God seems to be sleeping, eh?

2.26.13

The precocious 22 month old boy bawls after I remove him from the bamboo chair’s arm after almost falling at not being able to reach the drum he banged for twenty minutes.  Three ladies sit in front of Maya’s room talking about their men and where they are.  Two are awol and one is in Pokhara.  After breakfast I showered in room one for the first time in two weeks and the solar hot water left me so fresh I put on a clean white shirt and a cardigan tourists left nine months ago.  They also left long red choir robes that remain in a bag under the bed. 

In two days I return to Pokhara for another visa, number 8, and another razor. I can’t wait more than ten days to shave otherwise the 90rs two blade disposable will nearly rip skin, especially under the nose and the chin. 

Prisma’s little brother is almost three months old and his Hindu head is shaved mostly clean.  Moda is a personable mother who lived in the Netherlands and Belgium.  While Maya made pasta for tourists yesterday she said she preferred the white sauce and I don’t remember the last time I had a white sauce served on my pasta. Surely I must have had white sauce. 

Maya tells me she went to Baba’s house last night at two for dancing and didn’t return home until five.  She is very tired and wishes to sleep but not before cleaning the kitchen from top to bottom.  Meanwhile Didi saunters in, rooms one and three need cleaning.  She gets a long brush, a dustpan, a white bucket, a plastic bottle cut in half holds the soap tourists use and leave behind.  No, wait, she’s sweeping in here for the love of God between children and cleaners there is no peace.

Moda asked for a bucket of hot water and then Maya gave me the woman’s three month old son.  When he is healthy he is happy and the dark brown eyed wonder is healthy.  The boy is a far cry from Kushi, the two year old girl who is frightened when I or Laxman get too close.  This kid coos and caas and holds that blink-less stare and we’re alright. 

Peace comes to the dining room, a healthy elderly couple from the south of France arrive, Bolarum the taxi driver carried their large back-packs in. My stomach rumbles, my throat is sore, Maya might have got a five minute nap and she seems alright.  She’s dressed up with makeup for a one year celebration of Sumjana’s only brother’s marriage up at the Hill Top café.  How many days have the two actually lived together as man and wife?  About a month.  He’s waiting tables at a hotel in the Mauritias-land, she cleans toilets, the one job Sumjana expressed so much displeasure with four years ago.  Cheers to a successful Nepali marriage.  May distance keep your love strong.  I need a cigarette.

Twenty three years ago the college Tianjin Institute of Light Industry paid me $125.00 a month in cash.  I’ve seen salaries today at almost three thousand clams and that is enough to be interested.  But where?  Shenzhen, close to Lo Wu.  Beijing?  What about that pollution.  It hurts.

8:00pm--I told the Japanese trio in room one and the French duo in room three to expect a full orange moon around six pm, the time it came up yesterday.  The orb didn’t show up for another hour.  That moon, not like the predictable sun I forgot.  Nevertheless the trio rose from their dal bhat to admire it outside. 

And with a bright night the drums and chants and bells from the place I tossed two chairs fills the village.  Suraksha comes in to eat one hopes, oh she wants to finish my coke, the last of the rum will be straight, God bless everyone.  Maya has gone up, Reetchi arrives and where is Laxman I do not know.  Oh there he is.  How was your day?  Like yesterday, worthless.  Yuck.  I have those hours but they usually don’t last a day. 

The pope steps down in two days.  How, God, can this not be the end?  Your church needs a purge c’mon stop your snoozing up there and bring us home. Oh I see, there are other ways to finding heaven.  Sure.

2.27.13

When was the last time people were disappointed with a pope?

An American man with round green-tinted glasses came into the garden with his Nepali wife for a look and on his way out we chatted.  A funny man I have to conclude, ‘no one’s gonna find you up here if you decide to stay a little longer’.  Until I have to leave then, and then it’s just a fine.  I’ll calculate it tomorrow at immigration. 

I told the French lady and her husband who speaks perhaps two words in English and one is beer, how much I missed coffee.  Maybe it’s just talking to a Frenchie that I desired coffee and a corner and to drink it with…my mind is blank.  Apple strudels, yes, I think I am unable to desire any of this now.  This palatal desire brings me no good.

However do I desire to stay here longer?  I need to bring in money.  Why was staying here for seven months so astonishing to this American?  I tired of travelling and I found a place with an astonishing view so I stay. 

If I had someone to manage my money would I be happy?  If I made a lot of money I wouldn’t ask that question but if running out like I do is to be stopped, would I change with a someone in the frames.  Yes, perhaps. But this isn’t my call is it. Some things are not meant to be so they say. 

I went to the top for a sunset not hearing Maya’s calls to watch the place so she could go and talk amongst the ladies and sitting with the Pame Valley horizon deep orange sinking slowly I thought and teared of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams and the French and Bastille Day.  Liberty is burned into my psyche so deeply I think the Chinese recruiters feel vibrations in their force.  I can live without Facebook, and I could maybe live without youtube though I would miss some of that human American culture, not a lot, but enough. Watching Led Zepplin in that Kennedy Honors thing was cool.   And I could live without coffee though I’d take that 12 hour train to stock up. I just couldn’t live with anyone telling me what I can and can’t do if I am doing nothing wrong. 

postscript:

CNN this morning 2/28  The Pope says "God seemed to be sleeping..."

