unbridled energy

8.23.14

5.20am—A crescent moon with a star to its left stands sharply amidst the hazy gray clouds and there are no mountains this morning.  I was hoping for one last viewing.  No matter, today, laundry?  Where’s the sun, Pokhara is calm. The milk tea with rum was very good last night and didn’t leave me retching this morning but I am oddly empty.  I smoked too much yesterday and probably will today.  Tomorrow it’s a six am departure for the bus station.  The skies lighten, there’s no opening for the sun to shine forth. 

A sliver of Lamjung.  Let’s go.

12.34pm

The clothes are drying, a mix of sun and clouds on a fine day.  I said my goodbyes with Balrum and his first wife and daughter who goes to Austria next month.  Laxman’s father came to the kitchen and we talked about milk and lassi and absently asked what comes first, the lassi, the milk, yogurt, curd, I don’t know.  Of course we start with milk. 

And we didn’t say goodbye. 

The creaky wheelbarrow is back in action filling the fields with stone.  I don’t have a lot of stuff and should have room for a few books from Dubai, coffee, work trousers are on the list and should I buy a size I am now, which is a little smaller than I was six weeks ago or a size up, a bummer to consider.

Five years ago Keith said I could do better when I sat before the woman standing right in front of me, blue jeans unbuttoned at the top, a triangled tongue of red silk lashed out.  That was five years ago and have I done any better? I tire of the game and know when I am outta here so will end the memories of this Jungian mistake.   

I gave Ram the last of the Singaporan nasal sniffers and let him take photos with the smart aleck phone and now I am his best friend.  He tried to drag me to lunch and I wasn’t hungry because of a three banana pancake two hours earlier and he laughs when I consider how to throw him over the balcony. 

I think my laundry is dry now.

Passing thundershowers, winds calm. A mix of triumphant clouds of orange and dark blue hang in the air.  Preliminary packing finished.  I don’t have much.  Years of doing this has let me see what I don’t need to bring on holidays thereby ensuring space on the return for whatever is needed.  Shall you look for GFSE in Jumeriah?  Why not.

9.41pm

I love rain at night, it drowns out the noises in a clean fresh green manner.  We ate rotisserie chicken with mushrooms, potatoes and rice. My chicken breast was the largest breast I’ve ever seen and ate.   And a Tuborg beer.  I gave Maya money for five weeks of food and beer I forgot to pay at the time of consumption and if any money is left, the rooms need a painting.  At this time next year a new building will be in front of the super view lodge.  Everything will change and I don’t think it will be for the best.  I am a pessimist and I wish I weren’t. 

So, is this it?  Your last blog on the mountain, ready to go down again into the scrums.  I will always miss the cool air and the rain but I won’t miss extended days of fog and rain. 

The rain forest gets louder and begins to roar, flashes of lightning but no thunder. It’s luring me to sleep but I want to step out and soak it in, no pun intended.  Where’s the thunder, shake and shock me baby. 

Postscript 8.24.14

The lightning and the thunder came and did it shake, yellow flashes, the familiar zing of electricity banging right outside room five.  On the bus to KTM I started to wonder if that tremendous show of unbridled energy could be a send off, a sign saying something I am supposed to understand.  Energy.  A lot of it.  I always need it.  

an adverse tradition

8.22.14

10.18am-It hasn’t rained today though algae thick fog embraces everything.  And it is warm enough to take a few layers off.  I declined the job to pick up milk this morning because I’ll see the grandparents on my last day here tomorrow.  I don’t know if I am going to see the Tibetans this trip.  A planned lunch was cancelled and then I postponed a meeting and there is only tomorrow and tomorrow is packing and saying goodbyes and drinking tea.  What to do.  Nyima was a significant individual in this whole crazy journey.  His medium and the spirit who would later sync with me had something to discuss.  A meeting of two entities and I haven’t the faintest today of what that conversation may have been about other than what he suggested was two old friends meeting again.  Right.  And this whole missing spirit thing will always leave me thinking unless I can get an answer and now that’s he gone, what to do. 

Walking along the lake front I saw Ringtheen (?) the 38 year old Tibetan woman with perfect teeth who sold me odds and ends a few years ago and of course I looked at her stuff though my only interest was a ring to replace my Tulufan jade brass ring.  She didn’t bring any rings but I wound up buying something for the key chain.  And while we talked and I listened to the Tibetan plea for justice here in Nepal I reminded her of a longer and more deadly conflict and she should be lucky.  Lucky?  This is my only money, I have no passport.  No one is bombing you here, Didi.  She thinks my Nepalese has improved and I told her if she weren’t married surely she’d make it to the US and live a life full of commercials and taxes.  And she’d be free.

