take a nap

8.15.14

6.32am-The overnight rain started around five.  At one am I stepped out and Pokhara glittered.  A hard steady rain and its bedfellow fog settle in on day four in the belly of the monsoon. 

Tomorrow I am expected to have lunch with Nyima’s widow and daughter.  The following day it’s a trip to immigration for a two week visa extension.  Meanwhile the leech bites on my left foot are itching like crazy. 

Twenty six days of rain.  Is that enough to take with you back to the desert?  Are you missing the dry hot cloudless days yet?  The wind picks up slamming rain into the rooms.  Guests in rooms three and four stir.  I have to wash clothes.  The last wash three days ago remain on the lines.  Thankfully, in a big way, my passport is mold-free.  Here comes Ram sweeping excess water from the balcony, wait it’s Maya.  Kay Bi-Yo. 

The Japanese duo in room four are enjoying the appalling weather.  They are definitely stoned.  And why not?  What else are you going to do?  Meditate cleanly?  Read a book?  Scan your not too smart phone for hours and hours?  Alter the way you think.  Creativity comes when affective filters are lowered. 

It is better sometimes to raise one's conscious with someone.  Fleshing out the ideas, sharing the absurdities of an idea taken to its limits.  Did you really think you’d find a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian crisis on top of a mountain hitting the hookah every day?  Ha ha ha hoo hoo.  Dude.  Couldn’t you have been more creative with your time than to waste all that energy on a problem that will never end?  Dude, you are a depressant.  Dude, where’s my lighter, it’s raining harder.

If you live alone, year after year, there are concessions, not compromises.  Compromises come in pairs.  What concessions have you made, dear tell us.  I concede the inevitable.  Yogi Berra had the aura of inevitability.  “If the world was perfect, it wouldn’t be.”  A certain resignation, almost melancholy, that we accept the basic facts of life and some of those facts include the inevitability of evil.

And no matter how hard we try, it’s just never going to end, maybe you got a handle on it but the world collective doesn’t.  And it’s been going on since Adam and Eve and the call of Om.  Some things do not change.      

The Raag Vibhas.  I’d like to start class every morning with this song.  Or better yet play it while they’re working on a problem.  A group problem.  Or maybe just play it when I take their attendance.  Not good ideas, buck.  Maybe it would be appreciated in a different country.  I’ve listened to the first 2:17 of the song for the last ten minutes.  The internet, god help ya.

When I get breakfast of toast eggs potatoes and a cup of tea or coffee at 8 o’clock I am not going to be hungry again at 10 o’clock, perhaps not even 11 o’clock.  I will probably be hungry again at 12 or 1.  And this shouldn’t frustrate you because I can’t eat when you want me to eat.  Thank you very much you are so kind but…but?  Zare are no hotels up here!

The thing with the weather is you go outside you need an umbrella, warm clothes, water proof clothes, to enjoy it otherwise you’re confined.  Solitary confinement.  Krishna the driver walks by with a cigarette.  He brought today’s milk from the farm.  The dining room leaks.  Lots of leaks in a variety of places.  The hard rain hasn’t let up for five hours.  There is so much maintenance necessary and one understands as well one’s financial limitation ya have to let things go.  What to do.

Take a nap.

2.49pm

An easing of the rain and the fog thickens.  There is no work in this kind of weather. The Australian couple in room three are staying another night.  The woman is studying Yoga in Pokhara until October.  The man finds time to listen to music.  Shambolism was discussed in the dining room.  I’m not interested.  Sorry, maybe five years ago, maybe even two years ago I would have interjected my interest in their conversation but now, there’ s only so much one can believe in anymore.  Are you always looking for results in your faith?  You know life could be so much better if you didn’t spend time thinking about other worlds that influence our lives.  Just look at the fog, the blinding fog, and see what is present.  Nothing really.  Life is hard in these conditions.  You just close up, you’re shut off from nature by nature.  You’re cut off from all the senses and where does your mind go?

I watched ‘To Rome with Love’, and it was so so.  Why weren’t there subtitles in the Italian only parts?  That was just my copy? 

9.33pm

Skies cleared, the sun made a heartwarming appearance around six, the color of blue in the east, right above and in the west encouraged, a sliver of Himalaya, and stars.  I think I could speak for the mountain people but we hope the belly is full and the sun returns tomorrow.  I have to wash clothes.

And no buffalo momos tomorrow.  Dolker is headed to Kathmandu to perform in a radio contest and will return in a few days.  Perhaps we will hook up for the bms before I leave.

I may still go down tomorrow and stay the night.  A little live music in Lakeside perhaps.   

I don’t know, I have clothes to wash.