| | There's a sick cow out on the streets tonight. I know because I can hear her sneezing. It sounds like a boxer cutting loose on a punching bag-sized whoopee cushion. |   |
| | Subject: | Ayumi | | Time: | 03:21 pm |
|
| There's the potential for something hidden like a blue egg deep under the lake. Down, down it drifts into the ancient crevasses, lower and lower it floats into the nameless abyss.
Is there a murky beast who with half a gulp will make the fragile hope disappear? Its teeth would miss the hapless shell; it would find itself gnawing its own jaw while the egg bobs down its cavernous interior, untouched, but with what chance of ever being hatched? | | |
| If creativity comes about when one drops the ego, becomes egoless, loses the self, then perhaps I should forget having Lasik eye surgery.
As I've long observed, without my glasses, or my contacts, I become more of an artist. Nothing has too fine a point on it; everything is a blur of color, every object flows into its neighbor, disregards the rules of depth and distance, every hard edge is smudged by a divine thumb.
When I look at people, I can only make out their attitude, the direction they are facing, in general the style and color of their attire. I cannot see the wrinkles of a smirk, the fluttering of nervous eyeballs, a locked jaw. I cannot say that a person is beautiful or ugly, timid or bold, confident or submissive. Only when they begin to move, and before they move out of my field of acuity, can I glean something about how their personalities are expressed in movement. The world of aesthetic possibilities changes completely. I lose my ability to judge a person as a static work of art. I am transformed into a detective who must through the collection of small hints and clues deduce something about the mystery of a man. My eyes, which used to be incisive, sabre-toothed implements of summary dissection, are blunted, melted into something rounder, softer, alchemized to gold. I cannot pose a challenge or posit a demand or communicate a desire with a look. I cannot even deliver a prejudice. There is no aggressiveness left in my gaze. All that remains is a question mark, a void looking for wonder to fill it, a witness to surprise.
Am I really forced to don these dangerous spectacles just to avoid being eaten alive by everyone else roving the streets with razor eyes? | | |
| Not used to always being on guard, suspicious of ulterior motives, manipulation, trickery, masked intentions, deceit. Every gesture of goodwill is inextricably bound to a will to manipulate, to treat as an object, to shake gain out of. I cannot trust anyone. Words are full of congenial thorns which twist and wrench upon grabbing hold, break the skin internally where you can't see it, suck your blood through the vine like a lamprey.
Their brain is an ugly creature. If you could see it, you would want to mash it, burn it, stomp it, bury it, the stinking, frothing mass of control and lust, with no positive capacity for understanding.
The kids learn to turn off their consciousness. Or maybe they are taught by a world of zombies with atrophied compassion. They lose their empathy and the entire nervous system becomes rooted in I Want; no other sensation transmits signals that percolate into action. There is no rule defining the limits of behavior. Anything can be denied, then reasserted at the convenient moment. Running around the morbid lab with people's open hearts on bunsen burners, drained into by vials of caustic chemical, test tubes filled with abuse, they experiment ceaselessly, mercilessly. The aorta palpitates, shudders, screams, contracts, recoils, shrivels, turns into a grey stone. And taking off their sacrosanct lab coats they blink through ogle-eyed glasses and look absurdly surprised at the lifeless result.
Among all the swaggering teenage self-proclaimed "priests" trying to sell me their approval, who viciously denounce me as a "bad man", "no good", full of "bad karma" when I refuse to buy, is there no one who will stand up and say, "No no, this is wrong, this is a perversion of human trust, of our pure belief"? Man or woman, young or old, is there no ethical dissenter? | | |
| Raja: "Tomorrow you come my house, I feed you big glass of Hindi."
...
Looking at my hands in shadow a few nights back, I suddenly realized I was looking at Mom's hands ... | | |
|
DIANA PALACE
... the blinking neon sign towered above us. A ... lakh? A lack? What exactly was the sign to convey about the establishment? Something of its posh exclusivity, about the cost of one room per night? About its paucity?
[ Later on the same night ... ]
CRYSTAL MALL
A mall that has it all? Or run by Alan, Albert, Alfonse, Alfred, Almond, Al Capone, Al Cheapo?
They really leave it up to the imagination here!!! | | |
|
- rickshaw rage :
- condition of temporary insanity possibly leading to unspeakable violence as a result of continued, unmitigated exposure to the dishonest devices of rickshaw-wallahs
- rupe-rip [ROOP.rip] :
- a surpassingly unfair proposition of monetary exchange; lit. rupee rip-off
| | |
| Ansu (Shanti Guest House, Varanasi): "In India, you know we emotional people, you give a girl some chocolate, make friends you know, then marry no problem!"
And what about polygamy?
Ansu: "If you have money to feed them, then what problem?" | | |
| Exiting the enshrined tomb of Mumtaz Mahal, I am blinded by light. Echoing voices, a fog of stale tourist exhalations lifts like a spring-action curtain, a surreal world stabbing like dozens of pins into my reticent retinas. Even the dull marble reflections are too much. I close my eyes, revealing a warm bed of reds and oranges the afterimage. White air rushes into my lungs. A monument built for love? Such a monument would never last forever. Inevitably, it is or has transformed to become a commemoration of death. The Taj Mahal is as majestic as it is devoid of life, empty.
Far from the temples of Khajuraho depicting all the forms of life in every joyful occupation, the delicate pietra dura exhibits vines, leaves, and flowers only, shapely translucently fragile blossoms opened four centuries ago. If one took this art as representative of the physical world, one could believe the living world was filled with nothing but flowers, that perhaps humans sprang from floral seeds. But the pigeons wallowing quietly around the elevated latticed windows refute this theory. It is just a dream of simplicity, a vision of exquisite, geometric minimalism. It could not have been that the idea of including a little dog in the corner, or a sparrow hidden among the vegetarian designs was beyond the imaginations of the artisans.
