carpet cut

10.5.2012

The clearest day to see Lamjung and compatriot Annapurna II.  At five am I can see car lights snake up to the view point where the sealed road ends.  Two to three hundred people usually I am told.  When the sun appeared a big cheer rose.  Morning skies so blue they make me thirsty.  Cleaning out the reception room.  Seven men took the awkward and heavy case out and down to grandpa’s house.  Much to my surprise there were old photos I had matted and sent here via freight under a lot.  I had a nice camera then.  They are the clearest pictures I have, much clearer than what I see on a monitor. 

The carpet is cut and fit and it’s nice enough to sit on or wrestle someone.  I switched the glass bamboo table with an old wooden one and covered it with a sarong from Sumatra’s Lake Toba.  And on the window stands the Turkish woman from Rise, she says hello to no one in particular.  Her basket of green blades and three small malt balls of end product sit at her feet.  Fatigue. 

 

3:45pm. I took ten seeds at 12:14pm and all I am is tired.   What to do.  I took the seeds that Maya had put on a tin dish and have been in the rain twice.  I will take care of them for the time being.  I am using one of Laxman’s walking sticks.  Show me Al Kaline’s swing again, eh?  I could not have used a stick for ABC.  Maybe up sometimes it would have been helpful, but in one hand I always had a bottle of water and I liked to keep a free hand. 

I’ve been bugging the two for a couple of weeks now about a Ganesh painting I bought in Varanasi three years ago.  I still remember sitting in the artist’s office surrounded by his addicted obsession with painting, drawing anything to create the Ganesh figure.  He created the one I bought from him, signing it as well.  I wrongly assumed Maya would like it but they’ve hidden it and refuse to tell me if they threw it away or if a rat ate it or it got wet after the usual crazy butt kicking storm to blow menacingly through.   

And we couldn’t find a text book, in English and Arabic, a set of rules, guidelines from an ancient text.  I tell Laxman if you can’t find it yet go the last place where all things eventually wind up.  Under your bed.

I should invade their room and find the Ganesh.  I’ll hang it in room six and so they don’t care for it, that’s all right, just give it to me. 

 

A nice sunset, the sun dipped behind clouds early and the rest of the sky and clouds change a little red, orange, the mountains are hidden, the blue pall diminishes depth.  The tile men are finished and sit at a table in the dining room.  The bathroom is covered, very nice.  The kitchen is complete, very nice.  The reception room is done.  Clean up continues, the painters are painting the bamboo chairs and low bed frames as well as the wooden key chains. 

Thunder rumbles and continues onward.  Two nights without rain, a much cooler evening.  No tourists today.  Like it was said before the tourism business is like a roller coaster, one must be ready when the car swings into your garden and every room is full and all the tables are full.  In the meantime there are three gardens to tinker.

And finally, Beem’s buffalo gave birth.  Details tomorrow.