3/14/13
Amideast
Dear Mr. Norris,
I wish to express my great interest
in teaching with Amideast in Casablanca.
3.15.13
That’s as
far as I got with this one. It would be
cool to work in Casablanca. So what’s
holding you back? Are you kidding? I don’t have a clean shirt, no shoes, one
thin green silk tie, pants that are too long, and this outfit is legit, not
that my previous employers were anything but legit in their own eccentricities.
How bout
working for an ngo in Kathmandu? And
with a salary of 20,000rs a month, or $200 bucks. I’ll get a visa if that is more important and
I will live in a major city that is quite, how do you say it compassionately?
You’re tough to please, ya know that?
The Tibetan
Book of Living and Dying. A nice
companion to Mother Teresa if that’s possible.
Taking on suffering like only a nun can and accepting the inevitability
of it. I will work for such a sum if at least there is a clean room and toilet
to come home to. Not even the Albanian
lady could do her work without a roof.
We will see.
Outside is
calling. Yesterday’s late afternoon
storm was an adrenaline rush and taking photos at the helicopter pad you had to
brace yourself for a Himalayan pummel .
All is calm now. The spirit of
the home is calmer as well. Give each
other space and avoid drinking. Save it
for Sunday. St. Pats. How many enjoyable days have you had on this
day? Not as many as I’d hoped.
Many people
ask how I wound up here and few get the story.
Madhu the journalist and her German husband and their little boy got the
coincidences and Tibetan shaman visit story, albeit was brief. Four years ago a spirit who calls himself Job
led me to an old man in a camp.
I have to
choose what I must believe? Mother
Teresa vs The Tibetans. Jesus Mary and
Om.
3.16.13
The sun is
rising at least two minutes earlier every other day. A six twenty four beginning, earlier this
week I told a tourist six thirty. Time
changes because of its impermanent and relative nature. There’s no need to fret how this day will
turn out, you can predict it with some accuracy but that confident assessment
can’t account for what you will think unless you make an effort to
discipline.
Living on
this mountain has been a retreat from the west though the west is like Cruella Daville’s
fingers always trying to pull you back and she’s here. Cruella.
“Time is
short I’m sure there must be something more”
Well he
never said what that more would be but I am under no spell anymore. Find Mr Higgs and tell him who gives a
shit.
No, you
thought you might be a ghost, you didn’t get to heaven but you made it close.
For four
years I haven’t figured out who these lame ass characters are. Do you think you’re a ghost? One of those in Tibetan Buddhism’s
contemporary realms found on Venice Beach and Sydney? And why speak of heaven in the past
tense? You know something we don’t know,
I’d wager your ability to predict future events is limited.
Limited
spirit power, trust you not. I didn’t
ask you to come in, dude, and you certainly weren’t behind me returning for a
puja to exercise my right to exorcise you for such a misleading. Please Lord of
Heaven enlightenment is supposed to be blissful. I should go up and help Maya, Laxman is in
Pokhara, the internet is down, a good thing sometimes, Suraksha put make-up on
Prisma, Didi is walking around with large heavy things on her back, and
paragliders whoop and holler.
Carl the
Cock has regained some strength after he was given a medicine of hot water and
panadol last night. On the floor
outside the toilet he sat with a plate of flattened rice in front of him and
his beak would go down as if to eat but he’d just stare at it and then he’d
raise his head again. This morning he
was on Ramesh’s porch looking down on us and crowing “I am not cooked yet!”.
For crying
out loud how can I choose between two faiths?
I was born and raised Catholic. I
am a Catholic, for better or worse. This
spirit, shit, he’s still here. He’s a
Buddhist or a Bon or a Daoist, I’ll believe what I believe and you believe what
you believe but for crying out loud, if this means you gotta get out of my
head, then out! Out. Leave.
This confusion, the contradictions are leaving me adrift up in the rare
air. You heard Nyima, he was asking me,
not you, to choose.
It does beg
another thought about going undercover, unaware of course and only learned in
hindsight, in the Evangelical world. Who
planned that? And who were you named after?
That’s a lot of weight on one’s shoulders ya know, in the living room
there was a portrait of three John’s, JFK, Pope John the 23rd, and
John the Baptist.” Not the John who was
the best friend of Jesus? Well they all
came from the one whom Jesus loved most.
That is one hellava name to live up to.
Like Shiva? Ah I don’t know. Maybe. And how are ya doing? I don’t think I’m doing too well in the
outside world, but it’s just fine here, for now. Time to go up.
9:16pm
I violated a principle I’ve held
since I started journaling and later and that I was to never
write about the people I worked or lived with.
In the Emirates I didn’t write about my close friends because I
respected privacy (and then there was only moleskine) and here I
let my emotions and frustrations come out here. The spirit brought me here for a reason and
despite the spirit being in the dog house since nothing happened in December, I
had (have) to trust all things happened (happen) for a reason. Sharing my frustrations here is ok I think
however if it involves someone in this family I really must work it out in the
respectful arena of the home and not put it here. I mean really who wants to read of someone
elses troubles? Not me. Mea Culpa
3.17.13
Hopeless
helpless. ADNOC would like an interview in Dallas. How presumptuous. I’m really stranded here. I don’t know how worse things can get. Oh they will get a lot worse if you throw
yourself out of room eight. Why would I
do that you say, such despair on St. Patricks Day. Is there a reason to drink at least I know
the next day nothing has improved.
I
want to enter the cathedral of nothingness.
No dependency, no attachment.
Alone with nothing.
8:50pm. I will have to read Sogyal Rinpoche’s chapter
on meditation again because it was good, common sense good. No Christian can deny that cleaning the head
of all that is unhelpful is one of many steps to getting close to God, and
where is God but within each of us.
Two
Russians check in late and then watch the approaching storm from the dining
room. The internet weather indicators
have been almost right on every call.
This morning I told Suraksha to take an umbrella to school because it
was going to rain but didn’t she run up the mountain to avoid it.
I
managed to get one beer on this holiday in the west, while here no one knows
and no one cares and why should they?
Before
we blow out the candles Carl the Cock appears to be his old self and there is
no reason to bring in the lady chicks because today he was with the hen above
and the hen below. Carl lives up to his
name I say, and was unable to be corralled when the wind howled and the black
sky approached in a slow and menacing way so he was cooped up with Prem Maya’s
hen.
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