This whole structure is a tribute to poles of opposition. It plays with light and shadow, dances between substance and space; in treading barefoot on the solar-heated surfaces of squares I find the interface between life and lifeless. The crowds shifting over these surfaces become the flower petals and fruit, peach, lime, orange, violet, grape, lemon meringue, black cherry, beet red, green tomato, each never resting in the breeze. | | |
| It's easy to develop the jingle in your pocket even if you start the day out with no chance. By the afternoon my pocket becomes a mixing pot of 1's, 2's, 5's, and occasionally the odd 50 paisa for which I have yet to find a use. They stand out from the larger bills as easy money, easy come easy go. If it weren't for the plethora of coins exchanged every day for transactions large and small on the street, I believe all the beggars in Calcutta, Delhi, maybe all of India, would starve.
The coin has been systematically devalued, derided, and disused in the states. In the yet-to-be-suburbanized sleepy Northeastern burgs, the faded signs still exist, if they have not been removed to antique shops. Or old pictures of fledgling franchise McDonald's, or pleasant recollections of old-timers. The 50¢ burger. The 5¢ milkshake. The 10¢ drive-in ticket. The piggy bank filled with pennies and nickels and dimes, redeemable for real value. Fast-forward to the present, when coin currency is almost an anachronism, a relic of our refusal to round off, more of a nuisance at the cash register than anything. Though the absurd practice of rounding all prices to the nearest 99¢ seems very much alive, I don't think the average consumer even notices the presence or absence of that magician penny anymore. A quarter used to get you a round of pinball or arcade game, or a 5 minute local call. Even these have changed. Arcade games now swallow upwards of $1.50 per play. It becomes ridiculous to exchange bills for coins when the games cost dollars to play, so instead of feeding coins into the machines we feed paper money directly. The one place I still see coins aplenty is in that machine where a metal sweeper is constantly threatening to unleash a rainfall of coins by pushing a precariously stacked pile of other people's hopeful contributions. The fallacy is that it is easy to be fooled into believing your one or two coins will constitute the tipping point. Thus even in this "game" the quarter is made worthless. It is nothing, your friends will ridicule you if you sigh in disappointment about the loss. Perhaps more infuriating is the new toll phone fee of 35¢. The distribution of coins has surely changed since their usage has diminished. Who can count on having a dime handy at that crucial moment? And how likely will a friendly passerby have two dimes and a nickel to change with your quarter? The catch is a bitch; stated in prissy print on the phones: No Change Provided. I'm sure the telecom companies have run probability models on the likelihood of people having exact change, and found it as profitable to raise the toll to 35¢ as to 40¢ or even 45¢ with the outrageous no-change-returned policy. If the toll were 50¢ even, at least I wouldn't feel cheated depositing those two quarters. As it is, the communications giants are nickel and dime'ing me.
Coins are easy to spend, but in the US I feel virtually denied of a worthwhile place to spend them. My quarter in Calcutta amounts to about 10 rupees. They don't even have a 10 rupee valued coin here. When my heart is moved by the pleas of a beggar, my fingers plunge into pockets and swim in easy search of a coin. It is quickly produced and delivered, with a rush of satisfaction at having pressed something so physical, so real, into the other's hand. Coins in Calcutta pay for popcorn, sweets, newspapers, tea. They are also bread for the ragged children of the streets. | | |
| To All Ye Whom I Love:
There is some unfinished business out there, and I mean for it to be finished! Namely: some ungrateful students out there have "neglected" their pirate duty, that is, to answer my three questions in due time so as to receive my favouuur, ARGHHH! Before I force those unidentified souls to walk the plank and feed the bloody nest of crocodiles that merrily await, I will give them (you?) a chance to redeem themselves! Since the homework is so late I'll assume you have no interest in answering the more "difficult" questions for me. You need only do one thing (those of you who have already done this may ignore my grog-influenced message): WRITE ME YOUR MAILING ADDRESS. CLEARLY. SO IF I SO CHOOSE I MIGHT SEND SOMETHING OR ANOTHER TO YOU BY MAIL. AND I DON'T MEAN E-MAIL. Understand, me matey?
In other news ... TRAVEL! In India we have the TRAINS, the beautifully complex rail system which manages to wind around more kilometers of laid track than even China, bless its soul. Operating hours are extravagantly flexible, as I've found the right number to roll into the station quite nonchalantly four hours behind schedule, the originally posted departure time 11:30 in the Post Meridian. The stations are mostly images of devastation, bodies piled chock-a-block among the semblance of debris, a morbid scene indeed! BUT! Upon closer inspection, one finds that these are indeed LIVING, BREATHING BEINGS lying on makeshift beds of cardboard, foam, proper bedding, and bags and suitcases of every flavor. They are alive and well, but not as well as they would be if their trains hadn't been delayed for what appears to be years! If the railroad enterprise were to charge a fee for overnight stay in the station, they would make a fortune! Of course, they would also have a riot on their hands!
Finally on the train, snuggled comfortably in the layers of our sleeping bag feathers, we are beseiged by another fearsome racket: "Chai! Chai! Chai!" In my dreams they call for me by name, the endless banter, the interminable quack quack quack. But wait! Are they really summoning me? Ahoy, that is not the case, for what they offer is a hot mix of milk, tea, and sometimes masala, quaint little cups of "chai" that arrive steaming hot, and otherwise would be gulped down in two seconds flat. They wander like unsettled, bewildered, specters at all hours of day and night, always hopeful for the thirsty taker. But it is no easy job. I imagine I am in their place, the blur of faces to pass day after day, the dead weight of the tea dispenser drawing my heavy arm lower and lower into the moving floor, a moment only to relax before voicing what has become to me the equivalent of silence, the sound of my own voice repeating a word which defines me to everyone around me, yet actually says nothing about me. I saw it in his slightly bloodshot eyes as he smiled to me, sitting down for 30 seconds with a sigh, the half-occupied metal plate of room temperature samosas, pakoras, fried toast set aside onto the blue cushions. He was tired.
Who understands me? That's a question I'd like to ask. But I already know the answer, maybe. I've been thinking that it isn't easy to understand me, that it is a rare person indeed who even has the potential to grok the multifaceted me, the perfect me, the fatally flawed me, the creative me, the utterly ordinary me. My sister, the best candidate. Who out there is willing to try? Not just those who hail me "friend".
