this is a reading from...

1.30.31

Thirty minutes after sunset and the entire Pokhara valley is without power.  This afternoon Laxman and I went to eight petrol stations before we found one with petrol.  #$@ country.  I heard him say. 

Once I ascended above the jungle a little ratty kid comes dashing to my left and by the time she reaches where I am on the steps I hand her an orange and she takes off back to her home behind the trees about sixty yards away.  Further up in the village with the large banyon tree the kids are on to me like a hawk sees a rat two miles away and they get grapes.  At the tap Suraksha is filling a gallon and a bucket and Pricilla takes the grapes like gold nuggets.  I considered offering Prem Maya and her two youngest but there is an attitude that squared off the offer.  It is too bad, really. 

A blood red orange moon rises after nine, two German tourists checked into room one late, a dodgy guide orders a beer on their behalf and they shrug then he’s in the kitchen smoking much to the outspoken chagrin of Suraksha but it isn’t enough to persuade anyone so she leaves and I leave fast as well.

I mean it when I speak of quality not quantity but if there were a place where it was quality with the quantity, would that be possible?

  How would the world have turned out if Jesus’ closest friend was named Jack?  Go ahead and say it, this is a reading from the Gospel of Jack.  How about Jack the Baptist, Pope Jack Paul.  Someone once said I looked like the prototypical dentist.  How many dentists do you know named Dr. Jack?  Would you consider a dentist by such a name?  I don’t want to look like a prototypical anything, let alone a boring white bread dentist named John. I just have to act more like a Jack, that’s all, and how would Jack handle the crisis you’re in now?  What crisis I just got a visa for another month.  February.  I have loathed this month of my birth for a long time and now I will be here for it, may it pass quickly, friend.

1.31.13

Last week I accidently dropped a tea cup.  Today I accidently knocked over a large thermos.  There is a lot of glass in this thermos, I don’t know if I can strain out the hot water already in it.  I ran down to Shiva’s and he doesn’t sell them.  He sells gas by the liter but not a large thermos in the shop.  I text-messaged Laxman in Pokhara, ‘so sorry, I broke big thermos, buy new one’.  I am costing them money and I am not fucking happy about it.  Maya says she has more but I don’t know where they are, she doesn’t.  Shit.  If Laxman doesn’t bring it up I am going tomorrow.  I hope it cost less than 1500 rupees because that’s all I have. 

I know it was an accident but I know everything has got a higher value here than anywhere else I have worked.  Maya contains her damage control look but I know I did bad.  Meanwhile two young backpackers say they have no money but want to use the wi-fi.  I told Maya I’d be back in ten minutes but there is nothing to do but fret up there now.  I am ready to take off down the mountain which means I’d be walking back up in the dark.  Does breaking one of three thermos’s call for that kind of radical penance?  Not balanced too well, I’ll go up in thirty minutes. 

Before Laxman went down at noon he called me up, Maya needed help in the kitchen.  She’s cooking dal bhat for eight and strangling the organic chicken in the sink was Krishna the priest.  The man obviously hasn’t done much with whole chickens for it was quite cruel to watch him try to cut it up and when he blackened the head over the open fire I lost my appetite.  I don’t know if this is hindu halal but I shared a cigarette with this soiled and tiny man afterwards on the steps in the early afternoon sun and he is excited of the possibility of a black top road going right through the village.  “Buy a small land, open up guesthouse, Krishna Guesthouse, you like?  I sell black tea, I have no house, very small room, very dirty.”  I hope his dream comes true but there is no way I’ll order chicken if I visit.

If blood is drawn does that count?  Self flagellating, the thumbs bleed easily. When things go badly you know you have nowhere to turn.  You take this computer and you sell it first of all and then you go where your imagination sees you;  in Dolpa eating what you can find in the jungle.  I am bummed though reassurances are mixed from sincerely to you gotta pay though you’ve given us almost thirty grand in four years.  What good it that now?  Lunch from four men today; seven thousand rupees.  The German newlyweds are staying another night, buy the dodgy guide a few more beers, run that tab, no expenses spared for the new missus. 

A few random moments before the lights go out:

On my way down the trail a boy steps to the steps and points at me and says ‘Jungle Man’ I smile and it’s oo oo aH aH quite loudly and what a nice echo monkey and the boy laughs meanwhile  the boys’ siblings sit at the table eating dal bhat unmoved in silence.

On our way up the steps across from Dan’s palatial elephant Didi and I are on our third trip carrying logs when the old man comes out and of course we must oblige and chat?  Ah I’d rather not considering I’ve had this wood on the back of my neck for 25 minutes but Didi doesn’t sweat and she smiles and stops: “Oh Didi you look so beautiful even when you’re carrying timber, how are you?” 

An American tourist pushing the upper sixties wearing USC Trojan attired stayed for one night and he told me he had visited the Sarangkot in 1966 and then again in 1991.  After 22 years he says “it’s no longer quiet here.”  He’s right.  Pokhara has a low roar hum.  To find the real deep quiet walk west at least 20 minutes. 

a pint of penance please

1.26.2013

At the end of my contract in Turkey I left a huge bag of winter clothes for charity.  At the end of my contract in Oman I left all of my work clothes with the landlord. This purging, misdirected, was in anticipation for something to happen that didn’t happen. 

Of course if I hadn’t given away my sport jacket and three pairs of shoes and so forth I wouldn’t be able to travel as light as I like to be. This philosophy, however, doesn’t bode well when one needs a job that requires shoes and a tie and a nice shirt or two.

