It's world time

5.5.13

“We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community.”
― Dorothy Day, The Long Loneliness: The Autobiography of the Legendary Catholic Social Activist

4:27pm—Thunder clouds roll in, rain falls, good is the Lord who provides.  What will I miss in six days?  Revolutionary Nature, constant, impermanent, and sometimes just outright supreme.  Four years ago this week I passed out Mother Theresa pendants to the children milling about under the new steel communication tower installed on the kitchen roof as lightening snapped and buzzed from every direction.  I feared for the children who didn’t show fear at all and with that lesson learned quickly I synchronized with the name everyone knows.

I’ll also miss the cleanest air in the world.  Every storm coming from the north brings pure winds of unadulterated virgin rain.  You stay outside as long as you can, soaking and synchronizing it all in until it turns horizontal and you flee for cover. 

An Australian couple stayed in room three last night and this morning the affable male asked me what sort of day I had in plan and if puttering was in the itinerary.  “There is no magnificent mountain I’d rather putter on all day”.  I’m not sure I putter much, though when there is no business it can happen.  Today a walk to the Mountain View Lodge, the first place I stayed at in January of 2008, then owned by Durga, brother of Moti and Shiva, and now owned by Ram, cousin to Laxman, for a black coffee.  I’d like to take a minute and say something about Ram.  Five years in ksa, part of his job with a government official was chauffeuring the dude in his Black Mercedes between cities.  260km is pretty fast, bai. 

Radical social change.  Where else but in the schools is this necessary and poverty is the evil.  The article in the Texas Monthly is a frightening indictment for every child who’s had to attend a school in this state as well as other states who over-test and over-manage and haven’t come up with a solution to a problem that didn’t exist sixty years ago. 

Poverty.  You’re born into it fighting all your life and you get nowhere and so goes the next generation, one after another after another but you’ve got family, no?  Here you do.

The village deaf and mute lives in a shanty next to one of the smaller temples along the road to Kaski. How he survives I know not, but he came along to the wedding in Pokhara and there served himself up the largest pile of food on his plate that you can feel free to imagine here.  His family is this village. 

5:51pm—Wind ceases, the threat of rain looms under a hazy gray canopy of cool air and crickets. Whilst there is no tourist, oh wait an old fella checks into room three, his guide leads him. 

10:07pm—An Italian woman checks into room one along with her handsome Italian speaking Nepalese guide, and two Soviet ladies check into room three.  Soviets?  I have the door open to let some cool air and I know the mosquitoes are coming in, so close the damn door!

A sixty percent chance of rain today and all there was was spit that can’t be counted.  Clear skies and a few ka-trillion stars bristle in the dark matter.

I don’t know long I can wait before I make some contacts and god willing can receive some kind of reply before I go so I can at least have an idea if I am supposed to go East or remain on the West Coast.  Really? I got seven days.

5.6.13

Fog at five, a pale orange sun fights to shine, the Soviet ladies are greeted in zero visibility, enjoy the viewtop!  Ladies line up at the Banyon tap, the clock ticks.

10:04am—A breakfast rush brought in more Soviets and a reporter and his photographer from a newspaper in the Indian state of Punjab and I gave him the crazy story but I’ll wager when he looks at his notes and sees 2700 year old shaman who calls himself Job, Nyima Dhondrup, synchronicity, musadifah, he’s gonna write a different story about  a restless American on top of a mountain in Nepal. 

The fog thins to a bright hazy overcast with an imminent internet prediction of rain.  Take your umbrella, pani this afternoon I told Ram’s daughter Antika. Didi is staying home today with a sore tooth so there will be rooms to clean, dishes to wash though that might be harder to do if Maya has anything to say.

Four years ago I was pretty convinced something would happen on 12/21/12 and as the anxious days passed doubts and disbelief became disillusion the day after.  The journey I hoped to end continues.  What is wrong with settling down with a wife a few kids, a yellow kitchen, a dog, a hammock before my next puja?  Is it really so selfish to desire this?  Killing all desire is bummer, Buddha, and it’s making my stomach growl. 

5:35pm—The thirty minute storm passed an hour before Antika left school.  It was a close one. If the pattern serves correct the next storm will be late tomorrow morning and the boomers will come.  Surely, shaking hands with the tip of a lightening bolt is not what I desire, but to hear the snaps and the buzzes of mother nature flexing is just primordial I guess.

Since it is Monday in the world of Calvinists and Catholics I suppose it’s time to make some connections.  So, where are we now?  Well, we’re still in the airport.  After that I can’t decide.  Reading the Catholic Workers Movement schpiel intrigues and if upstate NY is good, I am good.  If it isn’t good, Venice Beach is losing appeal right now.  And then there’s the largest ghost town in the world.  Well, you’ve been talking family there they are, on the outskirts.  May we talk?  No?  I’m feeling like that North Korean dude sometimes.   

Didi came today, did the dishes, did the rooms and I spent two hours srubbing the kitchen floor.  Maya went to the dentist , Laxman went off to the jungle to look for water and four nutty 20 something Australians who had booked paraglider tickets with Maya were quite late for their launch time because the leader insisted her world time was correct: 

John: It’s 1:20, ya’ll should be walking now to the launchpad.

Shannon:  It is not, it’s 1:06.

John:  Ah, that’s India’s time.  Here it’s Nepal time.

Shannon:  No you’re wrong.  This is world time.(she’s holding up her i-thing)  This is accurate.  World Time.

John:  HA  What is world time?  It’s Nepal Time and the pilot just called, he’s waiting.

And off they went for lunch and Prakash called three times and the paragliding office called three times and the Aussies were just taking it far too easy.  Which I kind of admired but really, an hour later the storm came and that was it for the day.

5.7.13

The fog is very heavy and I headed out once with a camera and came back when the sun’s intensity turns the fog into a blinding no escaping white-out light and without sunglasses or my California hat which, incidentally was washed yesterday for the first time in nine months.  It looks like new, Merci.  And the kitchen floor may I crow looks like new.  Seven months, the tiles are holding up nicely. 

A quiet symphony of jungle life outside room six is very therapeutic.  Let’s pull the chair outside on the veranda, hearing them crazy dog’s bells is a good thing cuz you can’t see him.

Ok, it’s time to make a decision.  What’s holding you up?  Look,  I have been on top of a mountain for nine months.  The idea of getting physically close to anything nuclear doesn’t appeal.  Radical Catholics.  Am I a radical Catholic?  Has the last four years been anything but radical I don’t know.  I am not poltical but  I will be homeless and I think we can work together for three months at least.  and ya know, you don’t want to wish, you want to connect, right? Yes, I want to, yes I need to, but holy cow I am really slow about this transition. 

What do radical Buddhists look like?  Would they picket nuclear submarines parked in their backyard? All things can be used for peaceful purposes.  That is Himalayan pacifism.  Take what is bad and turn it into good.  What would Jesus say to this?  What would our friend Paul say to this?  Come friends, let’s sit outside in the mountain air, there is a patch of blue sky.