Days of Future Present.

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 14:52:21 +0545

Let’s wrap up the last trek. I’ve been alone again with Nepal for the first time in months; it’s been a strange and abrasively intimate reunion. The monsoon struck, turning the roads into flooded disasters, churning up the filth and pollution accumulated during the dry season. But the skies, these days, regardless of the obscured hills and mountains, are the most beautiful I’ve ever seen in this country. One foot is searching fruitlessly for a foothold in the States, while the other digs its toes into the Nepali soil and holds on. Strange, strange times.
How am I supposed to leave this place and it’s Turner-painted skies?

I’m closing shop, though. Mostly packed, preparing for a week in Thailand, and the return to America. Nepal’s laying the charm on. I’ve been writing a lot lately, and I’ll post a more personal reflection in the next couple days. For now, let’s close out Khumbu.

The Descent. Only about half as awesome as the movie of the same name.

Day 10:
From Gorak Shep down to Dingboche. Immediately our joints felt the strain of going down mountains instead of up. Steady cloud cover and snow flurries kept the heat off our impossibly sunburned and swollen lips. We finished at the Hotel Ari Zona, which if pronounced like ‘Arizona’ warrants an immediate correction.
The star of the day, much too stellar to be contained in this little update, earned his own independent gallery. Mingma Temba, the youngest child of the family that ran the guesthouse, adopted us as his best friends. Every minute we weren’t eating was dedicated to getting educated by Mingma - from teaching Kyler the Nepali names for body parts to taking ridiculous photos and looking at them on the LCD. The wonder in his eyes when he watched a little slide show of the afternoon’s photos was jaw dropping.
When Kyler and I left the next morning, hearts in our throats about leaving that little wonder, he waved and went back to his hoop-and-stick game like he wouldn’t miss us at all. That’s called unconscious awareness of impermanence, and some sage like practice of being beyond attachment. Here’s the link to the realness:
Day Slayer.

Day 11:
Dingboche to Tengpoche.
The Solu Khumbu posts from back in November all revolved around the Mani Rimdu festival in Tengpoche where I spent six days in a state of frozen bliss. It remains a magical place, charged by the activities of the monks and its position ringed by Himalayan peaks.
Kyler and I, piles of sweat after the final climb to the monastery, collapsed into our room - the zebra-print sheets gave us a hearty welcome. Once you get below the tree line, which is a sudden and miraculous moment wherein your lungs seem to have access to too much air, the trails wind rapidly down and up again as they crest hills and follow rivers. But oh god, the air is brilliantly crisp.
We sat in on afternoon Mahakala Puja at the monastery, listening from the corner cushions as the monks spoke/sang mantras. The sudden silences and equally abrupt beginnings were incredible. I meditated in those sounds for the first time in months and left with that indefinable feeling of peace that Tengpoche emanates. Dream time. It doesn’t hurt that the interior of the monastery is stunningly beautiful.

Days 12 and 13:
We woke early in Tengpoche and exploded because the sky was completely cloudless. The views to Everest, Ama Dablam, and the surrounding ranges are unstoppable from there and had in some ways defined my days on the previous trip to Solu Khumbu. I made Kyler get out of bed and run up to a hill top with me. Then morning pastries and the return to Namche Bazaar. Back along the Dudh Khosi river and cherishing the trees that had been absent for that week at high altitude. At some point, who can no why, Kyler broke into a run. Naturally, I followed, and as we leapt past other trekkers and porters we realized that we weren’t getting tired. The sudden spike in oxygen made it practically impossible to get out of breath. Not the remains of the bridge that used to span the river. Sit down.

We got to Namche and returned to the Namaste Guest House. Kyler and I fell desperately in love with the lady of the house - mother of four, deftly managing the household while her husband did who knows what, and bewitching us with impossible features. Oh, crush times. Kyler and I were killing time to see the finale of the Everest Marathon (a high altitude run from Everest Base Camp to Namche Bazaar) and the evening’s concert in anniversary of Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay’s first summit. We worked with one of the daughters (who I mistook for a boy until she corrected my ‘bhai’ with a ‘bahini’) on her English homework. Tricky business explaining the meanings of Living and Non-Living, but teaching in my broken Nepali was awesomely challenging. And secretly used it as an opportunity to flirt with the mom and talk about the woes of public education in Nepal. Interestingly, the only son in the family is attending a private school in Kathmandu - not that gender discrimination is prevalent here. Incidentally, Kyler and I took no photos of the woman that we swooned after for three days - probably because we knew inside that cameras can’t capture magic.
Marathon: the winner didn’t even seem tired. He might’ve been sweating a little.
Concert: poorer than high school caliber sound system and venue (actually a field beside the local school). And the ‘top talent’ they flew in gave a half-assed performance featuring less than mediocre talent. Kyler and I may have had a drop that redeemed the evening.

Day 14:
Descent to Lukla, our final walking destination. In my mind, this is the toughest trail with its steep paths and constant yak crossings. At this point our knees were broken and my feet pointed out their absence of arch with each footfall. That night, just outside of Lukla, we feasted on Pringles and (I know I keep mentioning this) got high on the abundance of oxygen.

Day 15:
No flight. Kyler and I were led to believe, by the charmless husband of the beauty in Namche, that we didn’t need to call in advance and change our ticket. How woefully misinformed we were. Hours in the airport yielded nothing as the afternoon’s cloud cover shut down all possibility of further flights. And so we exchanged books at a local shop and ate cheap momos, praying that we’d get a flight the next day before our cash ran out. Incidentally, not one establishment in Namche or Lukla that advertised accepting credit cards actually did. I really should’ve seen that coming. Namche, however, at least had the ultimate sass factory:

Important things:
A Korean guy in the room next door sang ceaselessly for hours. His repertoire: Aerosmith’s ‘I Don’t Wanna Miss a Thing’ with complete lyrical accuracy. And Michael Jackson’s ‘Heal the World’, with not one lyric. He hummed/nonsense sang that one for a long time.

Kyler photographed our terrifyingly large nighttime visitor, who worked to destroy himself with relentless pounding into the window. Mothra.

We made it back on a late morning flight the next day, without problems. And beginning the following morning we both started longing again for the mountains. One of the most magnificent things about trekking is its sense of daily purpose: get to the next place. You have a mission every morning, and it’s usually the dopest one possible.

Tragically, we saw neither snow leopard nor Yeti. Unforgivable.

The Pass of Caradhras.

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 10:40:02 +0545

There can’t be many places in the world where you can get a completely tailored suit with fabric and designs of your choosing for about $100.
Once Kyler knew about the possibility, which I mentioned one night of the trek, it became the dream for his time in Nepal. And so we got together a posse, rolled four deep, and stormed a reputable suit-maker here and spent an afternoon meticulously sifting through fabrics. We’ve now gone in to try on the suits and get slight adjustments made to what were already unstoppable ensembles. Nepal isn’t ready for tonight’s onslaught of Kyler, Sam, Ajay, and myself hitting the streets fully customized with canes in hand.