A little nibble from Antalya, said to be the third most visited place in the world.  The objective for the man whose ambition wanes when there are no like-minded people around him to encourage and inspire is to stay in one place for longer than a year.  A city by the Med sounds ideal.  Work your ass off, buy a bike, running shoes, swim in the morning, I can live there.  I gotta sell myself, Lord.  Strength, direction, where am I going.  I hate and am tired of anticipating.  Oh wait, to not anticipate means one is lazy which I’m not.  This is a journey and I am at yet again at a crossroad, not easily.  Anticipating poverty softly isn’t traumatic this time.  Room eight suffices for now.  Pennilessness isn’t upsetting yet though the division of my labor and and…the cute kid with the awol dad comes in.  She has enjoyed the mango gummy sweets she’s received in the past week.  Her mother and her other child, a three month old, sleep on a mat in the sun.  Priscilla is about four and can’t weigh more than twenty pounds.  I can’t be right, can it?  Whatever food they get must be coming from their family.

With Maya’s mother and sister and the kids huddled in the kitchen Laxman and I sit by the fire with a pot of coffee vodka, a full bright moon and a return to frigid temps. It’s only a guess but caffeine and booze reduces the chance of projectile vomiting considerably. We will see tonite.

1.28.13

A plugged nose leads to a sore throat which results in poor sleep.  Another group of Chinese check in, the third such in the week.  This bunch can’t be older than twenty and as the sun readies to emerge they’re all sleeping.  Welcome to nature. 

I am concerned that professionally I am sliding into oblivion faster than I imagined.  It’s my fault and I have to reverse this or I will never get out of here.  A fiasco is what it’s looking like.  Seriously, I have to be more professionally developed, on the edge of new and innovating methodologies to answer the basic question that really doesn’t need fancy speak.  Rapport, technique, empathy.

A default career for eighteen years is absurd but it’s still about the absence of ambition.  Why don’t I have that risk gene, that inner push to pursue what I really want to do.  Imagine hard for a few minutes and what do you see yourself doing now, the dream job, the way of life you haven’t attained.  Photography, a VW camper going from art fair to art fair.  Living in the bus.  Wow, a nomadic artisan.  And what would it take to do this?  A whole lotta money otherwise what would stop me other than myself.  A year or two in Saudi would do it.  Sigh.  Where is the love Lord. 

Penance.  I don’t mean to trivialize carrying sixty pound logs on my back as something I need or want to do in order to cleanse my head of internal negativity.  Five trips to the homestead, five logs carried back to the lodge.  In addition to the expected pain my nose ran like a politician and it wouldn’t stop.  Fatigue, pain, a bottle of rum in milk tea afterwards, a big group checks into rooms one through four.  What am I feeling guilty about, what motivates me to carry wood like the others today, women, Taka two houses above, pain is my friend I tell Posteraj.  I want to carry my weight here, I want to earn my plate of rice.  I want to suffer and remain humble to thyself.

As for ambition.  Is the lack of it tied to confidence or the lack thereof?  I don’t think so all the time.  And nothing is going to happen unless I initiate.  And running out of money isn’t initiating you to do something?  Aside from tossing out the work history, no. 

In the NYT a story about finding work says the best way is to know someone who can put a good word in for you.  Well hasn’t that always been the case?  I got the Zirve job, I think in part, because of someone I knew from the Emirates was there.  Simple.  And then over dinner I told her my loony story. 

I’m not telling anyone my loony story again.  It is behind me and it serves me and no one else any purpose.  Nothing happened, your imagination was pitiful, we are here so let’s go.  And I do think now that I will never share the loon again I am forgetting it, push it away.

My cough persists, my nose runs, and I have no medicine other than the cups of hot honey and ginger tea, nice but, and not even rum helped, ok maybe it did a little.

the trees

1/22/13

Outside room eight with another sunrise, yesterday morning’s negative thinking dissipated with social interactions.  I am not a sick man. Laxman returned from the wedding in Pokhara and we ate dinner with the Italian lady from Naples in room four.  Earlier Prem Maya and Ram dropped by for tea which I made the Nepali way. Before that I made milk tea, the Nepali way, for Didi and myself.  I also gave her a toasted peanut butter sandwich, cut in squares.  I don’t know what she thought of the strong tea and toast.  At half past five I made egg fried rice for Didi and it wasn’t the best fried rice, proportions are something I need to improve but she said it was ok, ok like it needs another onion and a few more spices.

Locals who climbed to the top to see the sunrise filter down.  An improved road would bring far more to the top and the conversations in front of Shiva’s place is who will benefit.  I wouldn’t benefit unless I fell in love with someone on one of those polluting buses.  The sun warms, standing up and typing is much easier on the back.

How different would my writing be if I had professors to tell me how to make it better, I have no idea.  Who do you write to?  Who the hell knows?  Do you think you have something to say that would change a life?  Sigh, no, probably not, this is mental exercise, meditation spilling out because isolation tires. 

I wish to inform myself I am not sick.  If there is a mistake I make typing my thoughts out is putting it on-line.  How different this is from writing with a pen is minimal, making it public might be the mistake.  Oh for the love of God if anyone has read everything they would see…I don’t know they would see.  I certainly don’t listen to those who say I need a psychologist, well who doesn’t, oh the jesus people, the Buddhist folks, of course, let’s go there now. I admire the locals here and in most of Asia who don’t turn to professional help because family is still the center for conflict resolution.

Room eight doesn’t have a toilet.  Last year some were quite upset when I told them I had to drop some serious cable in the jungle because I couldn’t make it up three flights of stone stairs to do it in the loo. 

The lady from Naples came by the room to say goodbye and then I listened to Guns and Roses Knockin on heaven’s door, ya wonder sometimes how long you can hold it in.  Heading to Laos and Vietnam I helped her out with Shiva’s medicine for her remaining days in the country.  O Simone, why are you taking a photo of my medicinal?  Ciao.

After returning to room eight last night Prakash came by and several hours later Laxman took him up to stay with his bald-headed father at the radio station at the top of the tower and it must been something to see the men tie this kid down to a bed.  No, I got no sleep last night.  Here dude, have a cup of tea.  Pants torn, bloody knuckles and a fat lip.  He’s hanging on how I do not know.