Prem Maya and Tika tend to their gardens right below.  Their property comes right up to the building and Tika plants large bare branches into the ground for beans to wrap themselves up and out.  Perhaps in three or fewer years the two will build another row of rooms right in front of room five and the rest.  And that, would be it. 

1.28pm

The sun is out strong, hazy skies, the paragliders are back with the big birds.  I have looked at the nicer hotels in Kathmandu and feel guilty only with one.  I don’t know where I’ll stay but I’d like a view and that’ll be where I go. 

I’m ready to go.  Five weeks was a good amount of time.  I don’t know how I did ten months, holy shiva. 

Prem Maya is working hard below today, pulling out the chopped stalks and tilling the soil.  Normally she commands the guesthouse, usually from a bamboo chair in the shop or the roof.  She’s talking to herself, ‘..bistarly…’ in the sun and mud, pulling those rooty stalks is not easy work with only a prehistoric hand claw.  She pants and tears up another.  She rests and a loud audible sigh is released, she throws stones out of the plot she has finished.  On top of the clean plot is a pile of fresh moist manure, waiting to become a useful form of energy.  She grunts, I’m done.

5.00pm

The non-coincidental returns with a young man, brother, boyfriend, most likely the latter.  Why?  She hopes I will see she is still not and will never be, available.  I know she’s thinking our meeting was a sign, she believes in signs though she’s trying to flee from her ancestral roots and be a 21^st century citizen.  Well good luck to you.  Our encounter was indeed a manufactured sign and you interpret it one way and I the other.  Your interpretation is one of defiance, mine is peace.  I’m not interested in you, honey. Shanti.

It has been a splendid day with lots of sun, blue sky, and cool winds.  Guests with a guide check into room one.  I almost took a shower in room one today, hoping instead there’ll be plenty of solar heating sunshine tomorrow.  Maya and Ram clean and till the plot of land that separates the plot Prem Maya cleared.  I told Maya the woman was speaking to herself and it was unfortunate I didn’t speak Nepali but it was enough to go out with the wolf-boy and get it ready.  Was she complaining about someone else’s land or was she simply not interested in doing this work I’ll never know nor do I want to know.  In three years there might be concrete where she plants squash tomorrow. 

Next time I need to bring eye drops.  The eyes itch an hour from dusk when I will most likely begin sneezing and fighting ferocious mosquitoes.  A calm evening one expects tonight, maybe a sunset worth going up.

There are no laws stopping my cousin from building right in front of my own. 

Traditions are being honored even though it will adversely affect someone else.  And no one wants to or is willing to change that tradition. 

And democracy has no place in some places.

Ke garne, what to do. 

10.48pm

The rain falls hard extending the streak.  Laxman and I chatted with the couple from room one, their guide, and a mysterious beauty the guide said was his cousin.  I am happy to see the Oppenheimer bio go to the German woman who is working for Dior in Abu Dhabi.  She recommended ‘Red Horizons’ about a Romanian and his experience during the cold war.  In our conversation I managed to share my theory, my idea, about ending the crisis between Israel and Palestine.  But I didn’t mention the change of interpretation of slavery.  Maybe tomorrow.  Tomorrow, packing, cleaning, visiting.  Balrum came by to say hello and I said I’d come by to say goodbye.  Clean for two weeks, he looks scarier now. 

no just God

8.21.14

"No just God would stand for what they did yesterday,”

6.02am—The driver leaves with the skinny Chinese girl and Maya, who is going to Naudana to visit her ailing mother.  Heavy yellow fog holds the mountain hostage, rain falls lightly. 

By uttering these words President Obama challenges whoever the hell is in charge to do something.  No just God stands idle while others in the name of God murder.  That is a logical conclusion and thus we ought to expect divine intervention.  It’s time for the Master, the Maker, to put its ontological cards down and do something otherwise people will simply give up on YOU.  Or they will simply interpret you differently.

Darkness closes in, babies cry below, all is still I gotta breathe, sun where is the sun.