Well, the package claimed "Extra MMR", and that ain't no computer acronym I'm aware of: Mosquito Mortality Rate. A little bulb of clear liquid attached to a plug contraption you stick into the wall. I'm sure that if there had been a commercial for it waves of death would visibly emanate from the plastic doodad accompanied by closeups of the beasties wilting mid-bite. But does it poison the air I am breathing at the same time it exorcises the bed-rage driving pests? We'll never know the answer to that question, because of one thing: LOAD SHEDDING. Yes yes it sounds complicated, if not that then at least like a good thing. When one SHEDS a LOAD one removes a burden from one's back, delivers oneself into fewer nagging responsibilities, the moksha of freedom, correct? Incorrect! "Load shedding" is simply a euphemism for "rolling blackouts, that means permanently"! It doesn't matter whether we are in Bodhgaya, Varanasi, or Delhi, the power can never be trusted to stay on, though you can pray it does. In the Shanti Guest House an amazing array of perhaps ten or more car batteries linked to a sensor/inverter kept the juice flowing to low power fluorescent bulbs during the inevitable blackouts; the drinking water purifier pump took the hit though during every "MAINS FAIL". No such UPS system was installed for our would-be mosquito assassin though, and we were left unprotected the whole night in Jhansi! Of course we were assailed by the blasted dive-bombers under cover of darkness. They were not sneak attacks because we knew they were coming, but dastardly, DASTARDLY nonetheless! Apply Repel!
Is it fate? Would it not have happened had I been bitten by one fewer mosquito? The unthinkable: my friend the Tibetan monk Luorong Pengcuo whom I first met in western Sichuan province perhaps five months ago had said at that time he would be going to India this year. "Will we meet there?" he asked. "It's possible," I answered doubtfully. Our plan was to skip Tibet, fly into Cambodia or Laos or Thailand and start in on our tour of Southeast Asia. But then we started hearing more stories about Nepal, how we would be fools to miss it. We ended up taking a route through Lhasa and the rest of Tibet to secure Nepalese visas. And guess who we ran into in Lhasa? Barely recognizable (not really), pimped out in a black down winter jacket, was Luorong Pengcuo, who starts every SMS message to me with the Chinese words for "friend". I was freaking out; our paths hadn't crossed for more than two months, and yet they managed to converge after all!
Now.
Haw-Wen and I have just eaten (or "taken", as the Indians like to "take" their meals as opposed to "eating" them ... is this yet another Britishism?) a mediocre meal in one of Bodhgaya's numerous tent outfits serving everything under the Indian, Westernized Chinese, seafood-allergic Japanese, and Israeli sun. We come out of the tent talking to yet another friendly traveler. We part at a crossroad and are probably destined to return to the mosquito-infested Burmese Vihara. (Fortunately the mosquitos are very stupid; they neglect to hide themselves very well during the day and actually seem to sleep the daylight hours away, coming out only under cover of darkness, albeit in droves. Mozzie inquisitions are best done by day.) As we walk down the street filled with Tibetan monks and pilgrims who have descended from Dharamsala along with the Dalai Lama, a thought occurs to me. "Where's Luorong Pengcuo?" I ask Haw-Wen, simply musing. "Yeah, where is he?" she echoes, and her eyes scan the mass of people around a bit more speculatively than usual. "Wait," she says. She moves a little bit toward the stands selling buddhist trinkets like low resolution, high contrast pictures of the Mahabouddi temple and the Dalai Lama encased in cheap plastic keychains, bells, necklaces made of wood, bone, horn, or even ivory beads. "Is that him?" "No way," I say. "Really, is that him?" "Where?" We move over and she approaches a monk sporting a shiny fake gold watch from behind. Trying not to be too obvious, she keeps moving around a little to get a view of his face without seeming intrusive. The line of that jaw is unmistakable. Guess what? IT'S YOU!!! WHAT YOU SAY??? SOMEONE SET UP US THE BOMB!!! More than another two months after our last meeting in Lhasa, we have again run into the infinitely amiable Luorong Pengcuo!!! I have never felt so speechless, so shocked/amazed/exhilarated/quaking in my disbelief. This kind of stuff makes one reconsider all previous empirical reflections of fate.
And what of the nature of trust? Is it scientific, statistical, or metaphysical? When innocent looking children clamber up to us after spying us out, their big eyes and cute getup, grubby unshod feet giving them free passes into our hearts greet us with cheery "hellos", then extend outstreched palms and demand "10 rupees?" without batting an eye? When making the short kora in Bodhgaya we are assaulted by scores of disembodied arms waving tin alms bowls through the slitted holes in the pink fence, accompanied by sounds of groaning complaint? When out of hordes of Indians we are systematically singled out to target by the troups of ragamuffin kids, teenage mothers cradling babies, boys and men with sickly thin legs scrambling across the concrete like unbalanced crabs, piteous old women covered in dust who tug at our shirts when we pass? What of "trust" when we joke of dropping our shields to 20% in one place, like the Enterprise cruising in Federation territory, and raising them to 90% as if under Borg threat upon being asked by a local, "Do you need help?" They say that you can look into a person's eyes to divine his or her intentions. It is a practice we are learning to perfect; for travelers like us an offer of help is just as likely as contract for payment, an innocuous slew of questions the precursor to a veiled business pitch. We have had to chase greedy brats out of temples. Tell people point blank: "I DON'T TRUST YOU." The situation is at once grim and comical. We have learned to take a vagabond's stance toward the abusers of reciprocal social propriety. "Room sir? Room madam?" they pipe up, always trying to insert, inject themselves into the continous stream of our thinking and observation. "NO." We answer their annoying questions bluntly. This confuses them; we are carrying our tremendous backpacks; we have obviously just arrived on the train or on the bus; it is ridiculous to think that we don't need a room! They try again. "Room sir? Come to my place, I give you good price. Come." "NO. NO NO NO." We reject them like Yao Ming would reject a midget's layup. Walking off, I shake my booty and wave two index fingers in the air, jubilantly singing, "Don't hate me 'cause I'm a tourist!" I don't want to be turned into an object. I don't want people to mistake me for a cash-stuffed wallet absently left on a park bench. When it comes down to it, my trust stays just where it should - in me.