We also spent a day out at Bouddha, Nepal’s largest Buddhist stupa and the center of Tibetan culture in the Kathmandu Valley, with Fulbright Director Peter Moran as our guide. I didn’t anticipate that slipping into fluent Tibetan would spike his excellence in an instant. En route to visiting his friend and renowned painter Tenzing Norbu Lama, we stopped at an incredible monastery and Peter laid out the details on the Nyingma (one of the lineage traditions in Tibetan Buddhism) iconography.

It was probably the most stunning monastery interior I’ve ever seen. Intricately painted protector deities lined the walls, idols of the Buddha and great teachers sat at the base of pillars, and - this is a first for me at a monastery - glittering chandeliers hung beside prayer flags from the ceiling. I know it’s hard to see details in the small image, but I think the scale and vibrance still registers. Makes me wish the Tibetans weren’t afraid to use a little color in their architecture, you know?

From there we went to visit Peter’s artist friend, the inspiration for the trip, to see about possibly commissioning work and to check out his workshop. The guy, characteristic of Nepal, welcomed us like old friends and gave us free reign to wander around the studio - which was actually the first story of a house that had been gutted and each room housed one massive painting. Massive as in 9 feet tall by maybe 15 feet wide with a team of painters doing brush strokes over the foundations he laid. Evidently a hotel owner from the Spanish Pyrenees commissioned the works to adorn the reception hall of the main building and the adjacent ski lodge. Roundabouts then I realized that the price to commission even a small painting would be well out of my range.
But watching them work was fascinating and I never get tired of being in the company of artists proud of and enthralled by their work. I could never get far enough back to photograph the whole canvas, but this is a close-up of one of the reception pieces - it was designed to be a narrative of his life in the Dolpa region of Nepal. The most jaw-dropping detail for me is the dragon concealed in the cloud of the mountain being circumambulated. I can’t express the caliber of work that was going on and how striking it was in person.

Okay. That’s enough of that. We’ll get back into the Khumbu trek.

Day 6:
Heavy fog at 4:00 in the morning inspired Kyler and I to go back to sleep and not attempt climbing Gokyo Ri. We ate a late breakfast and started the walk to Tangnak at the base of the Cho La Pass. We’d decided to have a short day so that we could start what had been hyped as the toughest day as early as possible the next morning. Most of the walk crossed the Ngozumba glacier, the trail described on the map as ‘Many Paths’ because essentially you guess at the easiest way to cross and avoid tumbling into ice and water. Recklessly, but knowing it had to be done, Kyler and I dislodged boulders and watched them tumble into the frozen lakes while the sound reverberated against the endless sea of cliffs and ice falls. We arrived at a guesthouse and spent the day resting and eating in the company of the sassiest women in the hills.

Day 8:
Cho La Pass. We decided while in Gokyo that we’d try to get a porter/guide for the 5330 meter pass - the word was that snow and scree obscured the trail so much that traveling independently ranged from difficult to impossible. I haggled with the ladies at the guesthouse until the 4000 rupee price dropped to 1500 to get us up to the apex only. That morning at 6:00 Kyler and I discovered that our porter, who would carry the larger and heavier pack, was one of the sisters that ran the lodge and came in at under five feet in height - but was made of much tougher stock than I. She set a rapid pace up the loose rocks, barely distinguishable beneath the previous days snowfall, that led to the top of Cho La - which was actually a basin between two Himalayan peaks. We went steadily up, passing an expedition of some sort on its way down, and crested at a massive snow field that was, in fact, another glacier. The map stated that the climb would take 4.5 hours, and we did in just over 2. Kyler and I consistently travelled stupidly fast.
It was a wonderland up there. Clouds obscured all the peaks, and all we could see was the blinding white stretching out in front of us and the glaciers looming on the snow-caked hills less than stone’s throw away. We grieved to see our guide head back down, as though nothing could be easier even though the incline hit 90 degrees at times, and we advanced to go down the opposite side and on to Lobuche.
Heavy snow fall greeted us as we moved beyond the ice of the pass and into a more level terrain of rocks and dried earth. At its peak, the snow was practically a sheet of white being blown against us. We walked rapidly, got lost in an obscure valley of despair with no landmarks visible in the storm, and eventually wound our way to Lobuche to finish the day. A number of obnoxious European travelers filled the common room and did their damndest to be unappreciative of the splendor around them.
The first photo features Cho La at it’s center, the dip in the mountain line with slivers of trail leading up it. It was a hilariously daunting moment when our guide just pointed and spoke its name.

Day 9:
Dream weather day. Woke up early in Lobuche, skipped breakfast so that we could get to Gorak Shep (5140 meters) before the daily weight of clouds could drop. Pristine skies throughout the morning, up another glacial valley ringed by peaks. We arrived at Gorak Shep before 8:00 with unprecedented clear skies. Upon arrival, a Nepali guide offered me binoculars and pointed at the bizarrely close summit of Everest directing me to watch the climbers as they walked to the peak. Walked. That’s what it looked it like. The plan was to eat and then head up to Everest Base Camp, but after a bite with the weather holding we opted to go up Kala Patthar (black rock) and get the most famous and complete views of Everest. We did the climb in an absurd one hour, getting to an altitude of 5545 meters, gasping for air and snapping endless photos on the way up for fear that we’d lose the Mother Goddess in the approaching clouds. But we didn’t lose her. At the prayer-flag adorned summit we sat alone (having passed everyone else on the way up) and got an immaculate twenty minutes being battered by the wind, gazing out across the highest point on the planet. Everest offers up the extra sass of being blacker and less snow-covered than the surrounding summits. The first one is zoomed in and cropped to show the climbers. Most people we met began to climb Kala Patthar at 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning without the luck of clear weather. It makes no sense that Kyler and I reached the top after 9:00 and the clouds kept their distance until we began to descend again. Extraordinary luck.

After the descent from what was easily the highlight of the trip, and the most awe-inspiring view of my life, we ate lunch and decided: why not head up to Base Camp? We didn’t care about the clouds because Base Camp’s about the things in close proximity, and we’d long since decided we could cover much more distance in much less time than guides or maps ever suggested. The walk was along the Khumbu Glacier that leads into the Icefall at the base of Everest.
Base Camp itself was the most surreal place I’ve ever been: hundreds of tents of every size and color with a bizarrely concentrated international populace yelling out cheers at random moments in celebration of the morning’s achievements. It’s a strange thing to sit on a rock and watch sun-burned Koreans stumble past, knowing that yesterday they stood at the top of the world. It’s equally strange to eat incredible Apple Pie in the makeshift bakery at the center of a camp perched across a flattish land interrupted by massive ice structures standing like monolithic sculptures among outhouse tents. Incidentally, Avril Lavigne posters are so popular in this country that they even adorned tents at Everest Base Camp.
We stayed for a bit, and then walked back down to Gorak Shep. We each listened to Achilles’ Last Stand and it cemented itself further as the most versatile and epic song I know.

I’ll post a final chapter about the descent from Gorak Shep and our return to Kathmandu in the next week. But this essentially covers the most raucous elements of the trek, and I’ll close with two of the other stars of the trip.

First, yaks. Not only are they giant, beautiful animals that in spite of their size navigate narrow and dangerous passes, but they will cover said pass with magnificent piles of shit.

