2069, year of movement

The first day of 2069 began with a phone call. Ring, Ring. I lay in bed, contemplating the phone call, who could be calling. Ring Ring. Wondering whether I should answer it, ring ring, thinking about how pleasant the ring tone on my phone is, how unobtrusive and tuneful. My first fancy phone after so many years of having the cheapest phone possible, with a kind of misguided pride. One of the things I like about this new phone is the brand name: HTC Wildfire. A fitting name for a spaceship, wildfire, but for a phone it's ridiculous, and also implies unpredictability and hazard.

Eventually the ringing stopped, but curiosity got me out of bed to check whose call I missed. The previous night I'd made plans to go to Bhaktapur and see the great chariots being pulled, a kind of tug-of-war challenge to see who can pull the chariot back to their village. Once again, this could be completely incorrect, this explanation was pieced together from many different people, each with their own version. Many people told me that every year someone dies in this chariot-pulling event. In the night-time, when I heard this from behind my drunken shroud, I was really interested in having a look, but this morning the world had become sharp-edged, each noise startlingly acute, each step made with exceeding care. It was not a day to schlep across town just to watch someone get unnecessarily crushed by a towering wooden chariot.

They have been building one of the chariots near my place. The ingredients lie there by the side of the road, wooden wheels the size of dinner tables, long planks of timber, piles of willow-branches which lie soaking in a pool of water. It's a bit like freeway roadworks. I never catch anyone actually doing anything, but every time I walk past, a little bit more has been done.

Last year, New Year's Eve took me by surprise. We had been warned about the one in April, but last November on the final day of Tihar, the festival of lights, my friends and I chanced upon an epic party at durbar square. We danced with the locals, watched bizarre performances on the outdoor stage. All of a sudden, someone started ringing a giant bell and everyone begain shouting  'Happy New Year!'. My initial thought was that they were even more drunk than I'd suspected. I realised much later, that this was the Newari calendar, Newars are the traditional ethnic group of Kathmandu valley, there are a huge number of Newari families, and the Newari culture is still going strong in places like Patan, where I live.

Two months later, a more familiar New Year's Eve, this time I was back in Australia, at a different kind of festival, Woodford. I was at the time completely head over heels and falling into a kind of love which is proving surprisingly strong, startlingly durable. I had all but turned on that cliche of love, that eulogized, mythologized, commodified love. I was starting to agree with my friend who'd had the rug pulled out from under him, after years of love and devotion had made him forget that rugs can move. There, on the park-bench across the road from the Evelyn, he and I shared a longneck, whilst he spoke in his sure-footed way. On that night so many years ago, he debunked love. As I recall, the ground trembled a little as he spoke.

"Ivan. Love is bunk."

And after slipping from rug to rug, I was inclined to agree with him. But as intangible and uncertain as it is, it cannot be denied or debunked. Not for long, at least. And now here we are, on Friday the 13th of April, 2012, and also the 1st of Baisakh, 2069. Every New Year's Eve has been different, this last one just last night situated around a kitchen table with the landlord's family and friends, drinking raksi and singing raucously, the New Year's Days have all been similar in their softness, their slowness. A gentle approach to a year, a door slowly opening. When a year is as action-packed as these last few have been, it pays to take at least a day to tread lightly.

the tiger's whiskers

Wild haired man, coated in a thin layer of dust, t-shirt the colour of dust, trousers dust-coloured. Hair styled by the dust, into a permanent electric shock. The striking contrast of the white shiny technology in his hands, something like an iPhone. We, the circus students and I, were over here, by the pipal tree, traditional meeting place. He was over there, by the little shanty-shop, a familiar tarp-and-bamboo-pole kind of place, selling a weird assortment of items. Stationary could be bought there, and biscuits too. Also, no doubt, Chahi Kahi, or whatever it's called - the tobacco which is neither smoked, nor chewed, but slipped underlip. My German and Scandinavian friends are crazy about the stuff. The wild-haired man was filming my juggling with his white shiny device. When I noticed, I turned my back to the camera, he circled and I turned, and so we danced, what a charming moment, his friends were all laughing, but I noticed that the circus kids were beginning to get uncomfortable, so I stopped. Wild haired man approached me, with a smile, and a knife in his hand. I looked questioningly at his smiling, childlike face, and back down to the knife in his hand. A kind of kitchen knife, I thought maybe he didn't realise that the cutting part was pointed directly at me. Yes, he realised. He wanted me to keep juggling. "Or what, you'll stab me?", I asked, trying to maintain the humour of the situation, so that I wouldn't start shaking. He just kept telling me to juggle, kept pointing the knife at me, with that maddening smile. I fixed on the smile, smiled back, for the first time thankful for the super-polite Nepali taught to me by my lovely teacher. "Enough, brother, I'm finished." I told him. And again, bhayo bhaai, siddhiyo, siddhiyo.  What happened? There was no climax, this situation just stretched out for an impossibly long time - although in reality it was probably only 5 minutes - me smiling at him, putting away my juggling balls, himself smiling at me, knife in hand, making stabbing motions, in case I didn't know what it was for.

