The Tenth Day

10.24.12

I didn't have much time to write today, this day being the last and big day of Dasain so...tomorrow it's a bus to KTM and then a flight to Delhi where in a day or two I'll be enroute to Jaipur. If there is an internet cafe in my vicinity I might write again here, but there is good in disconnecting.  Right?

 

10.23.2012

In this possibly the ninth day of Dasain children play games and this morning Maya cleaned all the items in her light blue kitchen temple and then replaced them, then lit oil, three incense sticks, sprinkled water on all brass containers including surprisingly a smooth stone I had painted when I painted the room while in my state of ecstasy, and then gave me a tikka, and then placed marigold flowers on my head.

And we saw a most amazing breakfast and lunch rush, one never seen here and Laxman estimated he had to tell at least twenty travelers there was no room at the inn.  Amir chills in the dining room, draped with a yellow striped wool blanket and no shoes.  He didn’t stay in room eight last night, asthma he said, perhaps a bit of claustrophobia.  I remember having problems breathing there with the constant rain and mold.  Two months, in the monsoon season.  Did I leave that room any better?

My mind wishes to play games with me, this instinct telling me there is a sense of urgency, of anticipation among the travelers, even Amir, in his bliss there is always something needed.  Feeling lazy can easily be misconstrued when during your whole life you work and then you have nothing to do.  I think contentment may be more suitable, but doing nothing.  It’s not lazy. 

The children continue to play on the steps, Laxman and Maya haven’t stopped cooking for almost twelve hours.  Ama and Baba come over and now that it is dark Ama is making fried roti circles over a fire in the lower garden.  The batter contains wheat, ghee, a little bit of sugar and water.  I sat and held my flashlight over the skillet as she poured a rope of batter with her hand and using a stick turned it over until it was golden brown.  I ate more than I should have but with a painful stomach the last two days this grease may have helped me deal with whatever bothered me.  I think I know and I did have more of it with the dal bhat and I feel fine. 

osho goldfarb

10.22.12

Two Chinese tourists checked into room five and I can hear them moving the beds together.  If the linoleum rips, dude, we’re gonna have a conversation.  I wish I didn’t start the post this way, but the bargaining for a lower price made me want to come out of the room where I am comfortably reading and writing and listening to Nawang Kechog, incense burning, a candle lit, sitting in its new brass candle holder.  The brass bell sounds good, a five minute practice session outside the room five door.  Well,  Gary the Goat got it and I wasn’t there to see the slaughter/sacrifice/killing.  I took a long walk to the view point and then across to the roundhouses and had a cup of chai and chatted with the dude who manages them on the top with the umbrella frame and chairs before coming back and they had all eaten and Maya wasn’t so pleased but I didn’t know what time I had left and I didn’t know they’d be finished by the time I got back and look at that, it was almost one, so she heated up the dal bhat along with a cup of what was granular blood and pieces of the chest bone and I have to say goat meat, while there isn’t much on a goat, is really delicious but it’s work, it’s sucking and pulling and munching, and grinding and when you get to the marrow of the bone, when you’ve sucked out the life, what else is there to do or say?

The Chinese have an annoying guide, an older fella with the traditional tea-cosy hat, and now he’s knocking on the door, that’s right wake em up, to tell them Annapurna II is visible.  Go the top lady, get out of the room if you think you paid too much when you didn’t.  Exercising the tension that has left the right thumb in tatters is something I wish I knew what to do about.  Going to India, reading up on places and logistics but but but….

The sun disappears within the next thirty minutes behind clouds but leaves panoramic skies alight.  Suman arrives.  Time for lunch.  Come.  A plate of pan-fried goat parts, some I know as liver like mother served on occasion, and the rest I don’t want to think about parts.  When I left the kitchen, there was Amir in the dining room, solo and checked in room eight, so we took a walk to deliver meat to the grandparents, the children followed because they slept overnight, and what the man says, in part is true, in part is simply not because my experience with a 2700 year old Shaman cannot be only for me.  It can’t be.  And if nothing happens in two months to me or the world? What in the blazing fuck am I supposed to think?  I will forever be stranded on this planet with nothing but whys and no answers.  Amir may be right, but it offers no consolation.  Faith is based on personal experience and how does one live when that personal experience is supposed to be only for me and no one else?

The world is going to end but it’s no ones business because the info that came to me was not intended to be made public.  If it is made public, like I have been doing, sometimes reluctantly because I don’t know if this experience is only for me since the subject matter is something more than predicting football games. 

As far as predicting goes, I have been horribly wrong across the board;  predicting the Cubs would win the world series this year and predicting the Maple Leafs would win this year, predicting the end, predicting a marriage on top of a mountain with Mitch Albom there to write the story, ha John, in hindsight that was so, I don’t even know what to say.  I was being sympathetic to Cubs and Leafs friends and the imagination of the spirit or as Amir would say the compression of big bang dust that makes matter and you and me and is too hard to define is becoming what many said, too much charas and that’s what it will be called instead of an entheogen if nothing happens in two bloody months.  Nothing has come remotely true, from the beginning until now, I have been everywhere in my head and nowhere right now. 