And finally, a gift from Marcus that kept pace with us the entire time and was always cracking the raunchiest jokes about women.

LAVINE’S, TO GET SOME PANTS.

Wed, 4 Jun 2008 12:19:52 +0545

Winding down. I’ve only got about a month left in Nepal before I begin the journey back to the United States and the state department stops footing the bill for me to exist. I’m almost always aware of the countdown to departure and it lends the strangest color to these days. So much of my time in Nepal, especially the latter half of the grant, has been dedicated to engaging in the moment and taking advantage of an opportunity to not be temporally conscious. Not thinking about deadlines or paychecks or some inevitable logistic garbage that demands that I watch the clock and calendar as much as the world around me. On rare occasion, I successfully engage and the impending stress of living in New York vanishes from my mind.
The past months have been strange and incredible, sharply different from all the ones before. For obvious reasons, really. I’ve had wonders visiting for over two months solid. Consequently, attempts at fruitful research have spiraled down the toilet while my happiness has hit a steady high. And I get to fall freshly in love with Nepal as I experience it with different people.

It started with Charlotte and the dreamtime in the Annapurna region of the Himalayas. A short trek through thirty-foot rhododendrons in full bloom with 8000 meter peaks exploding the skyline. You’d never believe how tough that girl actually was - especially on the day that offered up nearly eight hours of sharply downhill trekking. Downhill is murder on strong feet, so our flat disasters actually teetered on the breaking point. It was incredible and beautiful and I’ll never be able to express how much I cherish being alone with my big sister during a time like that. Also, and this is not an exaggeration, Charlotte was like some fantastical creature here. So many people stared in disbelief and what might have been awe. Even though Nepal gets a steady current of foreigners, none of them have the impossible porcelain beauty of that girl. Maybe because of that the Nepalis were at their most charming and open I’d ever experienced them.
Nepal was more magical while she was here.

Then Nicole and Zero showed up. It was a planet-cracking reunion. Charlotte and I were exploding with anticipation waiting at the airport. And then we slayed it around Kathmandu in the midst of the historic Constituent Assembly elections. Notably, Zero gave the sadhus at Pashupatinath an effortless education on what it means to be human. It was such an excellently happy time. And I encourage everyone to check out their blogs and flickr pages to get an impression of the experience that I’m glazing over. I’ll do a photo update soon with highlights.

And then it was just me and Nicole. For weeks in Nepal, with bonus days added on after changing the return flight. I’m never spending this much time without her again. It’s just not the way it’s supposed to be. It was magnificent having her here. It’s no small feat that not only were the mountains in the Langtang Himal more stunning for her company, but we were just as happy laying around my apartment. I miss that her company fulfills a day. That’s the realness. It was also excellent that my friends here all thought she was incredible and several were ‘inspired to try to find that kind of relationship.’
I’ll crash course through it in that upcoming photo blog, but in the meantime seek out that girl’s blog.

Two days of horrific depression passed between Nicole’s exit and Kyler’s entrance.

I planned the timing of Kyler’s visit around a trip to Solu Khumbu (the Mt. Everest region) for the Buddhist festival of Mani Rimdu at Thame Monastery. It’s another incarnation of the same festival held at Tengpoche monastery back in October - you can check out the photos in the ‘Knotted Thunderbolt’ update from November.
I consulted calendars, books, and local travel agencies to determine the date for the dance portion of the two-week ceremony. I worked out ---- lunar bullshit ----. Solid, right? Booked the tickets and got prepared to book-end my research with a day of Tibetan Buddhist dance. And then, of course, planned to do some intense hiking in the area with Kyler. He arrived, things were immediately hilarious, and we flew out the next day for Solu Khumbu.
Problem: the monastery counted the lunar month twice. You may wonder what that means, and if so we’re in the same boat. Once Kyler and I were a day’s walk from the Thame monastery I learned that they counted the Tibetan lunar month twice this year, pushing Mani Rimdu to the next cycle of the moon. Why that is, I just don’t know. My heart broke a little. But then I reckoned that it meant more time to dedicate to the mountains.
And now, I’m going to do a fast day to day of the trek in Solu Khumbu, letting pictures tell the story as much as possible. Kyler kept a journal throughout the trek and his blog will offer up the text narrative.

Day 1:
Forty minute flight to Lukla and the six hour walk to Namche Bazaar. Immediately Buddhist country, complete with giant Mani stones engraved with Avoliketsvara’s mantra and prayer flags coloring the skies (or suspension bridges).

Day 2:
Acclimatization. In one day we’d gone from under 500 meters to over 3400 and Kyler’s head was feeling it. We did a day walk up to Khumjung, the creepiest place in Nepal, and then slept again at Namche. It was a steep walk and we could feel how much thinner the air was. The walls of guesthouses in Nepal feature the most uncomfortably posed people superimposed in front of the mountains that actually exist right outside.

Day 3:
Walk from Namche Bazaar to Dole, on the route to Gokyo and its sacred lakes. Steady up hill with clouds battling the mountains. No views of Everest from the first vantage points. High hopes of seeing Yeti and snow leopard. Many blanket options in the guesthouse where the woman was unafraid to take a nap anytime she wasn’t cooking for us.

Day 4:
Dole to Panga. We were over 4000 meters and we had to slow the gain. Short day, so we climbed the hills around the guesthouse to gain altitude and then sleep lower - supposedly that makes a big difference in acclimatization. Spent a lot of the day literally standing in the clouds. The guesthouse was run by a young guy living buy himself. The three of us played Palace that night with our cards and then went to sleep terrified by what may be the most frightening hallway in existence. The photos failed to capture its essence.

Day 5:
Panga to Gokyo. Trees have long since vanished. They’re smart enough to avoid existing with less than 60% of the oxygen available at sea level. But the trade off was glacial melt and a series of impossible lakes. The Gokyo village itself was a paradise getaway overlooking the largest of the lakes. We spent most of the day walking beyond Gokyo beside a massive a river of rock that only revealed its identity as a glacier when you noticed cliffs of ice and pools of gray. It looked like waves of rock, complete with whitecaps. No Yeti, but we did get the Scoundrel’s View of Everest. Cairns were a mainstay of the trek, but those surrounding Gokyo were the most impressive. Glaciers, y’all. This was day one of the series at and above 5000 meters and glaciers were all the time sassing it.

And here I’m breaking. Next update will take us from Gokyo through the Cho-La Pass and on to the foot of Everest. As a bonus while I put together that next update, Kyler and I pieced together a smorgasbord of sorts - it’s 93 photos we took of each other at various instances of elation, frustration, and high altitude delirium. It’s excessive and ridiculous, and maybe hints at the relentless stream of inside jokes we were spitting each day. Here’s the link:

The Recliner Emporium.

More surreality and excellence to come.

It's been a long time, Tiger J.

Fri, 21 Mar 2008 08:53:02 +0545

Well, DJ Shine, months have passed since I last updated this. I don’t think it would be worthwhile or possible to track back through everything I’ve been doing. So I’ll start with the current moment and build from there, and we’ll see how the ramble develops. Now’s the time for ready, steady, go.