A job in Saudi is offering money I can’t understand however they will interview candidates in the states and how will I get there?  Where will I live how will I eat what ratty clothes will I wear?  I’m stranded.

Two hours of cutting up two trees Beem felled with sharp sickles.  Traditional work is the hardest in the world.   At sixty seven the patriarch stills knows how to swing a medieval axe.  He has been asking me to sleep in their small house and I am feeling obligated to do it soon.  Tomorrow I may return to the thick jungle and continue with the cut, we’ll see, the hands are sore, minor cuts , a sore back.

1.23.13

At sunset we carried logs from one tree back to the homestead and Ama offered a glass of chai and a plate of popcorn.  This morning my sunrise breakfast of kernals subsides hunger.

Ya know I look at what everyone is doing on facebook and only I remain in place.  I would like to continue my life with someone.  I believed I had been shown the end of the world but since this imaginary little tale is done with I want to start anew.  O lord how the hell am I going to think differently?  And yes the lady from Naples will remind me of Anne Hathaway.  Not too bad a memory.

I should be more upset, I should be more frantic, but think about it, where else in the world can you remain alive without a job but with shelter, food now scaled back at breakfast (last night’s curry chicken was delicious) I wanna cut down more trees.  And speaking of trees, as I chopped the wood kept reminding me of a turkey breast you’d buy in a deli.  So clean and looking just like pine. 

Maya is beginning to show some concern now that it is time to be frantic, to worry, to reduce our spending and conserve, fewer tourists, no money from me coming to them, I feel bad but!  I gave too much when I arrived, if I were to have spread it out….

1.24.13

Five hours cutting wood on the side of a mountain with an ancient sickle and then carrying it up and to the homestead was my penance I mumbled, the log on my back held by a rope across my forehead.  I am in remorse.  And the family, a most dramatic family I’ve lived with, all the crying with happy faces, ah the Nepali life Nepali culture, human symmetry exposed with no place to hide, unless you take off and try to leave the country or you catch the local bus on the first road below and go to a brother’s sister’s son’s wedding with people waiting for their fried eggs, toast and jam though we’re out of jam and milk coffee. 

My hands look like I was in a fight with a cat. The internet men are here and Suman paces.  I don’t know what is going to happen to me if I don’t find a job.  Really.  What are the options?  Rates for flights to LAX have gone up two hundred smackers since I priced a flight three weeks ago.  The Emirates, India, there is no where else. 

Three clueless Chinese with expensive cameras stand on the roof taking photos of pink tipped Lamjung and Annapurna 2 while the sun rises.  Hey!  You’re missing the sun rise you amateurs, look to your right.  With the day’s sun above the ranges one of the ladies squawks loud enough dogs bark and the three turn in a communist union.  Suman plays with his computer loudly and by the end of the day nine Chinese from Chengdu arrive and they camp in rooms one, two, three and seven.  Seven. please keep it down.  Goodnite.

room eight awaits

1.19.13

This morning Maya told me a group of sixteen were coming so I cleared out of room five and am now in room eight, the common room, the high ceiling and empty walls were my home last year for two months.  An hour later we got a call and the group cancelled. Pity, the room I stayed in for five months has never been cleaner. 

I told Suraksha staying in such a nice room made me lazy and now I hope to stay where I am until I find a job.  Suman is insisting I return to room five but I will be fine here.  Last night’s rain cleared the dust considerably and temps warmed up so it shouldn’t be too bad.  Meanwhile…Dilu.  What about Dilu…a widow for seven years, we stopped and finished a bottle of rum in her simple room down a few steps from the road, this woman is beautiful I don’t need to say more other than she is regarded as untouchable with Nepali customs and family branches going everywhere that require all adhere to the rules which are, don’t marry an old foreigner.  Then we moved on to Rocco’s big new pink hotel called Hotel Mountain Garden where we took a tour of the rooms and then drank vodka and ate roasted soybeans. 

I don’t like the fact that I am wondering foolishly that maybe the Mayans were off a month, like in two days something will happen.  Absurd, the only thing happening on this day will be the inauguration.  There will be no end to anything and I will be a fool again.  I am glad after this date there are no other dates to consider except the end of the horoscope, which is, which will be, the beginning or the end of pisces, or my birthday.  I do not like this imaginative clutter in my head.  Thinking for even a second that something is going to happen is a case of something cultic and I don’t like it.  And now, now that I sit on this bed I have not eaten dinner and in my stomach swims rum and vodka, cheap, and ready to project over the railing.  Oh lord please let me live sick free tonite.   

1.20.13

A rich red sky illuminates the rippled range before the sun brings life again.  Laxman came by at five thirty and we had toast and an egg and tea since dinner last night wasn’t sustainable, thankfully there was no projectile vomiting into the jungle. Omigod I know better.

1.21.13

A month ago I thought I’d be in heaven or somewhere near, instead I confront the ugly truth.  Substance abuse.  I didn’t consume entheogens, I consumed hash brownies and ecstasy.  I am laughed at, deservedly so and all of the coincidences were miraculously produced in my head.  I am very close to the edge of meaninglessness, if I haven’t already crossed that line, and all that is left now is death.

I am not afraid to die, I pray for it.  I have nine days before I must apply for another visa but walking into the jungle and dying under a tree is preferred.  I am grateful for Laxman and Maya’s trying to find me a wife but my head is elsewhere and there is no hope anymore.

And the worst of it, really, the worst is the four years I believed, four years wasted with nothing to show for it.  Just my imagination, yep, it has left me broke, it has left me alienated, it has done nothing good.

