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.