Chapter Fourteen
Wednesday, July sixth morning, about the
evening of the fifth.
Anna
has just come down from the Annapurna circuit, twenty-one days trekking – take
five seconds and think about what that looks like – around, all the way around,
a cluster of the giants. Anna is a nurse from somewhere in the USA Bali within a month to celebrate her thirtieth birthday with a friend she
hasn’t seen in five years.
Highlights from last night’s unraveling.
Who is here, why are you here, what are you looking for tonight?
Quite the busy night, as one-by-one, two-by-two, and sometimes more,
visitors climb the staircase to the loft. Our friend the young British fellow,
would be accountant, and I play a couple of card games on the floor table. Pool
table busy with some new visitors. Matthias from Austria Babylon
Thursday, July seventh around three-thirty
with a black coffee at my patio breakfast table, complete with thriving garden
and a single strand of prayer flags tied to the sky, softly waving in the
breeze between the leaves. Alsan stops over at ten this morning with his four
year old son, Zide. On the scooter, Zide sits in daddy’s lap, the two of them
tied together with a sash, little body to big body; if they roll, they roll
together. I’ve got the back seat, and the ride is to Sarangot hilltop
overlooking the city and the lake. No doubt it was somewhere along this
uppermost ridge that Gopan Tsering and I stopped on our final walk down from
our thirteen day trek in 1970. From up here today, the shimmering still water
is algae-green. It’s easy to see how the waters have risen over the three weeks
I’ve been here. The observation pier at the city’s edge is substantially
submerged. Today is a paragliding day, and Sarangot ridge is a favored take-off
and landing area. Alsan is a licensed paragliding instructor, or used to be, so
he knows a lot about how the currents work and how to work them. So it’s hang
out time on the Sarangot ridge with Alsan and Zide for a couple of hours
watching the paragliders and there are quite a few coming and going, taking off
and landing, some of them even disappearing into a cloud once in a while. Drive
back down to Lakeside
street
Sunday morning, July tenth, eleven-eleven.
Mostly cloudy, swallowing the early morning blue, gathering for another downpour
. . . when? The secret to be revealed, at the moment least expected. The last
couple of days are merged as one. Friday the eighth is Prem’s birthday,
twenty-six, and he keeps wanting to say that because all of that is now behind
him, and he is entering his twenty-seventh year, he can say he is twenty-seven.
A technicality of convention to banter on till the cake comes out, a big, chocolaty
rectangle with “Happy Birthday Prem” written amidst the sugary rosettes. Prem
cuts a slice for each of everyone here, including Mike who bicycled from New York California USA Babylon
Friday morning, Alsan and I scootered to
Mahendra cave, twenty something kilometers up the rocky road north of the city.
A wide-mouthed, walk-through horizontal hole in the ground, easily a couple of
hundred yards I’m guessing, over the uneven solid rock floor, until at the very
end of it, a Hindu priest sits on a small ledge next to a Shiva shrine,
decorated in blossoms and burning oil lamps, where he will give blessings to
anyone who wants. Returning through the damp and slippery, dimly lit hole
through the rock, there is a narrow branch to follow, thirty or so twisting
yards to a vertical convoluted wormhole towards the sky, climbable in a
twisting, serpentine kind of way about thirty or so feet through this other
gateway of Mahendra cave.
Friday night’s birthday and cake party for
Prem moves over to the Ozone, where the synthesized music is loud and the
dancing is crowded and wild.
Tanya
is a shake-it-on-down dancer, and Prem and Prakash get into it as well.
I
get into it a bit, but the crowd is too thick for me, and I mostly sit watching
and sipping my beer. Closing at two,
move on out through the side door to a nearby late-nite shop for an order of
some early morning mo-mos, relocating to
a gently rocking rowboat, and then the table by the lake. Prem and Tanya, the
birthday twins, and Prakash and I, partners in some special perceptual sense
that we are continually discovering. Lakeside walk back
to the corner where the roads diverge.
Next morning at quarter to nine, meet at
Babylon to start with morning coffee at Godfather’s, then ride the van to the
top of the ridge where Tanya will take her first paragliding soar through the
valley between the hills surrounding the Lake and her city. Prem is her pilot. Alsan
takes his son Zide for a paragliding leap. Prakash and I walk down together
till we catch a local bus to the bottom, where we take a taxi to Godfather’s
next to Babylon Babylon Netherlands midnight lake, around a wooden rectangle table, where two
small candles keep on burning.