I couldn't tell you how or why, but he went back to his friends, still looking back over at me occasionally and making little knife-stabbing gestures and smiling.

Less than two months left in Nepal. Time to bring in all of the heart's moments, the anecdotes and the realisations, and to try and form something out of them. A souvenir of Nepal, made out of interesting moments. Now that the end is in sight, the heart is lighter, the things which were frustrating are now funny. This could also be something to do with not being broke, or something to do with the return of sunshine. The salad days.

The other day, whilst I was walking through the labyrinthine alleys of old Patan, I saw an old lady lean out of the third floor window, and lower a key on a long piece of string, to the young lady waiting on the street below. As I got closer, I noticed that it was not one piece of string but many small pieces of string tied together. Indeed, this seemed like a perfect analogy for Nepal. It is incredibly difficult to find a long piece of string, but you can have all of the small pieces of string you like, so long as you have the time and patience to tie them together. If you get too attached to the idea of a nice, smooth, long piece of string, then Kathmandu will drive you absolutely mental.

Once you see past the unnecessary obstacles, the lack of materials, reliability, authentic information, you start to see that in some ways, the chaotic nature of this place grants a certain freedom unheard of in the places we know. Why, you could find some tarp and some old pieces of bamboo, build a little shop on the side of the road, and style yourself as a small-business retail manager!

Tomorrow, I will try and get some handstand chairs made up, To get something made out of wood here should be cheap and easy, as carpenter's shops are everywhere. All the same, I will remember about the string.

Writing with Raksi

Raksi is pronounced 'Roxy'. The sounds of 'a' and 'o' are difficult here, we try and squash the words into our cumbersome alphabet, just like the Volkswagen Beetle, lime green, in which I learned to drive. It was so small that my knees would keep my ears warm, and it was so rusty that I didn't need a speedometer, I could judge the speed by looking at the road through the holes in the floor.

Raksi. It is Nepali moonshine, typically made by Newari people (the traditional inhabitants of the Kathmandu valley) from rice rather than wheat. Unfortunately, at my house we have a limitless supply, because the landlady makes it, the best Raksi in town, as many will attest. The Newari language came down from Tibet, and is therefore very different to Nepali, which came up from India. My landlady whom, for some reason, we all call Baoju (brother's wife), speaks a kind of language which mixes Nepali and Newari with a kind of Raksi-fuelled life force which makes her much easier to understand than the average well-spoken person, merely through its desire to be understood. Did I mention that she's amazing? I watched her making the Raksi one day, mesmerizing. A cauldron over a wood fire, kept burning with whatever pieces of wood were salvageable. Inside the cauldron, the frothiest slop you can imagine, over which sits a little bowl, over all of which is finally placed lid with a pointy-down part, which collects the condensation and makes the drips slide down to the point, where they can land, drip drip, into the little bowl. All the while, Baoju was tending to the fire, opening up the lid and adding bits of water and whatever else, letting the steam rise up and invade her, causing her to sweat, back into the cauldron, putting herself unmistakably inside the whole distillation process.


I just tried to backspace a full-stop that was without doubt a punctuation error. It took me a moment to realise, after I had resumed typing, that it was still there. So I backspaced over it again, like the truck driver of the apocalypse, but it did not go. Is this really happening? I thought, is punctuation rebelling? Is my writing now taking control, having been neglected for so long, is it deciding to take the laws of grammar and syntax into its Own Hands? Imagine! I was at the peak of my speculative incredulity, when I suddenly realised: that was not a full-stop, but a speck of grit on my screen, placed perfectly. I brushed it away, a little disappointed at the prospect of returning to the mundane world. At least I still have the squiggly red lines that underline everything that is not in American spelling. I've changed so many settings over to UK English, so many times, now I just resign myself, and I think of the squiggly-red-line not as an indication of error, but rather a tribute, perhaps a portal. Although, of course, I must admit, it's a funny shape for a portal.