One of the clearest testaments to the development of India relative to its Northern neighbor Nepal, is the quality of the roads. To my knowledge and in my experience traveling throughout Nepal, no road exists without frequent potholes and unpredictable quality - highways that will suddenly accommodate one lane of traffic seem to be the style. But India, at least the roads from Delhi to Jaipur, Rajasthan, offers Western caliber smooth pavement and consequently vehicles that drive faster than 30 kilometers per hour. The occasional camel or elephant walking beside the road helps to remind me of where I am. Or that the roads are occupied almost exclusively by massive trucks, brightly and colorfully painted with the invitation ‘Blow Horn’ printed in Hindi and English on the back. There’s constant horn communication here (as in Nepal) as no one assumes that any other drive will obey traffic regulations or is paying attention. Seeing camels and elephants outside of a zoo was surreal and wonderful. Standing in front of an elephant, with nothing separating you but a few feet of empty space, brings the reality of their size and majesty to life in a way zoos can’t even attempt.
Jaipur, coming in at about four million people according to a local, is considered a sort of ‘third tier’ Indian city. And my god, was it overwhelming. In an area that in Kathmandu would comprise most of its commercial shopping district, in Jaipur only jewelry was sold. Or a few streets past that, only kitchen wares, and then beyond that the labyrinth of brightly colored and ornately patterned textiles. I actually shudder to think about shopping in the streets of some place like Mumbai.
I also hadn’t been in a country where I don’t speak the language since traveling in Europe, and there English almost always functioned. I’d forgotten how daunting it is being surrounded by a language you can’t speak or understand. And I hadn’t realized just how comfortable I’ve gotten in Nepal.
But here’s the most surreal thing about these past four days in India: I was there as presenter at a research conference. USEFI (United States Educational Foundation, India) hosted a conference for Fulbrighters working in South East Asia - bringing together student researchers, senior scholars, guest lecturers, and alumni that are all in the area because of the Fulbright Commission. Five of us came over from Nepal to participate in discussions and present an overview of our studies. At random moments, sitting in the conference hall listening to someone talk about the challenges in teaching mechanical engineering in India, I would wonder how the hell I came to move in these circles. No part of me, entering an arts conservatory to study acting, anticipated that I’d graduate and have a conversation in a Rajasthani village about the current landscape of opiate abuse in India. Or meeting a girl from Russia, currently studying Buddhist migration in India that spent years making documentaries about Mongolian and Siberian shamanism - we had a conversation that on its own made the trip worthwhile. Surreal in the extreme, though.
Which leads me to talk a bit about the conference facilities. The ‘Ethnic Five Star Resort’ situated just outside of Jaipur where the desert starts to strut its stuff. It was like a theme park. The sort of flagrantly inauthentic representations of local culture one only sees when they’re distilled and magnified by people using them to turn a profit. I should let the website speak for itself:
Ridiculousness.

I woke up this morning at 5:00 to ride back to Delhi for our flight to Kathmandu, stomach still full of alcohol, and an arm literally covered in mosquito bites (52 on my left arm, not kidding) to confirm reports that I passed out on a swing at some point in the evening. That’s called quality cultural ambassadorship.

The highlight of my first trip into India - outside of the disaster that is the Delhi airport - was the drive to Jaipur on the first day. Listening to the EP my sister recorded, Earache, and looking out across the Indian desert - riding past camels and desperate looking trees - was one of those impossible times when the music is the perfect soundtrack for the moment.

Here’s a photo of the Fulbright representation on the final day. We were certainly the smallest group, but we brought the ruckus. Don’t ask me why I was seated in front.

The Fulbright Research Grant. The research part of the government funding my life in Nepal was, to be quite honest, never a big concern for me. Thinking back about my proposal, I can’t believe the Commission awarded me the scholarship. Essentially all I said was: I’m going to go and watch all kinds of ritual performance forms so that I can be a better and more inventive artist. I trumped it up with some attempts at scholarly language and an explanation of why art is the best vehicle for cultural exchange. First off, I believe more than ever that art is the ultimate form of expression and consequently perhaps the strongest representation of the identity of a given culture. One cool thing about the Jaipur conference was that I was the only person doing work in the performing arts, and that made me something of a hot commodity during the breaks. People were doing fascinating stuff, but biochemistry is difficult to discuss among the uninitiated. But art, man, not only does everyone have an opinion or interest, but they tend to be more than willing to express it.
Anyway. The ‘research’ aspect of my experiences in Nepal, at least up until about two months ago, was poor. I’d seen dozens of performances and even made some strides at understanding the cultural context of them, but it didn’t lend itself to any form of scholarship. Beyond that, the artist in me was throwing a tantrum about the amount of stimuli it was receiving with no outlet. I was just observing, and not in an especially active manner.
Thank the gods, the relevant one in this instance being Padmasambhava, that I had Gerald Freedman as a mentor. For a thousand and one reasons I’m grateful for that opportunity, but on this occasion it’s the process of working with questions that revolutionized my experience here. My observation was unfocused in such an extreme way, so I started to examine what questions might frame my research. The obvious and endlessly valuable result of the Freedman process was the following question: ‘Why Dance?’
Why do religions throughout the planet experience the divine through the medium of dance? And looking more specifically at Nepali traditions, why did dance evolve as a method of direct interaction with deities? It’s a global phenomenon. Now I’m examining three religions and the transformational dance rituals they practice. The list breaks down like this:
Tibetan Buddhism
Newari Hinduism
Magar Shamanism

It’s worth noting that the shamanic practices in Nepal are some of the only ones in the world that use dance and music as the sole means of initiating a seance - no drugs. ‘Magar’ refers to a specific ethnic group traditionally located in the West/Northwest regions of Nepal. The problem with observing their ritual is that its prime location, the Bhuji River Valley, is sort of the Maoist heartland and with Nepal’s looming election it isn’t necessarily the safest place to be. Ke garne?

I’ve found some fantastic scholarship associated with the study of dance and especially the work of Judith Lynne Hannah has helped me develop some research templates to evaluate those three dance traditions culturally/contextually, choreologically, and experientially (the experience of the dancer while ‘performing’. It’s made my time here much more focused and fruitful. I won’t get into the way my work is going specifically or what sorts of conclusions I’m drawing because it’s all so preliminary. But at some point I’ll upload some charts and actually research materials if anyone is interested.

It’s the questions, really. I find that working through that lens endlessly generates deeper inquiries and propels me better than blindly seeking occasions to observe. Answers are an end - and who’s interested in that?
Not this dude on the left. Check the skulls.

Vipassana: Insight Meditation

At the beginning of March, after Rajendra Shrestha - one of my primary dance sources here - recommended it to me, I participated in a ten day Vipassana meditation retreat.

Overview of the course. Ten days, twelve including arrival and departure at the center located north of Kathmandu in the village of Buddha Nil Kantha, practicing a meditation practice preserved directly from the teachings of Gautama Buddha. During the course we observe ‘Noble Silence’ and interaction, verbal or physical, is limited exclusively to questions directed to the teachers. The schedule, beginning at 4:00 AM every morning, involves 12 hours of seated meditation each day with our last meal taking place at 11:00 AM, which is common in Theravada buddhist practices. Each evening from 7:00 to approximately 8:15 we have a discourse from S.M. Goenka, the man who brought Vipassana out of Burma and to the rest of the world, in the form of a DVD. Then it’s bed at 9:00 after a final bit of meditation. Rather than my doing a poor job talking through the technique, I recommend checking out the official intro or visiting www.dhamma.org and getting your education on.