The peanut lady lost her husband seven years ago.  The woman across from the library lost her husband seven years ago.  I lost my sanity four years ago.  Who is better off?  Shame on you, you lazy gangi toting son of a bitch.  Knock it off.  The taxi driver eats his plate of flattened rice and duck and shares the agony of having his thirteen year old son undergo multiple surgeries to remove a tumor from his brain.  He pulls off the boy’s hat and turns him around to reveal scar tissue and jagged lines just above his neck.  I am so ashamed and embarrassed when I see my own self-inflicted stupidities.  Religion and substance abuse, they are not good bed-fellows. 

I want to be hungry, I wish to suffer physically, only this will bring me to accept even with nothing now, and yet I know, it’s still better than the tumored boy, it’s still better than the peanut lady.  The fear of letting a child starve is the worst fear and should motivate to provide but when there is no way to go, when there is no hope, no plan, when one is reduced to begging, where is God but in the illusion of your mind.  It’s easy to believe when you can feed your children.  Take it all away and see what kind of faith you have.   Go ahead, oh thank you Jesus and Buddha for helping me bury my child. I’m sure I have sinned and deserve nothing less than continued starvation. Thank you so bloody much.

Do you know what it is like to be hungry with no hope you’ll eat soon?  I could confront this here or somewhere else and it is because of my abuse of the substances.  Shame on me to think a spirit world exists.  It’s cause and effect on earth, you deserve any suffering that comes this way.

The entire family is at a wedding and I am in charge.  An Italian lady is in room four and she is off somewhere.  I don’t know if she will ask for anything from the kitchen but if she does I will welcome her to cook herself something.  Sitting at the table in the afternoon sun is knocking me out.  Time to make tea.

five days and rain

1.14.13

What don’t you like about yourself:  How even an assurance as little as a breadcrumb can keep me afloat.  And when it doesn’t come I shuffle along.  I have one hundred and thirty six days to shuffle along before I must leave.  How much will that cost I don’t know but it’s a joke now that I am down to my last few bucks.  Yea what a funny thing but it took me almost four years to accept that I helped build this place and I should be entitled at least to a room.  And I am but the months will slip away and with nothing coming in tension will present itself, even if I work my fat irish arse.  Dependent, independent.  If we could agree to the communal approach to living I'd be up for that for sure.

On average I wear fifteen articles of clothing, seventeen when I do not type, another unspectacular sunrise, dry, hesitant but it has no choice, the sun, chained to our earth and what do we give it but worship which is easy when you see it all day.  That’s good, isn’t it?  I have been most fortunate to have stayed here this long.  Five months and counting, geez.  And there’s no end in sight for this ‘sabbatical’ which worries me because I don’t know if I will be qualified to flip burgers at the end of it. 

Vietnam interests me a little but the heat puts me off.  Taiwan interests me because they have Dunkin Donuts and yesterday I looked at shelters in Los Angeles.  Wow I could really really give up and still get food and water every day. I’m not there yet, thankfully.  And there’s no interest in returning to former jobs, really.  Anticipating an end and being on the mountain was all that mattered, which of course now begs the question, where to now and can I stay there for more than one year? 

A dirty noob she called him.  What is a noob?  Days of Future Passed sounds lush even on youtube.  America.  I would like to go back.  Go down hard and work up again in a new place with a new life.  Maybe that’s it, isn’t it, to just let go.  I’ve been holding on too long, a free fall into the faith of my father. 

I could also do that freefall here, walk into the jungle eating my way out of disappointment.  Caroline, the Australian from Canberra, said her goodbyes yesterday after a week in room one.  I asked her if New Zealand was the last place on earth to be colonized and she turned affronted: I think it’s Easter Island, no, but that’s a good guess.  I can’t believe I have no clothes to work in, except for two ties.  Ha.  I could be very expensive, not good at all not indeed. 

It is a problem when no one job motivates to apply for.  Am I subconsciously minding the 134 days I have remaining on this mountain?  I surely hope not. This is so ridiculous for someone my age.  What do I think I am, twenty three again?  How would have life taken me if I stayed for a second year in China.  I left because I didn’t like all my mail being opened and rifled through for what, for fear.  Twenty three years later the interest to return to the dirty place wanes.  I like freedom and clean air too much to go to Beijing and subsequently Saudi Arabia though their mercenary money isn’t enough anymore.  Even the idea of saving it all and going another five to six months without work isn’t that attractive anymore. 

Laxman’s father asked me to come live in the ‘small house’ with them.  You want to talk hardship, there it is.  I suppose when I see myself sleeping on a sidewalk it is much better, we’ll see I told him.  At the end of May I may need to hide behind your buffalos. 

I took off the socks and my feet saw sun for the first time since Christmas Eve.  I wish I could see myself living in a place where there is no poverty.  When did the new world become the old world? Oh my

hands are cold, the socks are on again, once the sun floats west the temps drop and why don’t I go up into the sun. 

Below a gong sends out ripples ))))))   )))))  )))) to others listening.

1.18.2013

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYXSl8Qlnn4&feature=youtu.be

And the rain falls hard.  I woke to thunder last night, this morning the fresh spring smell was invigorating, and now fighting with the sun competing with birds and life covered in feet of dust waking up to the crackle in the middle of January.  Yesterday I helped Maya clean the north end of the lower garden and gee it looks nice now that the rain is cleaning up.

Quality vs Quantity, it’s not a hard choice most of the time.  Saudi vs Thailand.  One has no beer, one has.  One has no rain, one has.  One has little money the other has too bloody much.  One has a social life the other is contrived and underground. 

And then there is censorship.  Funny how Beijing and Riyadh fear freedom, the atheists and the fundamentalists banging dumb heads together. 