12.17pm

Five hours of solid rain fell until finally the fog lightened up and it was ok to stand outside; right now visibility is 20 yards and it is dead calm. Birds on holiday, construction workers sleep, kids off to school, no tourists drive up, far below, a single hammering.  I asked Shiva who was visiting the dining room if he ever feels a little crazy when the sun hasn’t been around for weeks.  Yes, of course.  What are your symptoms?  Tension.  Do you ever see anything strange?  Do people look different? 

Flight itinerary printed out, bus ticket to Kathmandu purchased, even a room in Dubai for three nights, wow planning ahead.  An sms from a colleague back in the desert says a calendar she read says the return date for faculty is a week earlier than I plan to set foot in that place.  Ram brings the wind-up solar radio Guy left here two years ago and is planning to finish cleaning the rooms though I think they are clean.  I will check on him if his fuzzy Teej music annoys.   

My black man-purse has grown a shade of algae.  I turned the radio volume down, he is cleaning bathrooms. 

So, in the silence what is it that you want to do for the rest of your life?  This is not a fair question coming from me because I know well enough what I want to do and what I will inevitably do are two monsters.  The rain returns immediately with a vengeance.  I’ve already stated here where I’d like to see myself in a year with conditions to be somewhere else if what I see remains a mirage. 

And you won’t pursue that ‘dream’ job unless?  Unless I borrow, which I loathe to do though I have never defaulted any loan.  But don’t forget your training is what got you here and that dream job will be where?  In the bush, on a cliff, in a pub, in the meadows, on a lark, in the dunes wearing pantaloons, or just behind a desk?  Which sounds ok sort of, it really isn’t ok at all.  I don’t dream of desks. 

It’s time to snooze.

4.11pm

Pokhara emerges for the first time today.  Life does indeed exist below.  This is good.  Here comes Ram to tell me to go eat something and grabs my wrist.  Tsk, tsk, wolf child.  He sits on the carpet with the New Yorker I brought with me from Thailand and he is looking at the cartoons and photos and licks his chops at something I can’t see nor remember because I finished the magazine.  Let’s go for tea, boynee and he’s laughing at a drawing of David Chappell.  Why?  He tells me in Nepali and then Ram is off and wait, the Sun has been spotted!

9.16pm

The absence of sunlight for the past two weeks is most likely contributing to stomach cramps, sneezing, and itchy itchy eyes.  Maya was very kind and made me a mug of honey lemon ginger and other ‘natural floating medicinals’  tea after eating a quarter piece of a huge jungle banana left me scurrying for the loo. An apple also did me in, strange because I was alright after a little bit of dal bhat.

Three nights and we’re on the road again.  Did the month go fast considering how slow life goes here? A strange paradox it is. 

I sit now typing with one hand, the left holds a dripping cup of warm water.  The city below is clear and it is calm but there are no stars and who knows what the next 12 hours will bring.  I stopped following patterns when I descended from the four days in the belly memory, it changes too much now.

Sneezes come one after another, this is also the first night in three weeks or so there are no guests.  Funny, they come when the weather is bad and there’s no chance they’ll see anything literally and when they don’t come there’s a break and a chance to see the mighty Himalayas.  I think this is a good name to call your child.  Himmy, Himal, boy or girl, doesn’t matter.  It’s a name that is solid and will never let you down though you might fall from it. 

I’m a bit disappointed in myself for not coming up with an original idea that could stop the fighting over there in the holy lands.  I suspect finding answers in states of higher consciousness with noble intentions has been the wrong approach to discovering a truth that would transcend even the evilest of them all. 

And I’m somewhat surprised you expect divinity to give you something when you’re dissing the Supreme Commander and Chief of all life forces.  I am a contradiction I tell you.  Can’t have it both ways, sure, I can.  You can’t hear my suprasegmentals here.  Intentions are everything.

Ideas are free and what I wrote here for the past 32 days, they’re just ideas.  I can’t do much with only an idea if I am not with like minded people, though there may be few if any of those.  If no one is trying to come up with a new solution to an ancient conflict, well #$% and shame on me for trying.

Good night and God bless us.

parallels ponder

8.20.14

6.30am—The lightning and thunder at 3am was loud and violent and ya had to wonder who got hit.  The sun tries feebly to get through the fog and clouds, all is calm, too calm.

Dead silence, where are the song birds, wait here comes Ram with a squeegee.  Where did you sleep last night, man child?  A light rain begins to fall, sure we miss the sun now.  You gotta be tough up here, you need the sun to live, to keep going, to hope for new life.  Let’s start with a cup of tea, eh?  Thirty one days of precipitation. 