Observing the thought patterns of my mind was one of the most revelatory experiences of my life. The first three days, dedicated to focusing and quieting the mind, preparing it to feel the subtle sensations of the body, evolved in large part to consist of marveling at how untamed my mind is and how rapidly it will leap between ideas. And it does this all the time, we just don’t tend to pay attention to it. The problem, if it can be called that, is that our mind - conditioned to be in a thousand places at once - is consequently conditioned against be wholly engaged in the moment. There’s a rift between our physical/experiential existence and the habitual actions of our consciousness. And so we spent days calling our mind back to focus on the way the breath moves just below the nostrils and the subtle sensations that arise in that area - actively ignoring other stimuli. Sometimes my mind wandered for huge chunks of time before I even caught its action and refocused. Sometimes for minutes. But it was always difficult to sustain such precise focus.

Day Four we began the actual practice of Vipassana. I want to point out how beautifully non-sectarian the practice is, relative not only to other religions but to the myriad disciplines of Buddhism that utilize pantheons and mantras. Vipassana does not make use of visualization or repetition of words/phrases in the way that many other styles of meditation do. While it’s true that for many people the utilization of such focal points makes the practice easier as it offers the mind something to latch on to. Well, Vipassana recognizes that those things don’t actually exist in the reality we experience - they’re even more extreme mental constructions than the rest of the world as we experience it. Hence the use of breath. Not only does that exist in the immediate moment, it has the extraordinary quality of refusing to be held and demanding to be let in.

On the fourth day we graduated from the sensations of breathing and began to move across the surface of the body, part by part, to feel whatever sensations may be occurring. The idea, roughly presented, is that we are habitually aware exclusively of broad, gross sensation - pain, pleasure, itches, extremes of hot or cold, etc. Our brain draws our attention to those feelings so that we can either embrace the pleasure or practice aversion. Vipassana maintains that (forgive the oversimplification) that even those greater sensations are composed of the subtle vibrations that constitute our entire bodies - vibrations that we can tune into with complete awareness. Impermanence. When one comes to know these subtle sensations, which are testaments to change, the impermanent or fluid nature of our physical selves becomes more experientially true than might otherwise be possible. An extraordinary thing about this technique is that it’s presented in practical and pragmatic terms - pulling the intellectual concepts of Buddhism into a realm of actual experience.

In the course of the practice, one might achieve an awareness of the free flow of subtle sensation throughout the body. I never got there, though I felt like in moments I was on the threshold. I praise Vipassana for promoting observation and asking us not to judge the quality of the meditation - not even to compare the moment to previous sessions. Again, it’s that through line of impermanence that can draw us into this moment and dissolve awareness of past and present. Because, as it becomes painfully apparent, past and present only exist as constructs in our minds. Though as you move into the higher levels of Vipassana practice, traveling internally through the body’s sensations and examining sensory perception as the mind’s creation of our environment, I suspect most if not all aspects of the present dissolve into uniformity. Quantum physics, like.

Goodness. This is turning into much more of a ramble than I anticipated. But let’s just keep the stone rolling.

Days five and six were torture. Actual torture. My mind wasn’t interested in focusing on anything but the extraordinary pain throbbing in my knees after days of either kneeling or sitting in half-lotus. And I figured, ‘Hey, pain is a signal to the brain to amend a damaging situation. The classic hand on the stove example wherein pain serves to keep us from cooking ourselves. So maybe I ought to listen to my brain’s interpretation of the sensations in my knees and not continue to sit here.” As it turns out, pain was a fantastic vehicle to audition Vipassana and by day nine carried much less negativity. Bonus.

Also, I came to recognize how much negative energy I churn out when I’m physically stressed. Charlotte may remember that time when I twisted my ankle and lashed out terribly and aggressively at her for laughing. And in my mind it was because of her lack of immediate concern. In reality, it was because pain unlocks some dangerous bits of sankhara - these seeds of suffering we plant and nurture throughout our lives (really just karmic seeds, but they tend to be conditioned towards the negative). It’s incredible to start looking at misery as something only we can generate for ourselves, and to consider that external stimuli only serve to draw our attention to those inner demons. Pain and I spent some days together and I developed the ability to at least notice when it inspires negativity to flare up. I know that wasn’t quite clear, it’s a larger concept than I’m even beginning to illustrate here. And the old existentialist in me (you know, from like three years ago) appreciated how empowering it is to examine misery as an effect that isn’t wholly inspired by external forces. And in this context it seemed much less cheesy than talking about just changing one’s outlook or attitude. It was amped up by sanskrit terminology and hours of painful sitting.

On day nine I felt like I was really ready to begin the practice, that maybe I could start to rework the conditioned habit patterns of my mind. Then the following day we broke the vow of silence and the temptation to slip back into the rhythm of life reared its head and started getting seductive. The inclination of my mind to leap back into the familiar actually blew my ... mind? My mind blew itself. That formulation is ridiculous on so many levels. Part of my mind recognized the actions of another and then marveled at it. That’s garbage.

I remember thinking to myself at the midway point that the retreat was the hardest thing I’d ever done. As soon as it was over, I realized how ridiculous that claim was and in retrospect the time seemed to race by. In the thick of it, though, I think time crawled at new levels of slowness.

In this update that is never going to end I’ll revisit the way I started to think about craving, aversion, and escaping suffering.

The Moon Interlude

The orientation of the moon is different here. Or my orientation relative to the moon.

I’ve lived here for more than six months, and it took very nearly that long for me to recognize that the brightest point in the night sky doesn’t look the same from Nepal. And I only noticed because my friend Max pointed out the way children draw the moon here.

In the US, the moon in its waxing and waning phases presents itself as a ‘C’ or a ‘D’ facing either direction.

In Nepal, the waxing moon of last week was a basin. It was as if Cookie Monster had taken his bite from above instead of that side bite we know so well in the West.
It took me six months, and it’s even on the national flag!

Art, Dhamma, and Liberation from Suffering

One of the nights at the Vipassana retreat I found myself struggling to reconcile the closest thing in my life to a religious belief with the teachings of the Bhudda. I imagine many Christians, Hindus, Muslims, and members of any other faith encounter similar problems when they attempt to practice Buddhism.
The way I experience the divine and transcendent is through the medium of art, and my belief in the potential for art to provide a vehicle for existing wholly in the moment is as close to religious conviction as I get. So there I was, buying into the Vipassana technique as a means to bring us into a blissful state without any of the sufferings or cravings our mind carries didn’t seem to vibe with those fleeting highs one might experience in art. The dichotomist in me compared the two methods and began to consider that art was a more flawed method of reaching for the same ideal.
First off, part of my practice in that period was simply to observe and break from qualifying and judging - the notions of better and worse don’t fit into the practice of Vipassana. That helped.
Secondly, fully embracing the Theravada Buddhist teachings in some ways demands the acceptance of the idea of the karmic wheel of suffering. Essentially, if we don’t achieve enlightenment in this lifetime our consciousness/mind/thought stream will be reborn into the conditioned suffering of humanity. I buy into the notion of karma to some extent, but that’s currently hindered by how ragingly indefinable that concept is and the different amorphous explanations I’ve encountered. Point is, this take on reincarnation doesn’t vibe with me.
Then I fell back on something Gerald Freedman reminded us of an almost daily basis in reference to his teachings of acting and directing: This is simply a way. Not the way.

