Chapter  Twelve

     Sunday evening, June sixth, after dinner, sitting in my room at the Shechen monastery guest house near the dome and stupa of Bodhnath on the Eastern edge of Kathmandu. Taxied over here from Bhaktapur early Friday afternoon. The highway all the way in from the ancient city I’m coming from is a multi-lane river of the complete assortment of vehicles on any major Indian artery. The Marg . . . they don’t call it that, but it reminds me of the Gangtok central shopping zone . . . is a circle of Tibetan paraphernalia shops . . . Thangka shops, and every other kind of Tibetan craft shop, interlaced with coffee shops, and small local restaurants and monastery gateways, and narrow streets branching off in all directions, winding their ways to who knows where, also lined with little craftshops, and confectionaries, and vegetable vendors, and three-table restaurants. Everyone at the circular Marg walks in the same direction – clockwise – none of this two-way traffic or a helter-skelter thing. Closer to the center are the more prayerful, at the periphery are the shoppers and the coffee samplers and the folks on their way to somewhere else. Between the inner ring and the outer circle is a line of park benches facing the center. Not facing both ways like the two parallel rows of benches, each row facing one side of the parallel rows of contemporary paraphernalia shops and restaurants and coffee shops in the Gangtok Marg. File in one end of the Gangtok Marg and file out the other end – funnel in one end, and funnel out the other – as the rivers of city streets branch out into the surrounding hills and valleys. Over here at Bodhnath, we all move in the circular same direction, or sit on one of the benches in between and face the inner circle.

     Shechen is one of fifteen or so monasteries nestled all around in the immediately surrounding spaces between the shops along the lanes – flat, gray stone paved lanes, easy to walk on, easy to sweep clean. Some of the monasteries are small, and Shechen is one of, if not the, largest. It’s been a year April since the earthquake, and most of the debris has been picked up and set aside in many places throughout the city. The pinnacle of the main circular fixture of Boudnath tumbled, and scaffolding cages the new construction. Like something is being re-born up there. It will probably look just like the one that came down, but all the regulars who live around here and have been walking around this circle for years, will be watching this rebirth, and I’ll bet there will be a collective sense of awe and wonder at the becoming of this re-incarnation of their guiding light.

     Krishna in Bhaktapur recommended Shechen, and this guest house is an isolated enclave with its own restaurant and garden. I’ve got a spacious corner room, two sets of windows, altogether simple and clean, and the clientele, like myself, are looking for a quiet place to breathe.

     Saturday morning, went out for a walk to get a taste of what is out there on the other side of the gate, to the street where the taxi dropped me off on Friday.

The gateway is between the Tibetan enclave, and the whole rest of Asian - Western civilization out there. Head in the direction going towards the center of the city, with no idea for actually going that far, but do get in about two kilometers, hanging with the main street all the way to the Pashupatinath Hindu temple grounds and Deer Park. Once I get the kinks out, the walking is smooth and brisk as I negotiate my path through the ebb and flow of pedestrian and vehicular traffic. Reminds me of the busy Chennai neighborhoods and avenues I walked outside the YWCA Guest house enclave. Kathmandu is a plenty big enough place and the motorcycle invasion is as thorough here as I guess it is all over Asia. I don’t recall any such thing as this many motorcycles out here forty-five years ago. After sitting quietly at the Deer Park temple grounds, hire a taxi for the return. Initiation stroll across the terrain is enough for today, and the rest of the day is for walking the big circle a couple of times, stopping off for tea, and getting back to my room and the garden, and the open bookshelf – I’ll call it the Library – of a couple of hundred mostly English, German, French, Chinese and Tibetan books, unorganized but neatly lined up, including dharma books, travel books, novels, and miscellaneous. A quiet room sized alcove upstairs on the first floor, with walls of windows for readers to feel at home within. Looks like a promising collection.

     What with moving from one place in the valley to another, and diving into this entirely new world of shops and circumambulations and pedestrian crowds and motorized traffic and immersion into the maelstrom, it’s all day Sunday between the garden and the restaurant and my room, with time off between getting to know the library.

