Father: noun. Phonetic: Pa-la

My father requests a blog post.  Easily delivered, without the worry of currency exchange.

So, here’s an update:

On saturday we are going to India for a week.  We are haphazardly tracing the life of the Budha, filting across the map.  Varanasi, Sarnath, Bodhgaya, Rajgeer, Nalanda, Kushhinaga, and Lumbini- then back to kathmandu, all in 8 days.  2 days after we get back we leave again to go to Dharamsala for about a month. 

I haven’t discussed Grandpa.  He is an allusive figure, but he is my favorite character in this foreign film.  I see him more now, because I often get locked out.  The family is gone, but he lets me in.  He then locks the gate again and retreats to wherever the hell he lives.  I don’t have the key to my room.  This essentially locks me in the stairwell.  He tlaks to me in Nepali and Tibetan, despite my blank stare.  He is often shirtless, his skin hanging off his body like a loose coat.  His voice is nasal and often at strange volumes.  Shouting prayers or whispering questions.  His face resembles a crab apple.  After fighting to close the gate together I feel like we are secret accomplises.  I wonder what he does with his days.  He gets up at 4:30 AM, I see the hall light go on.  After that, I don’t know.  He is like the demonic dogs on the roof.  Some how associated with the family, but never discussed.  Unlike the dogs, he has never attempted to eat my face.  Fucking rat dogs. 

A cat ran out from under my bed the other day.  I had just come home and unlocked the door.  I have no idea how long it was there.  We don’t have a cat. One of the other kids woke up to a dog on top of her.  She doesn’t have a dog.  All of the doors were closed and locked.  Oh, Nepal…. where random animals appear in your room and you get locked in a stairwell cause your family forgets about you.

To study: verb. Phonetic: Junki

“From the news store I go one block south to the Postal Convenience Station, where I am secretly in love with a woman behind a counter.  I have already put my pages in the manila envelope.  I address it, and then I take my place at the end of another long line.  What I need now is postage! Yum, yum, yum!  The woman I love there does not know I love her.  You want to talk about poker faces? When her eyes meet mine, she might as well be looking at a cantaloupe!  Because she works sitting down, and because of the counter and the smock she wears, all I have seen of her is from the neck up.  That’s enough!  From the neck up she is like a Thanksgiving dinner!  I don’t mean she looks like a plateful of turkey and sweet potatoes and cranberry sauce.  I mean se makes me feel like that is what has just been set before me.  Dig in!  Dig in!  Unadorned, I believe, her neck and face and ears and hair would still be Thanksgiving dinner.  Every day, though, she hangs new dingle-dangles from her ears and around her neck.  Sometimes her hair is up, sometimes it’s down.  sometimes it’s frizzy, sometimes it’s straight.  What she can’t do with just her eyes and lips!  On day i’m buying a stamp from Count Dracula’s daughter!  The next day she’s the Virgin Mary. ….. I at last have my envelope weighed and stamped by the only woman in the whole wide world who could make me sincerely happy.  With her I wouldn’t have to fake it.  I go home.  I have had one heck of a good time.  Listen:  We are here on earth to fart around. Don’t let anybody tell you any different!”

 

Tonight I walked home with the dusk, in the dust.   

Each foot fall kicked up a cloud, calling the darkness to come, come, come out now. 

I shuffled along with the Ipod set to shuffle, singing, ‘cause, hey, if they’re gonna watch, might as well make them stare.

I sidle through memories and side step all too present shit in the street.   It’s a dance I’ve become familiar with.  

For once this walk can’t last long enough.  

The power may be out, but my power is on. 

Just flick the switch, it might be faint and flickering at first, but I swear, just give it a minute, its fluorescent. 

I breathe in deep and the exhaust fumes can’t touch me,

 Make sure not to step on a razor blade, that all too real hyperbole of how life shouldn’t be.  It’s a joke, but it’s not. 

The hairless dog looks warily at me and I cringe.

It is the opposite of cute, it is no one’s best friend. 

But I like it, in its gross strangeness, my cringe becomes a smile,

And isn’t that just Kathmandu for you? 

 

That pants-less child cries, but there are no tears in his eyes. 

His plea is met, music is turned on, and the hypnotizing rhythms of stricken lovers screech like car wheels on the street. 

I trip over a speed bump in the dark, jumping from a fire work’s spark. 

