Friday's Fish

8.17.2012

Fog closes in, thunder rumbles past, a cool breeze and runny nose and it’s almost ten.  Laxman’s father comes by, a stately looking gentleman of a farmer if you’ve seen one.  A bad knee slows him down this year.  Last year he came every other day and cut buffalo grass then carried it back to his home, 20 minutes on foot.  Today is Father’s Day in Nepal and Beem gives Laxman, Maya and myself a big rice tika and a blessing. 

A nice albeit unclear skype chat with an old high school friend, both of us somewhat envying each other’s lot in life, but not too much.   I told Ed we were having a 12/21/12 party and was unable to persuade him he should come to the Himalayas because he would be turning 50 in a few months and what better place will there be when we’re beamed, floated, transported in a big pod, ok, we’re mocking and why the bleep not.    Will we go to heaven with regrets?  I don’t think so.  Fifty.  Why am I so sure I won’t see my own, and really, I don’t want to see it.  Unless I am in New Zealand which is of course the circled country right now, to go to the furthest ends and become someone else.  How will I be able to live with myself if I am wrong and all this shaman spirit crap is bull?  How?  It’s pissing me off.  And I think talking about a 12/21/12 party is a taunt at the cosmos and a joke on us for taking the universe and spirits too seriously.

People will never believe, a wolf has cried too many times, for what proof do I have other than my own experience?  And how different are my prophecies from the girls at Medujorge?  Well for one they aren’t saying the end will occur at the end of the year, and their secrets will no longer be secrets if they wait much longer .

Maya left at noon,  six to seven hours of travel by foot, bus and taxi to family.  What will two men and a nine year old do without the cement of the family inabsentia. 

I told Beem I’d pay a visit.  I think that time is now.  It’s almost three.  It looks pretty hot out there, the sun has no resistance.    An hour later we’re almost there.

Sitting on the porch of Suraksha’s grandparents Ama makes rotis.  I arrived and found her on all fours in the green house sliming  the tomato plants’s stalks with this copper colored paste.  I hope I didn’t take her away from anything pressing. 

On the way I started out by going up the main path to the view top and after the last restaurant men were pouring cement for a new temple gate  like the one at the Kaskikot Temple.  I saw Laxman and sat next to him for a minute.  Along with the two of us were four men from the Sarangkot Tourism Committee.  One of those members was a 78 year old fella whose name escapes me and another man is the old dude with a long white moustache who sits in a booth at the view top at 5 in the morning taking 25rs for tourists and 10rs for locals and who takes my money even though Laxman told him not to take my money since I was a lifetime member of the committee. 

I continued on a path below and left of the temple under construction the mountain toward the newly finished roundhouse and there Machupuchere was looking sharp, the big fish comes up for air. 

After three rotis, a glass of lassi and a tea with buffalo milk and one cheroot I headed back to the guesthouse.   Beem offered the spare room if I wasn’t up for walking back.  Seeing it was still early and I didn’t have my toothbrush or anything else that would help me sleep in a farm house, I was on my way.

7:48. The fog gives way to rain.