     Courtyard of Nostalgia for the Way Things Used to Be. Kathmandu is a big city, as noisy and as congested and as nerve-rattling as any other city of this Asian peninsula hanging like a tear drop from the Himalayan glaciers. What will happen as the monsoons shift in intensity, timing and direction? The entire peninsula from Kanyakumari to Varanasi could become the lost civilization of a great desert. For now, so far, the rains have fallen briefly in the morning. Take a taxi Monday into the great interior of the Kathmandu wilderness. Near the center is the Courtyard of Nostalgia for the Way Things Used to Be. The Courtyard of temples and shrines where no motorized vehicle is allowed. Take a look through the gateway into the Heart of Silence where He or She, Deva or Devi, are there to Inspire or show a Guiding Light. The hawkers with their strings of beads and amulets walk their circuits through the day, looking for that visitor with a loose wallet. Part of the background ambiance, as I look for a stone ledge or step to sit on after I’ve walked my own circuit, climbed steps, read the gestures of the guardian deities carved in wood, and snapped pictures of ferocious stone lions. The Living Goddess Kumari lives in her own temple home with an old carved wooden window frame from which she might look out from time to time. Blessed are those who notice. All of this is the way things once were, nothing to do all day but worship the Devas and the Devis, and sip dark Java in a Starbucks subsidiary. Step out from here through any gate and enter the maelstrom of pedestrian and automotive traffic that requires precision alertness and reaction time from my taxi drivers.

     Once I’ve spent my late morning and early afternoon in the courtyard, and made the return journey to my monastery guest house garden enclave, I wonder about what would motivate me to return to the ancient Katmandu courtyard. In Bhaktapur, I lived across the street from and had a direct overview of the Ancient Courtyard and its temples. It was my backyard stroll every time I walked out of my hotel. The “Freak Street” area branching off of the Kathmandu courtyard may very well have been the neighborhood I lived in for a few days back in 1970. A narrow sidestreet of built-into-the-wall hotels and little shops along the way. So I’m kind of back to where I was before, in the exploratory, whatever comes next, kind of place. Twenty-six year old meets seventy-one year old walking towards each other on “Freak Street.” How do we notice each other? Does the twenty-six year old recognize the seventy-one year old? Here is an image of my future self. Do I know who you are? Would you recognize my voice? What does the older man remember about what that younger one was thinking? A mirage of places and people go by, all of those I met along the way between then and now, and the younger one merges into the older one and I am back to where I am now, Right?! Durbar square of Kathmandu in a day: The Courtyard of Nostalgia for the Way Things Used to Be.

     Tuesday, June seventh, evening at nine. Got so far as one circumambulation this afternoon, with a one hour stopover three-quarters around at the local branch of the Starbuck’s subsidiary. Just looking for a large cup of strong black coffee, together with a first floor window overview of the other circumambulators. Not so very crowded, but never empty. Everybody’s got their set of circles they gotta walk through. Once, or more than once? Spinning the prayer wheels in hand, or turning the large prayer wheels built into the wall, turning the drums full of prayers, counting the prayer beads, the Mala’s, and for others, walking close to the storefronts of the surrounding buildings. Pick up one of those magazine tour guides full of advertisements about Pokhara, pretty much next down the road from where I’m at now, as far as I can tell so far. Looks like it’s turned into a real tourist mecca, much different from the small town I barely remember. Couldn’t have been there more than a day or two on either side of the trek. Completely lost in the background.

     So I can look into the Lake again. Last time, I saw the Lake from a very green hilltop. A very empty space high above the Lake that was a mirror to the blue sky on a clear day. This on the thirteenth and final day of our trek across the hills and up the river valley and return the way we went up. I with my Tibetan refugee guide around my own age, Gopan Tsering. Really do not remember meeting other western trekkers on the path, but one – very few at the most. So I’ve got some kind of memory to visit in Pokhara, and I’m really curious to see how I take to this once-upon-a-time staging area for the climb I had only heard about. Coming from the North American midlands, don’t recall having seen the Rockies during those growing up years. Here I was, walking the river valley gorge as it passes trough Tatopani and other villages between the snow-capped peaks of Annapurna and Dhaulagiri. A memory that never fades. What will I see this time? Not going to get too far ahead of myself right now for my planning.