So you tell me.  You read what I write.  This morning I read what the pope says.  How many agree that God seems to be sleeping.  God has made promises and in the silence hope wains. 

a not so quiet American

2.25.13

I know if I attended one of these conferences next month I’d nail down a job.  But you’re not planning on being there?  No, and remember if I did nail down a job it would most likely begin in August and I don’t know where I’ll be before then.  You should go.  Ah I don’t think people have forgotten 'the possession' four years ago and that can’t be good when you need a job in the neighborhood.

By four am the clouds had blown out and the Himalayas glowed under the full moon.  At 11 am it is clear and sunny and warm.  A dozen middle aged French tourists who look older than I came in for masala tea and coffee.  Oui, oui how’s that instant stuff, Pierre?  Then it was breakfast before ten, dal bhat with a chili.  I have been eating more chilies now, some are blazing hot and I can’t taste the rice, but they have vitamin c so I suffer to be healthy.

Reetchi stopped by on his way to the fields with a sickle in his hand.  At thirty eight he has spent his entire life in the Pame Valley and has been making a go of it in the tourism business.  His English is slow coming but he works hard and is learning how the kitchen works.  Didi meanwhile asked for a pay raise and based on what other hired hands are earning she still makes more than everyone else.  Nevertheless she might just be working harder than everyone else.  This morning she carried the 30kg blue water containers from the banyon tree tap and then up the spiral steps where I helped her dump it in the tank on the roof.  Strange how the woman is never out of breath and I’ve never seen her sweat. 

Four men sit under the banyon tree, hands resting on pulled up knees.  If there was work, there’s nothing to do but wait.  Waiting is hard for me, the not so quiet American who likes nothing more than quiet unless there’s a need for old Dylan.

Let me die in my footsteps before I go down under the ground

I fear I laugh it could be so much worse and let’s hold the smallest violin between them nose hairs.  The Oscars are on I hear and I didn’t see a single movie from Hollywood this year.  I don’t think I saw a movie last year but I do remember a Frenchie director took the big schnitzels home.  Viva la black and white.  I’d sure love to go to France and speak that language.  Their ideals of liberty and passion and zeal for most of the time give me desires which unfortunately fade fast with no to keep the spark alive. 

Ideas are free.  Well duh, how in Tarzan’s name can you be around like minded people if you want to live a like a hermit and gravitate in the rhythms of silence. It’s a contradiction and that is dragging me down.  The black string from the Shaman’s vest is skewed, what happens if I cut it off. “Keep it on for a year then remove it and place it in a special place.”  So if I cut it off now and put it in a place whatever its intentions are would be immediately revoked?  Listen, I don’t want to stay here until the end of May.  Is this necessary?  Any word from the high school in Kabul?  It sounds a like big headache but it could be liberating.  Shit no woman there, ya know.  Maybe one at the university, no?  You’re gonna get your jewels cut off and shot at in a big blue jar if you’re not careful there ol Jack. 

It’s a tough choice, the streets of Kabul with a job and a roof or L.A. with no job no roof no money nothing.  I just don’t like that at all.  Kabul.  Pretty darn good Afghan mutton kebabs I remember outside the Hilton’s sub continental night clubs. 

“We need to find God, and he cannot be found in noise and restlessness. God is the friend of silence. See how nature - trees, flowers, grass- grows in silence; see the stars, the moon and the sun, how they move in silence... We need silence to be able to touch souls.”

                                                                                                                        Mother Theresa

Reading helps me not think unless it touches a nerve and even then reading is still better than not reading. I decided to pick up the Mother Theresa book I had to stop reading back in December because I couldn’t grasp her struggle and her vision.  Now that she has left the Loretos her mission really begins and it provoked some concerns I’ve had my whole life about ambition, which I lack.  First, this woman never lacked seeking God.  Her ambitious zeal resulted in those visions and the way I see it those visions were all that were necessary for her to find the motivation to continue in the most demanding work on earth.

Am I too old to be ambitious?  Nonsense.  Do you know how to approach your dream? No.  I always think of school, that’s where the support group is, encouraging, building, criticizing in a professional and acceptable manner.  Without going back to school there’s no way you’re saying.  Well, someone who could help me would be good.  I mean look at the little lady from Albania.  She prayed her way to Calcutta and got plenty of support.  So, let’s pray your way to…to…?  You don’t even know where you want to go.  China.  The one place that is never quiet.  Lord in the silence lead me.

squeezed out

2.22.13

The warmest day of the year for a few minutes, seven articles of clothing removed, my arms look whiter than my hair, but cool winds prevail with a strong sun it’s time to fill out another application form for another school who most likely will not offer me a job and while I try not to sabotage my efforts-consciously or subconsciously-I will God willing be grateful, even more grateful if I wind up in Antalya.

Elizabeth and Martin keep a blog of their adventures and hadn’t had access to electricity for two days so they came to the restaurant. They were harassed for only ordering a cup of tea, one cup, so they could use the wi-fi.  Two weeks earlier we saw Martin in Prem Maya’s garden trying to connect and it prompted Laxman to change the password. 

What I didn’t know until I spoke with the young woman with clear blue eyes is the day before we saw them piggybacking the wi-fi they gave Maya a hundred rupee note for a forty rupee cup of tea and they didn’t receive their change back.

They were angry.

 Now, first, wi-fi is free to customers who purchase something, these people are rightly called the customers, regardless of what they purchase, whether it’s a ten rupee glass of hot water or food.  Second, the couple are volunteering and being newly married have a budget and are living quite cheaply.  The expenses accrued from using wi-fi are neglibile and if they're not plugged in, which is usually the case in the afternoon when there is no power, the only cost is the labor that produces the tea. 