The kids scream and return to their game, it continues always despite the crash and clash of fire crackers and the lack of any pretense of sight anymore,

It’s infringements are so very slight. 

With Their darting eyes and dirty limbs, they are untouchable, they belong to the night. 

And so do I, right now, with the stars glinting brighter than my eyes ever could,

they stretch wide, taking in the sight, A  black out’s better than a dessert of sand for this,

It’s out of my hands and off my feet. 

What’s that smell, who is that staring at me, is that woman peeing? 

A million questions, I let go, they float up to rest comfortably in the embrace of the sky as another firework races by. 

I smile and laugh, it’s all over my head, and through my bones, and down my lungs,

The darkness has beat me home and I am alone,  

But in that good way.

So I open the gate and step inside,

My eyes open and my heart tired, but stretched    open      wide. 

 

 

The fireworks are less like fireworks and more like low grade explosives.  It looks like Christmas and sounds like WWI.  Trench warfare under multicolored lighted bulbs.  The streets are painted, the dogs run by, multicolored streaks across their flea bitten fur.  Kathmandu during a festival is a child’s dream and a PTSD victim’s nightmare.  I am neither. 

Here’s some pictures from Mustang.  Just a few, I don’t want to overwhelm anyone.  I hope this works, I haven’t used Picasa before.

http://picasaweb.google.com/melaniegmoore/SelectedMustang?feat=directlink

Mind: noun. Phonetic: Sem.

“I am a work in progress, dressed in the fabric of a world unfolding, offering me intricate patterns of questions, rhythms that never come clean, and strengths that your still haven’t seen”

The following is an attempt to organize three weeks of scribbled notes and things left unscribbled into a semi-coherent mound expressing some of my experiences in Mustang.  I will begin on the day before I left and end the day I came back.  Some of it I will summarize, some I will copy directly from my journal.  I would copy it all from my journal, but I am pretty sure no one wants to read a ten page tirade on how much my feet hurt.  Which is pretty much all my journal contains.

So, the short of it: We took an 8 hour (It was supposed to be 5 hour- welcome to Nepal) buss to Pokhara where we stayed the night.  The next morning we took a tiny plane to Jommsom, which took about 15 minutes.  Then we walked to Lo Monthang, where we stayed for 4 days, then walked back to Jommsom.  The whole thing took 18 days.  Remember when I said I would be walking for 5 days? Ha.  Try 16.  Walking was the main part of my day for more than 2 weeks.  I probably enjoyed about 5-8% of the walking.  We walked for 3-8 hours per day.  For you kids playing along at home, that’s a shit ton of walking that I did not enjoy.  We nicknamed it, not so fondly, SIT Fat Camp.  However, it was beautiful.  The most beautiful, vast, breath taking (and not just because of the altitude) place I have ever been.  I am glad that I did it, but I only did it because I did not have a choice.  If it was explained to me in detail, I would not go.  No way. Thanks, I’ll stay on the bus.  But, lacking human capacity to assert will power, I am very happy that it happened.  I over used the word “epic” a infuriating amount while there, but I have never seen a place to so inspire and embody the word.

So, the long of it:

My host sister avidly watches the Nepali version of Judge Judy.  I can’t understand the words, no, but it is exactly the same as the American version.  Same livid woman having a fit, lots of pointing and huffing.  Same bitchy, androgynous judge with masculine hair and glasses.  Same overly buttoned man shaking his head in furious disagreement.

I am watching an English language show that teaches people to speak Korean, on a Nepali channel, with a Tibetan family.  Whoa.

“Injee” they call me.  Foreigner.  Westerner.  The equivalent of “gringo”, but they don’t mean it with the negative connotation.  That is what we all get called, as if they don’t know our names. Ama-la smiles and nods whenever she catches my eyes.  The two gold teeth flash.  It is a moment of mutual acknowledgement.  She acknowledges that I am Injeee, and amusing.  I agree.  We continue.  Me reading, her bringing me unnecessary food.  She looks at me and speaks.  I turn to my host sister to translate.  “She wants you to eat a banana.  Please, please eat the banana.”  Ok….