Tuesday, July twelfth. Going all the way
back to the evening of Friday the eighth, to Monday afternoon. All one event, a
series of events, leading to this moment of intermission. Saturday’s birthday
party evolves into Monday’s going-away party for Tanya. Time to go back to
England for a couple of months to consolidate, liquidate, and terminate, and
take another step of separation from history in the UK, and towards her City by
the Lake in the Himalayan foothills.
Tanya rides with Prakash on his scooter,
and I ride with Alsan to the clear flowing river over the rocks, flowing
through the lushly green canyon, easy going current by the shore, and swiftly
flowing current in the middle. Transition is sharp. It’s Ok to go with that
fast current, but there’s nothing to hold on to except the rocks on the bottom,
as long as there is a bottom, and unless you’ve been this way before, hard to
tell anything about what kinds of rocks are scattered around just below the
surface. There is a moment of losing control over where I am and where I am
going. There is a boulder strewn drop off just ahead, that is basically
non-negotiable, so when it comes time to gather my attention into a fixed
purpose, there is no space for languid thinking. Ladder myself horizontally
across the rockholds I find below the surface towards the shallows and the
pebble strewn shore. That could have been a death: skull shattered against a
boulder, pink, mushy brains churning with the water spilling over rocks on its
way towards another whirlpool. Had no idea I was getting into a death-defying
trip when I jumped into the flow. The eight or ten little boys hanging out
here, jumping into the water, taking their ride, and getting out when they
want, make it look like a water slide at an amusement park. And I’m sure it is
if you know the flow and how it goes. So with my old “got-to-give-it-a-try”
attitude, here I am in the middle of something I have no control over, and I am
heading for my death. Time to put the A, B, Cs of what you need to do together
and real quick. Attention zeros into the self, the rocks and the current. And
after all is said and done, such a simple thing it was, over and out in less
than a minute. Thankful to my adrenaline glands for kicking in when I needed
them, and nice to know that my quick-thinking do-or-die reflex is working. The
day is still here, my friends are still here, I am still here, and everything
is just as it has always been, and it is all – simply – enchantingly beautiful.
Loosen up a bit down by the River.
Jump into the current, let it take me for
a ride.
Say what?
There’s rocks down there, further down the
way.
They be harder than my skull, me thinks,
So it’s time to find a hold,
and edge on over to the shore,
where my feet are on the ground,
and I can see where I’ve just been.
Jumped into the current
and let it take me for a ride . . .
. . . all the way to the other Side.
Wednesday morning, July thirteenth. Monday’s
going away party for Tanya was: Spontaneously, the idea blossomed. The original
idea was to meet for lunch at noon
at Babylon
Tuesday, July nineteenth, ten-ten. Totally
overcast, as far as I can see. Eight months now gone by traveling through and
living in this part of the world, India Nepal Pondicherry Sikkim Yuksom Darjeeling Nepal Nepal
I give Prem and Sateen a copy to share.
Outside of an occasional ride with Alsan
on his scooter to a bend in the river for a dip or some other natural place to
sit, I mostly been walking not very far around the neighborhood, up and down
Lakeside avenue, maybe trying out a new restaurant or coffee house, but mostly
winding up back at Sweet Memories for lunch or dinner or tea. Two teenage
girls, daughters in this family, are always there to take my order and serve me
up with their familiar smiling faces. Sometimes, Mum serves me up and sometimes
the ten year old boy. As a regular, I’ve pretty much got a handle on the menu
repertoire, and I don’t have to wonder what I’m going to get when I order.
After finishing The Snow Leopard by Peter
Matiessen, I found Cities of the Plain by Cormac McCarthy on the guest house
travelers’ exchange bookshelf. Cowboy life in southwestern New Mexico
Of course, I’m looking towards another
novel to pick up and spend my time with, since conversations and excursions are
few and far between these days. Got to
keep my mind connected with what it enjoys and knows how to do well:
reading
something literary, reflecting on the writing I encounter, treasuring what
I
appreciate when I find a writer whom I admire, and then, after all is said and
done, scratching out a few words of my own, and also sometimes picking up my
little handful of colored pencils, and painting a scene from my spontaneous
imagination onto a blank sheet of paper, and take a look at where my thought is
for the day.
* _
* - * _ *
With early morning rain
from
the garden doorstep.