And as it turned out the rain stayed and along with it came whipping winds carrying gray clouds smothering the mountains bringing two rainbows, hard slashing wind, smash banging thunder, a break before the sun quickly got the hell out of here, peace and contentment.  With night drawn in the rain pounds and meditation is a sweet silent sound.

stonecutters

1.14.13

We took a walk to the grandparents to recognize the festival where we ate flat rice and a variety of side dishes and received a big tikka with the grains of the rice kind.  On the way we stopped to see how the clearing of a hill for a five star hotel was faring and here we watched the stonecutters. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLLZ6BRQ72s&feature=youtu.be

accountability is a two way stream

1.12.13

You tell many heaven is coming the day after tomorrow and it doesn’t come you feel pretty stupid, regardless if they believed in you or not.  I am humbled.  Picking up and starting life all over again and erasing the last four years is not very easy.  I can remain here for another four months and nineteen days to clean the head, prepare for the next leap.  Graduate school again?  Lordy lou, SIU, I could do the MFA in creative writing, feedback is what I need and another degree will take you where?  I actually looked at a few pee-h-d programs and I’ll keep looking. 

It’s nice to hear a friend is ok in Singapore.  It’s nice to know a friend remembers in Turkey.  Maya’s father’s sister came yesterday.  From the rich lush valleys below she brings fruits and very nice cabbage for only 20rs. 

I have to listen more to the silence.  There’s too much interference in my head, where did all these Bread songs come from, this cabbage btw is very nice in the hookah and is actually helping me find the silence and repel the Bread songs.  Then the children come and it’s time to eat.  Breakfast in January when there are no tourists is strictly a local fare: rice, curry, potatoes, yams, dried spinach, sometimes this millet bread dough you dip in chutney and swallow without biting.  Laxman ate a kilo of this brownish black meal yesterday, dipping it also in a curry.  I don’t miss eggs and toast, really. 

I never stopped talking to God and as far as the unpardonable sin goes I’m sure millions do it but if I did I did in the name of Job.  I never stop talking and praying to God, it’s instinctual.  I think I’d really have to suffer the worst form of suffering to consider atheism.  Nevertheless I am accountable for everything I have written, so I’d like to hold God accountable for everything God has written.  It is a love and sometimes hate relationship, I know, what to do.

What to do.  Where am I flying to?  America, Singapore, Sarangkot and back.  Flying it’s a lot cheaper when you’re in tune on the mountain channeling network.  Creative thinking or reality we’ll never know until we put it in a laboratory and hook me up with someone else on the other side of the planet and imagine how this person would, at any given moment, describe your adventures to a third party.  You can practically hear it and you may be right or wrong I don’t know but when you fly alone it’s all you got. 

I have tried unsuccessfully to get information about the mfa at siu because the connection was too slow which has to be on their end because I can see video and listen to full albums now.  I don’t know.  Mock.  No one likes to be mocked but in love and in discipline it is effective as a tool in keeping order so when  one is mocked in an unkind manner with an obviously unkind tone it isn’t nice.  Of course throwing a barrage of pencils at the perpetrator who assumed wouldn’t be understood was a bit dramatic and over reactive.  So, a mug of milk tea and a handful of corn gently eaten that’s been it aside from a ten thirty breakfast.  I should go up because my stomach rumbles.

I am still surprised there is no word in Nepalese for ‘please’, the magic word that the children don’t use when they’re eating the sweets faster than I’m comfortable giving out.  Beggars know the word, it is implied with minimal dialogue.  Give me chocolate asked politely without the use of the p word is possible but it wasn’t today.  Going dry of everything, go ahead let me dry out, lose the weight, the powdered datura two hours later has had minimal effect on anything.  Is suffering from hunger worse as you inch closer to death or does it get easier because you’re so weak and so tired you can’t even move?  Eating is taken for granted sometimes, why shall we not all eat less and do less. 

broken teeth

I don’t have a lot of confidence right now about finding a job and my hope for finding love is nowhere.  Maya, god bless her, asked me to meet a young woman who wanted to marry and here she came with her mother and the old woman who has a shop at the top of the steps and the girl could hardly turn around at the table as we sat and drank tea.  Sure I must have looked like someone who hadn’t shaved in a fortnight, wrapped in all the blankets and shawls and hats I could muster.  I really don’t mind being told you gotta be kidding when I look like a bum. 

Seven days ago Laxman hired an orphan off the street to help Maya and for four days he worked hard and was very optimistic and everyone was impressed  with his energy and then three days ago Maya told the 13 year old boy to take containers and leave them at the water tap below.  He did and he never came back.  And! On his way back to Pokhara he pocketed Laxman’s Iphone4.s, what a little wanker.  We went down the mountain and looked for the thief, left numbers with anyone who might see him and returned to Sarangkot empty handed.  It’s a bummer ya know, you trust you’re doing the right thing, you trust someone you don’t know even if that person is a little kid and you turn around in bright sunshine and he’s gone with your goods. 

I really have made a mess of things in the job category, haven’t I?  This linked in site, what is this for, helping me find a job or share useless information.  The temps have been hovering above freezing for the past week.  This is as cold as it gets I am told by the locals, let’s hope so.  A real freeze will kill and break and there’s no need for that kind of loss up here, is there?

As for connecting with others, they know I am alive and they are busy with life.  Why did you post the 12.21.12 photos on another fb page I don’t know I guess if there was anyone who was interested in seeing what didn’t happen on that day could see the images but John, you contacted, what five relatives, people from the first college I went to a quarter of a century ago, and aside from two, God  bless, all have declined.  Hmmm, I’m not surprised at all. 

I broke two more teeth yesterday eating popcorn and the kernals, one on the upper right side and one on the upper left side.  At Christmas a silver filling popped out of another tooth and of course I had what was left of a tooth pulled in July.  My teeth are going to hell.  Will I follow?  Do I deserve to follow?  The unpardonable sin.  Who doesn’t utter it when you see hell on earth and not a #@$! Thing will be done.  God could clean everything up in a blink of an eye but chooses to let suffering continue.