Down in the Hole

Malaise is the colour of whole-egg mayonnaise,

Last night I made toad in the hole for dinner,

It took me two tries, because I was without a spatula, 

Or anything like it,

And I was working by head-torch, like a miner,

This morning I also made toad in the hole for breakfast,

It is true sometimes that you are what you eat.

They say that the egg is a whole food, they say it contains a vast array of nutrients, everything a baby chicken needs to survive and develop. At the time that they told me this, I found it to be a very strong argument in favour of the egg's nutritional clout. Now, many years later, I wonder if a baby chicken is perhaps not the best candidate to represent my nutritional needs. Sometimes I wonder how much the quality of the lighting affects your susceptibility to arguments. Like those 'before and after' shots where they show overweight people in terrible lighting, and then show them, in nice lighting, sucking in their tummies. It looks convincing the first 30 times you see it. The nice thing about the 'before and after' shot of course, what gives it power, is the narrative. Each photo contains a little 'Once upon a time..... and they lived happily ever after' story, distilled like hard liquor, so that it fits into a single picture frame. 

Now, thanks to the advents/misfortunes of free time, social networking, and a complete saturation in advertising, tactics such as 'before and after' photos are somewhat overwrought, somewhat pathetic.To me, at least, and I have body-image issues too, although they are only very faint voices. And yet these images are still used so much, I see such a mind-boggling amount of these 'before and after' shots, not just tummy-sucking, but more and more of abs, biceps, triceps, made oily and shiny. Is this really successful? I suppose I still know a lot of people who think that the spoon-bending trick is real, what a waste of a great illusion.

Of course, I also have a marching band inside my head. This sometimes makes it very hard to pay attention to anyone at all, but it occurs to me now that if there are voices in your head telling you that you're crap, it helps to have a marching band to drown them out.

Kurt Vonnegut just told me that his number one rule for writing short stories is that you should 'Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time is wasted'. At first, I thought he was talking about the characters, that for instance, you should not write in detail about the 4 hours they spent on facebook. Then I realised that he probably means the reader, that you should not waste the reader's time. Well, if you're reading this because you followed a link on facebook, then you were quite possibly already wasting your time in the first place. So let's continue, I wanted to clarify something.

Different people have different ideas of what 'toad in the hole' is. When I refer to it, I mean, getting a slice of bread, cutting a hole out of its centre, frying it, and cracking an egg into the bread-cavity. The result is pan-fried bread with egg filling. It is difficult to flip the new hybrid slice without a spatula, but the flipping is absolutely imperative. The small leftover pieces of bread can also be fried alongside, and either be used as croutons to dip into the yolk, or if you're a cooked-yolk kind of person, you can just eat them whilst you're waiting for everything to cook.

dogs and bells and drills and yells

For the duration of my stay in Kathmandu, the night-times have been marked by the barking of dogs. They bark and bark, and in each of the 7 or 8 places I've lived here, the barking has had a different tone, a different nature. Here, in this place, it is the worst kind of barking, feverish, maddened, distressing. And loud, sometimes the dogs fight literally outside my door. I have no love for these dogs, but I am a short-term guest in this place, their house, so I try and at least remain civil. They, on the other hand, adore me. In spite of my cat-like aloofness, they always try to lick me, jump up on me, follow me around.

I must pull the lock on my bedroom door or else one of the dogs comes into my room and takes things off my floor. She is a spoiled jerk, I caught her in here the other day, and she refused to leave. When I tried to gently push her out of the door, she lay down like an activist at a forest blockade. And when I tried to drag her out by the feet, she started biting me. What a jerk, get out of my goddamned room. I pray that the next house will have a better kind of dog-noise at night time.

Now, one month on, I am in a house which is indeed better for dog-noise. As I type, there is a dog in the distance, barking out a long soliloquy, rich in timbre and rhythm, sweeping up and down its familiar canine tonality. This may have bothered me some time ago, but not these days.