Smooth
and steady, tumbling,
tumbling
through the leaves,
the
music of
In-cess-ant-less-ness.
Like
ocean waves swelling,
and
gently rolling,
Swelling
and gently rolling,
Into
the sand, into the sand.
There
is no raging through the wind,
No
swirling gyrations of intensity,
Only
falling,
and
even in the thickness of downpour,
It
is all just gently falling,
falling
from somewhere up there
In
the depths of the opaque,
soft
gray light of the blank canvas,
Into
the proliferation of myriad green-full-ness,
Where
the sounds of impact,
Each
and every one in-audible,
Multiplied
by the thousands upon thousands,
Resonate
together into the
End-less-ness
of it all.
* _
* - * _ *
Five weeks now gone by in Pokhara. Clouds
gather, Rain falls, Skies clear, Sunshine brightens a day, Clouds begin to
gather. Every day has its own “going with the flow.”
Thursday, July twenty-first, mid-morning.
Going back to the table last night at the Babylon, overview of the
rain-dampened street below, with B.K. our medical professional, Prakash whom I
haven’t seen in a couple of days or so, Prem (birthday boy, guitarist and
singer, and paragliding pilot), and Shekar, owner-manager, mastermind for this
establishment. Prem plays his guitar and sings, while Prakash corresponds with
his gentle djembe. All around catching up, nothing much going on. The days go
by, the nights go by. Sometimes it rains, sometimes it doesn’t, and sometimes
the sun shines bright in the blue sky. Each day a slightly different walkabout,
in between the showers, or through them if you must, umbrella in hand, looking
for that place to sit that feels right for the time. Conjuring up the thought
that makes the day just a little special, some unique non-recurring aspect to
craft a note around.
Surya minds the bar and there is not
really much going down this evening-night in the city. Ballu comes up with one
of his friends, and we gravitate to the green felt table for a few rounds of
eight-ball. BK and I, Prakash and Ballu, and other teammate combinations. In
the back of my mind is a forthcoming journey to Leh, and how I’m going to swing
it. Perhaps fly to Srinigar, then take the two day overland through Kargil.
Would like to see that countryside, and take a gradual and measured path to Leh
rather than simply jumping in, airport to airport, from where I’m at to where
I’m going. There’s another different world up there, and the path to the place
is part of where it’s at. Meanwhile, the table closes down, Shekar goes home,
and the rest of us who are leaving circle down the spiral staircase to the
empty late night street. BK and I walk together the three blocks to my guest
house where we part as he walks further on towards his journey to Chitwan
tomorrow to visit his parents, then to Kathmandu to figure out the best way to continue his medical studies. Go for his
Master’s, is how he describes it. He would like to go overseas to practice,
where some money can be made, for although Nepal
As we are parting, I say what I can to
provide that encouragement to continue with his professional development, and
perhaps focus on what he can do to keep it here in the home country. Sometimes,
all it takes is a simple sentence to strike a chord and make the impression
that needs to be made. My words are out there, and how they are heard, I cannot
really know. I’m not telling him anything he doesn’t already know, anything he
hasn’t already heard. No doubt there are many complexities for him to consider.
We part at the wishing well, where the mysteries of all of our tomorrows ripple
outward from the center where the coin, the token of our intent, makes its
splash. He in his direction, my wandering soul in mine, for wherever I think
I’m going and why.
Saturday, July twenty-third around seven
in the completely overcast morning. Evening with Isaac and Nikita at the
Babylon last night, just returned from a visit to Muktinath and Jomsom and
their mythological journey up the Kaligandaki river, the route I took all of
those years ago, the route I would already have taken again were it not for the
monsoon rains. It was a dangerous trip, Isaac and Nikita confirm, with
mudslides and falling rocks and narrow cliffhanging roads that brought their
hearts to their mouths. A mythological journey visiting the threshold of death
along the way. Awe-inspiring intensity with landscape and ancient
rooted-in-the-earth culture on the edge, the frailty of their existence at the
whimsical random mercy of falling stones.
After days of seemingly timeless
emptiness, the Babylon Holland
Isaac, Nikita and I go on and on well past
the dimming of the Babylon
Adventuresome
and talkative nineteen year old James from UK Lake is one kind of Timelessness, and swimming with the river of mutually
stimulating conversation is another kind of Timelessness. Where we are going is
where we are at, and it is so much fun, so much fun, when conversational
partners find each other.