But even my own body deceives me! One must carefully lay each foot in front of the next to avoid sloshing into an inferno of puddley shit which paves in between all the stones. This is Varanasi, and cows are everywhere. Their bodies are the tonsils of every alleyway; they turn or do not turn as they please, munch on scraps they somehow find in piles of refuse, and leave nasty brown postcards wherever they roam. Even on the Ghats, the steps leading down to the holy Ganga or Ganges, we never walk in straight lines, more like the centipede weaving its way among the mushroom obstacles, left, right, get around, circumvent that shit! I DO have to admit, however, that they are kind of cute in a very scraggly pastoral way, although I do not think the narrow streets of old Varanasi is the right place for them. Their owners should at least be required to pick up after them! I like petting the younger calves as I pass; their hair is scruffy and tangled like that of overused stuffed animals, and their flanks do not quiver and tremble as if to shake off flies when I touch them. Walking down a dimly lit underpass I doubled over a mysterious mass hiding in the dark, like hitting a brick wall lined with velvet. Sorry, ol' chap! I don't think I left any scars on the furry bloke though! All this said, saying the owners care nothing about the unseemly propagation of crap is a bit unfair and untruthful. Contrary evidence may be clearly viewed on the sloping, angled Ghats, where poop patties have been set out to dry; unmistakably they consist of 100% bovine dung. Ah, what to do about this symbol of India, this rotund, gentle, protected beast? They give more than they take, it seems, and after all, isn't that godliness?
Or is godliness in the size of one's paunch? The enormous, geometrically perfect bellies Indian men and women carry with them - immediately visible at any public bathing spot - are probably filled with ghee. They are zippered tubs. If only you ask, they would be happy to let you scoop out a modest portion for use in palak paneer or your favorite masala. I'm just waiting for a "ghee belly" to call my own so I will be entirely self sufficient, even a business! MORE SWEETS! MORE GULAB JAMON! EAT EAT EAT!
The only problem is, all this romping about, crazed dancing at marriage festivals, cheat-evasion episodes, encounters with beasts-that-go-moo, late trains, tobacco spittle, spicy feasting, mosquito biteatude and burnanation, gloating enjoyment of erotic yester-millenia sculptures, keep me from the regular company of my inbox. It's the weather, must be. I know in dreary Queensbury the snow drifts will only get higher until April. In Hunan foreign teachers are cursing out the lack of adequate insulation anywhere, compounded by its own "load shedding". In Beijing snot freezes mid-hack. Here, it's mid spring in February, and I was banging away on my Jambay - newly acquired, very heavy - on the Delhi rooftop under the smiling sun at ten o'clock this morning. Sure, dust and grime get me down a little, but somehow, some way, we've denied the existence of a season called Winter this year. Simply stepped around it. And as the sun draws us outside, as experiences draw us in, 40 rupees (US $1) just seems WAY TOO MUCH to pay for a lousy hour in front of a agonizingly slow, buggy, virus-infected Windows 98 box. Just because I haven't written so many individual emails to you these months, don't get all in my face, like! I appreciate hearing from you every time, and will do better when I go home.
Where home is.
Overflowing affections and affectionation,
Bino / Haw-Bin / 柴皓斌 | | |
| Dogs, untouchables. They limp about, diseased, pock-marked, patchs of scalded skin nearly flaking off before my eyes. They lie half-dead day and night wherever they chance to collapse, footsteps mostly give wide berths around them but sometimes fall near, still they do not stir. I am already so low, they intimate silently, what else can you do to me?
These are not the dogs of Kathmandu. At night, do they vivify, rise to prance like children in the streets, give snarling, toothy growls defending fantastic territorial claims, copulate enthusiastically and with impunity? In their eyes is death, agony. They nudge rotten garbage dumps gingerly, sharing the pickings with sleek, healthy crows, nibbling on poison-saturated ruinous scraps.
Just as when I am powerless I cannot look straight into the eyse of strangers, their flickering eyes avert from mine, not just meekly, almost as if squinting and wrenching one's gaze away from the blinding sun. They sink lower into sulking crawls and slide away into the pools of shadow. A glass ceiling is stretched low across Calcutta, and they must constantly hang their heads to stay under the cramped space. They dare not bark at a human, rarely even at each other. With the zigzag-grated windows of our hotel room thrown open, a staccato of painful yelps suddenly punctures the undulating surface of street sounds. But where is the ensuing cascade of wakened cross-city howls and growls? For some reason they choose to keep silent. | | |
| Carnal fear rises in me at the thought of stepping into cold mush. Wet, cold feet make me think of disease, pestilence, suspiciously slimy floor tiles of shower rooms of public swimming pools. I see the frothy spittle after hearing the hack-and-gather that are its precursor, charge it up; it lands like a slug with leprous boils on the muddy unpaved walk. To see children walking barefoot, rickshaw wallahs, women with weighty sacks balanced on cerebrum ...
He held my hand like father to son. With the drink in him he struck his beloved wife, held back only by his practiced daughter. He was ecstatic when the IV dripped color back into the tenant's eager face. | | |
| It's Xiangtan, with rickshaws. Autorickshaws that maneuver like go-carts, nimbly dodging left and right at angles that would make normal cars spin out. The other difference in the gloomy pre-dawn is the presence of massive, drooping trees in the rice paddies and vegetable patches. They run along the borders of cultivation, but also spring up unexpectedly smack in the path of the mud-greased plow. In China these useless trees would have been razed long ago in the interest of expanding he area of cultivation just that little bit. Here, it seems they provide just enough shade, just enough nooks and crannies and hiding spots to allow a miniature ecosystem not limited to the agricultural to flourish.
Soot is caked around my nose and under my fingernails, likely from the coal warming the milk tea the persistent seller paraded around the coach all night. The air is cleaner here, now that the sun is out this place is seeming more like a warmer, lower-elevation version of Tibet, with asian faces of all varieties roving about. Some of the Tibetan women have cute, Hong Kong style chin-length haircuts. No longer blistered by the unbridled sun and wind of the plateau, their cheeks still show a hint of rosiness, but their skin is brighter, unblemished, beautifully youthful. Combined with the old Tibetan playful energy and penchant for unexpected smiles they are very nearly irresistible!