So a forty rupee cup of milk tea is a forty rupee cup of milk tea and whether you are on top of a mountain or in a Starbucks in Hollywood, wi-fi is free if you purchase a product.  There is absolutely no grounds for overcharging because someone doesn’t give you more than you want, it is wrong, it is anti-karma, it is petty, some might call it theft, and really, last night I thought how can I stay here anymore. 

Before they left Elizabeth apologized to Maya for making her upset and Maya knew, she has a highly keened intuition and didn’t wish for me to speak with the woman, Maya knew what she did was wrong.  I trust it’s over because I don’t wish to see anyone treated unfairly here.  You’re poor, be thankful for what you got, you’re rich, be thankful, and really, keep your hands in your pockets and say please. 

2.23.13

Forbes says Detroit is the most miserable city in America and a story on Yahoo says Nepal is the eighth most miserable country in the world.  To boot I have applied for jobs also on that miserable country list and geez, it is really making me feel miserable.  Not even Annapurna and Lamjung are cheering me up.

And the worse thing is with everyone posting everything on the internet life just seems to be getting worse.  Even reading about the rich and famous I can see through the shallowness and they are just not attractive.

Ok, let’s make some kids laugh.  Where’s my bag of dried apricots and Malaysian hard candy that isn’t very good.   

Shipwreck the sun I am on your side

I spent an hour today filling out an application for a job teaching little wieners in Hong Kong and at the end I wasn’t able to submit the info because the website is not bloody infallible and I figured, shoot is this really meant to be, c'mon, a sabotage not of my doing?  Why was I not able to send it you’re telling me you sabotaged it.  I rarely see jobs that aren’t working with little kids in Hong Kong, a city that is anything but miserable. 

And I wait for the others, four that at least have let me know they got my info and are reviewing it.  I sent my cv and everything else to places in Korea and Japan and Taiwan and the wankers probably just moved it right into their virtual trash can, inconsiderate blah blahers. It's blatant age discrimination and they don't apologize for it.

A waxing gibbous burns bright through the filtered clouds this evening.  I moved the remaining wood that Laxman and Maya’s cousin Reet-che chopped a few days ago in the lower garden to the shed and Didi was begging, beseeching is perhaps a better word here, to help her clean the beds in four rooms.  ‘Tomorrow rain, bolu pani porto’ and the ladies right above, Kushi’s mother and Manab’s mother immediately start asking questions.  I hope it rains tomorrow but Maya doesn’t wish for this anymore even though the tap has been dry for two days and I am beginning to smell.  ‘I need people, not panni’.  A successful business here needs a lot more coming in and that might be one reason the unscrupulous become unscrupulous.  There’s a desperate and sad response to needing something bad enough to take advantage of others in order to get it.  It shouldn’t be that way but I let most of let it slide and I turn my fat cheek.  Guy let it slide because he believes he’s much richer than most around here, true, but not the landowners.  Though a parcel might be tied up in generations of family, selling a piece so everyone could have a better life is attainable, you want your kid to have an egg every morning and you know you can afford to do it but you don’t because you don’t know how to manage money, well, shit, your children are neglected and it’s no one’s fault but your own and there is too much dependency on the land and not on the people and they oughta do it.

2.24.13

Thank goodness a little rain has fallen.  The skies brighten now and my own suffering is self-inflicted.  Finding a job where everyone is half my age will keep me out of the picture.  #@%.  Not only that but I don’t have a decent shirt, a decent tie, no pants, no shoes, what the hell, Jack.  I have no one to blame but myself and a malevolent spirit.  #$@.  I need some physical pain. 

http://healthland.time.com/2013/02/20/bitter-pill-why-medical-bills-are-killing-us/print/

And so with a blustery day and the fatigue of a market that is squeezing me out, I read this Time story about health care in America and I got a pain in my stomach.  Thankfully, hopefully by tomorrow morning I will dispose the problem and I will be alright again but I am most grateful I haven’t had any serious trouble that would land me in a hospital, and thankfully not one in America. The overcharging of all things in healthcare is shameful. 

jupiter moons the moon my butt

2.17.13

The east horizon splits, light pours out between the dark earth and sky and it is cold.  Where is thy sun, where is the warmth we need.  Prakash’s body was cremated yesterday at the Ram Ghat, his father did not attend because I am told it is custom the father not attend the funeral of his eldest son.  Laxmi’s shop is closed again, I don’t know how she feels since she was only a mother-in-law in the endless drama that came with this young man’s presence.  If there is any empathy in the woman’s body it will be for her husband who has to have his tubes untied to make his pretty wife pregnant.  Come on dude, now’s the time, it’s cold, you need warmth in the form of a woman, your loss, however consequential, is still a loss. 

A group of eight are supposed to be coming today.  I offered to clean up the bathrooms and Maya was angry that Didi didn’t clean them the way that leaves them really clean.  I wish I hadn’t said anything and had just gone along and cleaned them but I told her I wanted to work to stay warm. Ok, do the windows in the dining room (Didi did them yesterday!?) and clean the floor with toothbrush, very clean floor. 

Back in room eight, safely away for the moment, another interesting job that will take more than my moxie to land. Sigh. 

They’re calling the meteor that fell in Russia and the asteroid which flew by earth a cosmic coincidence,  1 in 100,000,000 chance of it happening.  So the hell what, this says nothing.  Live long enough and my father saw man invent the airplane and the answering machine and he wasn’t crazy about the latter. “If it’s important, they’ll call back.”  Yawn.  Let’s see meteors come to earth like the stars in the sky and maybe something can be said about change.

