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.