Monday evening, July twenty-fifth, around
ten-twenty. After the city gets a solid soaking with a six hour steady
downpour. Little rivers flow through the gutters, but this comes later. First
of all, I have to walk north on Lakeside mid-afternoon when the clouds are
still gathering, umbrella in hand, knowing that something will be coming down,
and I don’t want to be stuck in my room for whatever that is going to be. Past
Sweet Memories, and past the Babylon, past a whole string of other little
restaurants and hotel fronts and shops to the Sun Wel Come with a Dahl-Bhat in
mind, the Nepali version of an Indian thali, a mound of rice surrounded by an
array of delectables. Matthias is already there with three friends I have never
met before. I’m walking the other side of the street when Matthias calls me
over from their table. How convenient. My table is the singleton on the covered
patio one step below and next to their table, so it’s like we’re all sitting
together, and I begin to get to know Chandra from Delhi, and Garrett from
Portland, Oregon, and Rajiv from around here. Chandra and Garrett and I easily
fall into our exchange. Chandra, the artist and poet, and movie script writer,
singer, Vipassana meditator, and educator for children and teenagers about
personal discovery and development and the kind of world they will be growing
into. All wrapped up into a bundle of enthusiasm, determination, and
intelligence. Garrett has a memorized poem about his ordeal of engaging the
depths and complications of quitting his tobacco cigarettes. A long poem,
artfully conceived and spoken. As part of explaining who I am and where I come
from, I happen to have with me a copy of the English version of my book.
Chandra and Garrett take an avid interest and we proceed through some
questioning and answering and hypothesizing about why things are the way they
are. Garrett tells me the story of his surreptitious visit to the innards of a
Mayan pyramid still in the earliest stages of discovery and exploration, and
how he broke through the archaeologists’ locked doorway to an interior of
painted walls clearly portraying an array of human figures with animal heads.
Reminiscent, shall we surmise, of Egyptian figures painted on walls some three
and four and five thousand years ago. What were those artists thinking when
they were painting those images . . . the Egyptian, the Mayan, . . . all of
those peoples from however long ago, in whichever land, on whichever continent,
on whichever wall of which cave . . . what were they thinking? And what kinds
of thoughts do these images create in what we like to imagine are our complex,
sophisticated, up-to-date-with-the-latest-app minds? How does one think as one
stands face-to-face with the paint laid down into that wall by that long ago
artist? Picture him or her now when the structure was new before the jungle’s
reclamation. With their bottles of paint and brushes as they send their message
to all who will ever see it, whomever that might be? Garrett, for one, of the
very few since that very long time ago.
The Sun Wel Come is a cozy Nepali family
style restaurant, specializing, to me, in Dahl Bhat, while including a diverse
menu for whatever else I might want, and I can imagine heading over here more
often. Chandra and Garrett are taking a bus to Muktinath in a couple of days.
Inconceivable to me after hearing the stories of my Dutch friends Isaac and
Nikita the other night. I’ll be waiting till things dry out in October or
November before heading up that way myself. When the skies are clear and the
tumbling boulders have done their tumbling, when one can see where one is
going, and the footing is well grounded. Making new friends from out of the
Blue, whom you really feel good about, is a magical moment.
Tuesday, July twenty-sixth at ten in the
morning. Another passing thought. After a rain that went on and on and on from
sometime around five yesterday afternoon to just a few minutes ago. And the
cloud is still completely opaque gray, and we wait, for the next release. Now
down to the last five copies of my message, four for giveaway and one to carry
to Leh, where I must inevitably find an offset printer and make another hundred
copies. The enthusiasm and interest of Chandra and Garrett and Rajiv in the
drawings and the words, together with the setting of what unfolded at Sun Wel
Come last night sheds a lot of light and makes it abundantly clear that I am
finding my current. Two more weeks here and only four giveaways left. Clearly,
this is what I’m about, in the material world, a book giver-awayer. Last will
and testament for those who wonder what I was thinking about on my way out. Was
it Lao Tzu who, as his final days were drawing near, walked away from the city
and into the mountains for his last trek, wrote his final message to the world
before his departure? And for all of the many others who left their final
thoughts, their summary of what they saw and heard and remembered, behind in
writing? Not to know who one’s readers are? Only to know that they can be read
by anybody who knows the language, so that instead of trying to write to
anybody or everybody, one writes to the language with the words that one knows.
Syntax, Semantics, and Lexicon: that’s all it all is, notes along the line to
follow if the music rings true.