And there it is, the end of the day.  The high season has been quite high for the Super View Lodge, another night of all rooms filled and I don’t know who is in rooms one and four and am unsure of two but Osho Goldfarb in room eight. 

dasain

10.21.12

I do things that I wish I did not do but eventually I see the meaning, even if it takes a long time.

Suraksha dealt the uno cards and then I did it, I pulled out the Kit Kat Dark and said winner gets this.  Five minutes into playing she tells Suman who is serving guests and now he wants in and the goddess of games did it again.  I don’t know how she does it, we stay on her about the cheating if it looks like the game is getting away from her but she’s lucky and so instead of opening the candy bar and sharing it, she’s got it and having brushed her teeth last night I don’t know if she has remembered her non-blood uncle this bright chilly morning.

So, two months to go.  You’d think if there really was something to the Mayan calendar the universe would be gracious enough to shoot a flare or something to let everyone know there are sixty days left of at least one person’s sanity and belief in God if nothing happens.  I will be so disappointed. 

Meanwhile a full garden of tourists having breakfast, quick peel  garlic, one garlic soup.  Who eats garlic soup for breakfast, of course the middle aged Chinese couple in room two.  Having checked out I find towels on the floor, used as a mat between the beds, and that unmistakable odor from feet that requires serious ventilation.  Sigh.  Suraksha continues to win at uno.  Trying to get that chocolate back she holds it like a miser, waiting for that one moment she’ll best enjoy the spoils of card playing. 

 

Twenty one seeds consumed, knowing nothing will happen though every day they must be getting drier but not to that level where they work do I find them today.  What to do.  A big group presumably comes today at one, so busy Maya you are with that bad back, the stereo decided to not work on the morning of the 16 elderly Chinese, a omen perhaps because we were going to play Tibetan music.  I feel sometimes like my hand is being slapped.  If they were 16 20+ somethings from Beijing do you think the stereo would have worked?  Absolutely. 

I leave for Kathmandu in three days.  How will I pack I think I know and unfortunately I’ll have to take a check-in size bag.  Do I really plan to stay out of Nepal for eighteen days?  If the Salalah account is done then I will have to exercise shoe-string measures and crawl back to the country. 

Didi calls me from the roof.  I never have any idea what it is she is saying unless it’s for a cigarette.  The stomach grumbles.  In the rush I got two cups of coffee and a tasty lemon pancake.  Now it’s dal bhat time.  Last night I could not eat the chicken parts given to me in my bowl.  There was one piece of white meat and the rest just looked like a car wreck.  Suman said beforehand tonite’s meal was bad, a chicken was cooked for the broth and the meat and now we were eating the rest.

9:18pm—I came up this morning and joked maybe it was a good day to go to Pokhara and buy flowers.  Instead, I went with Laxman and with a dozen men from Sarangkot bought five mountain goats.  There had to have been a thousand maybe more people and goats all celebrating this Dashain Festival.  I told Laxman I’d help him prepare for tomorrow’s slaughter but I will not watch Gary the Goat get it. 

The Brazilian in room three stands next to the router, occasionally coughing in a chilly evening with a brilliant quarter moon.  Rooms 1-2 are taken by a big family from Kathmandu and a family that came up on a donkey, all the way up here ain’t that something, they’re in rooms four and five.  Sounds like American educated kids with a with a white mum and Indian father.  And then there’s me.  An Indian group of 15 from Calcutta will take all the rooms on the day I'm enroute to KTM, and Laxman and Maya joke room six as well, but I don’t know if they are kidding.  Maybe I should come back early and catch someone in this bed.  Sniff, I can’t call it my own. 

Below near the Banyan tree a buffalo bellows a mournful dirge. The Brahmins don’t eat buffalo but lower castes will and one big one can feed a hellava lot of people since most don’t have refrigeration, no one can take more than the amount they can eat before it goes off.  And yes, when I think of buffalo getting slaughtered it’s always an Apocalypse Now flashback.

 

 

 

 

 

 

as soft as cement

10.19.2012

The sixteen elderly Chinese tourists with cameras bigger than dogs devoured the hard-boiled eggs, toast, bananas and curry potatoes, greedily washing it down with coffee and tea and a bit too much of the hot buffalo milk which several ladies were asking full cups of the rare stuff.  Now they’re gone.  Back to Pokhara and wouldn’t it be nice if they got a tour of one of the Tibetan camps. 

The sunrise has become dangerously routine.  I should move to other vistas for something different to frame.  Well, that baseball team has made it into the World Series, it is hard to believe I was in Detroit the last time they played, 2006, and it looks like I’ll be somewhere in Rajasthan by game two.  A nice place will have the games if it really means something to you.  It does and it doesn’t and I won’t think about it right now.  A three a.m. wake up to watch the game, great fatigue slowly encroaches.