     Reading stories I find on the library bookshelf. A Wind in the Door, by Madeline L’Engle, a brilliant story for bridging the distance between the seen and the unseen worlds, and about what it means to communicate through the heart. On my wall, a really nice watercolor of the Kathmandu valley and the river and the hills on the horizon all fading through blue-gray washes into the cloudy sky above. The forests are green and the river is fresh, and the clouds are promising rain. The river through the forest before the cities moved in, and belched smoke into the sky and effluent into the water. Recall watching those buses and trucks and jeeps belch black smoke out of their exhaust tubes into the faces of whoever happens to be out there. There is no stopping it. The future generation, and two and three, are progressively fried, and the smoke is not disappearing into nothingness. And so for all that is going on in the world out there, I make one circumambulation today, with a cup of good java along the way, and a passing glance from time to time, wondering where my next conversation will be coming from, and how far it will go, and how far will it go?

     Room with medium-dark brown wooden floors, a bedroom-living room to spread out in. Only occasionally does a barking dog interrupt the nighttime silence. Curtains ripple gently in the breeze. I’m making this Boudnath circle and guest house my home base for four additional days till June fourteenth, one week from today. Planning without planning with intentional focus.

     June eighth, Wednesday morning at ten. Just biding my time (bide-ing) – in a quiet residential neighborhood. Occasionally, children play in the narrow lane outside my upstairs window. What does one do in Kathmandu? I met myself all over again in Durbar square two days ago. He said, hello young man, I remember you. I was once your age, and now I am your grandfather’s age. The hair becomes gray, then white, and the face wrinkles in characteristic patterns of thinking and looking at the world. What you see is where you will be.

     The traffic beyond the gate of the Boudnath Stupa enclave is bedlam. I’ve walked the downtown of the ancient city and met myself from a previous age. I’ve got a shopping and coffee house district within walking distance along pedestrian-only lanes. At early morning breakfast in the garden-side guest house restaurant, I can check my emails and follow the American news, and maybe make a posting for friends and family to read. Feeling a bit more connected now with my American world of family and friends than I was during my first couple of months in India. All part of the ebb and flow of sometimes cultivating solitude and sometimes cultivating involvement. Of all the neighborhoods there are in the city to wander around in, I’ve landed in a perfectly fine one.

     Time to start bridging the difference in concept between tourist and ex-pat. For the past six and a half months, including those three and a half months in Pondicherry, I was still the tourist, the visitor, leaving a lot behind to experiment with a different sense of myself in the world. It’s all been kind of tourist-y. An example is all of that time in Sikkim with all of those road trips and excursions and exploratory walks. Even in my old familiar Pondicherry, I didn’t have much of a sense of reconnecting with a former self. No, I had to wait until I arrived at Durbar Square in Kathmandu, and walked the nearby lanes I knew so very briefly once before. Like a little vortex sucked me into remembering how I was with the world back then. I was a tourist then as well, but now I am graduating into an ex-pat. I don’t have to run around checking out all the districts. Nurturing the district I’m in is much more creatively appealing. My time here is short enough as it is, for I will be moving on. No sense in trying to swallow Kathmandu whole. All I’m really looking for is myself and someone to converse with, and we can be found anywhere. Like-minded people meet in Like-minded places. There is letting things happen and there is making things happen and there is balance between the two. Settling into a quiet frame of mind is kind of like doing both at the same time. The travel journal of the tourist becomes the place where the ex-pat sorts it all out into some sort of idea, or theme, or story. Or, simply lets it be its own story, the unfolding page by page, petal by petal of the blossoming flower, into a never-ending story, where every last page returns to the first page, and the first page never ends.

