I have started many blog posts in recent times, only to stop halfway through, put off by the sheer inanity of them. There is a purgatory of blog-post-drafts piling up, but I cannot bring myself to fix or finish them.
So now, for better or worse, I'm just going to go back to writing whatever crap and then pressing that orange button labelled 'publish'. So they say, publish or perish. I just wanted to let you know, in case you were hoping that I would end this constant obsession with the mundane, and write instead about the many-coloured chimaera, the dancing, farting and honking beauty of Nepal, the mountains which mock the clouds, the smells which defy all comparison, the rich mythology, the threats which lurk like feet under the curtain, political-instability, the great earthquake, the collective rage of a country which has, as an emblem, two crossed crescent-curved knife. My late grandmother could have told you what crossed knives means. Anyway, I will not write about these things, they're still cooking. Forewarned is forearmed.
My newish phone, the HTC Wildfire, has some interesting features. It stores up all of the alarms you've ever set, in case you'd like to use them again. I once had an afternoon nap, and used the alarm to ensure my nap would fall within the recommended bounds of the power-nap(15-30 minutes), so that I would wake up feeling empowered, rather than claggy-mouthed and groggy, as is sometimes the case. I forgot to disable that alarm for so long that ultimately I grew to love it. Now, every Monday afternoon at 3:47 my phone patiently chimes away until I stop it. It is a welcome reminder of just how different each quarter-to-four-on-Monday is from the last.
Just over a week ago, my love-from-afar came to visit me. She left today, and now I find myself looking for her everywhere. About her arrival I was forewarned, but not forearmed. How to prepare for the surreal power of it? A figure bursting out of a picture frame, and into the real world. Words disentangling themselves from the soft glow of laptop screen, and finding sweet voice. Real fingers, real toes, real beauty! At first I struggled to keep my cool, almost to the point of being cold, until I found my bearings. I took her to all of the places I go: the office, the cafe, the circus-training, the places I like to eat, the refuge, and all of the pathways in between. Everywhere we went, she just marvelled at everything, the buildings, the people, the dogs, and I remembered. Strange that it has become mundane to me now, and stranger still that I like it, the mundaneness. Gosh but I miss her though.
Now that I remember the magic, I try to hold them both together, the banality and the wonder, two conflicting notions here in the land of paradox, where it is simultaneously the year 2012 and 2069, where people can contain the abovementioned pool of rage alongside a demeanor of genuine compassion and warmth. Where, on the same day as the country celebrates the birth of Buddha, a flash flood kills dozens of people and whisks away countless homes.
Oh, one last thing. In my last post I mentioned the chariot which was being built on the side of the road. Well, shortly after writing that, I caught them, the builders. They were all dressed in regular clothes, jeans, some with glasses, just as though they'd all been walking past and decided to help. On the rarest of impulses, I took some pictures. I thought I should show you one.
They just kept adding and adding to it, until in the end, it resembled nothing so much as a 7-storey Christmas tree on giant wooden wheels. Then people pulled it around town for a few days, for a festival known as Machhendranath. Then they took it apart again.
That's all,
Love Ivan
So now, for better or worse, I'm just going to go back to writing whatever crap and then pressing that orange button labelled 'publish'. So they say, publish or perish. I just wanted to let you know, in case you were hoping that I would end this constant obsession with the mundane, and write instead about the many-coloured chimaera, the dancing, farting and honking beauty of Nepal, the mountains which mock the clouds, the smells which defy all comparison, the rich mythology, the threats which lurk like feet under the curtain, political-instability, the great earthquake, the collective rage of a country which has, as an emblem, two crossed crescent-curved knife. My late grandmother could have told you what crossed knives means. Anyway, I will not write about these things, they're still cooking. Forewarned is forearmed.
My newish phone, the HTC Wildfire, has some interesting features. It stores up all of the alarms you've ever set, in case you'd like to use them again. I once had an afternoon nap, and used the alarm to ensure my nap would fall within the recommended bounds of the power-nap(15-30 minutes), so that I would wake up feeling empowered, rather than claggy-mouthed and groggy, as is sometimes the case. I forgot to disable that alarm for so long that ultimately I grew to love it. Now, every Monday afternoon at 3:47 my phone patiently chimes away until I stop it. It is a welcome reminder of just how different each quarter-to-four-on-Monday is from the last.
Just over a week ago, my love-from-afar came to visit me. She left today, and now I find myself looking for her everywhere. About her arrival I was forewarned, but not forearmed. How to prepare for the surreal power of it? A figure bursting out of a picture frame, and into the real world. Words disentangling themselves from the soft glow of laptop screen, and finding sweet voice. Real fingers, real toes, real beauty! At first I struggled to keep my cool, almost to the point of being cold, until I found my bearings. I took her to all of the places I go: the office, the cafe, the circus-training, the places I like to eat, the refuge, and all of the pathways in between. Everywhere we went, she just marvelled at everything, the buildings, the people, the dogs, and I remembered. Strange that it has become mundane to me now, and stranger still that I like it, the mundaneness. Gosh but I miss her though.
Now that I remember the magic, I try to hold them both together, the banality and the wonder, two conflicting notions here in the land of paradox, where it is simultaneously the year 2012 and 2069, where people can contain the abovementioned pool of rage alongside a demeanor of genuine compassion and warmth. Where, on the same day as the country celebrates the birth of Buddha, a flash flood kills dozens of people and whisks away countless homes.
Oh, one last thing. In my last post I mentioned the chariot which was being built on the side of the road. Well, shortly after writing that, I caught them, the builders. They were all dressed in regular clothes, jeans, some with glasses, just as though they'd all been walking past and decided to help. On the rarest of impulses, I took some pictures. I thought I should show you one.
They just kept adding and adding to it, until in the end, it resembled nothing so much as a 7-storey Christmas tree on giant wooden wheels. Then people pulled it around town for a few days, for a festival known as Machhendranath. Then they took it apart again.
That's all,
Love Ivan
Came across a picture of chariot building in 1940. x
ReplyDeletehttp://www.thecosmosphere.com/flashback-patan-and-bhaktapur/?album=3&gallery=10&show=gallery
At pulchowk, the very same place.
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