I mentioned staring at candle flames and my penchant for it.  I reiterate.  The power was out.  It was dark and quiet and I was letting the language wash over me and staring at a candle flame.  And I thought- besides these blackouts, when was the last time I looked at a candle?  I was expecting to reassert how foreign this experience is.  But it is not.  The image of a flickering candle flame is so familiar.  I am stared at so many.  They draw my eyes and thoughts.  They have burned themselves into my memory.

So, my journey to Not-Tibet.  The pre-emptive title of my blog rears its head in an anti-climactic fashion.  Slight headache, light headedness, ect.  I wasn’t excited until we got on the tiny plane.  Roaring down the runway, watching the propellers, I just started smiling.  We flew through the deepest gorge on earth.  We would be high above everything, barely able to make out the roofs of villages fare below.  Then we enter a cloud.  When we move beyond it, suddenly there are mountains on either side, rising high above the plane.  It was mind blowing.  I stepped off the plane and just breathed in the mountain air, snowy Nilgiri rising in the background.

Then we start walking.

I started off day 2 thinking- I am a BAMF.  Ended it with- I am a wimp.  Confirmation from day 3: I’m a little bitch.  A fucking lame ass totally out of shape little bitch.  Oh my god, I almost effing died.  Hopefully this is the hardest day.  Cause I can’t keep doing this.  6 hours, 700 feet up.

I have such a crush on one of the guides, Ketom.  He plays the drum and sings and carried my bag when I was being the aforementioned little bitch.  He calls us “sister” and sprints down mountain sides.

Bear Grylls ain’t got shit on me.  Okay, that is a lie.  I have never drunk my own urine from a snake that I have killed and worn around my neck as a scarf in the mean time.  I do, however, have  blisters.  I feel like I should name them before I demolish them all, but I am too tired to come up with 9 fucking names.  I am in Gemi, watching a line of 8 children sit on each other in the dirt.  I met 4 of them earlier.  They followed us up a hill.  I showed them pictures in my book.  They snorted snot up their noses.  Their cheeks are red and cracked from the wind.  They have noticed me.  It is hard to write with 8 children on top of you.  Literally, on top of you.  They are dirty, these children.  But then, so am I.  We are camping, so my only shower has been the public water tap.  I shake them off and leave. I give my last band aid to a girl who shows me the cut on her finger.  Damn, I needed the band aid for my 18 million fucking blisters. We walk over rocks and through trees and  in wind and observe a turquoise river and mountains.  It was so beautiful I wanted to cry.  But you know me and crying.  We just don’t get along.

Yesterday afternoon we came to a place on top of the mountain, finally the very top.  It was exhilarating.  Amazing.  I sat on the edge of the cliff and watched the Himalayas continue the slow growth they have maintained for millions or billions of years.  I sat and thought “Who am I, here?”  The answer came to my mind immediately.   “No One.”     Absolutely no one.  It was a freeing thought and it made me laugh.

“I’m happy just because I’ve found out I am really no one.”

I’ll be back here, to Gemi, I thought, with its wind and its poplars and its silence.  Now I am not so sure and I am aware of the hyperbole of my above statement, but I hold on to the feeling.

I got 99 problems but a bitch ain’t 1.  My 9 blisters, on the other hand… I did not start the day off well.  Walking was agony.  I actually longed for my mommy. The people on the program could sympathize and they did.  But no one feels your pain like your mom.  She would tell me to take a break.  She would tell me to stop, because I shouldn’t do anything that hurts this much.  I bit back tears.  But I bucked up.  The end was actually fun.  Julie and Brian improved a song.  We went to a monastery.  Women greeted us with a traditional welcoming dance.  Tibetan religious art and décor is almost gaudy in its intricacy, but it possesses a humble, home-made feeling that is its saving grace.

“Into the caverns of tomorrow with just our flash light and our love, we must plunge, we must plunge, we must plunge.  And then we’ll get down there, way down to the very bottom of everything, and then we’ll see it, we’ll see it, we’ll see it”

Angnima-la, our Sherpa guide, is awesome.  He has a deep, gruff voice.  The Tibetans have nicknamed him The Tibetan Mastiff.  He has been to Everst twice.  He wears ridiculous turquoise pants, with flannel shirts and a backwards fanny pack.

In the Gompa, young monks chant and play music.  It is the same music that wakes me up daily in Kathmandu.  It makes me miss the room I sleep in.  Ah, a bed….

I want frozen yogurt and mango and granola.