A monster snake fog moves out of Pame and Pokhara disappears.  Men repairing Kali’s new two room building continue hammering nails into the corrugated roof.  Oh crap, the rain returns.  Wool socks aren’t keeping the feet warm, jumping up and down helps a little.  Thunder in the valley.  I’m seeing a few interesting jobs today and they’re asking for references so we’re back in the dining room.  Phone numbers and such.  That four year hole glares largely. I know I am not an attractive candidate on paper right now.  And finding work and starting before June feels so unlikely.  Who are my connections, they’d rather not hear from you right now Lucky Jack? It really is frustrating to know God knows your future  and knows if I am going to crash and burn and lets me crash and burn.  That is really disconcerting.

At one o’clock in the afternoon we are cut off and swallowed by blasts of flashing light, pounding rain and the darkest grayest clouds I’ve seen in six months.  I really could use an epiphany Lord.

The freezing rain continues to pound and the driver with the eight Chinese calls and says he can’t make it up the mountain.  Laxman calls a paragliding outfit and now we wait to see if a 4x4 can climb the treacherous trail to the top. 

4:30pm The rain from the west ends and beautiful stunning sunshine warms and a few layers come off.  How about Kabul? Even if it is only four months? I’d still need to…blah blah.  I’ll wait a few days before I respond to such an offer.  Posts elsewhere are asking for cover letters and each one has to be tailored and I haven’t been a good tailor recently.  A stunning blue eyed wonder walks up the view top, a second look and I have to shave.  Will she stop here on the way down? I see no mountains otherwise I’d follow up.  Suraksha catches a break and dodges the long walk up a mostly miserable day but now the glorious sun is here at least for an hour.

2.18.13

An old friend had these two words taped on his desk when he was a student: “Poverty Sucks”.  I don’t think he was ever going to face a life with no home, no money, no family.  He was too smart for that. And then mother Theresa bats away and desires nothing in life but that of poverty.  I certainly am not cut out to follow the Albanian’s lead.  I like to have money in my pocket so if I get the urge and want to buy a piece of chocolate or a newspaper I have that freedom.  It is selfish but up here chocolate is shared and it makes me happy to see a little kid happy.  As for the newspaper nothing is wasted and Maya can use the editorial section to clean windows. 

As for my old friend, I envy the security money gives and it does not explain why in the last nine years I have allowed myself to go to the bottom four times.  Four!  The trend bothers me.  I see jobs beginning next month and I am eager like only a reactionary can to go somewhere where money isn’t good, but where I’ll stay out of poverty as long as I work, this isn’t too much to ask for is it?

I can’t keep coming here and giving everything away.  I can’t do it anymore.  It’s sad but I must not allow to cave in and wind up high and dry again.  I must stay away.  It is sad but for crying out loud I have to change.  I come to this mountain wealthy and I leave impoverished, the poor become rich and the rich become poor.  Well, considering how well off they have become they will remain ‘rich’ and not return to a life of poverty.  For me I do not wish to live a life of poverty and I think landing a decent paying gig points only to…sniff…the sands.

A half moon in the afternoon sky.  Jupiter passes the moon today?  Who gives a rat’s ass.

Prakash escaped, did his atma leave before he did?  Maybe he’s in one of these eagles soaring.  He got a bum brain, Lord.  Death, the last great adventure if you’re confident you know where you’re going or it just doesn’t matter because hell on earth is separation from God and how much worse can it get?

Meanwhile, I gave Laxman the gold chain with an Irish pendant so he could have it appraised and that was ten hours ago.  If he sells it (at a price I agreed prior) I want a receipt.  I fear he’ll take a commission which he isn’t entitled to because I didn’t ask him to have it appraised, he offered to have it appraised and that service is commission-free.

I’m glad this day is finished.  Such dark conversations in my head left me with throbbing temples.  A few people checked into the rooms today so getting busy helped push the conflicts away.  I gotta get out of here.

Prakash, dude

2.14.13

The dog who was almost hung from the banyon tree last year barks madly when I pass him at sunrise. He is chained to a tree behind Kali’s shop until it is sunset and then someone takes him up close to the Hilltop café near the mountain gate where hence he is returned the next day.  The look in his eyes is pure insanity, what is wrong or right I don’t know he says but everything pisses me off.

Another spotless sunrise and no job leads. No one is prepared to see me hanging around here until the end of May.  I’ll be dismayed but when you don’t know the direction you’re supposed to be going well, shit, what to do. An interview in Los Angeles to work in Saudi appeals like moldy bread.  Big money though, Lord have mercy, and it would betray my reasons for leaving the Emirates four years earlier.  What a shame, a damn shame, a spiritual misleading in the worst ways.  It’s hard to believe, Lord, it really is.  Ash Wednesday yesterday and now Lent.  Give me a break. I tire of waiting for you to intervene, we’re so weak, confidence doesn’t come from you it comes through a slim illusioned world of social media .  It’s time for tea.

The last of the guests in rooms three, four and five have left.  It’s time to clean if there is a need, if Didi is carrying 40kg water containers from below.  Yesterday she left early to cut wood in the jungle.  Beem is not asking for my help this time. ‘Very deefecult’, he describes climbing up on all fours with sixty pounds of timber balanced on your back with a forehead rope.  Too deeficult for you, he says.

#@*

I know I never mentioned a birthday on the 14^th but being who we are and what we are the cake that came out and the singing that followed coincidences with Vietnamese and the non-coincidental whose name I forget every time I see her and the sudden appearance of another on this date left me believing for a second a message was being conveyed but the day as usual passes without further incidence and all will be forgotten again.