Not so Xiangtan after all! What a relief! But the mosquitoes ... | | |
| At this moment I feel so full of love for everyone, for the world, for being alive. The sun has finally broken through the clouds, the last wisps retreat far into the ocean of blue, evaporated with the ennui, malaise, boredom of recent forgotten days.
Maybe at thistime I can finally share with you my reflections on trekking in Nepal. In more mundane times it is impossible for me to conjure the real sentiment of those memories. When my restfulness begins to parallel the sublime ease of heart which enveloped me at that time ... then perhaps I may be able to relate it all.
> The world is my bathroom <
No, not meant to shock. What would that black-clad, infinitely stylish sunglass-toting, Prada/Gucci-sporting too-busy-for-you New Yorker think, encountering a gargantuan, stinking, cinnamon-roll spiraled pile of shit on 5th Avenue? What is the conditioned response? A comment about unseemliness, disgust? Aversion of the wobbly, slighted, nearly fainting eyes? But she needs to pee, she needs to vacate her bowels in the fashion studio, on the subway, during the staff meeting, and the urge has been so controlled by habit that the feeling doesn't come on so strongly anymore. She reins it in, tightens buttocks ever so slightly, exercises those invisible muscles to keep the obscene hidden inside, until that moment in absolute privacy, she can reveal to herself - and herself only, everyone else agrees never to broach this taboo topic - that she has indeed eaten, that her body is still performing its job admirably, that what she consumes does not mysteriously disappear without a trace into the great cosmos. But what is this? It's not coming out so easily! Lodged in its practiced niche for so long, it will be a fight to persuade it to come out of its den into the cold now!
Dal Bhat is the drill sergeant of my intestines. "Move along!" it barks to all the digested foodstuffs hanging around aimlessly. "No time to stop and smell the roses soldier, make way for the big guns!" Highly dense nuggets of fibrous rice, lentil, and vegetable remains will pause for no one; my internal bugle calls every morning without fail so that I hardly need another alarm clock. I unzip the mummy-style sleeping bag which has served me so well all night long, and warm air whizzes out of it steaming up the blanket of cold resting invisibly on it. "It's time for the poopinator," I croak in a morning voice. Haw-Wen, in the middle of her morning facial massage, nods with complete understanding.
If I fulfill my half of the bargain, my guts never let me down. Almost before I even fully assume the excremental squat, boulders come a' tumbling. It's over in 20 seconds flat. No need to wait around! Neither is it a mystery where this stuff goes. I fill a bucket with water and send it all to the oblivion of the pit in the earth that the toilet drains to; no massive sewage systems and treatment centers, septic tanks or plumbers on duty. Now this is the right way to start off my day!
Donkeys ambling at their languid pace, shaggy dogs with carpet-like coats fending off the cold, purposeful yak-oxen walking who-knows-where, all treat the world as one big toilet. Perhaps it is the stress of starting a rocky, uphill climb that opens the first unabashed fart in what soon becomes a symphony of gaseous release; from the expression of the donkeys one wonders the odds the greatest poker gamblers would have against them! Maybe after a perilous downhill the relaxation of flat ground is most suitably celebrated with multiple poignant depositions. There is a fearful denial of the existence of shit in some parts of the world, but here it is visible, it stinks, it is everywhere, but for its visibility loses some of its repulsiveness. It does not bowl one over like the gusts of manure-tainted air that sweep in from American dairy farms, which appear to be huge cesspools of nothing else. Droppings are distributed sparsely but rather evenly over the path of every animal's movement, markers that dissipate over time. "Why do you leave shit wherever you go?" Because a place isn't significant in my life till I've shat there!
> The horror of western toilets <
It's hard to adjust to life indoors after trekking. Our lodge accommodations are characterized as windbreakers more than cozy havens of warmth; that designation belongs to our sleeping bags. In Nepal, in Tibet, people accept that the heating of large open spaces is expensive and impractical, while keeping the body warm is essentially a matter of wearing double-digit layers of clothing and avoiding contact with "room-temperature" water like the plague. Why O Why do we in the west insist on planting our plushly warm behinds on freezing pieces of plastic, or worse ceramic, simply to take a shit? In Japan we have electric-heated toilet seats; I can't think of many more frivolous or ridiculous wastes of resources and engineering effort. One heated session on the pooper could probably supply light to a Nepalese hillside village for two nights. The "fur-covered" toilet seat is arguably worse. I wouldn't want to clean that crusty crap off after the inevitable splashage!
It's jokingly referred to as a throne, but whether or not one is the King of one's own body is seriously called into question by the continual defiance and frustration of the funky stuff in that upright attitude. Why else do we become accustomed to bringing books into the endeavor? Don't waste time wastin'. Piles of magazines are a common sight in American bathrooms. But when I run to the squat toilet, even the thought of bringing reading material doesn't flit across my mind; the urgency and speed of release are equally astonishing. In that hunched-over position, even grimaces become effective squeezing the guts suggestively; the whole intestinal tract seems optimally aligned for the fire exit. Keen to shed every pound and ounce possible before embarking on the day's trek, I am only happy to make my morning visitations of the outhouse.
When I do eventually buy a home, I will evict all resident western toilets and replace them with squatters. Not only do they do a body good, they are easy to clean, water efficient, and never clog. OK, I may leave one western toilet for those slow to adapt to the joys of liberated pooping.
