hairy boys

8.6.14

6:53am  The guests sleep, there are no mountains to be seen.  A low gray overcast quiets all except the birds.  It’s time for tea.  I’d like to accomplish something today.  Something significant.  Let's start with a cup of world famous masala chia with buffalo milk.

All but six of the guests have left, two remain in room one.  I don’t think I saw the two in room one.  The morning remains overcast, clouds of fog drift through the guesthouse grounds leaving us in dark greyness.

Three cups of tea haven’t helped come up with something significant to do today.  Listening to Bach, Luther, Boccelli, and David Waters coalesce with drifting clouds over Pokhara in the garden under a banana tree.  But in the room the connection is weak so I listen to a man chopping wood, more men tossing huge stones under room one.  I don’t have a good feeling about the new hotel going up right in front of the garden and it will most likely mean the end of seeing Lakeside. 

I guess you’re gonna stay.  Yes, but for how long is uncertain.  There are 12 days left on the visa which still leaves me with two weeks of holiday time.  I can get a two week extension but I do have one more place to go.  At least five days.  Two weeks is too much here.  Unless another place inspires suddenly soon. 

So what’s wrong staying here in the forest, you got a hookah, you got muscle pulls, you have music once in a while.  Anything on the ME today?  I wonder if a single event would change the minds of the Israelis and those who deny the country its existence.  I’m with Israel all the way on protecting its citizens but surely it also knows with the settlements it’s always going to be contentious and knowing that, it continues.  Good grief. 

Tribalism.

So, instead of negotiating as governments negotiate as tribes.  Palestinians, are you a united tribe?  It doesn’t look like it.  How does a tribe manage itself differently from a country?  

What time did I eat the Tibetan bread?  I am not ready for breakfast number two.   

Paragliders jump off into the fog.  That could be fun. 

Rain came last night in intervals of the seriously heavy kind.  And I shouldn’t be taking naps before noon, right?  Get out, do some manual labor.  There is still the dining room ceiling you’ve offered to clean.  I know.  How about a Woody Allen movie? La da.

The sound isn’t working again.  I got all psyched up.  Why not Rome?  Rome, would paying a visit to the city Paul conquered be a spiritually good idea?  Son, you’re figuring ten days is more than a grand or two.  The Coliseum.  St. Peter’s.  Anything else? I’d wager I’d have to wait three hours in line to see the Cistine Chapel. Well, I’ve never been to Amsterdam in the summer.  Riding bikes.  Good exercise.  Nice cafes.  Great museums, the kind you want to return to.  Son, you’re talking the same cost?  It’ll still be cold.  Europe.  In small bites.  Then you might as well go to Greece.  What do you want, more beach, some culture. 

4.16pm

I spent most of the afternoon in the restaurant with a decent connection and figured out I lose pc sound when I log off or sleep.   So?  So.  A brief downpour and the day has been mostly cloudy with light breezes that are clean and cool. 

Leaving here when my visa expires gives me ten days before it’s back to the armpit.  A bit of culture, say in Europa, will cost as much as flying back to the states.  I am still undecided and maybe that inspiration will come when or if I leave ten days earlier.  The option right now is not thinking about it, ok?  I got eleven days to relax right where I am. 

Two young Saudis check into room six, carrying food and a propane tank to cook tonite.  Hmm, where are the women in this no horse town?  Remember shabobs, respect the peace.  And where’s my hookah. 

The boys paid $12 for room six and they’re happy everything in Nepal is cheap.  Relatively speaking that is true.  I told Maya paint the walls, install the screens, repair everything and ask for $20 in October.  That’s not too much at all.  The beds are solid comfortable, the hot water is still an issue.  So, if you want guaranteed hot water then you have to pay more.  Anyways, why should hot water be considered a standard when it isn’t possible, like on cloudy days and the tank is empty from yesterday’s Euro gathering. 

You think these hairy fellas mind not seeing the mountains?  Not a chance, out of the frying pan and into the cool waters this is.  Let’s hope it rains, and may it be a ferocious gonad swinging storm just for them.  Wala. 

Ok, I’m thankful for guests, they give me something to write about.  Oh what would be better, going over to their room with my hookah?  Laxman has a real hookah in the restaurant, I’m not going near them. 

My battery runs low and there is no electricity.  I haven’t walked anywhere today, resting from a day amongst the masses. 

Sometimes a song becomes thematic and it’s the only song that I’ll sing or hum for weeks, maybe months.  In my five nation Asian sprint in 2008 it was ‘The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald’.  ‘Comfortably numb’ is this season’s always singing song and I don’t know why. 

Ok shabob, what was written for people 2000 years ago has to be reinterpreted for it to be relevant and meaningful.  Tribes have always managed their own affairs with or without another layer of spiritual belief.  Surely common sense is more desired than legalism, no?  Follow what is right not what Mohammed or Moses tell you about a conflict though they probably saw the same power struggle in their own time because there is no one like these two today who will mediate. 

God’s letting this one go for a long time though only a short time on his watch, so he says.  Where is one with common sense among all of you? 

Things crash next door.  Take off the watch and forget what day it is, what month it is and always buy one ways if you’ve got the time. 

9.02pm

The Saudi boys used the kitchen and served us rice with goat, a delicious peninsulan meal, and then they went to eat in room six.  They came back an hour later with their own hubbly-bubbly for sheisha and A.A. carried in a shoe box sized speaker.  The boys were gonna chill Arabian style.  I was, it was a coincidence too, just finishing my one and only liter of tuborg when they came in so I was dismissed.  The evening entertainment was left for Maya and Ram who in particular helped make the coals and fire up the hookah.  He was enthralled and it really was my time to go.

And the rain suddenly begins to fall.  The shabobs have stuff on the terrace including furniture.  Should I do something about that?  Like what?  And they left a light on.  They’re not the first there. It is nice to hear the rain again.  It feels like such a long time ago.   

A final thought while it remains.  I’m sure it is well known and understood and I think about it all the time,  Rome is the capitol of the Catholic Church because!  Because Christianity conquered Roman Paganism and the new believers stuck a flag in the body of the defeated and declared a new beginning. The enemy of the new faith was the old faith.  Let’s put the rock HERE.

And it pointed West.