It’s not just our table of five! On the
other side of this narrow patio porch-let, across the entrance steps of the Sun
Wel Come, is another little set of tables with another set of travelers where
I’m sure I would easily fit into the conversation and the music. Chandra for
one and Matthias for another, as the late afternoon rain continues through the
dusk and into the darkness, are visiting that other set of tables. A trio of
musicians emerge, their instrument boxes opening like cocoons emerging into
butterfly wings of music from the guitar player and his voice and the
box-drummer, and the harmonica background, and the porch and the restaurant
from one side to the other, from inside to outside, swims with the sounds of
the cascading downpour in the energy of togetherness with each other and the
waterfall. The book tour has found its venue, and the bookmaker has run out of
books! Chandra is not merely a selfie taker with her camera phone. She creates
three and four minute videos of what is going on around her, including herself
at appropriate intervals, narrating the scene, or simply tuning into the music.
She has a movie maker’s mind. And just wants to include with whoever is out
there in her internet world the events and people of her real time existence. She’s
got a little piece of me now in her catalogue of clips, and where she’s going
with it, and how much more I will get to know her is whoever’s guess. She spoke
of plans for a bus ride to Muktinath for tomorrow, along with Garrett, and if
it has been raining north of here on the road to Tatopani, to Jomsom, and on to
Muktinath like it has been here for the last sixteen hours, one might wish to
brush that idea with a touch of caution, but here is youth and adventure and
exploration and a one-time visit, at least for a while, so they might go on
ahead with it and put their lives in the hands of whoever will be holding onto
the steering wheel of that bus. Not I, even if this was my first time here, and
I was twenty-six, and had never seen the mountain, I don’t think, or would I?
If I was twenty-six again, I might be right there in that bus alongside Chandra
and Garrett . . . how can I say what I would have done . . . If? I had my own
set of harrowing adventures when I was twenty-six, doing things and going
places I wouldn’t try to do or go to now. But for everyone, I suppose, at least
for me, there is that turnaround point where one decides, one looks at and
weighs the alternatives, the relative values, one decides that the absolutely
real possible danger trumps the possibility of the anticipated thrill, or
whatever sense of satisfaction one would walk away with from the other side of
the tunnel. Taking the road less traveled by is not always such a good idea.
There’s a reason it’s less traveled by. A little dose of wisdom might say that
it is a good and perhaps even better idea to keep one’s view set on the longer
term destination. Now I am closer to that place than I was all those years ago,
and after a while, the rainfall resumes, and there is sweetness in the air.
Wednesday, July twenty-seventh at ten on a
thinly overcast day. One becomes sensitized to the depth of the overcast from
one day to the next, from morning, through afternoon, and evening. Here in the
heart of the city, as closed down as the city gets at night, there are enough
late night shops and signs and occasional low-light lampposts to keep the
streets in soft light, and there are no stars, no constellations, no planets. In
daytime, like a threadbare rug of broken warp or waft, strands of blue sky
appear and widen around midday and shadows appear. Another day in Pokhara walking between three
worlds.
In this room, my interior, the world of
memories and dreams, as in the endless staircases and waterfalls of Escher’s
drawings, and the spatial interconnectedness of interlocking colonnades, like
puzzle pieces all a-heap that can be arranged and rearranged, into patterns of
changing shapes. Entertainment central. I do include the view through my window
in this world. A
profusion of leaves, from the smallest of ferns to the tallest banana trees,
through a field of maize stalks now shorn of their gifts to the world,
withering brown for return to the earth, thick moss covering old stonework,
broadleaf stalks of bushes with leaves fluttering on the other side of the
glass, on the other side of the metal bars that insure against intruders. All
of that is in this room. This is the window between worlds.
On the other side of the door is
everything and everybody who is out there.
Everyone
I encounter and engage with. Some I have already met, and we continue from
where we left off. . . yesterday or before. Others, first encounters, first
impressions, first smiles, first frowns, first recognitions, first sounds from
the new voice, first words spoken. This is me. Who is You?
Met Devi yesterday early afternoon in the
Xerox shop. He has a house for rent in the hills along the main road to Beni , twenty kilometers west from here. Pictures look nice. Lots of green
space around. Looks like kind of a glen between hills, wide apart enough to
lend a wide view of the sky. October and November will be clear skies. I suppose
I could see some stars and planets out there. If it’s open when I return, I’ll
have a look.