In the dining room the driver arrives with milk from the farm, the guide for the two in room six listens to what he says is 40 year old Teej music.  Sounds the same as today’s, dai.  Laxman cuts strips of wood to repair a window and Suraksha is slow to get up.  Ram meanwhile buzzes around and Maya is in the kitchen.  Fog, wind, rain, yuck, what are we going to do today? 

10.06am

I fight this hangover feeling despite not having anything yesterday or the day before.  It feels more like a low grade fever, the sun would be good right now.  Warm me up, Maya asked me to go fetch more milk, ok, I will do that, but slowly, bistarly, I go.  The Chinese woman who I thought was Japanese made country chicken soup last night.  The broth was excellent and most of what I could identify was also good.  Did you have a chicken foot in your bowl?  Ah, ya, no thanks, I am full. 

 It is good to remove articles of clothing and I have enjoyed not wearing socks for 40 straight days.  My feet are happy when they are free, they tell me.  Ram is cleaning room one though no one stayed there last night and will be coming for room six soon.  The ladies left somewhat of a mess, surprisingly, but they also left a current newspaper.  Wow, what’s going on in the world.  Yikes, I don’t miss newspapers.

For five minutes I listen to a very chirpy-buzzy bird on a branch below.  Its call does not follow a pattern except for one note and it is quite frustrating to listen to this rant and not be able to spell out what I hear.  The driver arrives to tell me Beem came with milk so I don’t have to walk to the farm.  Considering how slow I have been to go, it makes sense now that he is here. 

We should take a walk.  It is so bright outside and it ain’t gonna rain anytime in the next thirty minutes or so. 

4.53pm

“No mobile, no television, only buffalo.”

And a buffalo will keep you busy.  Two buffaloes will really keep you busy, but if one of the buffaloes isn’t ready to give milk then it’s only feeding two buffaloes which is still a lot of work. 

It didn’t rain on my walk and visit to the farm until upon my return standing under the corrugated tin roof of the mountain top temple did a drizzle come out of the fog/cloud.  Construction continues, man boys carry 100lb sacks of cement from the landing above the Hill Top restaurant down to the four sites that sit fat right next to each other along the main steps. 

Three young male Asian travelers checked in to room six while I was out.  Their voices congregate on the balcony now yawning loudly. 

How could multiple universes determine the fate of humanity he asks.  Without hearing Mister Freeman’s response I will guess the same guess I guessed four years ago, the next dimension/universe is in the smallest of particles and all we got to do is walk on through.  I volunteer!

http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/curiosity/topics/do-parallel-universes-exist.htm

But if I were to speak of multiple universes from experience, no one would believe me.  So?  So, what if someone does believe your synchronicity with an ancient spirit is evidence of another universe/dimension, so what?  Is there anything else you’d like to say that you didn’t say five years ago?  How much of what you experienced then is of any help to you today? 

That is a good question and probably not much.  And I think sometimes if I’ll ever be able to go there again because the questions raised since are a little different from the questions I was asking five bloody years ago that led me to this…this…I don’t know what to call it these days. 

Dusk arrives in the fog, it ought to be a naturally optimal time to ponder.  Guests with guides check in.  The guides recommend this place, I think, perhaps as one of the few places presently operational up here.  Aside from Ram’s Mountain View and The Lake View Lodge oh yes and the recommended Panoramic, this is the best bet. 

Are you going to enjoy your return to reading as the substitute for disappearing from this world?  What choices I have I no like anymore, for now, for a while.  Relax.  Relax?  I gained twenty pounds relaxing last year.  I have to find something physically challenging and do it regularly.  Camping?  It’s all about the car, dude. Learn a watersport across the barbed wire?  Return to playing tennis?  Ha, no chance at all there.  I would in Buraimi, though, though there are no tennis courts over there.  Golf.  Yes, there’s a lot of walking and swinging.  I don’t know.  I was thinking swimming and the gym.  And I’d consider running again if I persuaded myself the cause was worthy. 

And how are you going to eat differently?  Ya, the same thing for ten months.  But I liked it!  What to do.  I think it’s time to go up.

9.19pm

Ending the night with a few incantations.  The fog is thick and on my window a strange blinking neon Halloween green eyed firefly goes up and down. It is sending me a morse code from nature.  Go..to..sleep.  The Chinese threesome in room six are gabbers in their room and please don’t come outside.  The incantation and the bug are enough.