There are goats roaming the chortens.  Ben and Brian juggle clubs.  Others play Frisbee with the porters.  There is an audience of young monks, not daring to join.  The Frisbee goes wide, up the hill.  A monk runs after it.  The ice is broken, the monks join in, the game is on.

We reach Lo Monthang.  The last 2 hours I am forcing myself to not break down into tears and fall onto the ground.  My feet hurt so bad.  No one wanted to be my roommate.  Mher.  In her blog, Bekah talks about her roommates.  She talks about how she is not 18 or she is less socially awkward than she thought, because making friends, getting along with people isn’t a problem anymore.  Well.  I am pretty fucking sure that I’m not 18, so I guess that says something about my social skills.  I am tired of trying to make friends.  Considering there are months left, I don’t know if that is a good thing.  It’s not awful or anything, really.  I just don’t belong to either or the distinct groups of friends.  I am tolerated, but not desired.  It is a position I have maintained before, and one I can live with.  But it is not ideal.

The King of Mustang served me warm tang….

Today we raced horses through the Himalayas in the restricted region of Mustang.  Fuck. Yeah.  Images of Alexa’s inner Mongolia experience mixed with bad trail rides flash through my head.  But today was probably the best day of the semester.  We explored caves used 2,500 years ago to protect villagers from Tibetan Terrorists.  My horse ran and I held on, having to pee because of bumps and the wooden saddle, and just laughed into the wind.

My feet are doing strange things.  I fear a mutiny.  I almost burst into tears multiple times yesterday.  There seems to be a pattern here.  The peaks just wouldn’t end.  You would turn a corner and see the top and think “okay, it can’t possibly be farther than that.  That is the top.”   Then you would get there and turn the corner and another peak loomed ahead.  We are so close to Jommsom.  But we aren’t going.  We are going up to Muktinath.  Up.  Fuck this.  I rode a horse for 5 minutes due to a misunderstanding.  I was the only student to do so.  The horse was a fucking bitch.  She tried to kick me as I got on.  She would stop and refuse to move.  Cool, ‘cause I don’t feel alienated enough.  Let’s make me the only one to not walk.  Awesome.  And everyone can watch?  Even better.  I keep imagining DC and even G-ville.  American conveniences.  Starbucks.  Bekah’s chilli.  Dad’s cookies.  Nice things.  Not the disturbing ripples in my toes or the wounds on my heels.  This is what you do when you walk for hours at a time.  Well, this is what I do.  See, I can’t hike and talk at the same time.  If I am going up, I can’t breathe.  If I am going down, I am concentrating on not falling.  I am the worst hiking-conversation-partner ever.  This just adds to my popularity.

We are in Muktinath.  I took the bitch way to get here, obviously.  This involved the quick n’ easy 4 hour hike to Kagbeni, then the hour jeep ride.  The back door to the jeep was held on with a luggage lock.  Isabelle just said “cuchi cuchi injee kin.”  I imagine this is Nepali, but still, WTF?  She tried to read during the jeep ride up the mountain.  The driver was the rural Nepali equivalent of a hipster.  He had a bandana, racing gloves, and a camo jacket.   There was porn tucked into the visor.  Angnima-la was hilarious, of course.  As soon as the jeep started to move he threw himself on me like a bomb was going to go off.  He would tap people’s shoulders and make faces at them.  He would bounce around like a small child.

Ketom left last night.  We had a dance party with all the porters and staff and scared away some Euro tourists.  Angnima stole the show with his dancing.  They asked us to sing.  All we could come up with was “My Girl” and “Alstar”, by smashmouth.  We don’t know the entire lyrics to any song.  I kicked ass at a Nepali card game.  There are two rival rap groups: Yak Attack and Lama Rama.  We have only seen the performance of one group, but it was hilarious.  Angnima-la gave us “mustang coffee” and “mustang punch”.  The punch was neon orange, with white chunks.

It is raining.  Everything is wet.  All my clothes, my sleeping bag.  Audrey droned on for hours about Mac n’ Cheese. Seriously, shut the fuck up.  There is nowhere to escape when you are on the side of a mountain.  I may have considered throwing her off said mountain side (why wouldn’t anyone want to be my roommate, I can’t imagine).  I feel like my feet are presenting their own version of the biblical plagues, informing me of their ever increasing displeasure.  No more possible area for blisters, eh?  Well take this.  Now my toes feel like I am walking on a cheese-grater, there are wrinkled as if I have been standing in water for hours.  My heels are scored with red lines, they do not bleed but are somehow constant open wounds.  We are leaving Muktinath.  We are staying in Muktinath.  We are blown about on the biting wind like the dust that stings my eyes.  It is cold and grey.  My mind is cold and grey.  I am tired.