> How dirty can you get? <
Surprisingly, I am amazingly tolerant of and comfortable with grime, and I am lucky my feet seem the sole perpetrators of unwashed stank. If you think about it, the hot shower is a pretty amazing phenomenon, nearly on par with the western toilet in non-intuitiveness and difficulty in implementation. On a beautiful day in the Kathmandu valley countryside I see women young and old gathered like ducks at the shores of streams and around healthily gushing taps to wash clothes and to wash themselves. To see a woman unselfconsciously bathe in the gracious realm under the generous sun is a truly beautiful thing. They are adept and discreet; instead of a shower curtain, a door, shaded windows and walls the guarantors of privacy, an opaque blanket of cloth loosely draped on her natural curves and cleverly manipulated to use the shadows sustains the mystery. Her strong supple back is bent under the flow of water to wash her dark flowing hair; strong and supple from the endless push and scrub of clothes unclenching their false colors, carrying children, her own or from the great Nepalese family, the laborious harvest of wheat, rice, mustard. She looks up at me, and smiles. Lust welled up in King David's heart; in my heart a sunny clearing of gratitude and well-being.
To have a hot shower first you must have water, a method for elevating it to a height from which it can then sprinkle down upon you, and of course some way to heat the water. In most cases, every step involves the expensive infusion of more energy.
No Tibetans allowed, the adorable Tibetan girl at the front desk has to explain to a couple of Tibetan pilgrims who amble into the hotel lobby as I try unsuccessfully to slurp my over-spiced hotpot noodles. It's a little complicated, the Chinese manager of the Tibetan-styled Lhasa hostel starts unwillingly. Tibetans rarely wash themselves, maybe only once or twice a year, you see, it is too cold where they come from, water is not readily available. A set of white linens costs me 200 yuan, but they sleep in the beds once and they are ruined, ruined! They will never be white again! And I get a measly 20 or 30 yuan from them for it, it is an impossible equation, it is not sound business! You have hot showers, I observe. Why not have them take a long-deserved shower before getting in bed? She stares at me incredulously. How can I do that? They are not in the habit of ever taking showers, they would never agree. It is a cruel logic.
In Ganzi, Sichuan near-scalding showers revive our benumbed extremeties. The kindly, crinkled owner returns from leaving a fresh set of coal bricks under the boiler and good-naturedly mops away the thick black prints we've brought with us from the clay pit which unfortunately leads right up to his door. There is only one knob in the shower. I guarantee the temperature is perfect, he says with infectious certainty. You know, years ago this used to be an army barracks. I had a little shop here back then; Ganzi was nothing more than a few shabby houses flanking a crossroads. But now you see there is so much competition, I had to close the shop and enter this business. He smiles unresentfully and is silent for a moment.
Other places charge 5 yuan per shower. I charge just 4 yuan, my margins are small but I get by with the few extra customers I get. If your price is higher, you can't expect people to come, am I right? I ask what he thinks about my 20 minute shower. That's typical. I have people stay in for 40 minutes, an hour even. No, 20 minutes isn't very long at all. People don't take showers every day. When they do take a shower they want to enjoy it, can you blame them?
No, you can't. Salt streaks mark my clothes like errant blobs of toothpaste, my head itches with phantom lice from wearing my hat day and night, my skin feels like lukewarm gelatinous sludge in contact with the inner lining of my sleeping bag. No contest, this is infinitely preferable to taking a cold shower, when the fantastic myth spun by the lodge owners is inevitably revealed as fallacious propaganda. We have: 24 Hours Running Hot Shower! No, you don't! we contest hotly. Don't even try that shit, we know the water is solar heated at best, today was cloudy, moreover all the light-footed trekkers who got here two hours before us today have already monopolized the shower quota!
You are wrong! the owner defies us, amazingly, in Chamje. Then almost whispering: come and look, see that? He points to a flimsy rubber tube snaking out of the kitchen window to the shower and toilet complex below, a separate wooden structure with a corrugated iron roof. We heat water in the kitchen, you can have a hot shower definitely! This, after quoting us an absurdly high rate for the room.
When the hot water slams into the interminable cold effusing from the slimy cement floor, it immediately recoils into steam. I perch balanced on an ingeniously positioned brick that has the special property of warming as the hot water washes over it, and shrink my skinny torso into more of a pencil than usual to catch all of the water possible. The lightbulb blinks on and off in concert with the ebb and flow of the electric current serving the entire township, the district headquarters no less. My headlamp supplements the elastic moments of shortage with a ghostly, lurid glow. Oh god, to be stuck here naked, in the dark and unable to unlatch the door, and for the water to suddenly turn ice cold. Batteries, don't let me down! The signs in the closet warn, Do Not Waste Hot Water! Do Not Wash Clothes Here! Do Not Spend Longer Than Necesssary In The Shower! I make my escape barefoot back to the drafty wooden room to give a report of the situation to Haw-Wen.
Fresh socks reset the unwashed kilometer ticker. Just like the meals, a shower feels so good when it is deserved.
> The road ahead <
Are we smug when we tell others, no, we have hired neither porter nor guide to help us, to enlighten us, to lean on, as crutches, as excuses for laziness, as evidence for a lapse in willpower? Does it show?
When the body is in motion, so too is the mind in motion, Osho says. My favorite moments are the restful ones. Scrambling up sandy hills, pushing off rusty rocks which may or may not honor their inertial appearances, ducking forward to shift my center of gravity ahead of my toes, reaching a crest and seeing that instead of continuing to climb, the path drops lower as far as the eye can see, marks the perfect occasion for taking a break, collecting my awareness about me. Unclip, unsling, the backpack threatens to topple flat onto the ground until I kick it a few times. Rushing rapids suddenly overtake my senses; I wake up to this static; the trail has followed the river all day, yet only now does the powerful hum penetrate my consciousness.
An orchestra settles into its tuning routine. Hawks skate on the icy currents above. Thorny brush and dessicated nettle quiver as dwarfish mountain goats rip at them matter-of-factly, like eating petrified grapes. A train of tolling bells bobbing along the waves, gentle beasts of burden struggle up behind me, heaving air through their nostrils. I lean on my bamboo pole, my telescoped antennae, and notice my own slowing exchange of breath in waiting for them to pass.