So we drank rum, ate cake and when all were in bed Maya and I carried water from the tap.  Choose your faith, man. 

2.15.13

A grey and chilly morning.  The couples who didn’t know each other from Vietnam have left, a coincidence that they checked in at the same time yesterday, the first tourists from this country to stay here this year. The younger couple showed me photos they took with the Dalai Lama two years ago.  May I shake the hand that shook the Dude’s hand? 

Suman came home yesterday. Today is a day for puja, the god of education, no one eats before the puja, a good idea to focus respect, thankfully I got eggs, potatoes, toast and a cup of tea.  Suraksha takes her books into the kitchen where Maya is performing the puja.  Two Chinese girls wander about taking photos, the old lady who has been trying to play matchmaker for three months sits outside dragging the cigarette, big cameras shutter away.  And away the children go with Maya to school for a function recognizing the importance of education.  Meanwhile Laxman and I remain in the dining room and for the entire day no one comes.  Good thing, after three quarters of rum Laxman would rather not cook and I would rather not fraternize. 

I imagine sometimes big blow outs with Laxman or Maya and I pack my meager belongings and leave.  Right now I have less than five dollars to my name.  It is cold outside now and it looks like rain.  The homeless must die young here. 

2.16.13

Four days ago Prakash lost all hope and took his life.  He was 28.  It is too surreal to imagine we will never see him again. 

People in the village are talking about the meteor in Russia.  ‘Three hundred children dead, a thousand hurt.’  Wherever the information comes from there is speculation and spin until time reveals truth.  I watched the youtube videos this morning from the Urals and no one died.  Another man said the meteor was the size of a planet he heard and I laughed.  I told him it burned up as it entered earth’s atmosphere and was the size of a minivan.  The sonic boom it caused shattered glass and that is interesting.  Imagine an iron rock the size of New York coming at the planet.

Another overcast morning, no tourists yesterday and the rain begins to fall, the third time since October.  In the kitchen Suraksha says I am sad.  Why am I sad how does it look I wasn’t thinking sad thoughts.  Prakash’s mother and father are most seriously sad and to think of their sadness, presumed, perhaps is why empathy might be leaving my countenance down. 

Born on the cusp.  The rain falls harder, clouds cover the Pame valley, the temps drop, and Suman, Suraksha and Suson are restless, there is no peace now.  Laxman went down to Pokhara upon hearing the death of Prakash.  Maya sits across from me and watches the sea of white below, now she moves to a table and begins sewing.  It is impossible for these children to be quiet.  Now Didi scratches paint from windows that are right behind me, it is almost comical, Maya is collecting water and I ran down to room eight for the pashmina and mouse chewed wool shawl.  No Shanti.  Lord with no power I can’t tell the little ones to go watch tv.  The rain falls hard and I can’t tell this woman to go outside and clean windows.  Yesterday I went down to Balarum’s shop and the ladies in other shops mocked my very torn up jeans. It doesn’t bother me whether in Indian bars in Al-Ain or here on a mountain I am an anomaly-the only middle aged white dude in the room- as long as I don’t know what they’re saying  go ahead and make fun.  All I want is to keep my toes warm.

Room eight is warm and silent and in ten minutes the power will go off and I’ll have two candles and my headlamp to guide me to bed.  Prakash, dude, you weren’t right in the head, but you were harmless.  I’m sorry it ended this way for you. Did your spirit leave years ago I don’t know, some aren’t surprised you did yourself in but you weren’t there and no one knew what to do.  Brother, I’m sorry.

poopy diapers

2.12.13

Twelve from Guandong  Province took all the rooms yesterday and after the dancing and drinking Maya said she missed the Shanti.  Three days of this kind of business is too much for too few people to manage when every dish coming out of the kitchen is from scratch and you gotta wash the dishes, scrub the pans, run to Shiva’s or Balarum’s shops for more eggs, beer, mushrooms, more beer, coke, water and toilet paper.  Laxman brought in a new cook and he did alright but will he remain here when the billions return I doubt it, oh wait, there he goes now.  Maya’s cousin never left and this afternoon I’ll show him how to put on sheets and keep them hair-free. 

After dinner four young ladies sat around the fire I carefully nurtured, and with their not very smart phones the frustration comes out:  throw your mobiles into the rivers, gals, look you’re all addicted to these brain-sucking gadgets and no one is talking.  You’d rather be somewhere else with someone else?  Where are the stars and the mountains. 

The main water tap below is dry so Maya and Didi are looking for other sources.  The Chinese 12 are without hot water for their thermoses. Shanti. In their western clothes and fashionably dyed hair the people from the middle kingdom now look like the rest of us but they still lack an understanding of how it all works outside in the free world. Laxman joyfully mocked the girls who don’t have access to Facebook.  Yes, it is a wonderful thing for you to get out of your country and see freedom of speech in action.  Set up an address in the US and then get a VPN so you can bypass Beijing’s ignorant firewalls.  What do they fear, they’re not afraid of issuing you a passport now because they know you’ll come back.  I tell you go back and push for liberty.

Yesterday was the last day of the Tibetan’s new year festivities and I missed the Vajra dance two days earlier. Well, for a three hour walk the Seti didn’t disappoint.  At its edge the rapids drowned out Pink Floyd.

“So, so you think you can tell, heaven from hell”

I read the Pope is resigning.  Can you imagine Jesus getting really old (the Kashmiris believe this) and saying, I’m just too tired and I feel like crap.  Peter, the rest, resigning from a position that is supposed to link man with God.  I ignore hints and instincts now thinking this means anything for humanity.  The dude just got old and he is only human.  Divinely appointed perhaps not this time.