     Wednesday, June eighth, afternoon at three, at the Himalayan Java shop. Of course you had no idea then that you would become Me. You had not yet even opened your first Anthropology book, and were three years away from painting your first picture. I’m sure you had barely even ever heard of the Aztec calendar stone. You had less than three months to go for your Peace Corps tour. You had an idea for an academic career path. Go for a PhD. in Anthropology, and a lifelong professorship. You had no idea about using your economics degree and Peace Corps experience to pursue a position with a corporation or a bank. You wanted to be attached to a University Library and to follow your line of questioning through the volumes in the Temple of the Book.

     As the months and years went by, doors opened that you had no idea even existed. Other doors closed, or you turned your back on them, in search of another path. It seemed like you were making conscious decisions, just as it seems so today, but aren’t all of our choices rooted in the primordial soup flowing through our veins, rooted in the synapses that were connected when we were learning how to walk and how to speak the language that we were hearing?

     The only scene I remember from those two or three days in Kathmandu on either side of my trek was sitting on a stone ledge on one corner of an intersection between walking lanes with a few middle-aged Nepali men. Senior to me, but not ancient. Night’s darkness had settled in but there was soft light from candles or oil lamps. I was on an exploratory walk, and joined this welcoming group for a sit down rest. The chillum was going around and whatever was in there was strong enough to get me coughing, and my friends were amused. The chillum came around again, and I was a part of the circle.

     As the years go by, the circles grow wider, until they become as wide as a life is long. Circles of Inclusion. Circles of Participation. Circles of Listening. Circles of Heartfelt Understanding. Circles of Willingness. Circles of Artistic Creativity. Circles in the Silent  Language.

     Touching base on Freak Street in Kathmandu was like reconnecting with a ground point, plugging into a socket that had long been idle. I was smart and alert and questioning and decisive, and on a personal mission to know the world around me, along with whatever underlying truth I could discover and understand. I was a complete novice with Tibetan culture, my main experience having been following my guide Gopan Tsering along a trail for thirteen days, sharing sleeping quarters in small homes or huts along the way, having dinner with the family. And listening to 108 school children sing Tibetan songs in their wide, low-ceiling classroom in Jomsom at the end of the trekking trail.

     That’s all I really knew, and what I’ve learned since, compared to what there is to know, could be written on the head of the proverbial pin. And I’m always open to another text that can, through its language, throw a little light into my mind. Like Poetry, the Language of Light. Here is another way to know the world. Listen closely.

     Friday, the tenth at four in the afternoon, with an Americano at Himalayan Java. So what do you do when both of your houses are a pile of rubble and you don’t have earthquake insurance? What do you do when the clouds are rolling in with fresh buckets of water to keep the tourists away from the courtyard? When there is nobody to talk to about what you know, and your wife is living with her parents in their village four hours away, when she will not even be eligible for a teaching position for another four months? How about when your musical instruments have been trashed and your practice is falling further and further behind with every passing day? Time for reaching out, would you say? First an email, then a telephone call, then a bus ride from Bhaktapur to the Boudnath Stupa and Shechen guest house. Is there some way I can help this noble and gracious person? None of this - give a man a fishing pole bullshit. There are no fucking fish in the fucking lake. All the tourists are staying home, and all the fishing poles lie in pieces under a big pile of bricks. . . .

     What an amazingly beautiful conversation to be watching. Between a young monk, perhaps thirty or so years old, and a young western woman of around the same age. I’m guessing the language is Tibetan. It’s not about learning the language. It’s about what is the language talking about. And the language that both of them, and especially her, are speaking through their hands is a magical dance of infinitely expressive gesture. Such a spontaneously interactive exchange of ideas that both are working on together. Both are clearly entirely fluent in the language they share. I have never in my life witnessed this kind of conversational expression. So thoroughly mentally involved they are with one another, and so intricately animated in the way the fingers, palms and wrists move with emphatically precise and graceful innuendo. Such a joy comes through in their linguistic expression, smiles of realization and insight interlace their sentences like emphatic exclamation points. Pure mental, mind-to-mind interactive joy! Here is how we share our words about this whatever that both of us are passionately involved with. With our hands as much a part of our voices as the words on the tips of our tongues. Neither one of us one-upping the other; rather both of us forging a path together in exploration towards the expression of a realization that both of us are searching for.