I am amazed at times that I have gone on as long as I have here.  Boredom?  Loneliness?  Sure it hits me sometimes so what do I do?  What can I do?  Exercise, elevate, eradicate.  Hey, with almost two months to go and a little more and this year is up, I might be getting even more restless.  Look at my right thumb, dude you’ve torn all the skin off.  Amir reminded me, he like others like to live not in the past nor in the future but in the now and sure, who can argue that unless you’re one of those wise crackers who says the past, present and future are all going on right now, repeating and repeating and I don’t know about that.

Life begins at 50.  Not a chance, unless I am seriously hit on the head and can’t remember anything at all.  Not even my name.  What would that be like I don’t think it would be a positive experience, dude.  It is chilly in room six but step out onto the balcony and the sun is toasty warm.  I would like to lay down in the sun but this cement is by no means softer than San Diego cement. 

I’d like to visit Dubai but I don’t think I’ll have much left after a spell in the Raj, and I’d like to have something left for the last month. Wouldn’t it be simply wonderful if I was still getting a salary deposited?  Wow, that would be something new. 

The Swede in room five moved out after a two week stay.  In room three a Brazilian dude with red hair is camped, said to be for a month.  Tourists check into room one.  Business is good, have expenses risen or are they the same?  Helping out surely helped though it may not have been necessary.  When one has a line of credit, ya can only hope.

Thunder rumbles.  It has rained only three times this month, I’m still hoping for those clear mountain views, perhaps next month.  A photo from the peace pagoda and the lake and a reflection would be nice.  Another case of extremities with the sun and shade.  Everyone though, is bundling, except for Suman who wears his Ronaldo soccer suit.  He makes me cold and he’s never cold, so he says.  Mountain blood.

10.20.2012

Maya’s brother Ram came with his wife and child and we drank vodka and apple juice and a few pieces of chicken and onions and I did not feel too hot for most of the day.  Ram has lived in Hong Kong for six years and commutes to the New Territories from his abode in Kowloon with his other wife and child and works for a company dealing with real estate.  I guess he is doing ok.  I like to think I’m doing ok, compared to him, I might be very lucky or I might be very unlucky.  Women.  I can’t imagine one or two or three women living in the same room with me.

Sitting on the porch watching Benita and the other two boys whose names I’ll never remember, running up and down the steps. I remember riding a bike down a mountain road in Pittsburgh and wishing I didn’t have to go up.  Manna and his mother moved up to a newly built home, and from what was once called the Cottage Guesthouse and had been empty for a month there appears two children and their mother.  There’s no sign to indicate she is ready to open for business or is in going to open a business.  What will she do with six rooms? 

The sun breaks out on what has been a mostly cloudy and cool kind of day, Bisal and Benita come up almost naked having just bathed at the pump.  Many laughs coming from a group of ladies up the path and hidden from view.  Didi took a shower today outside below.  That is one shower a week?  or one every two weeks?  Say if you don't smell what the hell, save some water. 

 

Sumjana's father just walked past.  I namasted and he looked at me and said nothing.  Too tired to speak?  Just what in hell am I still doing here?  Have a nice day sir and please, go slowly.

 

sweep

10.18.2012

Frost covers the forest below, by far the coldest morning to date. Clear skies and a hazy Lamjung leave me feeling lazy.   Looking, reading, learning of Delhi and Jodphur and Jaipur.  I don’t have that much cash so the ten dollar rooms will have to do.  Tomorrow morning another large group will have a breakfast buffet here.  I suggested serving noodles and charging five hundred rupees a plate. The French.  Did they bargain down for three hundred a plate?  The work and service in today’s market calls for an increase which would still be a bargain in the west. 

Sometimes I do feel I am terribly wrong.  Almost two months before 12.21 and if nothing happens and I continue to expect, how long would you expect me to expect the end?  Not long at all.  It’s January 1.  After that we’re done, no not the end of anything other than my belief and profound disappointment that all continues.  What in God’s name did I miss four years ago?

Clothes washed and hanging on the lines, I don’t think I got all the soap out,  hands were sticky with soap afterwards.  Didi left quickly with an empty basket and two locals following down Maya’s Way.  The tourists for rooms one, two and four are here.  The rest of this group checked into the View Top.  A variety of drums, horns and percussions are heard throughout the day, the festival is in its third day. 

Sixteen elderly Chinese tourists sit in the upper garden.  No one is drinking tea, no one is eating.  Oh I see, Didi and four others carrying up the luggage.  Those who are staying here finished their noodles and rice and returned to their rooms.  I ran down the new road to get a better view of the red mountains and was rewarded with some nice pics, thanks to the bamboo.  Then I see the wildlife photos of the year on the BBC and I think mine really suck.  Wow, to have a nice camera and be deeply into it.  You can catch some pretty cool life. 