A stroll through Thamel, Kathmandu, usually just makes me want to break things. I want to take those sorry excuses for musical instruments, their whiny, finger lacerating steel strings, their crudely chiseled, barely decorative and highly ineffective sound boxes, raise them high above my head, Hulk Smash them into a thousand satisfying bits, and savor the expression of shocked amazement painted on the seller's face. I want to take a sledgehammer to the infuriating marketing video that loops supposedly invigorating footage of rafters, kayakers, spelunkers, bungee jumpers have a grand old time under our favorite spot for Muesli fruit curd, G's Terrace. The crazed, insipid sound pollution accompanying these images is 80's era pseudo-electronica trash that sets my heart racing in rage. I want to kick in the wobbly, hammer corrected tires of pedicab tycoons who shout, Hello Rickshaw Ne! at me across the street and 10 meters away. I want to spin around unexpectedly and trip up the shifty-eyed youths who shuffle in behind me and whisper, Hashish? Magic Mushroom? I want to shove those Namaste-Have-A-Look shopkeepers so that they tumble arms flailing into their racks of falsely-advertised x-percent Pashmina shawls. I want to clothesline the motorcyclists who rev and honk intimidatingly after turning up roads obviously teeming with people. I want to take a wrecking ball to every building conspiratorially erected to enrobe every street and alley in umbra and obstruct me from my sunlight.
The only object threatening to deprive me of sunlight here rises with a glacial garland across the valley; it stabs into the blue heart of undulating fabric, unrepentant hard edge tracing out the keepsake box for the sun. There is a light feeling that nobody is judging me. Nobody is looking at me, waiting to see what I do next. Nobody is telling me what to do. I am free in my anonymity, uncaged in movement and motive. With the onset of crashing river sounds in my consciousness the streams of my own thought suddenly appear stamped on it. The ink slowly dries and decays in my silence. The question I am left with is, what next? The accomplishment the ego demands - making it to the next town, the next sprinkle of red squares on the cursed map, our preordained destination, before the sun is put away for the day.
It is infuriating when I think about it, but when I accept that egregious errors have been committed to the map, accept the stupefying scale of the cartographic blunders we discover, after the disbelief and frustration have been duly vented, I realize that the map guides us well enough and faithfully leaves us only in as much trouble as we can suffer, no more. Map-making is an art that we perhaps take for granted. Far from a pirate's map where X marks with pinpoint accuracy the trove, up to which lead thickly dotted lines weaving among ridiculously spaced landmarks, the maps of discovered lands, halls, rooms automagically created in the wake of our fearless videogame hero are pixel-perfect, digitally complete. At first I am skeptical that our "Around Annapurna" map is any less reliable. But then the road forks into two clearly stomped-down tracks. We take the high road unknowingly and wheeze all the way up to Temang, a village loosely alluded to by the map. One overcast day the temperature plumets, and an icy gale begins to salt the rocky landscape to taste. The map indicates the next town where we have planned to stop for lunch is just around the next bend of the river. We round one bend, then another. Another. Two hours later we throw our bags down, fatigue the sole mask of apoplexy, ready to shred our unworthy guide with malevolent talons and fangs that unhumanly hunger has caused to spring forth from our nails and teeth. Arrrgh, we play the fool again me matey! We'll blow your PLANET up!
When I start moving forward, I am impelled along by invisible spider thread; it is not a meditation. My mind beings to fill itself with plans, anxieties, impatience, analyses. The other goals in life have not disappeared, but rather have faded to transparency, paradoxes of invisible-detectable. But with each fallen step the road ahead balloons slightly as with a puff of air. A gooey hand is reaching out of my mind to grab hold of the future, when I can set my bag down with enough finality for a day, when I can sit down and just savor the ecstatic moment of touching the menu, opening it, poring over those oh-so-familiar choices. It is moving out from me; my mind is dancing out of my body! I try to reign it in with a series of deep breaths. Walking has become automatic. It's no use. I command myself to stop.
A hiccup, the body slurps up the mind again and the audio, the inner commentary, catches up with the seamless, infinitely resolved video around me. Even if all of the snacks adding kilos to my pack run out and I go hungry, even if my legs sag like cardboard inebriated with sweat, even if the map directs us down a path longer, steeper, with inferior tasting dal bhat, even if night comes on before we have made camp for the day, as long as I am alive, breathing, seeing, no mistakes have been made. The road ahead brings me worry and doubt. The road under my feet is my joyful communion with existence in the here and now.
> You animal! <
Sometimes I have the sensation of beling slowly transformed into an animal. Only I am not a single beast, more of a Chimera or cerberus with different animal heads, able at any moment to let a dog's howl, a mountain goat's bleat, a chicken's cluck issue forth from different mouths. Every day the sounds seem more and more convincing to the animals around me; when I baah sheep stand at attention; when I bawk little chicks scramble for cover. Even if my exterior form has not changed, I am sure that on the inside I have developed a creature's heart and matching gizzard.
The herbivorous animals exude a playful air, though I know they do not mean to play and in fact are simply enacting the stories of their lives. It is soothing to walk among them. I have always been captivated by cute animals, fascinated in a way that perhaps only one who has never lived among animals may be. Far from the anthropomorphically animated, quivering stuffed animal dogs, bears, horses, and leopards under our youthful manipulation, the chicks chirping along the trails as they pass through villages, dogs moping along on unexplained missions, scruff-coated horses standing frozen, inanimate in distant stares, aren't interested in appearing cute, and mostly ignore me. Bouts of mirthful, wicked satisfaction brighten my days when I stomp after pockets of fleeing chicks, woofing menacingly, enthusiastically! Like a madman. Now they respond! Goats, their mouths forever upturned at pleased angles, poke their heads many directions at once, slitted eyes instantly making shallow evaluation of the situation. Never doubting, they march to the next bone-dry branch or ragged leaf to crunch. They are more difficult to distract, consumed as they are in the problem of sampling all of the apparent abundance of natural food everywhere, invisible to my untrained eyes. Even with my dirt-encrusted pack casting my shadow as an unbalanced hulk, sounds of liquid swishing emanating from the water bottle buried in its interior, the ridiculous effort evidently involved simply in transporting myself from remote location to remoter, the goats are neither impressed nor interested. I am transparent as a flawless pane of glass looking out onto greener pastures.
