halal this

8.11.14

9.30am-Heavy fog finally lifts to reveal life below.  A nice breakfast this morning of tea, roasted corn and Tibetan bread with honey.  What shall we do today?  I should read.  I have collected four books for reading time back in the armpit.  Two or three more and I will be ok for a while.  I will probably take the smart ass phone with me, seeing information from google and facebook has been synced with it.  And if I can get skype to work on it and have access to any interviews I’ll be lucky enough to land, that’ll be a good thing.

Bright heavy fog returns, the sun fights its way through only to be thwarted again.  The construction of Prem Maya’s new guesthouse continues.  All the dirt and stone are being dumped into a field below room one and two.  All are aware that by next year the view from the garden will be radically changed so plans and counter plans are underway to rethink everything.  This of course will take a lot of money.

Heavy white fog and the sun make the perfect blinding background for silhouettes.  And thank goodness for pirated photoshop, my lousy camera is taking a lot of pics that otherwise would be worthless but with this software, I create something good. 

And I should pay for that?  I promise if I ever start making money with photos and writing I’ll buy the overpriced original. 

Paragliders are jumping into the abyss and loving it.  Breakfast number two is usually around ten but yesterday and today we’re having it in the afternoon.  I always keep a peanut butter cookie nearby in case.

3.30pm

Badr from KSA checks into room six for two nights and I have to lay down and chill.  Why is this antagonist upsetting me so?  Oh for all the obvious reasons.  Laxman works on him, and like the Israelis who as well are proud to the point of arrogance, the Saudi relents.  Now he is below with a half dozen children watching the driver skin the goat Badr personally, halal-ly, slaughtered.  It is a nice gesture to buy the kids Fantas and Cokes and to feed them goat, it’s the least you can do considering how you YOU are in part responsible for the troubles in the Middle East and for the way you treat foreign labor. 

Laxman and I were two minutes from hiking to Panchase.  Well, like your compatriots, respect my space and don’t ask me questions of politics, religion, family, or home.  Drink the case of beer you brought with you from Pokhara and your 10 liter Tupperware full of vodka and enjoy your time here.  Salaam.  Peace. 

I should take a walk and bring the journal.  Are their some things you’d like to work out that you can’t do right here?  Moti’s lakeview might be a restorative to something.  Something.  Your faith in God?  In humanity?  In free will? 

Tribalism and the interpretation of the Quran.  Is this it?  Descendants of Abel?  Descendants of Ishmael?  You got snubbed right from the very beginning.  By God no less.  And God didn’t expect the descendants of Ismael to genuflect before their cousin, chosen to be landowners.  Is that all it is?   

Well the rift was certainly deep enough and finally, God, you and the prophet dude whose name I will not write here out of respect, what did this man say about Ismael instead of Isaac.  How can you justify that?  God, if it’s a mistake, if there are other mistakes, specific revelation, sure I believe in it, but who are the words from?   

The message came to the man in Medina 550 years after Jesus was around.  And who knows, if Paul hadn’t reminded all the churches that the Arabs were not a part of the covenant, well I’m beating a dead horse here, can something be reinterpreted?  The zealot made it clear, the Arabs, then practicing paganism, didn’t get a single epistle.  And as the faith spread west forgotten were the Arabs and though pockets of believers existed, they didn’t read Paul, unless they interpreted what he said a little differently.

Hmmm

The rest of the planet doesn’t trace human civilization through the archetypal Adam and Eve but what about Cain and Abel and Isaac and Ismael.  Perhaps with these two pairs there is an archetype of another kind being taught here that should be considered. 

Hmmm

9.55pm

I don’t know why this Saudi, who is still in the restaurant talking to Laxman, got to me so quickly and deeply.  After I excused myself from the halal-ing I rested in bed and then took a walk and didn’t come back until the rain fell harder after dusk and I slipped into the tv room until now.   It is a strange repelling, a desire to have no conversation with this person who I know nothing of but the incident at Ram’s seems to indicate here is a person who doesn’t understand the difference between language and religion and has no idea what freedom means and maybe my spirit saw something else, something worse, something anti I don’t know. 

 
He’s here for another night.  We will see.  I have another broken tooth, this one makes chewing on the upper left side a little painful.  I may have to see a dentist if this one hurts to eat.  

The rain falls hard and then stops and then falls hard again.  Falling asleep to rain is a good thing.