I know, how can I say such things about God and expect to make it anywhere?  Well, what have I accomplished at this, the end of a four year mid life crisis?  I alienate a lot on-line don’t I, thankfully here on the mountain there are no falsehoods, there are no masks to hide behind, transparency is unavoidable isn’t it, in the flesh.  Eyes don’t lie.  And how am I with the family?  Well, Maya is still looking for a wife for me though she jokes maybe it is better I don’t marry, Suman and his arm in a cast for posterity wishes I’d stop smoking so we played kick ball with the yellow tennis ball size happy rubber ball on the terrace outside the rooms and the second time the ball went over into the jungle I spent an hour later pulling out sharp needles from my microtec fleece pullover, wool socks and a Peruvian llama tuke; Suraksha and I share a weakness for chocolate and I am down to my last chocolate, an almond joy, o the princess, will she see a bright future?  God help us.  And Laxman, bummer about the mobile, what to do.  If it is any consolation, it was a gift, right?

o'crap

12.23.2012

The spirit possessed me because I didn’t have a spirit.  Did I have one when I was born?  Did it remain with me throughout my whole life until one day it left?  Did the spirit of Jesus live in me? Did I then have two spirits?   When I was a young Catholic?  St. Francis and the Buddha aren’t working together?  Combining the two is unhealthy?  Does it explain my terrible headache right now?

Choose a faith, he said.  Choose Buddhism, of course he’d say this.  Too many spirits, too many faiths, true simplicity and contentment and peace of mind might come simply from not believing in any of them.  To become a godless atheist, this is good? 

Love all, trust few.  I’d like my own spirit to return.  Please.  Whoever that is.  I can’t and would never give up on the tenets of Buddhism, and I can’t and would never give up the basic tenets of Catholicism, certainly not.  So, when did my spirit leave?  How long was I empty in spirit?  I guess there was a moment when my spirit may have departed…October in Dubai?  2008?  Did I utter the unpardonable sin at the end of the marriage?  

Maya had to ask if there was a Nepali woman in my future that I was to marry.  I turned to Dolker and said the one in question was a result of a coincidence perpetrated by an unkind entity, who shall remain nameless.  I don’t care if she was my grandmother, it scared that girl and while it wasn’t her intention, it’s the kind of mistake only someone in my family would make.  I know because I hold the door to the dumb things dept. 

So, where do I go now?  Look for a job.  Where?  I don’t even want to entertain this because my headache is coming back.  Two days to Christmas.  I am certainly not in the mood.  If I do become in the mood will I be restored to a normal life?  The miracles of the holiday, I don’t deserve anything and would be selfish to ask knowing what I know and that is what I need to accomplish.  Knowing what I know.  Would it be better to stop knowing?  It has to be healthier to not think at all.  Is that what Buddhism offers?  Empty the head, believe in one, and what else? 
 

12.24.2012

The sun rises clearly, there is no change, Lamjung, Annapurna, looking down on as they have since the beginning of time.  Choose your faith, choose your God.  Who do I want my God to be, believing in all the faiths or none of the faiths.  An animist perhaps?  I have to give credit to where credit is due, atheism, though, dismisses all connections with nature and the divine.  Silence ought to be my creed this Christmas, disgraced for four years, the new beginning, every day now there will be no thoughts of the end.  Ha!  I am finished thinking about the end.  What a relief, four fucking years.   

My spirit departed?  And this shaman filled the void?  My spirit departed, really?  That’s depressing, well, I can think of many reasons why the spirit would leave but believe me I never asked the spirit to leave.  Well, I have no reasons anymore to visit Nyima, he has done his job.  He has given me instructions, it is up to me now.  Find a stupid butt licking job.  Gee, such jolliness. 

A lot of people believed something was going to happen on 12.21 and nothing did.  The weather made us believe something was different, heavy fog and no sun on the day.  At least six men from the village stopped and told me, hey look, we no die.  Well, I never told anyone we would die, only heaven would come.  Up and down.  People here now will see me as a westerner who smoked too much ganga.  It is as simple as that, and these people, who so badly wanted to see the ‘change’ will return to their everyday scratching and clawing for a decent life, for meaning they will only need to turn to their family.  And that is what everyone has up here, except me.

Nyima’s medium said I’d need another puja when I am 81.  Shit, I wish I didn’t know this, another thirty years on earth?  That sucks completely to do it alone.  My God my God, why have you left me here alone?  Who are you today God?  Om?  Intercessory prayer?  I am a bit undecided about ya’ll right now. But if he is right, then I can push the envelope and challenge death daily.  Where will I start?  Paragliding without a seatbelt?  Swimming in the Seti with no clothes?  Drinking bottle after bottle of local wine until I puke my large intestine out in one long piece?  Is that possible?

 menotwilliam@yahoo.com

12.25.2012

I didn’t think I’d see the day to be honest.  Am I disappointed?  I went down with Guy and his Pakistani assistant who shall remain without name in a taxi to the airport and then after going through the usual second hand bookshops looking at the same books over and over I had a measly lunch that was enough to climb back up the mountain. 

I understand no one will listen to me now that we are still here but let me clarify something I hope anyone who reads this understands: no spirit ever told me anything was going to happen on 12.21.12, I naively took that date for bandwagoning reasons because I like closure like everyone else. 

I had my doubts because the spirit never gave me that date but what discourages me is the spirit didn’t do a damn thing in letting me think like a nutcracker for four mentally anguishing years that this wasn’t the bloody date. I do feel foolishly misled, suffering from delusions of grandeur, go ahead say it. 