Walked to
Sun Wel Come for another Dahl Bhat, third in a row. I need this kind of food
right now. Here comes Matthias and Rajiv down the street to join me at the
little round table on the small front patio where we can sit and have our meals
as the afternoon’s pedestrians make their ways one way and the other along the
asphalt lane between the rows of shops. Through our mostly silent conversation
with its occasional catch-me-up notes. That was yesterday. Not a whole lot of
social interaction, but just enough of good quality to help me feel a bit
connected with the world on this side of the door.
Between
these two worlds is the infinite space of what to do in the meantime.
My world in reading, especially through novels where
I can meet people I never knew in places I’ve never been, doing things that
will never be a part of my real experience, and through the storyteller,
fashion an image of character development and interaction and live for a while
through my imagination in their world. I take at least a few days to read a
novel, allowing a set and sequence of images to settle into my thoughtfulness.
Where I’m at in the middle of some story, in the middle of some character’s
dilemma or experience, hovers noiselessly in the background of my time in my
other two worlds, the interior and the exterior. A stitching thread of continuity.
The path of someone else’s life, as observed and crafted by an author.
After
Cities of the Plain, I found Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver on the
traveler’s bookshelf. I read it years ago and know I liked it, just as I’ve
liked the several of Kingsolver’s books I’ve read. By now, I could barely
remember but a couple of scenes, so I entered the story with the sense of
rediscovery, and thoroughly enjoyed meeting again all of the characters whom I
had known once before. Rural Appalachia , in all of her Natural beauty.
There are
small stores in town with shelves of used paperbacks to browse through, many of
the books in very good and excellent condition, so that now I’m in the middle
of The Road by Cormac McCarthy © 2006, and today will be my third day into this
story. A man and his son walk through the utter desolation of post apocalyptic America
Thursday,
July twenty-eighth at eleven on an overcast morning.
For yesterday. Matthias called around noon to see if I wanted to meet with him and Rajiv for a
walk, otherwise unspecified, and we agree to meet at Orange House in an hour.
As I’m walking my way along North
Lakeside , meet with Garrett
walking the street with no particular place to go, so we walk together to meet
with Matthias and Rajiv. Next to Orange
Patches
of old asphalt, mostly packed rocks, some muddy spots, and one swift little
stream flowing down from the forested hillside across the concrete slab of a
spillway built for this little piece of road, water rushing its way through
descending levels of stones and rocks towards the lake just below. It’s a nice
long walk, and we pass by one of the paragliders’ preferred landing areas, and
Chandra gets into long conversations with those fellows as she nurtures her
interest in giving it a try. Happy Village
We begin
our walking return, and within a hundred meters or so, comes a country bus
around the corner heading in our direction towards town. We flag it down and
take the bumpy ride to where we disembark at Sharma’s. Here is where I leave my
afternoon hiking friends, for I must walk quickly back to my guest house before
the rains begin. Stretch out for a little rest at home, quick refreshing
shower; chicken, veggies, and fries at Sweet Memories, and it’s time to return
to Babylon
Big crowd
tonight, including Matthias, Rajiv, Chandra and Monica around the green felt
table. Ballu and BK at the bar stools; Shekar, Prakash and Surya for sure;
Alsan and Garrett, who between them later on get into a wonderful conversation
about how they love their juggling and how it feels in their brains. All I’ve got to do now is decide I really want to
practice to the place where I can be a part of that discussion. New faces as
well, including a man who has his first novel in the hands of an interested
publisher. A sense of accomplishment. A sense of good things to come. A sense
of wanting to share, as he and I exchange outlines from our personal stories.
There will be more to talk about, clearly, but tonight is kind of a merry-go-round
in general. The fellow from Chennai who’s been motorbiking through India
Followed
by the crash. Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, out of circulation. That
raspy throat in the morning tells me something is coming down and by afternoon
I’m running a fever, along with a crushing headache (this is not a hangover)
like some Yeti’s paws grasping my skull from both sides and squeezing, and the
stomach is going on strike. How long and how far is this going to go? Is this a
direct outcome of last night’s free-for-all sharing of joints – both kinds: the
tobacco-hash variety, and the pure ganja forms – exacerbated by a visiting
Jordanian who in his enthusiasm wants to get everybody on the floor stoned, and
he’s got the big fresh stash to do it with. My personal policy is to take what
I want for the moment, and let it pass when I’m satisfied. Even so, the crowd
was entertaining, scattered about in little groups – the pool table, the bar,
couple of Djembe players and accompanying musicians, couple of tables where groups
of four or five sit and talk – and by the time one adds up all the
possibilities, seems like a great opportunity to pick up a virus.