Sigh.  I told Maya I took thirty seeds this morning and nothing happened.  And then I told her I built a ‘temple’ though the word used to describe the piling of rocks in the garden is unknown to me. To Lamjung, Maya.  Then she slapped me.  You take seeds you build temple?  Hmmmm, is there something going on there?  What else I have I done on the days I took the seeds?  I’ll have to look for any unusual behavior, right?  Blah!!!!  

Time for bed.  Game four comes on in five hours. 

 

Daedalus said what?

10.17.2012

A group of 16 French travelers ate from the buffet and they appeared content.  Laxman came by a minute before sunrise to request my presence up, a small bummer because Verlander was in the second inning and I had a clear reception of the game.  I helped Maya set the tables and chairs and forks and knives in the upper garden and then retreated to the sitting room to resume my viewing of the game until as one expects, the power went out and so did the game.  It wasn’t until all had eaten and so had I that I returned to the room and followed the harrowing ninth on ESPN gamecast. 

 

How about that tattoo now? 

Well, Amir was the first Israeli to hear the story and for what it’s worth, his response was, how to say it, plausible.  The end of the world and the beginning of a new world may not be for humanity, it may only be for me. 

Nevertheless, it’s been one hellava ride and I’ll be glad to get off the trail and sleep in a hammock for a long time. 

One way flights to Delhi: $160.  I am at a crossroads here.  Take two days to reach Varanasi, a city I’ve visited twice and don’t really need or desire to see at this time, and then wait who knows how long for an available seat on the next train to Delhi, and yada I’ve used up four or five days right there.  So, a flight and a train to Jaipur.  How many nights in Delhi?  I think there are a few places I’d like to visit… 

Business has been good since the renovation of the dining room.  The rooms all look clean and nice, the weather has been cloudy and breezy, mountain viewing has some moments but they are by no means October clear. 

I suppose I’ll decide on the 20^th where in the India I’m going.  Going to visit Nyima beforehand would be ok, or I can wait until November, or shoot, wait until I am wrong and the ol boy can perform his puja, expelling the spirit who says he is Job. 

Today is Wednesday and strange that it doesn’t feel like a Wednesday.  Suraksha finished her eight examinations and is off somewhere and Suman asks me how many punctuation mistakes there are in this sentence:

im a god ive made me fly Shouted Daedalus.

Ok, a one way flight to ND, a hundred and thirty something, in nine days.  A night in Kathmandu.  Delhi.  And then to Jaipur?  Where in God’s name else, please let’s go here and think no more about it.  Eighteen days max in the country.  I need to find out how much is in my Salalah account and that will help decide to go back to KTM or god forbid, that other place, which would be fine since God isn’t going to forbid it. 

God forbid I do anything stupid like playing it safe.  C'mon, I do play it safe, and maybe that's what's boring me because it feels sometimes as if it is harder to not play it safe when everything I consume gives me a headache or has absolutely no effect on me whatsoever.  What is that all about? 

I had the bus stop at the path that took me through the rice fields and to the Panchase Restaurant. The man with friends in high places didn’t follow me off after I failed to persuade him and the bus went 100 meters further along where it stopped and the man stumbled right off into mud and rocks.  I walked and found him sitting in the middle of the road, a gash and blood dripping down his temple, caked mud in his hair and face…and he remained sitting in that road for an hour until he was able to walk and I helped him somewhat though he weaved away and went back and forth to the restaurant.  Yeah, it sure is my fault.  I said go ahead have a drink, but he drank half a bottle of rum in twenty minutes.  I didn’t know this was for him, a day of freedom away from his buffalo, his family, his fields and falling silly in the middle of the road without a clue, how the man with friends in high places spends his freedom, I just don’t know. 

travel shmavel

10.16.2012

An overcast morning leaves us with no sunrise and no mountains.  Great indecision regarding how to approach India leaves me wondering what to do with time running out.  Maybe I should go to Kerala, go all the way south, sure with less than three weeks.  Air Arabia has a flight to Jaipur, that’s cool, but I would have to stop in Sharjah! Sharjah is not even close.  It would be better to go to Sharjah instead! No, it wouldn’t.  Oh, maybe just flying to Delhi or Kolkata, the bus route to Varanasi would be the same way I took four years ago, which means a night in Lumbini.  Well…

The Cardinals-Giants game is nice background, a surreal portal back to America.  San Francisco, hands down the nicest big city to live in.  But even the most beautiful place is not a beautiful place if you don’t have a good job, and you don’t have a nice place to sleep.  It doesn’t matter.   

Heavy fog comes and goes, the warm sun is wanted but is elusive.  Coming up this morning 15 Japanese tourists are having tea, Amir sits in the dining room without socks, the children serve the large group in the garden, I scuttle aboot, finally get a cup of tea followed by a hardboiled egg and a piece of toast after the group is gone. 
 