     Debate as the mutual challenging and reinforcement of ideas in spiraling realizations of a Truth that we both recognize. Something other than Debate seen as a challenge that leads to winners and losers. The young monk is the teacher and there is a notebook on the table he shares with his student, the eloquent young woman who speaks with the hands of a Bharatanatyam dancer. They both know what is in this notebook, as if they had written it together, taking notes in tandem from whatever source. Only very occasionally will this notebook be referenced.  The monk has the final nod, and the woman whose words dance on the tips of her fingers knows full well with absolute certainty when she has reached a conclusion. There is no hurry. This is not a contest. The young woman may even plug into her laptop and look for something in there. As if reconnecting with some half-remembered thought, filling in a blank on the way back to the continuing conversation.

     On this Day for Special Conversations, Krishna comes by for a visit. Took the bus in from Bhaktapur, two buses actually to get within walking distance of Boudnath. Within ten minutes of his arrival at the garden-restaurant where I am waiting at a table, the rains begin, and they come down heavily for easily an hour.  We have a small pot of masala chai. Here is where our voices and our thoughts meet across the table. A different kind of gestural interface. Krishna can talk about the economic disaster he has encountered, and is encountering, with absolutely no trace of any anger towards anyone or the system that keeps him in this mess. He is a husband and a father and can’t go running off to the Emirates to make a bunch of money. He’s got the land his houses were built on and a three room reconstruction, and a well kept garden, and he is in a Love marriage for six years now. What becomes of his Life will Become here. Nothing complicated about this conversation. What this man needs is some Crowdfunding! Hmmm. See how we think in this digital, mindset world! Back down on Earth, gradually the rains subside, and the cloudy sky evaporates. Time for the two friends to take a walk around the Stupa, stop in a Thangka shop for a look-see, and climb the steps to the Himalayan Café rooftop for lunch with a front-row view of the reconstruction progress of the new stupa pinnacle. Krishna and I are a part of each other’s conversation, or shall I say that he and I are each a part of the conversation we have? I think both of these are true. Two people finding each other in conversation! What a Rush!

    

     Fingers dancing on the tips of Bharatyanatyam gestures.

     Thoughts on the tips of our tongues in conversation.

     Lotus Blossom, Petals Open, Dawn.

     Sunday the twelfth at one-thirty at the window of Himalayan Java overlooking the circumambulators while listening to three men and a woman exchanging their ideas in Russian. Nine nights it has been here now at Boudnath. Two more are planned before a Tuesday morning departure for Pokhara. Ninety percent of my Kathmandu experience has been here on the grounds between the Boudnath Stupa and the Shechen Monastery Guest House and garden-restaurant. How are you using your mind, what are you using your mind for today? How are you choosing to direct your thought? How about some monotonous repetition? Like all of the mala-bead recitation people? Carol P. visits in my dream last night, my art teacher back at the University of Wisconsin back in the late-eighties, when I’m in my younger forties. She is kind of teasing me in a playful kind of way. Sooo, John, when do you think you are going to start drawing your mountains and mandalas again?

     Monday the thirteenth at ten-thirty morning. Just gotta Luv these smooth transitions. Yesterday afternoon, stop at the front desk to ask Ngawang for some basic info about getting my way over to whichever bus station can get me going towards Pokhara. Ngawang points to Tashi sitting at his computer in the room across the hall. Tashi has all the answers. Tuesday morning at quarter after six, I carry my bags downstairs, through the garden and to the stone pavement at the security gate where I will meet my taxi driver. He will drive me to the bussing area near Thamel in central Katmandu, where I will be dropped off at the appropriate bus. All these guys know each other. They do this all the time for mono-lingual, bewildered tourists. Bus ride is from seven to three, and I’ve got a mid-coach right window seat, the preferred side. Looks like a short bus, as busses go, nice pretty new in the brochure picture. Tashi’s got me lined up with Little Tibetan Guest House for ten dollars per night. A taxi man will be standing at the bus drop off point with a card with my name on it, and I will be whisked off to the hotel. Door-to-door service between cities takes the edge off of that uncertainty I must carry when I enter a city with no pre-booked room, as I went through with Khakarvitta and Bhaktapur, and which I’m sure I’ll go through again along the road. What will be, in either case along the road, is what will be.