I visit Babylon Kathmandu this weekend for a Tuesday interview with the German visa man. The
German who invited Prakash wants him to come over and talk about a children’s
home in Kathmandu and a school in Pokhara that are the beneficiaries of his
German charitable organization. The German’s letter to the embassy is a page
and a half explanation of what this is all about, which I can only decipher in
fragments, and I have to help Prakash write a letter that tells a story that
meshes with the German’s request. Not an easy task when Prakash has only the
foggiest notion of what he is supposed to be talking about over there. We get
one full page together, single space, from heading and salutation to closing
remarks. Quite an accomplishment. Like a little miracle. Pulling sentences and
paragraphs seemingly out of thin air from what Prakash is telling me.
On the
walk back home, I head for the pharmacy to ask about aspirin or other otc
medicine that will help alleviate my fevering brain. Just so happens, BK my
medical professional friend shows up – a crossing paths coincidence. As I
describe my symptoms he asks the pharmacist for one of those arm-pit thermometers
which reads me out at 99.8. Kind of on the hot side. BK orders up three types
of pills for me and tells me when to take them and so forth and to call him if
I feel the need. That is a godsend coincidence. I am mightily uncomfortable and
there is no appetite. He thinks maybe it’s a stomach virus, and the word is
this is not going away overnight. What can I say? Be extremely cautious in
large party settings, and for me, from now on, it’s steer clear of those
hash-tobacco joints. I’ve been doing those things with the Europeans who’ve
been coming up here for the last six weeks. Its what they like to do, and I’ve
been doing it with them, but it’s time for no more of that. Hash is not the
problem. It’s the tobacco that’s messing me up.
Now it’s
Monday and I’m pretty much coming out of it, but it’s been four days of a
dysfunctional brain that can only think about how uncomfortable it is, and
demanding that I do whatever I need to get back on track. In one way, an
opportune time to stop and take stock of what I’ve been doing here in Pokhara,
since my last week here is coming right up. Virtually everybody I’ve met here
in Pokhara has been through connections I’ve made at Babylon Pondicherry
Prakash
came by the guest house on Saturday and we worked out some revisions he wants
to see in the cover letter. Alsan drove Prakash over to the Pokhara school for
a look-see and meet the people there so Prakash will have some idea about what
he will be talking about. He will also visit the children’s home in Kathmandu when he goes there, and before he goes for his interview. It sure would be great to see him get to make this
journey, tentatively scheduled from August ten through September six.
Meanwhile
Dawa walked me over to her favorite travel agent where I booked a flight for
August eleven from Kathmandu to Delhi
From the
depths of desolation in the darkest hole of Hades, the fire that never fades
throws light into the world of color and sound again. The brain is coming out
of the Laundromat. For all of whatever that virus was all about, however it
found its way into my throat, into my flesh, into my neural network, and for
whatever went by with all of those fine people by way of those tobacco-hash
joints. . . for the last six weeks night after night . . . all of the garbage
has to be cleared out. This is day six after the big party, and the onset of
the attack and the counterattack, of the rebellion and the demand to “system
restore” the internal hard drive. The five day nightmare has opened all the
files . . . including those long forgotten and lost in the archives. . .
nothing is ever really deleted . . . and in
a sense, everything has now been updated, everything that insight can tell
a story for. All stories are subject to revision without notice from the
manufacturer.
Including
today, I’ve got six days to wrap up the Pokhara show. So far, I feel like
keeping today in recovery mode. I feel like I can see again. I don’t feel like
I need to be walking up and down the lakeside looking for a place to sit. I’ve
got the absolutely perfect place to sit right here in this room . . . naturally
cool air and a view through my window of greenery close, greenery near,
greenery far away. Five days of darkness it’s been in this room. Now let
me see it with a Ray of Light, and then return to Babylon
I believe
today is Prakash’s interview day with the German embassy, so my best thoughts
for his success are with him. Sunlight
breaking through today, illuminating broad swathes of moss on old stonework
incandescently. Time to spend some time looking through a window onto a piece
of the natural world, and watch the changes always going on, the movements in
their subtle grace, and the visitors, butterflies and birds, who come to play
their parts on the stage. Noiselessly – all of it . . . Noiselessly, always
moving.