My heart stopped two days ago when I heard that they have begun killing the street dogs in my old neighbourhood, by feeding them poison. Kanchi, Dorje and Punx were always escaping and causing mischief on the streets, the idea of their accidental murder was unbearable, those same three dogs I had so viciously slated in this very blog post. Such a relief when I saw their healthy, noisy faces. Jerks they may be, but lovable all the same.

Here, in my new house, there are other kinds of noise. In the daytime, the construction site next door provides hammering, angle-grinding, etc. Between 5 and 6 in the morning, it's the temple bells, which get rung for a length of time which seems to be increasing each day. It sounds like Shiva and Pravati are screening their calls.

writing with eyes closed.

So I was hoping I would be tired enough to write without really caring, without self-censoring, as they say in theatre. But now I'm not sure if that's really such a good. Idea. Punctuation is beginning to . Disobey my flow.I let my eyes close, , my knees sag together, my spine curve up from bed to pillow-against-wall, how is this position so comfortable? How good is it to type with closed eyes? I have a plan to get out of here, it is too much for me, this place, its demands. I must wake up at six tomorrow, as I did today, pray for water to come out of the tap when I turn the handle. Ride into the English teaching job, then prepare for the private lesson, then go and teach juggling at the British school, then do the private lesson with the gardener, where perhaps we shall revisit rope-climbing techniques, then to circus training in the evening, then to catch my friend before she splits back to the Tarai, then sleep, then up again before the sun.

The only thing that makes it sustainable is the constant newness. In the last month or so, the circus classes have increased from 3 evening sessions per week, to 5 days full time, now 6 days, all at the behest of the refuge manager, and we're racking our brains to find ways to use this time so that we don't destroy the poor students. Digging up old pilates routines and researching this or that thing. Frustrating, then exciting, then frustrating again, it ebbs and flows. Then there's the English teaching, which always threatens to become too much, but still I get just little enough that I can manage to be heavily involved with circus training, just enough to pay my expenses, I will not save money but as long as nothing too dire happens then I will be able to afford to come back to Australia, and rest. Just two months to go.

Here in Kathmandu anything is possible, so long as it's not the thing you're aiming for.  A few months back I had to learn Illustrator in a night, because that's how long I had to draw up a plan for a potential circus school. This week I will teach school kids how to juggle, the gardener how to do a Russian climb, the nanny how to sing English lullabys. Today I did a particularly bad juggling show, completely unrehearsed, for some German flipping tour-group, I did it because one of the Sapana performers told me I had to, and how could I say no to them, they who jump through so many hoops, with so little warning, so that EBT can show the world what a great job they are doing at helping these poor kids. And we the trainers are always the unfortunate messengers. Never mind that you might have had plans for your weekend, for any of your weekends, ever.

Oh, oops, too tired to delete that. I never allow myself to write about how frustrating I find EBT, because I really don't want to put off any potential circus/performing arts teachers from coming and helping out. Especially right now with our super-extended training hours, with a good team of trainers we could make so much progress. Really, it's an amazing project. The opportunity to do a social circus project with kids who are at such a high skill level, who are so eager to learn, and who are above all, just such a great crew, is too good to pass up. Suffering the impulses of those who are in control, but actually have no fucking clue, is just one of those things that one must do from time to time

Good night, dear reader. My eyes snuck open back there somewhere, but now they will close again, until my unruly alarm once more wrenches them open, 8 hours from now.

Holi

A rooftop barbecue for Holi, a haven from streets where at any moment coloured powder, balloons or buckets full of water, could fly in your direction. Over there, all of the young Nepali cool kids were sitting and talking. I sat in my little group of Western foreigners, watching them longingly, just as I watched the cool kids 12 years ago in high school, when I was restricted to that small group of nerds concerned principally with science, role-playing and hacky sack. Eventually I summoned the courage to go and sit with them, try and cross that difficult bridge. They weren't unfriendly, but they also weren't about to drop everything and involve me in their conversation. My grasp of Nepali is restricted to the kinds of conversations you don't have when you're kicking back with friends at a party, so I mostly couldn't understand. Someone came with a tray full of what looked like iced coffees, just enough for all of them. I asked one of them what it was.
"It's called bhang, it's what we drink on Holi. Would you like to try some?"

"Sure, thanks!"