     Since my Durbar Square excursion last Monday, every day has been around the Boudnath enclave and surrounding pathways, and the monastery guest house. Circumambulations, along with a closer look into some shop I newly discover, spiraling staircases to rooftop patios for a veg burger, fries and salad or some such thing while watching the workers on the stupa reconstruction, visit Himalayan Java for a large dark cup with a chocolate muffin, and some windowside coffee house contemplation of whatever and whomever is out there. Walk the lanes back to the guest house around four, and share time between my room and my garden. Same, Same . . . only Different.

     Forthcoming time in and around Pokhara will be eye-opening, consciousness expanding in a different kind of way. I’ve got a memory picture of walking the narrow river valley between the snow-covered gray granite peaks of Dhaulagiri and Annapurna. I’ve got a memory picture of the Jomsom hamlet, and the graceful village of Tatopani winding along the river’s course. I’ll be looking for a jeep ride now, through this place where there were then no roads. Airplanes will be taking off and landing at Jomsom. Very much “Same, Same” for the view towards the sky, very much “only Different” for the trail. Jeep ride will likely be a few or several hours of a single day. My walk back in 1970 was seven days up and six days back. Superimposition of old and new images. What was for coloring what’s new, and what’s new to fill in the blanks between the old memory pictures.

     Vajrayogini dances, riding her blossoming lotus, sky-dancing woman with words of wisdom for those who Listen.

     Now Tuesday evening, the fourteenth at nine-thirty in room twenty-seven of the Little Tibetan Guest House in Pokhara. Referencing last night the thirteenth as I’m getting to the bottom of my last cup of tea at the Shechen guest house dining room. Last couple of days, there has been another elder man of European descent sitting at a table, just as I have been sitting at a table, and there are signals in passing that we are both open to a meeting, a possible conversation. Since I arrived at Boudnath June third, now eleven days have gone by, and I’ve had no conversational interaction with any of the other European or American visitors along the way around here. There are mostly younger travelers from their mid-twenties on up through their thirties and forties. Even a group of eight French-speakers for a couple of days who sat around their dining table, four along each side and two across, and I’m not exactly following what they’re talking about, but it seems in my ear as a musical chattering of French sentences simultaneously enveloping the air. Point getting around to when and where one meets one’s conversational partner.

     So I’m finishing my last cup of tea before departure the next morning, and in walks this other elder guy come down for his evening bottle of coke, and our mutual greetings lead us to sitting across the table. Freddie C. is from Britain, a tall, strong, robust eighty-one, thin wisps of white hair across a balding crown, and we begin our stores of how many times, when and where we have known India and Nepal. Freddie’s memories for this part of the world go back fifty years, and includes some time in Pondicherry. He has worked in some capacity for the U.N. as an economic development aide, though all of that is not a part of the point of our conversation. The point is that all of his adult life has been traveling more than half of every year, going here and going there mostly in Asia for different reasons that draw him to his special, magical places. One of which is Leh, which is on my itinerary, and which he makes a point of visiting every two years. I pictured myself in some similar professional role when I was an undergrad Economics major, and as I entered my Peace Corps assignment. Those were the first two steps of an imagined career path. Am I talking to the kind of person I might have become, career wise? My idea changed during that two year tour in Cuddalore. The path took a turn through Anthropology, Art, and Poetry, as I went searching for my original Vision, and my original Voice.