The latest Indian plan: bus to Raxuul.  Only five hours from Pokhara and it is far closer to BG than going through Sinuali, which I’ve done and would like to go a different way because it’s different.  The travel agent I spoke to last night and pretty much discouraged me from taking any route other than the one he recommended, said the Raxuul border is not used much by tourists thus the likelihood for petty crime and the likes.  So what.  The other way is eight hours bus to Sinuali, a jeep to Gorkaphur, three hours, then a train, eight hours to Gaya and then a thirty minute taxi to BG.  And there was no mention of how long at the train station I’d be, so Raxuul can definitely be a better way if I’m not stabbed and robbed.

Time for bed.

A gap between thoughts

10.14.2012

A slivered moon on the eastern horizon, the sun rises, mountains pink peaks, low winds, chilled air, good morning Sunday.  No baseball game on, who in the world would watch badminton singles instead of ALCS baseball in October?  Please.  No score in the fifth.  The American woman in room four is still here, she takes off her hat this morning.  The Swede in room five, ok, he’s not a German, who the hell can tell anyways, he’s still in room five.  At three this morning locals came and are in rooms two and three.  No doubt we’ll find them thrashed.

 

 

Well, what in the world am I going to do today?  There’s still a rock-pile in the lower garden.  Ok let’s clean three rooms.  And coming out too early has given me a cold.  But the rooms are clean and not listening to Maya paid off with the rooms full.  Ke Garne? 

Meanwhile, in the dining room some entertaining tourists are here.  To be gracious I will not write about Amir and his wife and their daughter/cousin and her child in their presence, and the names I’ve already forgotten except for the man who looks like Osho.  What can we talk about?  Shamanism, Israel, and crazy things that no one understands.  The older single woman in room four, the one who waited while we cleaned it, left soon after , a family of three, Norwegians perhaps, take two, a couple of fellas I don’t know are in one, and I guess Amir and his group are in room three.

A stuffed nose.  It’s been a while.  A headache from too much smoke?  Ten not ready seeds have anything to do with the headache?  I’d rather not go up again but it’s early.  Silence is good.  Maybe all the talking with Amir, using parts of my brain I haven’t used in a while got some exercise and now it, the brain wants to sleep.  I’d like to sleep, and I’d like to dream. 

Because I never dream.  I did a few times in Oman and I dreamed a few times in Turkey but I haven’t here and I don’t know why.  Laxman’s sister works in Tel Aviv and there she was on the iphone, Ama is talking to her, and then Ama gives the phone to Amir and his wife and he’s shocked to be talking to a Nepalese who lives in his country, and the woman’s mother is right next to him.  Amir is learning and enjoying it. 

10.15.2012

Every day is a weekend here.  Even when I work it’s better than what I’d do elsewhere.  So?  The gap between thoughts is about to close on human history and when it does this experiment will be done.  Unless of course I am wrong and only my own ‘experiment’ on earth will be done and the rest of ya’ll will go on.

 

 

Great fatigue today.  Played football with Suman and untangled a fishing rod, put away dishes, cleaned refuse of leaves and litter from under the upper garden bushes of rose and jasmine.  John, how about a lassi, say a Bhang lassi and it sure tasted like there was chocolate in it.  I don’t think there is anything that is going to have an effect on me anymore.  Neither mushroom or datura or bloody bhang does anything to me.  And I can only conclude that the moment I peaked, the moment I believed that the Messiah had returned, nothing else even comes close and I’ll never experience such unity in everything again, at least before December 21.

The day is almost done.  A brief shower this afternoon, cool temps, Amir and his family are camped in the dining room. One glass of Raxsi with the man is enough, heavy feeling, an easy going looking for quiet soon kind of feeling. 

uno snickers

Is a rainbow still a rainbow when you can see its five colors make a complete circle?

                                                 the wind is blowing the rainbow circle away

The mushrooms were so bad I almost threw up and out they went.  That is ok, they’re not the same as the desert kind.  Another clear sunrise, the largest tourist groups to date come hunkering up the steps.  Europeans, Americans all wearing the clothes you can tell others I needed this there.  No you don’t, all you need are flippers, sunglasses and a camera.  Another twenty not ready seeds taken an hour ago.  Yawn.  Why take them?  Because I got a lot and there’s another pod I should open.  Black and white mold on the outside but it hasn’t opened like the one I took from the kitchen.  I guess I’m not going down today.  That leaves one Saturday left, if that is, they are free.  Well, the 20^th is good, it’s just before this next festival and I’ll leave five days afterwards.  Right?