"Careful though, it gets you a bit high"

I assumed that this was just a simple mistake, and she meant that it was a bit alcoholic. I've heard people say 'high' to mean 'drunk' before. I didn't think much of it. It was tasty, a little spicy, later, in the kitchen, someone offered me one, and I saw them mixing a thick dark syrup into some yoghurt, adding sugar. I can be pretty slow at times -precisely the reason I don't like weed - and still didn't think much of it, until it was far too late. This is not like being drunk at all, I realised. And what had they called it, 'bhang'? The travellers in Pokhara had talked about drinking 'Bang Lassi' in Varanassi, and getting stoned out of their brains. Of course the pronunciation was different. But this was intense, much too much. I went to find the guy who made it, a lovely Nepali guy who likes to reminisce about his college days in New York, being a typical American college boy.

His eyes widened, "I made it way too strong, I didn't really know what I was doing!"

Holi is a Hindu festival, celebrated in India and Nepal, which is renowned for its epic colour-and-water fights. It's tempting to do a quick Wikipedia search and find out a bit of background information on this festival, but for the sake of ambiguity, I won't. What is Holi actually for? It came up in my conversational English class, and all of those important, respectable hindus had a little discussion and after some disagreement came up with some kind of dubious explanation. Dubious enough that I didn't bother to remember it, something about someone's sacrifice of someone's son. And what is a religious festival without a bit of ambiguity? After all, the pre-Christian god Mithras (along with a bunch of others) was also born of a virgin mother on the 25th of December, and also died and was resurrected, before it was cool. What is certain is that we give each other presents on Christmas, and we throw colour at each other on Holi. Good.

It was 3p.m. and I absolutely had to leave, to seek sanctuary in my own room. I made the bare minimum of obligatory-farewell-conversations, made a cursory attempt to wash the colour from my face, hair, arms, and left. In my state of overwhelming wibbly-ness, it really didn't help that the world had been turned into a Pollock-apocalypse. The aftermath, colour strewn, speckled, spewed over ground, walls and people. People moved around and behaved like real people, but they looked completely out of control. On the way, I encountered all kinds of trials. First there were the European girls in fairy costumes, who thought that I was unfairly clean, and unwilling to listen to my protests and pleadings, forced me to dance around them, under them, twisting and turning in my stoned and ungraceful way to avoid their attacks. I somehow managing to avoid each of their advances, and ran off down the street, fleeing from the fairy girls, it must have been a sight to behold. For the rest of the way I shadowed the older Brahmin-looking types, seeking refuge under their aura of respectability, so long had it taken me to wash the colours off. And then, so close to home, a strange man with wooden movements approached me. He explained to me with no small effort that I would have to buy a ticket to visit historical Patan.

"But I live here,"
"This is....... um....... counter" He ventured, pointing to the ticket booth,
"मा यहाँ बस्छु. पतनमा," I attempted.
He launched into the spiel from the beginning, clearly he had practiced it. Clearly this was going nowhere, but I also had no money on me, and getting home was absolutely top priority. I felt like I had to keep a lid on it, by doing as little interaction as possible, maybe no-one would realised how horribly mashed-up I was. This was a difficult situation, it would be impossible to avoid dangerous amounts of social interaction. Of course it wouldn't have mattered if he'd realised how stoned I was, it probably would have helped, but at the time it was absolutely out of the question that anyone find me out. This was, after all, an accidental bhang lassi situation, I couldn't have them all thinking that I was one of those debauched Western tourists who give us all a bad name, who make it even harder for me to fit in to the strict culture here, who make Nepali men think that it's ok to shamelessly grope Western women on dance floors, and in the street (so my line of thinking proceeded). I was at a loss how to proceed with the ticket-man, when finally, a third person stepped in, and, understanding what I'd been trying to say, put a sticker on my t-shirt. With this, the wooden-man let me pass, and finally I made it, to my room, to shut my door, draw my curtains, and stay in bed for the rest of the day. Sanctuary.

Did you know that Odysseus had gotten almost all the way back to Ithaca, when one of his crew accidentally opened his bag full of god-wind, and blew the ship all the way back to Aeolus' island? The bag itself had been a gift from Aeolus in the first place, so it was an awkward situation, to say the least. I like to remember Odysseus when I'm having a hard time getting home.

I apologise to you, my valued reader, because I don't have time to edit this just now. You'll just have to read it the way it is.

Happy Holi.