That opened me up, for better or worse, to embrace art again as my transcendent vehicle of choice. And I started to formulate my thoughts about why I love it using the Buddhist aims of meditation.

This is about as well as I can abstract it: Vipassana practice purports to draw us into the moment - to dissolve the rift between the facets of our mind and our experience of the world, and to shift our mind into the clarity of singular focus. No involuntary intellectual digressions or wanderings from the ‘reality’ of this instant. When I develop this I’ll find someone who expressed that much better.
When I used to think about transcendent experience, I thought of it in terms of ecstasy and passion - a moment so powerful that the intellect shuts down and tries to reconcile it after the fact. We’ve all had those immersive experiences wherein our consciousness quits trying to make sense of things and run the show. I still buy into that, but I’m shifting into new terminology - and thinking about as complete action. Incidentally, karma is sometimes translated as action.
What I’m referring to are instances wherein every aspect of our being is engaged in doing something. There’s a harmony, a synchronization of the mental, spiritual, emotional, physical, and whatever other divisions may exist. All the elements dissolve into unity for whatever duration. I’m linking it to action. Anyone who’s ever studied acting, even if they never hit that high, knows that life doesn’t begin to happen on stage until there’s complete, unintellectual commitment to an action. When the thinking stops and afterwards you’re like, ‘What the hell just happened? That felt great. It felt like I was really doing something.’
I’d wager that any activity can potentially provide that complete immersion. It’s just that art, the way I’m considering it, is designed specifically to do that. In its creation, practice, or experience of its audience.

In terms of the Buddhist aim to escape cravings, aversions, and the subsequent generation of suffering, what room is there for the mind to conjure up desire or disgust when it shuts down (or amps up?) to engage a moment? Desire and aversion link one to the possibility of a future wherein something is or is not present. And reflective suffering emerges out of qualifying and judging those moments that have passed us by. There’s no room in the full experience of this moment for those considerations. The action exists in its own right, regardless of cause or consequence. Gods, I hope this is making sense.

Those of you that have read the Tao Te Ching, the idea I’m referring to is wu-wei - or actionless action. Maybe ‘effortless action’ is a better translation. I can’t know.

I feel like I’m glazing over these massive concepts. Part of the difficult is that intellectually, I think they’re quite simple. It’s just getting at them experientially and then converting a moment that by its very nature defies the clumsiness of language into words isn’t the easiest task. Fortunately, smarter and more capable writers than myself have taken stabs at it. And this is a concept I’ll be developing into something much more cohesive. I don’t really know what I put down in this section of the update, and of course won’t be reviewing it.

Love and Compassion

One night at this retreat, which continues to reveal itself as an impossibly affecting experience, I broke down working to reconcile my relationship with Nicole and my belief in that moment that craving produces suffering. Romantic relationships, at least the way I conceived of them, are anchored in craving and attachment. To some extent, they define many such relationships.
Fortunately, defining anything is inevitably stabbing into the dark at something that doesn’t have a form to strike in the first place.
Even still. I examined the moments of misery (using that word without the weight of extreme unhappiness it tends to carry) that have emerged in the course of being with Nicole. They’re few and far between, and I think that fact lent itself to dissected them. There’s no point in sharing the details.
First, any misery I experienced was based entirely upon unconsciously conceived expectations that weren’t met. Or some ideal that I hold in my mind that was challenged by reality. Any suffering was self-generated. So I’m thinking, ‘What does that say about the way I love Nicole?’ On the surface level, I believe it manifests itself conditionally. And that’s a terrifying notion, even if there’s an ocean of something pure below. I place value in the way I think I ought to be loved, and often that means that my expressions of affection should be met with something of a comparable caliber. It amazes me that I’ve suffered so little operating that way. I’d wager that it’s because of that ocean I mentioned before.

The Executive Director of the Nepal Fulbright, Dr. Peter Moran, eased me out of the retreat and helped me make sense of the whirlwind ravaging my mind when I got back to Kathmandu. He’s such an extraordinary individual.
Peter brought up the way ‘love’ and ‘compassion’ are defined in Tibetan Buddhism (he speaks Tibetan and practices Tantric Buddhism). It went something like this:
compassion - the desire that suffering be removed from someone’s life
love - the desire that happiness be generated in someone’s life

It’s a subtle difference, maybe. But it’s huge. One removes the obstacles impeding happiness, the other generates it. Our conversation then developed the idea that loving someone, in the pure sense, revolves around the generation of happiness in his/her life. It has nothing to do with the way they reciprocate that love - the action of loving defines itself based on the happiness of its target. Stay with me.

Then I thought about this notion of complete, immersive action. The kind that elevates and unites our being past all potential for suffering. And my god, if loving doesn’t provide a perfect and beautiful action. If it’s really selfless, then how the hell can there be an active ego involved? Relentlessly giving. Giving, in purity, is one of the six paramitas of Buddhism. And because it isn’t result/reaction oriented, it’s a self-propelled wheel that can never be impeded - even though it may transform a million times (to borrow an image from Nietzsche).
What an extraordinary thing to aspire to. Love as transcendent action.

This update is ridiculous and unwieldy. Underneath whatever experiences I had in India, at the meditation retreat, or in the course of developing my research in February, was the unshakable awareness that some serious loves of my life are coming to Nepal.
In one week, Charlotte arrives and we head into the Himalayas for a week. Magic times. Then Nicole and Zero arrive and things go nova - like the Human Torch when there’s no other alternative. I can’t even think about that week with those three wonders. Or the month with Nicole in this magnificent country (going to India inspired so much love for Nepal).
And check this. Then Kyler comes and we’ll be in the Everest region, trekking through Gokyo and watching monks dance.

Let’s close this monster down.

1. A quote from Sartre on impermanence: “Things become beautiful because of the possibility of their absence.” Can you believe that?

2. A shout out to Sam and Max. In part because late night conversations with them have been almost as informative and stimulating as anything I’ve experienced under the Fulbright, but mostly because if I write their names together I’m reminded of a certain duo and a computer game that I’m confident no one but Marcus and I ever played. Believe that.

3. I’m writing a play. It’s about mermaids and a broken mast.

4. Most importantly, I haven’t washed my hair in 23 days.

5. I’m actually the luckiest man alive.

Burning Rubber

Sat, 26 Jan 2008 13:10:51 +0545

Banda. I never thought I’d see the day that one of these Maoist-led strikes actually produced results.