So, Niyma, it appears, performed a partial exorcism, or rather it may have been a smack down.  Pick a faith.  In your day you had a lot of choices, The God of Israel or pagan gods.  So should I consider becoming a Jew?  Is that the real faith?  Those funny Jews, how you have beat them up.  No thanks, I’d rather not believe like that though I’ll always admire.

In a mad scramble I moved into room five yesterday and now remain here.  The Tibetan carpet is very nice between the beds.  With all my possessions in bags the time to purge is imminent.  I have eight t-shirts so I gave the Pakistani assistant the Obama Hope t-shirt.  You’re not really who I wanted to think you were, right?  Scientific Reincarnation?  Anyone else in history but the other dude who say’s he’s God. 

So I read that those in cults who believed the end of the world would occur and are wrong become defiantly confident that it is still going to happen.  That’s very strange to me.  I am humbled and embarrassed that all we got here on the mountain that day was very heavy fog and we never saw the sun. The night before I danced sheepishly around  the lighted mandala and banged the gong the spirit used four years ago in Al-Ain, my audience at the end of farcial charade: five little children. 

And then we drank around the fire next to the mandala and I had had enough and went to sleep an hour before midnight.  I guessed maybe something will happen at 12:37am or pm, or 5:14pm and to make sure nothing was going to happen we said if something does happen it’ll occur in the last time zone, give or take an island, Hawaii, and of course time past and I was cooked and it was time to see Niyma.

And now that everyone is back to normal, as for the coincidences, there was communication with the spirits, unfortunately there were more than one influencing me.  I have no anger towards you, Grandma, but it doesn’t matter if the woman I’d like to fall in love with is the eighth daughter or third daughter.

12.26.2012

I wear the glass colored bracelets Guy gave to Suraksha because Maya gave the expensive thai purchased in koh samui polished hard beans accessories thing she wore on the outside of her bag to the Pakistani assistant for no reason at all.  We complain about a 270% percent tax mark up on a Ford Ranger but it is nothing compared to the 300% mark up the woman of this house executed yesterday.  It disturbs me sometimes, this unscrupulous manner in which money is made here.  It is corruption at the level where the wolf, for example, smells a baby lamb with a wounded clavicle. 

 Sarangkot’s road to Kaskikot is getting widened in many places including the main strip with restaurants, lodges, and shops with a steam shovel thus the ripping of cement of a few of these restaurants, lodges and shops is all welcome to certain degrees by the locals who live there. 

I looked at jobs today.  I can work there if I need to.  I can also work there if I need to.  But do I want to live in either of these cities and countries?  Where do you want to go?  I want to go to New Zealand. 

How in the world am I ever going to get there with no money? Bffffttt…I am not that smart right now.  The power goes off and the cheap sandalwood incense is not good. Oh Guy, sorry about that.  This stuff is worse than cigarette smoke.  Thanks for the real sandalwood chips.  The aroma is uniquely fruity.

12.28.2012 

The worst kept secret on the mountain is buying gangi from the tightly wound man right below the guesthouse.  John John.  Don’t tell anyone ok, not good, brother in custody three months…” and he’s yelling my name for everyone to hear.  So now it’s no longer a secret anymore I’m looking around getting little donations here and  there and then  Jokard lures me right into the home I had been looking down at for the last five months, Maya waves from the garden above, and has a nice amount, long enough to do something I don’t know what. 

I can beat myself up all night and day and it won’t change a thing.  You told people the world was going to end.  I only got the date wrong, please.  And Nyima’s spirit said I’d need a puja when was eighty one so I guess nothing’s happening.

Nothing is going to happen.   And the world will not end in this life.

A new life.  Jack?  Where and how?  Going back to school.  Thailand.  Money.  Location. Somewhere new? 

Nyima’s spirit could be wrong about that eighty one and I don’t like to think of being eighty one let alone what comes next year.  Cutting off facebook at Christmas time.  What to make of that?  I’m so far away this time.  Walking up the mountain that afternoon, the kids all along the trail wishing me happy Christmas and I gave them nothing.  And I had a bag of Werther’s and I could have stopped and been marauded instead I kept saying no to everyone on the way who greeted me.  What a Grinch.  No, it wasn’t a good day.

Many tikas on the foreheads of men today.  Suman comes home.  From one crazy man to another I sure can cough but it is a good cough, the kind that you cough so bloody hard you’re guaranteed to expel anything that ought not to be in the lungs or windpipe. Coughing out the poison.

Tomorrow a group of forty or so are coming for breakfast and lunch.  Laxman told me they are hemophiliacs and they are children.  Together we read the definition of this terrible disorder.  He left to drink below.  I drink a beer alone in the dining room, the children are in the tv room, Maya’s helping with the guests in room six and the man of the house is below. 

12.29.2012

A chapter of the Nepal Hemophelia Society met on the roof and we fed fifty people breakfast and lunch.  Suman is quite put out with my failure to deliver the goods and bring the end of the world to his doorstep.  I can pass the buck and blame a spirit no one believed in the first place but that’s just what everyone expects. 

But if I repeat myself on one point it’s prior to October 2008 I never thought about the end of the world and didn’t know what the fuck a shaman was. And I wish I didn’t fucking know now.  Fuck.  Unless you bring it by the end of the month we will really be finished.  Fuck you.  Iistened to you.  All I wanted was a fuking girlfrield you fuck.  Fuk.. end of the fuk you.  You fucked me good. I doubted yu from the beginning because someone better was there?  You misled me you fucking piece of shit.

In the blink of an eye.  Twelve twenty one fucking dork fuck.  When did my spirit leave>  fuck, you leave too.

I can’t see myself anymore teaching all squeaky clean.  Too much trauma.  Too much.

I have a crazy condition with regards to the one who used to be known as the princess of Sarangkot, all she has to do is say good morning and….and I won’t expect even that.  What the fuck am I fooling>   give up you fucking old fuck fuck.  A fuck fuck, that’s what we got here, a fuck fuck. 