The Nepalis who pass by do notice and acknowledge me, Namaste, always friendly. It is difficult to discern where the earth ends and their wafer-like sandals begin; when they glide over the terrain their feet sink deeply, surely into its idiosyncrasies, the small chinks and facts of every rock perfectly swallows, then releases their feet. Incredible power is packaged in their tiny bodies. Straped to their heads: wooden cages holding twenty or more unhappy looking farm-raised chickens prisoner, white-feathered unlike their free-range counterparts; a bed and mattress; a basket of enormous rocks, probably to be used in constructing a new home; great cisterns of water, hauled up from the river 100 meters below. I envy this strength, borne of this life, a natural, meaningful strength. There is no concept of jogging, of doing pushups or crunches, of obtaining a gym membership and bribing oneself to actually make use of it through contrived incentives. Magazine images of beauty from the other world seem stupid and irrelevant. Unaware of their awesome power, Nepalis go about their lives artfully and harmoniously with the elements, with the animals, with the itinerant trekker. I cannot help but feel they live in a paradise. Having had a glimpse into this exquisite system I am tempted never to leave.
We live the lives of beasts of burden. We sleep with darkness and wake with the light. We eat and drink to a certain contented fullness impossible without being preceded by hours of toil. Our muscles grow firm and wiry, we become aware of the dense strands of bundled might propelling us over suspension bridges in sinusoid oscillation, over and above the treeline, keeping us from slip sliding into white oblivion on sloping patches of ice. We rain sweat and grit teeth, breathe sighs of exhausted relief and nap after meals. We wear our unwashed clothing like coats of fur and down to grow or shed as nature demands. It is enough, this life. I cannot imagine a world beyond the ever rising ridges of rock and snow that protect my valley, bless it with slender coronet waterfalls. Even the clouds are blown off their frozen caps, which somewhere provide safe haven for the razor-eyed hawks that hang suspended on the updrifts. Newspapers spin an ever perplexing, increasingly convoluted myth of civilization, of its egoistic wars, nuclear governments, commercial juggernaut, unfulfilled desires, criminality, comforts, lusts, disease epidemics, disappointments. No, I don't believe any of it actually exists. Fabrication. For the time being I am amnesiac. Until the day comes when I am impelled to remember, I am safe and happy in the womb of the present experience. | | |
|
| Chinese Name |
English Name |
Name in Pinyin |
Relationship in Chinese</td>
| Relationship in English |
Home |
|
| Daguma |
大姑妈 |
Bob's Oldest Older Sister |
Washington DC |
| Les |
|
| Daguma's "Hubby" |
Washington DC |
|
| Erguma |
二姑妈 |
Bob's 2nd Older Sister |
Houston |
吴光丁? |
| Wu Guangding |
| Erguma's [Estranged?][Gambler] Husband |
? |
阿茹 |
| A Ru |
| Youngest Daughter of Erguma |
Houston |
阿浩 |
| A Hao |
| Husband of A Ru |
? |
阿歌儿 |
| A Ge'er |
| Middle Daughter of Erguma |
Houston |
| Tom |
|
| Husband of A Ge Er |
? |
小郑 |
| Xiao Zheng |
| Oldest Daughter of Erguma |
Houston |
? |
Frank |
Chang Faqun |
| Husband of Xiao Zheng |
Houston |
|
| Gugu |
姑姑 |
Bob's Younger Sister |
Michigan |
婷婷 |
| Ting Ting |
| Gugu's Daughter |
Michigan |
| | |
| | Purna Gurung: "It is difficult to change a new songs into oldie. If you want to listen a old songs you can listen after One year that new songs is old one." | | |
|
Sometimes, You |
有时有你 |
You've found someone else
I've stopped looking for now
You know, I wonder how you are
since a construction paper wall now bars me from your inner world
I doesn't matter whether you still think of me, or if I've disappeared from among those significant memories
I am not a martyr demanding memorial after the fact
Some moments, under the breathless sky, in silence or solitude
I still imagine you are sitting beside me on a park bench, in a deserted city bus
You say something about the nature of this world, or
simply rest your head on my bony shoulder
I let you vanish as the reality eclipses the fanciful reverie
During which there was pain, but also I beamed with joy at its beauty
And I am left smiling, because
although the truth of separation is sad, your spirit I feel dwells not in melancholy by-gones, but visits in the incomparable present and then is gone like the scattered petals of a fragrant blossom
I love this dancing ghost of you
You, who I need not possess to love
|
你已找到别的了
我呢 暂时不寻她
想知道你过得怎样 知道吗
因为一张建设纸帘阻止我走进你的内心世界
还会想我，还是把我从那些有意义的记忆通通删除了，真的都无所谓
我不是烈士，事后要求被留在心中
有些事后，在屏息静听着的蓝天下，那宁静或孤独里头
我仍然会感觉你正坐在我一边，在公园的长椅上，一无他人的公交车上
你便对我指出鸟和树什么的，要不
单纯把头靠在我瘦瘦肩上
随着真实超越幻想的变化，我让你，这一切，消失
它辛酸，可是我能为它的完美兴高采烈的微笑
我一个人留下，喜悦不散，因为
尽管分开揭晓是悲哀，我觉得你的灵魂不生活在忧郁的过去里，而总在无双的此刻出现，于是不见，如同鲜花布散的花瓣
跳舞的神灵，我就爱你
不需拥有也能爱的你
|
| | |
|
Hotel Annapurna
Head Straight Only 10M
| </td>
After trekking for a few days, you look ahead to see if the unbending dirt path yields to a cozy looking guest house. Seeing nothing of the sort, it immediately becomes obvious that M used in this context means not meters, but minutes. Distance measures are always given in terms of time on the trail; the only time meters is used as the metric is when calculating elevation gain or descent. And as with any time-based distance measure, YMMV, namely depending on your speed! Our speed was manifestly less than that of the guides and friends who advised us on travel times. But slow or slower, we finally completed the Annapurna Circuit just yesterday, and live to tell the glorious tale! After 16 days of quadracep-lovin', sleeping bag-huddlin', dal bhat-snarfin', we're here in pok pok pok pok Pok-hara!
Hallelujah!
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