Last week, following a government decision to increase oil prices throughout the country, Maoists of all ages rallied together to effectively shut down transportation in Kathmandu. There’ve been dozens of these ‘banda’ attempts since I arrived in Nepal, but they haven’t been executed well enough for me to really feel the effects - I always managed to easily avoid the road blocks. Not so this past Tuesday.
A huge part of the problem stems from the Nepal Oil Corporations complete dependence on India to supply them with fossil fuels. And India, naturally, feels the effects of the global trend to increase oil prices and the maybe-inevitable looming energy crisis. The NOC consistently sells oil at such low prices that it accumulates only debt, never turning a profit. This recent increase in diesel fuel and kerosene marked the third attempt since October - and it seems to me like the price jumps are justifiable. But I’m not generally ignorant of the global economy (I am, actually), and my pocket doesn’t hurt when barrel prices go up sixty rupees.
Anyway, on Monday and Tuesday the Maoists mobilized to prevent any gas-burning vehicle from operating. On Monday I just avoided the roads and hid myself in my apartment most of the day. Tuesday, however, I planned to meet a friend out near Boudha, then take a bus to the village of Saankhu for the first day of Swasthani Brata (more on that in a moment).
The taxi driver attempted three different routes before we gave up and accepted that I’d need to walk. Awesome. I walked past the lines of stopped cars and finally made my way to Chabahil, a major intersection in the East of Kathmandu. Cue the toxic haze of burning rubber.
The valley had been lost in fog and uncharacteristic cold for a few days, leaving it at its most unpleasant and polluted. The introduction of flaming tires didn’t help that ambience. While I pushed through the crowds and did my damndest to hold my breath against the filth (how did the protesters stand in the eye of the storm for hours?), one thing ran through my mind:

“It is a barren wasteland. Riddled with ash and fire and dust. The very air you breathe is a poisonous fume. Not with ten thousand men could you do this. It is folly.”

And that running on loop made the walk infinitely more manageable.

No microbuses were running by the time I met up with my friend Ken at Boudha. We ended up splitting cab with two local Nepali women and making our way to Saankhu by secret back roads that dodged the protesters’ bullets.

Before I get into the excellence of that village, though, I’m going to close the protest thread. The government folded after an emergency meeting at the Prime Minister’s residence, and the word from on high was to repeal the price increase. It actually worked. And even though I had to walk all the way from Saankhu to my house (hour and a half?) through clouds of burnt rubber later that afternoon, maybe it was worth it. Except that the source of the problem (the millions of dollars of debt that NOC owes to India) will only become more and more severe until the government takes more drastic measures to pull itself out of debt. It’s kind of cool (really? is that word at all accurate?) to be in a country wherein oil shortages produce such immediate and visible negative effects.
Bonus. Even after the government decision to return the oil price to its previous levels, the protesting intensity increased in the streets. In the final evening, riot police unleashed tear gas into the crowds and I’m told that the wind carried it through the densely populated and tourist-frequented neighborhood of Thamel - causing families to evacuate rather than weather the storm.

Check that out. From a haze of pollution, to thick clouds of smoke issuing forth from burning tires, to tear gas. That’s a recipe for the healthiest of lungs.

Saankhu. Alternatively Saakhu, Sankhu, and Saanku. And a handful of spellings that really don’t make sense at all.

Of those two gentlemen, the one on the right offered his services as guide through the Swasthani Brata festivities. By offered, I mean that he volunteered and didn’t give me much choice about his companionship. If the aroma of liquor was any indication, the man was plastered. And speaking a steady slur of incomprehensible Nepali, that I gave up on understanding about five minutes in. He also blessed me with a tika (the red/orange paste on the forehead) five separate times.

Swasthani

---

And that’s where I stopped writing this entry, way back in January. I was about to explain the origin of Swasthani Brata, but (not shockingly) got distracted and wrapped up in something. And given the current political landscape, it’s interesting to me that I made so much out of the oil-related protests of January. The politics of Nepal in these weeks preceding an election designed to accurately represent the people warrants considerable elaboration. I’ll cover it soon.

Meter Down!

Sat, 19 Jan 2008 20:15:40 +0545

I don’t know if these guys will end up as friends or foes.

The Ministry of Culture, Tourism, and Civil Aviation, or MOCTCA, reachable at www.tourism.gov.np.
At some point the government of Nepal decided to link those three fields under a single ministry. I’d actually visited the site before arriving in this country, but I didn’t register how strange that union is - and potentially dangerous. Exploring policy and the organization of MOCTCA’s website reveals that ‘T’ heavily outweights the ‘C’ in the acronym. Because tourism is such a significant source of revenue for the government, they understandably put effort into promoting and encouraging visitors. The problem is that indigenous art forms function to supplement the tourist industry, and the government makes little to no effort to promote tradition for its own sake.

I’m going to lump the Nepali performative arts (mostly dance) into three major camps:

linked to festival/ritual/religion
This one’s going strong. From what I’ve heard talking to multiple generations of Nepali men and women, the ancient traditional performances are relatively unchanged. People still turn out to see the gods dance in the streets, and performers continue to be initiated and trained.

married to tourism
A recent to trip to Pokhara (more on that later) drilled this one into my skull. Restaurants and hotels recruit dancers to recreate traditional Nepali dance - both folk and religious. These generally depress me. The dancers are often talented and completely capable of meeting the physical demands of the choreography - it’s just in a forum wherein they compete with dinner conversations and a constantly rotating audience. The venue doesn’t do the artists any favors, and the authenticity of the dance slips to the wayside as it becomes motivated by commerce. It’s a poor, poor arrangement.

3) independent ventures
This remarkable handful’s working to create art with an agenda other than commerce. Kala Mandapa, for example, attempts to recreate the atmosphere and focus of a genuine ritual performance in a venue accessible to visitors. But the word from my friend Rajendra is that it’s an uphill battle and a constant search for funding.

These are over-simplifications and the lines aren’t rigidly drawn between them. What it helps me do it break things down so that I can get a better appreciation for the cultural scene. And it makes it easier to funnel information into scholarly form as I have to do from time to time here. The plan for the coming months is to interview both the dancers and organizers from those three groups. I’m especially interested in the experience of the dancers and how they compare when doing similar choreography for an audience of devoted locals, tourists of varied interest, or a small committed audience. We’ll see what I manage to discover. Part of hopes that my research inspires some degree of activism against MOCTCA. I think I’d be missing out on the Nepali experience if I didn’t have some aspect of the government to rail against at the drop of a hat.

It’s been a month since I updated this thing. It’s quite a bit to catch up on.

As mentioned in my last entry, I was en route to somewhere to do something. At the time I was being all mysterious and cryptic (doing a poor job at both, really). Here’s what was going on - though I’d bet money that ninety percent of my readers are more than caught up at this point.

I flew back to New York City on December 21st to surprise my girlfriend, Nicole. Owing to spectacular efforts among her friends and family, she had no idea that I was coming until I bought her a drink at Meet the Johnsons - a bar in Manhattan. It was an explosive moment in my life - I don’t know that I’ve ever been wracked by more anticipation than on that day. When Nicole was coming up the bar, I thought my heart would escape my rib cage and incinerate the building. No joke. And if anyone has any doubts, Zeppelin’s “The Song Remains the Same” started playing when we embraced. Try stopping that.