12.30

A sore throat followed by a runny stuffed nose and tomorrow is the end of the year.  I hear the Piker is in  the neighborhood.  We’ll have to meet and quaff.  Dates, I can’t think every date may be it, thankfully only two bother me now: tomorrow and 1.21.13 both which will undoubtedly leave me being wrong again.

I know I could work for Amideast in the West Bank, I just have to be there.  Sigh.  The job in Sur saddens.  Live on a campus in no where land and you have to have something strong to endure. A job working with lawyers in Tehran looked interesting. 

Choose a faith.  When did my spirit depart?  Did the spirit depart in 1991?  Did the spirit depart the last time I banged my head on cement in marriage? 

I do think forgetting the coincidences completely instead of wondering why they happen(ed) is a better route.  I was misled in the most dramatic of ways I must say and I have to straighten up and dress professionally in the rags I own and be and do what I know how to do.  I wish the Turks wouldn’t dress like businessmen in academics. 

And at the end of the day those who know me will simply shrug.  I can’t say anything crazier than I have stated for the past four years.  I am glad the date is done with and I believe this journey is done.  No, there’s no conclusion about the meanings of many of the coincidences and I guess I’ll never know, but I need to move on and, and, tomorrow another month?  Wow, if they say no, where will I go?  Please no to the Emirates to wait.  There really isn’t.  Maybe this is the time to say goodbye to everyone and walk into the woods. 

1.3.13

I have seen a few jobs which have interested me but I appear to be moving very slow.  I have about eighty five dollars left.  This morning it seemed logical; move to west Hollywood and teach in the LA public schools.  I could live in a shelter until I have saved enough to find a place.  The enthusiasm for returning to America is being tempered however by the thought of living in a shelter.  The kindness of strangers I hate to rely on, even those I know have become strangers.  Where else?  Blah blah.  I am a stranger to myself, lost in the immaterial, wanting more answers to another world and no one can help me so we trod along. 

West Hollywood intrigues but really, public schools?  I might as well be a North Korean.  China allures, salaries higher now than ever before, Japan blah blah, Asia.  Four Chinese speaking Malays are in rooms six and four.  I sit in the cold room, bundled, the door is open, it doesn’t matter if it is closed when it’s cold it’s cold.  Malaysia.  I looked at a language school in Penang and I can’t see myself looking clean anymore.  The beard grows on, white, itching somewhat but not terribly.  I really don’t mind wearing the same clothes day after day if they don’t stink.  How can I do that down there below, I am safe for the time being right here on this god-darned mountain.  An asian couple with a child check into room one and litter their wet clothes on the railing.

Who wouldn’t have followed that spirit? He cleared the path and I went along.  Glancing back during the last days I always doubted but greatly anticipated.  Who placed the doubt?  Did my spirit return and does this spirit reside with the other one who shall remain nameless until he apologies for fucking with my head for four years. 

I am so naïve, gee, I can do anything I want.  I need to get out of the funk.  I can do anything I want.  Is there anyone else you can’t see that helps you?  You succeed because you do the work on your fucking own.  God help the lame and weak because if you don’t pull yourself up from the bootstraps you wanking wank we’re gonna throw ya over the edge. 

How can you willingly stay here longer knowing you’re broke again?  It’s sad, I know.  Japan.  I would love to work in Japan.  All I need to do is fly there and begin contacting places you want to work.  So, you’ll need how much to do that?  Fucking wanker.  Maybe Tokyo has shelters.  They are a humble people and I have been greatly humiliated.   

1.5.13

Laxman brought home a young boy to help Maya and he is enthusiastically hardworking.  He is an orphan and there is no other information I know of the black haired kid who prefers sleeping on the ground to a bed and who just brought me a cup of masala chia.  Another night with all the rooms full, business has never been better and it is January.  Five years ago I stayed in Sarangkot for one night and I remember no people.

I sent my cv to two places yesterday and there’s another one today I’ll have to write a cover letter for.  I know I have money to get another visa for February if I haven’t found anything by then and then after that, whoa, what to do. 

Who doesn’t need shanti in life? Bolarum says it’s no problem, a couple of new suits, some gold for the nose, maybe a gold necklace, only two maybe three lakh,  c’mon we can go to Kathmandu and within a week you’ll have your visa and you’ll be married.

Shanti Shanti, if I had only peace would I need or want anything else?  Daughter of Brahmin’s priestly clan, a sister in London, she is intelligent and not completely disinterested.  What difference is there between love and age I don’t want to know right now because really, it doesn’t matter.  Shanti I will always have in my heart even if I never see her again. 

Tonight it is going to get cold.  The thermometer in the upper garden read seven Celsius.  Zero would not be good up here.  A job in Iraq.  I don’t know but maybe I am too old to be credible.  There has been no training, no professional development.  All you do you wanker is sit and write and you wonder why nothing happens.  I am not lazy I am indecisive, I am afraid to admit but as long as I continue to boot everything I desire to the curb something may still happen.  Such stupid misguided hope, it can’t even be called hope, it’s called neurological dementia, burned out synapses, the price for swimming in the pool of divinity that turned out to be the lake of deceit. 

Pack your bag and head to the Dolpa. I hear the ‘jungle’ people wear no clothes year round.  Sure, send me a thousand clams and I’ll get your story. 

1.8.2013

Laxman convinced me to go to Prem Maya’s home so we split a quarter of Royal Stag and with hot water and some lemon we sat in the enveloping darkness and I told Sumjana’s older sister the coincidence was not a coincidence at all, it was a mistake, I just don’t want to see her look sick whenever we meet.  No coincidence, no love, no fear, I am not in Sarangkot because of her.  Finis.  I am glad I shared this with her and no matter how she tells her younger sister, I can leave and that is it.  I don’t hope foolishly.