no rain sunday

8.26.2012

The sun is out bright and strong as are the mountains.  Seven or eight days of serious rain but last night all was calm.  The restaurant has plenty of folks coming in, guides bring their tourist for an omelet and coffee.  The Polish family comes up, here for four days, food for six in the first three amounted to around a hundred bucks.  Yerrik and his wife invited me for a couple of beers and instant coffee yesterday, Yerrick has that look that is identical to Frank’s; clear blue with an edge. 

By the end of this week I will need to renew my visa, and then next week decide on a trek to the Anapurna Base Camp or Turkey.  What?  Are you serious?  Really the most annoying obstacle is having no clothes to attend any social function.  Can I rent a suit? 

I’d like to think that a climb up Sarangkot is more difficult than doing the same distance over three or four hours.  I don’t believe any part of the trek to Machupuchere is as steep as what we got right here.  I am surprised I am not sore at all this morning.  My calves were getting burned, but thankfully nothing that disabled me, like the knee going down, except of course for Friday’s late afternoon excursion.  No problems there for the first time.  So are we as ready as we’ll ever be?  Glaciers, a walk around a Fish tail. 

The Sarangi instrument is a haunting violin with an echo.  It’s also very settling, I listen closer to this sound for it feels it contains spiritual intonations like the didgeridoo produces where ripples and waves reach into other dimensions and bring back an experience of some natural synchronicity… perhaps.

I was asked to do something about the mangled bricks along the wall that fell two weeks ago on top of them along with a dozen plants and flowers.  But we hesitate, a hot sun, nice breezes, an hour or two should be more cover.  But what to do for two-three hours except admire a chillum and hope for the best.  Yerrick took his 18 year old daughter with him down the mountain.  Good luck to them.  Mother, whose name I can’t recall, remains behind with the three, to read, to sleep under the shade of a banana tree, to keep the kids entertained while it is hot.  A tall European man and his two sons wearing Yankees hats check into room five.  I can’t cough quietly, so I shan’t cough.  The large black spider in my hat is now on the wall.  The mice were in my sweaty clothes that lay on the floor next to the welcome mat.  Serves them right.  Last night Laxman paid a visit and a bat followed him into the room and then into the bathroom where they played around, dirtying my nice clean floor, before he opened the door and the bat made its way out without injury. 

And now that the bricks are all lined up as straight as a curving left-hander is able, it’s a hot shower.  The men, I hesitate to say even young men because the leap from teenager to adult feels younger than 16 here, are carrying up heavy sheets of posterboard into the dining.  A serious makeover but I have doubts, how is this sealing up all the leaks?

At sunset yesterday, Suraksha and I went to the view top.  She stopped in each of the temples, left flowers in each, came out with a self-administered tiki, but before we left stopped at the ticket booth and she gave herself a yellow tiki and then she gave me a vertical stripe on the forehead and then threw a five rupee note into the locked temple located in the cellar of the new one being built that won’t finish before the end of the year. 

And to end the day, standing on the terrace, a little closer to the router, last thoughts are no thoughts are good thoughts.  It is hard to think of things to say when it feels like I write to no one in particular.  While on the other hand to write about experience is to write about what each desires and it is interesting to write about, even if no one reads it.  Today I desired a moment of sleep this afternoon.  Nothing else no one else. 

Ah, that’s not exactly what I was thinking.