I’m close to a plan for India, if I can go straight to Bodh Gaya and then head West to Delhi, hop on a plane to Dubai for three nights and then back to KTM, arriving around the 17^th and then it’s up to…Lantang.  I don’t know about Langtang, really, because that means having to carry warm clothes through India and Dubai and that means checking in a bag which means what more?  Going to India and only Dubai I can carry the red bag and sandals only though you know Dubai now.  Well, the fact is I left my casual climbing Indian made shoes in the mountains with the fella who gave me a pillow when I laid down on his restaurant floor, so I don’t even own a pair.  Buy blue jeans and a pair of shoes in Dubai, slummer. I don’t know how much money I have dude.  Shanti shanty.

I lost a Snickers Crunch bar to too many 'this is real' Uno games.  Suraksha walks off with the candy bar.  Suman says when she least expects hit, bam, watch your valuables.  Of course he wouldn’t do that, will she, though, share her not so hard winnings with him?  Certainly not I unless she manages to have not already eaten it.  Mid afternoon, temps in the shade are at least ten degrees cooler.  Rooms 1-3 not cleaned, I suppose I could straighten out the beds…Something to do on a lazy weekend.  ALCS begins tomorrow.  I’ll have to go up to see it unless the tv miraculously works again. 

And it should.  A request was made and the power to the tv’s was turned on for tomorrow morning’s baseball game I think.  I’m not gonna get up at 3:30 in the morning, but five is usual and it would be nice lord, not that you do favors like this because I know I can live without it.

Three men with problems I can’t even begin to describe but they are suffering of the kind that is brought on to themselves because of issues in life they can’t handle.  I don’t know what to think.  Civil order bending backwards with frequency or it’s just living in a village where news moves as fast as it likes to be. 

 

tiger tiger burning bright

10.12.2012

A smashing sunrise, the cloud variety and colors made for many nice compositions.  One or two that could be painted…

A day in Pokhara buying art.  Originals I must say would fetch a lot more elsewhere.  Invest in art if you can afford to or you don’t know how much you have in your Salalah bank account because it really doesn’t matter now.  When you see the end near you bunker down.  San Diego is a nice place to bunker down.  Here is a nice place to bunker down.  If I am wrong about everything there will be no bunkering down I tell you that.  We’ll be going and I don’t know where because I don’t think about it too much but seeing a way out with a job…the question is humiliating. 

Suman is home for forty days.  He says he has forty days of homework because the vice principal told the teachers to give it to them good.  I haven’t spoken with any of the teachers but I’d wager they don’t like this vp very much.

A very hot shower in room three was splendid.  My first in six days sister, as she tried to keep me around but I needed a shower. Oh this poor toilet of mine, the tiny worms are growing larger when they’re not eaten by ants.  This must be a feast for that huge spider I haven’t seen in a while, and I haven’t seen a web.  Perhaps it just stinks too much for a spider. 

So the plan could be tomorrow visit the Tibetans, overnight sleep, early wakeup to climb to the peace pagoda and come back I guess.  The mushrooms remain in the bag, I don’t know if they go bad or not but we’s thinking what to do with them.  Take ‘em first thing in the  morning, call Dolker, yes or no on the go, and let life slide either way. 

Suraksha calls me for lunch.  It is 5:30pm.  She plays with the Datura seeds.  What you going to do with these Uncle.  A Puja.  Oh, the Daisain Festival.  Yes, why not.  And then it’s off to India.  Bodhgaya in or out kid?  She’s looking outside.  Suman is taking a shower.   Her older brother is back. 

The Tigers win.  Is this the time for a final tattoo?  How about Dubai for three days after…how much do I really have I’ll have to know if I go to that place because that place is for people who have incoming income.  And slumming it, well there’s nothing I need to buy.  We’re just restless Lord, help me please.  I don’t want to go to Thailand and I may not necessarily be ready to return to Nepal.  A few days in some familiar place I haven’t been to in a while after India…

The end of the day, sitting in the newly carpeted tv-sitting-living room.  The paintings have been rung and Maya isn’t happy about something.  Well, I am glad many times to not know.  They work it out eventually.  The rooms are full, a family of four occupy room one, and two and three are taken by a Chinese fivesome.  The red head who’s really a blond who never takes her floppy hat off is still in room four and the tall German dude is still in room five.  Full. 

 

 

 

Om my God

10.11.2012

Is this date auspicious in anyway?  We only know in hindsight, right?  And we really have to avoid looking at the day’s events and saying, well, you see, look at those numbers, that’s why you found a parking spot so easily. 

A lingering headache brought on by combinations, albeit the items were small in quantity.  The mushrooms have been disappointing and I think the locals are wondering themselves, why is nothing happening to him.  Aside from the ensuing headache the only alteration in thinking was the depths I felt I went to answer the impossible questions.  I could find no answer to Taliban shooting little girls.  Nothing new is under the sun and the only difference between the Taliban and the history of violence is CNN. 

Laxman would like to go to Pokhara and look at some art.  Which I’m more than willing to buy.  But not something I don’t like. 