Again owing to family and friends, the two weeks I was back in the United States were planned out completely in advance to include both of our families in Virginia and North Carolina, and an explosive New Years trip to Chicago. Somehow we kept Nicole in the dark about every bit of it. The surprise also included my mother and two nieces, and an exceptional Christmas day reunion with my family.
Incidentally, those of you that I didn’t see, I really wish I could have. Odds are that seeing you would’ve meant time away from Nicole, and that was just not in the cards. I’ll make it up to everyone in July.

Basically, the love and happiness crammed into those two weeks is much more intense than I could ever decompress in this forum. Between family, friends, and Nicole it’s just way too surreal and sappy to write about here. But I’ll do a secret entry with a hidden link for those people involved. And I promise to do a terrible job concealing it.

I’d like to offer special thank yous to those who actively participated in the planning that began months in advance and helped everything go off so immaculately:
Kiersten, Stefanie, Jessica, Katie, Charlotte, and Marcus. That’s listed more or less in order of appearance, and it doesn’t include everyone who contributed - just those with whom I directly talked to work things out. A thousand thanks to everyone not named.

Moving right along. I got back to Nepal on January 5th, and after a missing phone and luggage fiasco I was again bewildered by where on the planet I’m living these days. I reverse culture-shocked a lot when I first got back to the United States. Little things that I didn’t expect to throw me ended up hitting me hard. Beyond the fact that in the developed* world people are actually held responsible for their jobs and things can generally be expected to run smoothly. Most jarring, no joke, was how fashion-conscious and consumer oriented America is. Standing in an H&M in Chicago actively wounded me. The number of people lined up and the time and effort thrown into such inconsequential and impractical things - it was like looking at this behemoth engine dedicated exclusively to pinning us down with inanities. Or something like that.
Here’s why it jarred me, though - this is the kicker that locked in at that moment. Kathmandu, and a few other parts of Nepal, actually aspire to that. The wealthy minority of this country are extraordinarily fashion conscious, and owing to mass media more and more of the Nepali youth are adopting Western (generally set by America) fashion trends. And general consumer trends.
Don’t misunderstand me, I love the U.S. and believe it is the greatest country in the world. I just wish the culture of the few cities in Nepal weren’t clawing at that wasteful impracticality and instead they embraced the more beautiful undercurrents of our society.
And the explosive consumerism works better in America because our domestic issues are relatively slight - there’s a lot of money going around and a relative few are exploited. That is not the case in Nepal. It is the poorest country in Asia, fourteenth poorest in the world (don’t hold me to that), and yet money is funneled into new cell phones and designer clothing as opposed to creating jobs. That’s something America did with such extraordinary gusto - inspired entrepreneurs that turned capital into job opportunities. I’m so far from an economist. I’d bet money I’m misspeaking constantly.
But what I do know is that the people with money in Nepal very seldom pump it productively back into the economy and the government does next to nothing to create jobs and circulate wealth. Hence the extraordinary amount of foreign aid and the number of NGO organizations operating in this country. I should probably substantiate this with numbers.

I got way off track there. Worst part of it is that my mind is still hurtling in that direction and there’s so much more to say.
I’m going to use another divider to shift out of that and into a better place.

Pokhara. Lakeside town and gateway to the impossibly beautiful Annapurna range of the Himalayas.

My second day in Kathmandu I took a bus ride (something like seven hours) out of the city and up to Pokhara to join two friends. We spent a week in this beautiful place.

Some time was dedicated to visiting temples and observing the tourist oriented dances and feeding that into my research here. Some was spent mountain-biking with Tyler and John while we visited the surrounding schools and villages for Tyler’s research on rainwater harvesting. About that.
We brought our bikes from Kathmandu, strapped to the top of the bus, so that we’d have them to explore the area. Now, Tyler and John are experienced and capable cyclists who do mountain trails often - college in Colorado offered them all kinds of opportunities. Me, I don’t know what I’m doing.
The proofs positive of my ignorance were my two disastrous falls while careening down trails. On both occasions I slammed to a halt against a rock and was launched over my handle bars. Cue giant bruises and multiple scrapes. Could have been a thousand times worse. The first one was a lot of human error and my using the brakes stupidly. The second and more painful fall involved one of those gods I don’t believe in grabbing my front wheel and stopping it.
But cycling put me in places like this:

And it let me meet those kids up at the top of the page who posed for pictures while I sat on a wall and rested. They literally exploded every time they got to look at themselves on the little LCD display.

And in a tiny village, where I waited for Tyler and John to finish whatever ridiculous trail I decided might actually kill me, I had a horribly broken conversation with these two gentlemen. The one standing was just a nice guy who invited me to have tea. The one sitting however, explained in Nepali that he thought of me like a son and he hoped I had a beautiful live. I don’t know why he felt that way. After weeks back in the States my Nepali was terrible. So for the next ten minutes I was with them I called them, respectively, the Nepali equivalents of big brother and father. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it before, but Nepali’s use familial terms for family, friends, and acquaintances. It’s an extraordinarily beautiful bit of the culture. But that old man explained to me that I was like a son. I don’t know that I’ll ever quite get it.

Also in Pokhara, down by the lake, we got the ol’ shave and a haircut from local barbers. Except that I only got the shave because I refuse to cut my hair. It was my first experience with a straight razor. Strange thing. Here’s an in-process picture and one afterwards. I hadn’t been clean-shaved in something like seven months and thought I looked like a twelve-year-old girl.

The experience evolved into them trying to rip us off and charge 350 rupees for ten minutes of garbage shoulder massage. 350 rupees each. Then the shave only cost 80. I’m just glad that Tyler knew how to get rude in Nepali.

Anyway. These days I wonder why I left a place where the mornings look like this:

And I’m back in Kathmandu. Working with a Japanese researcher named Ken to help him uncover information about the Vajra Yogini dances in Patan. He actually got referred to me by a couple local Nepali guys. I couldn’t believe it. He’s also studying Sanskrit in India, making him a hero.
I’ve got interviews lined up and festivals are back in action basically through the end of February. It’s a good time to be here. I’m glad to be busy. Leaving Nicole again was actually much more difficult than the first time. These days I’m doing my best to stay busy and engaged in both research and ridiculous social exploits.
Seriously, as if I’m going to have a birthday without passing out in someone’s hotel room.

Closing note. I reread The Silmarillion recently. Every part of it is better than I remembered. Every single part. I’m changing my name to Turin. Only so I can change it eight more times. And question, were there Balrogs?

On the horizon:
-Lhosar. The Tibetan New Year and ultimate Buddhist festival.
-Swasthani Brata. Get your ritual bathe on. In a river. In winter.
-Fulbright Conference in India. Nerd convention.
-Visits in March and April from two garbage pail girls.
-Toe to toe with the MOCTCA.
-Bollywood dance classes. ‘Meter Down.’
-Updating this thing more often than once a month. Because then I won’t glaze over details like actually hanging off a cliff after losing control of my bike. (Not a joke! Happened yesterday!)
-Joined a Nepali gym where half the time they exercise by candlelight because there’s no electricity. Every time I go it’s like I’m trying to get the Eye back. (Anybody but Marcus get that?)