Three rooms of Chinese tonight including a man and his wife and son who walked from Dhamphus, normally a six hour trek, ten hours.  Their guide told me over the fire they’re not in any shape and were stopping constantly. 

After doing the beds it was to the dining room and for the afternoon I looked at jobs on-line.  The windows are closing.  I sent my cv to a dubious school in Kabul and I almost sent one to Yemen.  These isolating jobs are not what I need or want but I have to go somewhere.  I think I would do fine in Thailand but it’s going there and getting established and knocking on university doors with all my papers and looking well dressed and shit, how can I do it. 

2.13.13

I can’t just wait for something to happen.  If I want to live in KSA then I’ll have to return to the states and live in on the streets somewhere before I can get an interview.  How would I smell, what would I look like?  Money, blasted stinking money.  Peace-Shanti-Heping.   

I handed the woman who works at a university in Xi’an my email and wrote at the top of the paper ‘peace’ in Chinese script.  “This is your Chinese name?” she asked.  Well no, but it could be I guess.  The night before I talked with her well-traveled husband about censorship and how savvy today’s young educated and mobile generation with their VPN’s smell Beijing’s fear like a poopy diaper and want to know more.  The couple had worked at USC for a year and saw a free society with free flow of information doesn’t produce anarchy and dissent, oh there are exceptions, but intelligent people know the difference and he knew that too but perhaps it’s unimaginable to ponder how a billion plus opinions would change everything. 

And then I asked him if a time was coming when the people would be allowed to vote for officials at the highest levels of government and the man who kept saying ‘Jesus’ (you’ve been here six months? You heat your drinking water over a fire? You’ve been to Tufulan?  I’ve never been to Tufulan) said it wouldn’t happen in his lifetime.  Jesus, man, if it can sort of work in India why not in Beijing, if numbers are the only fear, I’m sure we could think of other fears, let’s talk about the Dalai Lama, eh?

 

Snake

2.6.13

Thunder and lightning before six am, oh wait it’s my stomach, an egg and toast before bed, no one is cooking and rightly so, a day off yesterday, washed out but now the dark marshmallow clouds unleash the Mediterranean sea’s gift to the Himalayas and we’re hungry again.  Chinese tourists appear from the steps below, mountains shyly reveal their parts, it is still cold.

I am no closer to finding work than I was at the beginning of January.  Trouble trouble my feet are cold and I wear wool socks.  Breakfast warmed, rice and gundruk curry and a glass of fresh buffalo lassi.   I gave Suraksha a foot massage, poor kid has one hellava walk down and up every day.  She’s got an extra sweater and longjohns but if her feet get wet well what to do.

Beem comes by with a bottle of milk and together we make black tea.  I have been making paper napkins for the past two hours watching the hurricane Sandy benefit concert, then it’s education reform on the Daily show and the lady goes back again and again to her place where learning is most important; that teacher standing in front of the kids. How would you fare if you were in the public school mix of metrics right now? 

Laxman returned from Pokhara and crashed in room seven.  When he came up three groups came and I was cutting onions, tomatoes, garlic, ginger, potatoes, spinach for  four pizzas, macaroni, tomato, vegetable and mushroom soup, dal bhat for two young deaf Serbians and their guide, and four lemon sugar crepes for two English gals and their guide, and two more pizzas for three fellas from Kathmandu who were travelling with a sixty year old Canadian named Steve who looked like he lost his fortune and nerve a year ago and hasn’t been dry since. 

I like earning my keep.  With Didi gone another day we washed dishes inside while the rain tapered off and I finally returned to room eight after feeling spasms in my back.  Standing and sitting, I am never really comfortable when it’s an all day affair here.

2.7.13

Six Chinese from Guangzhou finished their soups and pizzas and one man with a strange healthy gaunt in his mid-forties said this was the first time he had seen stars. 

Two cleanly bald men from Brittany in the south of France checked in at sunset and are in room five. When I told him I was Detroit, he said it like only a Frenchman can say it, Day-twa.  It made me want to eat strawberries dipped in chocolate I don’t know why.  I said but of course, Day-twa was founded by a fella name Mister Cadillac and Count de Pontchartrain . 

2.8.13

Didi was supposed to return to work today but she hasn’t shown and she isn’t answering her mobile.  She had attended a wedding and that was four days ago. Aside from cleaning the rooms and dishes most of the work is manageable but there are the dirty jobs that thankfully aren’t priority.  For now.

I started writing a letter of reference to explain my time here and I can describe what I do but I can’t use adjectives or superlatives to describe myself or my personal disposition because it is just immodest.  I don’t know what to do.  Jobs in Burma and Mongolia are interesting, I’ve sent the data info to KSA enough, as well as the Emirates.  Four hundred for an Everest beer, paid without a whisper by a soft-spoken American who sat in the garden and drank it standing up.  In room five tonite a peculiar couple who might be Indian but listening to them speak to each other I haven’t a clue.  They could be Libyan, there is that look, but they don’t speak Arabic, Berber perhaps?

2.9.13

I shook hands with Li from Tayuan his wife and twelve year old son who was so excited to see Orion last night and off they went.  A most happy man-his son was also happy he was happy- to breathe clean air, to photo the night sky with his high-falutin camera, to make red Yunnan tea with his portable burner and now at ten in the morning with Laxman in Pokhara Maya is overwhelmed with people in the garden and thank goodness Didi came back but she’s washing clothes and is moving too slow to come up and help.  So why am I sitting here typing away? 