     Freddie has a garden back in England that he cares for strongly, sounds like his home is a place where he can feel quietly, creatively comfortable, until he hears the voice that tells him to get up and go somewhere, usually in Asia, with India and Nepal being his favorites, several weeks at a time, traveling lightly, visiting familiar places, and some new ones. Kind of a way of life I’d like to direct myself towards, according to my own style. Where does one find what one needs to realize a sense of fulfillment? In the garden we nurture, the garden we venture forth from to find new inspiration to bring back to the garden, in the garden where Freddie cultivates his flowers, where I would bring forth my paintings.

     In my travels, I’m frequently asked how old I am, and when I say seventy-one, I am met with looks of amazement, and compliments for how strong and healthy I appear. I tell these people that I keep moving, keep walking, and that is my key to endurance that I plan to continue. Pursuing a life dream for me is an active tense verb. The walking I do now is simply a slower version of the running I did in my twenties. Setting a pace that pushes wherever I am at just a little further. Freddie also extols the virtues of walking, the virtues that keep all of our physical systems in working order. We are designed for walking, and the more we do, the longer we will be doing it. Freddie is an inspiration, so that when I get to feeling sluggish and worn out, I’ll remember the image of this cheerful old guy gallivanting around the world to this favorite places while he leaves his garden to care for itself sometimes.

     I ask Freddie if he reads poetry and he says not particularly, but he has appreciated some on various occasions. I’ve got a copy of my book for him, printed in Poindicherry, and he really appreciates the gift and speaks enthusiastically about reading it because he knows the author, this other world traveler who sees the world and our relationship to it in so many similar ways. Eleven days in Boudnath, to find this conversation, and what a good one it has been!

     Wednesday the fifteenth of June, at nine in the morning at my Pokhara home.

Recollection image: The village on the hilltop that looks across the valley to the snow-capped peak on one side, and from another side of the top of this hill, a view downward towards the sky-mirror of the Lake.

     Today in the City by the Lake, Light and dark gray clouds linger and merge into one another in wistful embrace, from horizon to zenith, the gray cloud hovers. Just in time for the off-season monsoon beginning. How far I will be able to go will be quite weather dependent, between walking along the streets of discovery in the city, or jeeping it out beyond the city limits.

     I’ve got my own semi-circular balcony with one round table and two chairs. The opposite door opens to the communal balcony hallway that leads to the stairway to the garden. This enclave is a cultivated rain forest of different types of trees, interlacing branches and sharing sunlight. A string of weathered prayer flags hangs loosely from one branch of a tree in one corner, coursing through the branches of other trees, to finally tie to the branch of another corner tree.  Opposite doors opening both is perfect ventilation. Maybe I’ll get very far towards the interior and maybe not. For now, I’ve made a beachhead, and what a very fine little place this is. No phone to the office, so I walk down to ring a brass bell to call the Tibetan matron, wife, and mother, in her mid-life sense of the world, to the door. I give her my order from the menu, and she will have her teenage daughter bring it to my room. Breakfast is the only meal served at the Little Tibetan, and I will be going beyond the gate to visit and choose from the endless rows of restaurants along the Lakeside main street, for I am pretty much in the middle of where all the backpackers pass through.

     Yesterday’s eight hour bus ride – station-to-station, seven to three – was rather rattling. Fine scenic views through my riverside window, on a bus with brakes that screeched through several octaves of intensity every time the driver touched the pedal, and besides the fact that, if this vehicle does have shock absorbers, they need serious attention.

     After resting, as dusk is reaching into darkness, walk through the misty air along one block, then another, checking out the shops, reading sidewalk menus, finally settling into a Godfather’s for a vegetarian twelve inch pizza and a small pot of chai. And watch the waterfalls out of the sky and make rivers in the streets. And so it is the clouds drift by overhead, with no trace of blue to be seen anywhere except in memory. It really doesn’t matter, what happens or doesn’t happen, as long as I keep writing about whatever it is or isn’t. All I really do is sit in my room looking out a window if I have a view I like to visit, which in the case of the Little Tibetan is a patchwork quilt of treetop greenery, so I like it. And from here I wait for some idea to take me through the garden to the gateway. Just coming in from eleven days of going around in my little set of Boudnath circles, on the threshold of an entirely strange set of city streets. Through the garden path to the gateway, and something new begins.