Let's have a serious bleating chat

8.7.14

9.30am A bright foggy morning, men throw stones next door, a woman walks below through the green, headed to the forest north around the mountain.  The Saudi boys are accompanying Suraksha and Monab to school today.  Ten dollars one of them flat footed desert nomads slips and breaks a femur.  Ok, five dollars they get lost on the way back and call a helicopter to take them to the top. 

Prakash, the young man who took his life last year, had a brother working in London.  His brother knows of no news regarding the death of his younger brother.  Everyone has a right to know what happens to their immediate family.  It was a tragedy and I do remember the last time I saw Prakash, the look in his eyes of all hope lost.  It was scary then but I’d never seen that look before and I didn’t know getting tied down to a bed by his father would be the final blow to this man’s dignity.

Beem cuts what buffalo grass there is below.  I cannot justify spending ten days in Vienna.  Listening to Mozart all day, still dressed like a bum, eating well, everything is clean and orderly and perhaps a little too efficient.  There’s still Sri Lanka if you like it moderately clean and orderly and efficient.  I have been told the roads are much better now than when I was there ten years ago.

Fog rolls out of Pame and winds blow it up the mountain and again a white out at ten in the morning while cheering and whooping from the para gliders jumping off the cliff is muted. 

The Saudi boys lead the Bengali six for leaving the biggest mess in their rooms and terrace.  For the former it’s simply a case of youthful sloth combined with growing up with no responsibilities and always having a maid to clean up after you. 

I have had no internet connection this morning.  That is a good thing sometimes.  Get outside and breathe deep the gathering bloom. The dark gathering bloom. 

2.42pm

The Saudi boys are back, completely conked out from walking down and back to Suraksha’s school.  On the way one of the shabobs called the guesthouse to say he lost his new iphone and when they climbed back up they found it right where it fell out of his pocket.  You always have a better chance finding something on a mountain when you move slowly. 

Ram stands at my door asking me a question I should know.  Repeating it isn’t helping.  Can I remember it later?  It is a quiet afternoon, one hammer and rock clang with the birds.  Trash is absently knocked over next door.  Is it haram to call a Saudi an unclean animal? They’ve opened their door.  I would like to listen to some music, wait, I can hear Tibetan horns blowing from the monastery at the end of the mountain road. 

That’s good because my cd player doesn’t work.  A good coincidence sort of.

On my walk this afternoon I had a cup of milk tea on the roof of Ram’s Mountain View Guesthouse and chatted with Robert from Germany who’s lived and worked in Java for twenty years.  I have met him before and it wasn’t until I was leaving that he suddenly became familiar and it was only last year that we met, albeit briefly.  So.  He said he spent four hours in a Javanese airport suspected of bringing something illegal with him because there was recreational residue on his fingers.  Body cavity search the whole thing.  In subsequent returns customs recognized him and he hasn’t been searched since.  ‘A good time to take some now?’ was suggested.

A goat bleats below.  Now there are two and they get louder.  Behind the new Sunrise guesthouse, which sits right below on the road and across from the Banyon tree, there is a goat pen and two kids are separated from mama goat who remains in the pen.  The goats are having a serious bleating chat.

Locals check into room two and the driver brings two beers to the patrons.  Ram is standing next to me.  He took off his blue sandals and now he watches me type without a mistake.  Now he says “keena esto?”  in a question.  Why something, ok, it’s time for tea. 

A wall of rain came from the Hamja Valley quickly and that was that.  Little, I speak figuratively, rain cells sprinkled over the north part of the city and that might be all we’re gonna see.  Meanwhile Pokhara proper basks in sunlight.  And it’s only five pm, perhaps a nice rainbow. 

The Saudi boys left their room just as showers accelerated and winds blew.  I think this is intentional.  Stand in it, sing in it, bellow in it.  A long nap after so much climbing, no sorry, shabob, it isn’t evening yet. 

A patch of sun falls on Pokhara, blue skies revealed in pocket holes, the smell and the breeze after a rain is worthy.

6.42pm

I watched the almost first sunset from the roof top and the green valley hummed in a golden filtered dream and when that was that I turned around and a huge mother ship cloud was coming from the east and it moved fast and wondered if it was going to go right over then it downloaded heavy fog.  And it was certainly a nice way to end the day’s light. 

How strange that such a fast circular upside down wok of a cloud would leave a trail of thick silent and moving slowly fog.  All is blue outside. 

And then, such a dramatic evening it is, a hole is cut out of the fog for the moon, looking confident for no reason.  Crickets must like something in the organic rich air, airborne krill perhaps blown in just for you. 

10.09pm

The boys took a six hour nap and they’re firing up their propane to eat something.  Just keep it down, ok?  Everyone is sleeping or quietly nestled in for the foggy night. 

The smart phone succeeds in taking my time to learn it.  And after three days is it worth it, to learn, to be smarter than a smart phone?  Will I be a better person, better informed about my world?  The boys are walking back and forth trying to learn how to eat independently.  Walking down tomorrow I’d like to be gone before they leave.