This is the year of the snake in China.  Big deal.  Last year it was the Dragon, big deal too. This morning you could see a thin crescent moon, its shaded circumference just above the horizon.  Would you take a photo of that if you had a three foot lens to carry around? Li showed me his photos of Kathmandu on his smart pad.  How better of a teacher would I be if I had one of those in the classroom.  Yesterday Elizabeth from Riga showed me the letter she wrote and intended to give to the headmaster where she and her husband Martin have been volunteering.  Teachers not in the classroom, students sit on their hands, it is an appalling situation in a dormant system. 

2.10.13

The busiest day in the history of this restaurant and lodge yesterday and this morning it continues.  What is worth remembering about twelve hours of cooking  for locals and Chinese and a foursome of lame Russians?

+ Suraksha answers the phone: “Superview Lodge, can you help me?”

+ Talking to a Nepali man and his wife who live in London and visited the states two years ago. “We didn’t like Los Angeles, too many immigrants.”!!!???

+ The Russian lame-gangsta wannabe wanted fried rice and not plain and got testy: “You forget in restaurant I am a god”  I hope you enjoy the rice and, oh cigarette butts in the rice are free of charge. 

+Li asked how long I’d been here and when I’d be leaving.  I told him when I find a job I’ll go and right now I don’t know where that’ll be.  “oh, you free man.”  Hmmm, free to choose I guess, free from owning anything, free like a bird?  I think birds get pretty hungry and then freedom becomes an act of survival.

Last night Maya’s Aunt and cousin came and were immediately put to work.  Laxman returned in the early afternoon and Didi actually left early.  If there is one thing I do not like about working in the kitchen is when two or three dishes are bubbling and steaming and Laxman or Maya wander off to leave me thinking it’s all about timing, is this soup done, is this curry vegetable done, is this rice done, is this egg done, do something enough and you know when it’s time but cooking in this kitchen is a challenge. 

A deep heavy headache slows me down. Manab has got the Chinese Happy New Year down and the group that checked into rooms one and two give him chocolate.  The hobbit is over the moon. Gimme some kid, ten percent tax right here. 

Hilarion said what?

2.5.13

Rain.  It’s been a long time.  So clean so fresh I leave everything behind when it rains.  A few days ago I imagined the perfect way to spend the rest of this life and the rain leaves me imagining other ways.  The young couple who have been volunteering at the middle school are from Latvia.  They prayed before they ate their omelets and I don’t know but when they arrived I was reading a story about Russian monks on Mount Athos.  “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner”.  Who wouldn’t love to sit by the city gates discussing the holy books with other learned men.  Ok, tell me Tevya when “Jesus Christ appeared on a mountain bathed in light, were the rays that emanated from his body created or divine?”

“In any philosophical system in which the starting-point is the radical, primordial distinction between the Creator and the created, a hard question arises. To which side of the line should words, images or phenomena be assigned that belong to earthly reality but also pertain to God? And is it ever possible for something or someone to be on both sides of the line at once?”

At noon the rain hasn’t let up.  White soft clouds drift through and over valleys.  Suraksha occupied my computer when I brought it up for tea and then for the rest of the morning it was used by Laxman and his cousin Ram to set up a website for Ram’s guesthouse.  I stomped around with two pairs of socks, unable to shake the chill and finally took the socks off and we will acclimatize or it’s rum for lunch.

Here’s a cool job; Kuwait Airways.  I would have to wear business suits and remain clean shaved and how about all the flight attendants I’d have to teach.  Ok, Layla let’s practice:

Layla:  Would you like coffee or tea, Mr. O’Neil

Jack:  Honey, I’d like an Irish coffee.  Do you have buffalo milk and Jamesons?

Layla:  Of course, sir.

What kind of cover letter do I need for this one?  They’ll want photos and a skype interview where I look professional and that means no Peruvian hats, Pashmina shawls, no microtec fleece and wooly mustaches. 

There were three brothers, one ancient story tells us. One of them decided that his mission would be to bring people to reconciliation, the second decided he would visit the sick, while the third went to the desert to live in silence. The first, finding himself constantly between conflicting sides, did not succeed in bringing about peace and therefore was himself in distress. He came to the second and found him also in deep despondency. Together they went to the third brother and asked him whether he had achieved anything in his desert. Instead of an answer, the hermit poured some water into a chalice and invited his brothers to look at it: the water was so turbid that nothing could be seen in it. After a short time the hermit invited his guests to look again: the water settled and became transparent enough for them to see their faces reflected on its surface.

The hermit then said: “Someone who lives among the passions and cares of the world will always be perturbed by thoughts, while a hermit contemplates God in stillness.”

I am perturbed and often despondent by thoughts of what I am supposed to do and the direction I am supposed to take.  Contemplating absolute silence in nature’s stillness is more attractive than wearing a tie.  How does, a question raised, a hermit eat?  I suppose the mere thought of provisions question’s God’s ability to care of those who seek communication.    

Ram concedes and takes a cup of tea with rum.  His last venture into the world of rum was videoed.  Huge clouds race from the west, hail for a minute, fog pounds, pounds? the dining room windows.  Lay down Ram if you need too, oh thank you brother, I no need, sure take a cigarette.  Maya concedes the day and crashes in her room.  Rain and no business, stay out of the kitchen, ok you can wash the dishes. 

