wondrous weekend

8.19.2012

A heavy fog shrouds the mountain top, not even the sun can penetrate this one.  Classes cancelled for all the schools, Laxman says there is something political going on.  So, Suraksha all ready to go changes clothes and is back wearing the tattered red dress she wore yesterday. 

I have a bag of laundry but there is no sun.  To put them on the line I may have to wait a day or two before they are dry.  Another risk is the ‘doosy’ the mold that is carried by the fog, making all susceptible to ruination. 

Plans to trek to Machupuchere base camp are slow, though still on.  I may decide to take a guide simply to allow myself the freedom of not handling logistics.  What cost that may be I do not know, though if I hire Ramesh a negotiable rate will be fair.  And he says he’s done this trek before so I won’t need a map though I’m still looking for one.  Other 1-2 days ventures are possible: a two day trek to Panchese mountain, and a bus to Baglung.  Seventy-two kilometers away it is a three hour bus ride.  Laxman says the attraction there is the city, located in a valley surrounded by very high mountains.  He doesn’t like it because he gets claustrophobic.  There’s nothing holding me back from doing this except...

The precocious nine year old arrives and calls her mother with my phone.  Let’s go and swing.  I don’t want to play, sweetie.  I want to relax, this is a school day even though you have no school.  I’d like to write and think and and…ok, let’s swing.  Dal Bhat is only a few minutes away.  Oh the rain comes, sorry kid. 

JMT responded to my query on his FB page.  There is nothing less complicated than a life of simplicity.  This comes when worry is resolved, where tension has no place, where faith isn’t challenged. 

Simplicity.  Tis a gift to be simple, tis a gift to be free.  Who doesn’t wish for a simpler life?  So why complicate things?  Simply accept you are right or you are wrong.  Three years ago I didn’t know how I’d fare waiting this long to know if I am right or wrong.  Only four months and two days to go. 

Ok, a disclaimer; if the Mayan Calendar were the only indicator of an event to occur I’d be greatly skeptical but the experience and other credible predictions together has me leaning towards a 60-70% chance today the consummation of time is hear for real and we won’t see 2013. 

It’s hard to have mental simplicity when one questions everything and nothing rests until it is accepted for what it is.  There is no simplicity when one thinks about the evils of cosmological thought.  So why think about evil and its awful rule in the experiment when it is an inevitability? 

Because the game has gone on long enough and the rules have been bloody unfair.  To those who have the least I will give much.  It’s time to fulfill that promise God-Om.

Suraksha shows up without invitation and starts snapping gum in my ear.  Uncle Uncle, swing.  I promised in an hour and she couldn’t wait.  This is one bored kid or I am just too fun, I don’t know.

I just locked her out.  No, she opened the window. 

Truly, real pure simplicity is having one faith and believing in nothing else even if it is possibly true there are other truths and all truth is God’s truth is true for them as well.  I suppose to believe in this, simplicity comes easy.

All of this is inconsequential when it comes to things of eschatology.

I am sorry so princess.  I don’t want to play, Lord, how can I want two things when I can only have one? Mountain people used to have great patience.  I guess with mother gone she’s a banshee looking to amuse herself.  I don’t mind, but I prefer a moment of solitude every day, something I got none of yesterday.  She’s outside talking to herself trying to stay busy fighting boredom.   And she won’t stop.

“be ready to go, and you will be ready to stay.”

Oh my God.  Can I read this simply?  It’s a paradox.  Is he saying find balance between the two? In the Middle Path there is peace. 

I don’t know.  A puzzle to avoid perplexity.  It’s all about symmetry.  Meanwhile ten minutes on the swing and thankfully one of the ropes wrapped around a pillar broke with me in it and not our friend. 

The fog and spit kept me from going out, undecided, not ready to go, unwilling to stay.  What the blank.    

After hours of stalling, fog from Pame rolls in and up and with it heavy showers.  Laxman never put the garden chairs out today.  You live on a mountain all your life and instincts are in sync with nature.  Caught in the dining room can be a good thing.  New potatoes in oil cooked in a pressurizer and a hard-boiled egg for the afternoon meal.  Suraksha stays happily busy elsewhere, Prema and her husband Tika, who had been overseas for six-seven years until last year, sit below, tea cups in hand, waiting it out.  You do a lot of that during the monsoon season.  Thunder rumbles, rain falls harder, can’t hear others.  A young couple here decide to pay an afternoon fare for room one.  I think I’ll smoke another cigarette

I still feel Talbot’s response was glib. But who am I to question this man?  Not.  So, it is pertinent to ask him another, since I have his holy ear. 

1.      Have people stopped expecting the Lord’s return?

2.     We are to be ready, but how can one be ready if one says whatever, when the messiah returns the messiah returns, just stop telling me the messiah has returned because I won't believe you until this messiah comes with a bag of the supernatural end-times biblical kind of stuff to shower and amaze us into empirical proof.

I ask Laxman if the rain might be coming into the rooms, which are open. He says if these windows (pointing east) are wet, then yes.   A minute later he goes down to close them and I am not making this up, the wind shifts the intense rain and pounds the glass in front of me.  “Good timing, you think?”

3.      Do you think the spirit of a noble and just man who lived on earth before Christ would return as a deceitful spirit?

6:30pm  The rain continues, four men in their fifties arrive, take rooms three and four, ask for asian toilets, and now settle down in the dining room, ready to order.  Poor Laxman, doesn’t feel like cooking.  Here’s a day when you wish they ordered pizza and then you could order out for it. 

8.18.2012

A Saturday morning that for some reason feels like a weekend in the west: a bright foggy tranquility up and down the mountain, and a pot of tea from Laxman, already cooking at 6:30 for nine tourists who stayed last night.  A chance to continue reading Leon Uris’ ‘Trinity’ before Suraksha wakes up in her red dress and wants to play Uno but Daddy needs her to help with breakfast. 

Ed asked me what my plan was for the day.  I have no plans.  I have no routines other than the natural ones;  sleeping, eating, walking, writing, talking, taking photos, visiting and so forth. And of course doing whatever is asked me around the lodge.   I carry no watch or mobile here unless I walk down to Pokhara.  A great burden is removed when it doesn’t matter what time it is. 

Suraksha’s cousin Suson walks in.  I gave him a pair of these finger shakers because he knows how to boogie to any kind of music.  A few hours later he and Suraksha got the cement chalk and made some remarkable work. 

And for the rest of the day I played hide and seek, cards, the swing, and didn’t do any writing.  I wonder if that is what a Saturday is like here.