Like a
River flowing, the memories pass by, fading in, each clearly being there, then
fading out into another memory fading in, from another time, another place,
clearly being there, and on they go one after another, from every time and
place from my entire life, in totally random sequence, from the most obscure
and most seemingly inconsequential to those I might deem the most important,
all on an equal footing, one after the other, one at a time they flow by: every
roadside rest stop, every sidewalk ever walked along, every household visited,
every friend I ever knew, every snowstorm weathered, every campfire watched,
every art museum gallery treasured, every night sky remembered, every classroom
sat through, every library bookshelf ever gazed upon, all of the ways in which
I knew Chicago, and Madison, and St. Louis, and Albuquerque, and Champaign-Urbana
Illinois, and Canyon-Amarillo, and all of every other little town I knew in
between, along with all of the scenes from India and Nepal, from forty-five
years ago, from five years ago, from this ongoing visit. Beyond free
association. There is no obvious clear association between one image and the
next. There is no rhyme or reason to any of it. Every one of them as clear as
the moment it comes from, all right there in front of my face.
I can grab
one and hold on to it for a few extra moments if I like, as with that final
sunset over the eastern slope of the Sandias, seen from the reststop on the
interstate as I was driving out of town on my final departure from the city where
I lived for fifteen years; as with my Palo Duro canyon treks across the red
rock mesas, where I discovered so many paintings. There is no end to the flow,
and the clarity and number of these images is staggering.
The
tensions in my neck have abated, the energy flow from spine to brain has broken
through some rocky barriers. There is no good or bad, nor likes or dislikes to
be measured against any of these images. They are just all there, the vast assortment
and collection of scenes from my life here to visit me in this room as I look
out into the foliage through the breeze and the drifting clouds on the other
side of my window. More stories in there than I can ever tell.
Friday,
August fifth, going on one in the afternoon. Coming out of this morning’s
dream, through wherever I was going with it all, kind of a problem-solving
expedition . . . at the very end, looking across the lake in deep dusk, as the
last dark orange line across the horizon precedes the descending night, just
over the line of the rim of low lying hills, first crescent Luna follows
sun-Surya behind the horizon. Which is all very coincidental with tonight’s
first crescent to appear in our real time sky, which due to city lights and
cloud cover, I must simply visualize through my Cybersky program. Tonight’s
first crescent is also spot on conjunction with Jupiter, with Mercury and Venus
in the neighborhood by just a few degrees. What a beautiful show that will be
for those in the right places.
Prakash
and Alsan stop by yesterday afternoon. Checking up on my recovery, which is
going well. Prakash’s interview at the German embassy sounds like a
paper-shuffling performance by a secretarial perfunctory. The official read all
the letters and statements in Prakash’s portfolio, asked fewer than half a
dozen routine questions, typed notes into her keyboard, and said she’s let him
know without the slightest clue about the possible outcome. We did all we
could. The ball is now in the other court.
Now we can
get back to hanging out in Babylon Babylon
"Relax, " said the night man,
"We are programmed to receive.
You can check-out any time you like,
But you can never leave! "
* - * - * - * - *
Sunday, August seventh at four in the afternoon, as the clouds above are
gathering. Loose ends. As it turns out, neither Chandra nor Garrett took that
overland ride through the Kaligandki gorge they were almost ready to start off on
ten days ago. The rains made a rather emphatic statement those days immediately
preceding their scheduled departure, and whether they called it off or the
transport company called it off, these friends are still in town and there is
plenty to keep the adventurers entertained right here in the valley and
surrounding hills.
Chandra keeps going back to the Begnas lake area about twenty kilometers
southeast of the city where there are fine guest houses and lakeside picnic and
resort areas and a clean swimmable lake, and all without the Pokhara urban
density. Surely I will have to visit there when I return in October. Maybe stay
out there a few nights. Weather-wise, late fall will be clear, and I will then
be able to arrange some kind of overland journey towards Muktinath.
Meanwhile, word last night is that the German embassy called Himalayan
Monk Travels to verify Prakash’s employment as a trekking guide. The
investigation is in progress, and a decision is expected in a couple or so
days. Garrett is heading out overland towards Rishikesh today, with intentions
to travel on to Kashmir , and it looks like we will meet up in
Leh in three or four weeks if all the dominoes fall into place.
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