We are social animals we need to be with people and social media meets some strange need but it doesn’t satisfy.  The wind picks up and tosses a sign into a mustard field.  True, I need people but the silence, the kind you’re checking the ears it’s so still, I don’t fear that.  God, Om, whoever the hell you are and I say this with all sanctity, ever true, ever mysterious, were the hermits selfish?  Cutting off everything and everyone to communicate, to go into the divine and be in that presence, how does, how did, it bring joy and compassion to the world?

Too many questions, too much thinking, distractions around me and in my head leave me spinning in one place and nothing has been accomplished.  Whatever arrow points the way I’ll only be sure the moment it’s happening that this is right because I initiated it.  A man plans his course but God determines the steps.  I desire, I plan and whoa those steps never end.  Where’s the hammock, dude?

After a hot plate of spaghetti with yak cheese Maya emerged from her room and asked me to fetch milk from the homestead.  The rain had stopped but that didn’t last, thank goodness for wool.  I shared a cigarette with Beem while he warmed his hands to the fire that heated the milk tea and we drank.  A guide with four Chinese sloshed passed, I wasn’t able to persuade them to stay at the Lodge, they’re were headed to Pokhara and they will arrive there in the dark. 

Maya and Suraksha are out, Laxman has retired to his bed.  I stand and type this at the rotund counter in the dining room, my socks are soaked and my feet are itching.  God be praised it’s quiet.

avoid the palm readers

February 1 2013

Negotiating with a ten year old to use this computer is long and arduous but it wouldn’t be long and arduous if I wasn’t the uncle who’s spoiled her more than anyone else in the last six months. And now the polyps return in the same place under her lower eyelashes, too much sugar, too many grape gummies and she knows they are definitely the last.

A few seconds of spit can’t be considered a rainy day on the first day of the month, oh Lord, the wind is cold and the sun strong enough to dry the pashmina I washed this morning and laid out on the two towels used by the German newlyweds who left.  I tell people how helpful it was to have when I slept on San Diego sidewalks three years ago just to see their response but it really is no laughing matter.  Does your imagination see you doing it again if you don’t find a job by the end of May? 

Manab finds entertainment with anything you give him.  The box from the new thermos is a rocket and he’s swinging it with the plastic twine wrapped around and now he’s gone, why the fuss about giving this tiny hobbit a throat lozenge I don’t understand. 

I see a lot of jobs I am just not qualified for or I am overqualified, I see, a new generation is taking them.  Oh if there ever was a time to reinvent, I need a spark, a lightning bolt bam! Right between the eyes. This is the first night in two weeks all the rooms are vacant.  It was an excellent latter half of the month, unthinkable four years ago, how will this measure?  I checked to see if there was anything in the Salalah account, of course with minimal expectations, smart, it’s empty. 

2.2.13

Inside the broken tooth far in the back food is stuck.  With no toothbrush within reach my tongue tires.  Maybe it’s just the gum, my tongue wouldn’t be feeling this if there was a tooth there.  I started the application on the San Francisco school district webpage and stopped pretty quickly.  No credentials aren’t going to take me very far though I’m sure showing up in person would give me a better chance. 

For three hours under cool and cloudy skies Maya and I gathered, cleaned and cut about two dozen tree vine squash, now drying under the radioactive my ass tower.  Didi and her daughter Sumjana and her friend Shandra sit outside and eat spicy flattened rice and black tea.  Shandra is kind of cute, a student like her friend, she’s studying management.  Management is just what I need.  I need to manage a better way to make a better life this next 31 bloody years.  I’ll need another puja in 31 years, Nyima’s spirit said.  I really hope he is wrong.

"I'll give you a winter prediction: It's gonna be cold, it's gonna be grey, and it's gonna last you for the rest of your life."

The only tension that exists is coming out of my poor scalped right thumb.  What really worries other than the usual mashing of all things normal and communicating in the second dimension.  If only we could talk in person.  Biswah comes in, his mother is doing hired work somewhere on the mountain today.  We met last year, he goes to the school where the trail down to lakeside begins.  Maya gave him some tea and spiced rice.  His English is better than it was last time and if it’s possible to say thanks his disabilities haven’t worsened, well he can still smile and that’s ok.

I don’t know what people think of me when they figure out I’ve deactivated their facebook account, it’s usually nothing personal, it’s either I am simply not interested in feeds that I don’t understand or I spoke of insanity with such conviction my shame had to end it with some.  So, am I on this mountain the same  person in social media?  Well, ask the kids on this mountain about John dai.    

2.3.13

Another broken tooth verified, the back one I can see one side of the tooth just gave way.  Was it from biting on the bone of mutton in order to suck the marrow, by far the most deliciously savory part of any animal on earth?  Serves me right.  Who deserves such flavor not I, I tire and wane, I look for a hammock to swing.

Another see-vee sent. The Arabs will wait me out.  I’ll hear from them in six months, maybe more and you know I’ll be somewhere else by then.  The Koreans and Japanese delete my application when they know I am old.  I think it’s official I am old now though I don’t feel any different when I was thirty.  At forty it was a bloody marathon.  Any feats in store? I’d rather not see it or be reminded of the date so let’s just let it slide by as quiet as a mountain breeze.

A Pisces and an Aquarius get together for a chat under the sea and the fish remarks how unfortunate and fortunate people born in their cusp live.  “Everything is black and white, fence sitters they are indecisive, it makes for anything other than a dullness in life.”  The Aquarius sighs in agreement.

In the house above Ramesh’s sister in law washes her hair every morning.  She has a special talent Nyima warned me about six weeks ago; avoid the palm reader.  She talks to spirits.  I’d like to take a few spirits out to the woodshed and remind them how fragile is the human psyche.