The datura seeds get an hour or two of sun before they’re in the shade again.  This morning I took about ten or twelve despite the shroom blues, and of those ten or twelve ones that had turned black.  We will see.  Should I take my passport with me in case I need to remain in town for reasons I can’t think of? 

It was decided to go to Pokhara tomorrow because Suman will be coming home.  That is good.  I am/was in no shape to go down, a heavy wobbly headache took me to bed for three hours.  The seeds, ah, who knows.  Maya wants bricks in the middle garden laid out.  If there is no more rain, how can flowers survive, I meekly protested.  Go tell Didi to fetch the buffalo dung and we’ll take care of it tomorrow.

Going tomorrow also lays plans for staying there if I pay a visit to Nyima and his family on Saturday.  I’d still like a photo, please.

Tension.  Tension comes on when you allow someone to change your gentle and quiet disposition.

The room darkens, the fall air is more evident today, by five pm it’s time for the micro fleece.  In another hour or so the pashmina will be necessary.  Surprisingly my feet are staying chill free.  And wearing socks with flip flops that have that piece that goes between your big toe and longest toe is kind of difficult unless you wear oversized socks, which I don’t have. 

The lingering headache left me longing for silence and there is plenty of that up here when a dog isn’t barking or doorbell buzz birds aren’t buzzing, or…now it is as quiet as it is going to be with chickens and children and drums and chopping living it up somewhere.

I saw a job that interested me.  It begins January 1, 2013.  An escape if I am fucking bloody wrong.  I know what you’re thinking, he is preparing to move on when he sees that all this shit experienced was nothing more than his own doing.  All in the brain, nothing external that happened happened, coincidences were figments of a creative entheogen fueled in sixth gear noggin going where he had no idea. 

Oh Saint Francis, what was I doing at your tomb?  Why don’t you and a few of your saints say something with a little more than two months to go?  You’re gonna let me sink, aren’t you?  It’s my fault, right? The saints flit to and fro, resting, sleeping, moving on, there isn’t much you can do about any of this, right?  Without prior approval?  By the Om-God. 

And perhaps worst of all, while I begin to think about the world going on as it is ad nauseum, I still believe it is going to happen. 

Om-my-God.  The tourist in room five has some kind of wind instrument, like a wounded oboe or a cheap wood flute.  Turn up Dave Mathews please just a little bit.  I have to admit I enjoyed watching the last five innings of the O’s-Yankees game this morning.  Raul Ibanez.  And for the third and fourth innings the Reds-Giants replay was interesting this afternoon.  Weird how foreign players are in the National League.  It would be nice to see game five of the Tigers-A’s.  Or maybe not. 

And the NHL is on strike.  The biggest surprising yawn of all.  What happened there?  Too much success? Too many faces, too far away to remember and watch is probably the most likely reason for loss of interest but remind you this, my last tattoo is forever Howe and Ogrodonick.

mountain music

10.10.2012

A glorious cool sun filled morning, the six Czech bikers slowly rise, an Israeli foursome drink black coffee, two men with short Lasar-Wolf beards take off their shirts and soak the rays, the Chinese in room one have left with their guide, Suraksha has a touch of the flu.  Today is examination number four: English writing.  Yesterday she said the English reading examination was easy.  Writing very difficult Uncle.  What advice to give?  Write what you remember first and don’t stop until you are finished.

The rain stopped last night and so with it the electricity which has yet to return. The back up battery is spent, all six rooms plus seven and eight where locals have yet to stir and 27 dining room lights were too much.  What shall I do today?  “The Age of Kali” is still riveting reading 15 years after it was written.  Now we’re thinking a few days in Lucknow to visit what remains of the great rising of 1857 and the beginning, says Dalyrimple, of Indian independence. 

A low-grade headache persists.  Cleaning tables, the power has returned now that the bikers have left.  Rooms to be cleaned, an omelet with tomatoes and mushrooms is on order in thirty minutes or so.  The sun retreats behind clouds and the chill is immediate. 

The omelet is in a holding pattern for now.  Washed dishes, four huge pots full of everything from the kitchen is put away, I begin cleaning rooms until Didi frees herself and begins with room four, which a red-headed tourist waits for. 

The Lindell AC.  Detroit sports.  Wow, was I lucky or what to have grown up then?  Gordie Howe, Al Kaline,  some greats, wow.  I am proud to be from this grimy and depressing place but I cannot see myself living there again. I’d choose a flotilla of hungry leeches to a night of freezing rain in November in Detroit.  I think I long much more for the past than with the present.  And if I were to live there would these memories equal the ones I had as a child?  I don’t think so.  Then, sports were celebrated as a family for what I saw as family of Tigers and Red Wings and Lions.  That loyalty today feels contrived amongst those who boast so loud of their loyalty to get some of their own fake fame.  As for the players, I can’t be objective any more.  I’m sure if I were there I’d hold…who on the Tigers do I even know…Justin Verlander, in high esteem like I did Mickey Lolich or Denny McLain?  A ten year old and a forty nine year old just don’t think alike I think.  And of course, there’s no family. 

