2070

4.10.13

The twenty percent chance of rain stayed on the other side of the Himalayas and surprisingly strong winds cleared the clouds by late afternoon, how about that Clementine, your mountains, nothing like them French Alps, oui oui?

I cleaned the dining room windows today of nature’s infinite insect population.  The next cleaning project, the kitchen floor. Then it was the beds and the bottoms of the feet are black again and an hour nap after a headache prompted retreat.  So, maybe a shower tomorrow.

Four years ago this week, on top of a mountain high above the city lights the beginning of rain and the first lightening blasted away just as I turned on the shower.  I laughed and thought what a ridiculous coincidence.  The Chicago dude and I and our guide Subash, now in Afghanistan, had just returned from a day of hiking and meeting with a shaman to the two-room Super View Lodge when it occurred. 

A coincidence with nature probably only means you’re in sync with it, farmers are probably more in sync with nature than anyone else.  There is so much time to think through the silence and feel earth resonate, in the fields you think of one thing while at the same time that inner clock, the subconscious, the guiding spirit, Jesus, St. Francis Xaiver, who’s on call, leads you home. 

Gonna sing my Lord, for all that I’m worth.

4.11.13

After a hot, blinding dusty walk to Baba’s for sugar, salt, beaten rice, moy-e, flour and an always delicious glass of buffalo milk tea I returned and took the hot bucket shower and once again feel clean.  It makes me know I told you so showering every day really isn’t as refreshing as taking it once a fortnight. 

A week of no rain, another chance, unlikely it looks, a better chance in a few days, but this is the build-up to the monsoons, the hot, dry anticipation though it kills business when it comes.  Nature seems to survive better than humans who depend on nature. 

I can’t help but laugh when I think even for a tenth of a second that the Nepali New Year 2070, this Sunday, the 14^th, and arriving in Sarangkot four years earlier on the same day have anything in common with a scheduled interview with a university that morning.  Oh, and a big group comes in this day, taking all the rooms.  And I will predict here to combat the absurdity of connecting anything and everything that by the end of this day, nothing will have happened supernaturally. 

So why even write about it if nothing is going to happen?  It’s just this month ya know, it’s keeping me from moving on.  The end of this journey is coming, and I’ll be terribly disappointed and greatly relieved.

4.12.13

How can you explain when an entire community decides to sleep in?  Forty minutes since sunrise not a soul stirs, not a single tourist has ventured up to the hazy top.  It’s the heat, the dust, all forecasts for precipitation have dried up.  The driest part of the dry season is keeping us in bed a little longer. 

Two tourists in room one drank ten bottles of coke last night.  They’re lucky it’s so calm and they have the whole place to themselves.  On Sunday a big group comes I hear.  A little bit of rain will be appreciated.

9:36pm—The days can be so fast I hardly remember the significant and the insignificant but to sum: a grocery trip to Pokhara with Laxman, carrying foodstuff in a backpack and resting on my left leg a box filled with loaves of bread is not a big deal unless you’re sitting on the back of a motorcycle and with all your strength you’re trying not to fall right off the back because you’re going up hill.  A headache ensued and before I knew it it was time to close the shop, put away the chairs and cushions, lock the doors and decorate a table for Baba’s sixty-eighth birthday which was a mostly entertaining affair of tradition, breaking free of tradition and I’ll leave it at that. 

Whaddya think, 2070, 4 years ago, an interview.  No relation at all between them, but you so dear want there to be, you @&#$%#@#&@%

4.13.13

A slow red sun rises at six, officially five forty four or so elsewhere.  An insect bite at the base of my left thumb itches and spreads under the skin.  Room eight has big spiders who stay away but there are a lot of other things who don’t care.

The internet hasn’t worked so we’re in the dining room, newly arranged for twenty tomorrow or the day after. Slow rising party goers are, for the moment, not restaurant owners, rather homeowners, assessing only the step in front of them, no orders, no cleaning, wash your face, trim the bushes, the children sleep, and why not it’s not even seven.

Walking back from the paternal homestead the heat saps strength and it’s in bed for a two hour nap.  Today Ram’s new son was given a name by the guru, Hindu priest, eleven days after birth, and the family is happy, a healthy boy whose name I cannot pronounce let alone spell. 

Next to the banyon tree rest stop a group of men slaughter a male buffalo.  I am glad to view the work from this distance. 

There’s no way to avoid the contemplative moment, four years ago we arrived in Pokhara, went to an outdoor new year’s celebration and that’s all I remember.  When I think I’ve only lived abroad for 13 years but not consecutively, wow what an unlucky number, it doesn’t seem like much.  And in those years I learned to keep anticipation at a lower than average barometer, a pessimist you might say, but overseas learning to expect nothing is a far safer way to live among different peoples. 

So what happened four years ago, well nothing but anticipation drove me from continent to continent, shedding everything to keep moving and in the end, splat, nothing, brown mud, transparency a sick illusion.  I anticipate tomorrow to be like any other day.  To expect anything will lead to disappointment.  I can be content in the middle, a safe place to be.

Didi walks by with a basket of organic fertilizer for the plot right below.  I face a very very strong possibility I will be without shelter when I leave here.  Does listening to Neil Young make you feel bummed out?  A man needs a maid?  I never let maids clean my flats. 

Families are so connected here, relations rooted long and deep, even sentences demonstrate, though not briefly, the extent in which everyone in the chain is recognized, and most likely remembered.  My wife’s mother’s sister’s daughter’s boyfriend’s father’s brother was taken into custody yesterday.

The alien and the little  girl met in the early morning, amongst the mangroves and sunlight illuminated the dense green and all is well for thirty families of lower castes who will eat meat tonight.  A man in a yellow shirt takes half swings with the axe at the ribs and it sounds like he’s cutting wood. The parts are partitioned on a clean sheet of corrugated tin. 

9:45pm—Dinner finished, dining room locked, teeth brushed, the pulsating booms of dj music from Lakeside ruins an otherwise perfect night.  Happy 2070.  We’re in the future and how does it look for you, I don’t know.  Sleep looks good right now.  See you next year from the mystical, good night.