A mushroom and tomato omelet eaten an hour ago and all I feel is hungry for another bite of Walker’s Shortbread.  All is quiet in the valley except for an unhappy crow and a truck rumbling far far below. Crickets get started with three hours of light to go, music from below, so much artificial noise from below.  Last year at sunrise every morning for a month, Krishna the temple keeper played this upbeat Hindu song praising Krishna and Shiva but this year there was no music and when I heard there was a mechanical malfunction I offered to help repair it but the people who live at the top hear it a lot louder than we do at the Superview.  Negotiations are ongoing.  It would be nice to have music for this festival which begins in ten days or so.

And Laxman let me know trains and travel west are booked for some time, except for flying.  Flying to Delhi could be an option.  Maybe I should fly straight to Goa.  Birds of passion outside grow louder.  Stop thinking about India.  It is, I don’t know.  Two weeks is all I’ll have because I wait until the end of October to witness, not really participate, in the next holiday.  Oh well.

the best part of the day

10.9.2012

In a day I’ll be quick to forget I reached the guesthouse just as the rain began to fall and fall it does with lots of lightening.  The first time it has rained in a week or so.  We all hoped, or at least I did, that the rain was finished, look it’s October.  Funny, now, as it pours outside, I remember rain in October on the other side of the world.  That kind of rain I wasn’t crazy about being stuck in either.

But the sunrise was worthy.  The best part of the day.    

After parting from Balarum at the second taxi park I walked up Moti’s Way with Krishna, the temple keeper, who was carrying bags belonging to a biker’s group that included a man I talked to who told me on the way up they had just returned from Upper Mustang on bike.  I don’t know who carries all this luggage when they’re biking but as it turns out they’re in rooms 1-5!

I should go up. 

As for the day, let me simply say…

Here’s the best part of the day.

 

 

The banana farmer

                                                                10.8.2012

 

It does appear that the monsoon season has ended, another day of clear skies, cool winds and lots of sun.  The mountains haven’t been particularly clear here’s hoping for that to come soon.  Monday morning, Suraksha made an early visit, knowing I had been in Pokhara yesterday, she smells chocolate and seeks the bag until she finds.  After school, we agree, we’ll take a look at this Belgian chocolate, 72% pure. 

There’s a local artist on the mountain who does animal carvings and paints portraits.  Yesterday he told me a single painting was five thousand rupees.  In Pokhara I went to a gallery and saw a wonderful painting that was four times the size of the local artist’s work for the same price.  I look out from the dining room and see regular stream of tourists stop to see his impressive wood carvings of birds and insects.  Laxman and I paid a visit and I offered two paintings for the price of one and he refused.  How art is assessed is very speculative and I don’t see how he can justify the price so good luck to him.

Laxman handed me a banana.  Beem had brought up a stalk from below.  Jungle bananas, sweet and it was discovered I had planted this tree last year.  The farmer extended his hand after he learned I had planted it.  Nice job he seemed to say.  Well, yes, sure anytime you need a banana tree planted, just let me know. 

A week ago I agreed with Balarum to go to Pame today.  Plans changed.  It’s hard to explain the change but let it be said, I’d hate to see his wife in prison.   

The walk up the mountain yesterday took 90 minutes to reach Moti’s Panoramic Guesthouse, and just in time for a rather restrained sunset.  Moti uses an Italian coffee maker so it’s always good and he has a really stupendous viewpoint of the lake, and to his east, Manaslu.  The dry season is here, and he worries about water.  Really, where in the world is he going to get water for the next five months.  It is a concern shared by every person on this mountain.  The superview has four 1000 liter tanks and under the rooms a 15,000 liter.  This tank, I am told, has run out.  So, while my much needed and most appreciated shower in room five may have come very close to excess, perhaps a few minutes more than is reasonable, I will try to be more conservative from now on.  I will propose to Laxman we put up notes in the toilet asking people to take it easy with the water.

Walking past Prem Maya’s last night she was at the water tap.  It was the closest we had been. I kept my head down and said nothing.  I was happy to hear her laugh when asked of something by someone in the house but heard nothing else.  The day before yesterday she and her four nieces enjoyed the day’s last hour of sun on the roof, and I am happy she is not afraid to be in public knowing my atma is present.  And I didn’t wish to let her see me on the other roof.  There’s no reason to plant a seed for bad talk and gossip to grow.

Tourists have checked into room five.  Good thing I removed all the body hair from the shower this morning. 

A beautiful sunset with clear pink mountains.  I went up the steps quickly and turned left before the temple and headed to the helicopter pad.  While I ought to have expected it a row of Chinese from an amateur photo club were snapping away.  It actually made for what I hoped was a nice photo or two.