“I’m not sure what the trouble was that started all of this; the reasons all have run away, but the feeling still exists; it’s not something I would recommend, but it is one way to live, ‘cause what is simple in the moonlight, by the morning never is.”

I remember winter in Nevada.  Getting home and smelling the fire, the warm cookies baking.  Dad coming in with newly chopped kindling.  His breath would rise in puffs of white air as he would stomp the snow from his boots.  What I wouldn’t do for that warmth and comfort.  Of home-made chocolate chip cookies on a couch with warm dogs and a crackling fire.  Or Bekah’s chili and some good bread. Or Thanksgiving dinner, things that just carry the feeling of warmth with them inherently.  Oh. My. God.  peppermint mocha from starbucks.  All of the good feelings associated with Christmas found in one cup.  Holy fucking shit. Mmmm…..

“I miss my old friends, I miss my old face, I miss my old mind, fuck this time and place”

The title of Pablo Neruda’s “Walking Around” has never seemed more applicable.  I know I am being over dramatic.  But seriously, the walking….  I prey to  my memories of comfort.  I think this may be home sickness.  It is the first time I have experienced its ilk.  It isn’t that bad, I don’t know what everyone complains about.  Lovely memories course through my mind like blood in my veins.

“And so it was when anyone tried to speak: their minds would become tangled in remembrance.  Words became floods of thought with no beginning or end, and would drown the speaker before he could reach the life raft of the point he was trying to make.  It was impossible to remember what one meant, what, after all of the words, was intended.”

We reach Jommsom.  My first shower in two and a half weeks.  My hand tingles as I reach for the faucet.  It tingles, and then vibrates again.  I must be more tired than I thought.  I reach for the pipe.  Electrical shivers run through my hand.  Okay, it is not me.  It is the pipes.  What the fuck is happening.  Maybe the light is interfering.  I turn it off and reach for the handle again. Bbbbzzzzzzzzzzz.  My hand is shot through with electrical current.  I am naked and covered in soap.  What. The. Fuck.

On our one free day we are instructed that we must be up at 8 for breakfast.  We will then go on a hike.  Are you kidding me?  Nope.  We are told this while drunk at 9 the night before. Whilst on this hike we must cross a bridge.  It is covered with goats that also must cross.  They do not want to.  They are entirely blocking the bridge and yelling.  Thupten, our language teacher, picks one up and walks across, carrying its screaming body the whole way.  It stops trying to escape and just lets him carry it.  We cross and look back.  The goat herd is tossing goats on to the bridge.  I would be offended if it weren’t so hysterical.

Back in Kathmandu.  We have missed the Dashai festival, famous for many ancient rituals, the most prevalent of which is the robbing of unsuspecting tourists.  Second is goat sacrifices.  Leaving Kathmandu, we had seen the tops of busses covered in goats, moving in to the city.  They street children have procured firecrackers, which they let off with shrieks every five minutes.  I ask Julie what she thinks would happen if I yelled at one of the hobos that regularly tries to get our money.  She says I would probably get in a fist fight… unless they didn’t have any fists.  Most of the hobos are missing limbs.  I find this hilarious. I laugh for five minutes.  She feels bad, but honestly, if they could stop thrusting their deformed extremities in my face it would be great.  I can’t buy you a new hand.  I argue with a cab driver in the middle of a street, while dogs have sex against the tire.  There are razor blades in the street, and a buffalo is eating a sacred offering.  Dinner:  black porous tubes that smell like ass.  Bitter gourd or meat.  Either option is horrifying.  Answer: goat lung.  This is Kathmandu.  It sounds awful, but I am honestly amused.  At least it has personality.  Like getting punched in the face by a hobo, it is not necessarily something pleasant at the time, or something you would long for, but it is fucking awesome afterwards.

Conclusions:  So much is chance, and with or without choice, you must continue.  You can’t know what will happen, and you can’t know how you will feel about it when it does.  Breathe in and take things as they come, with a shrug of your shoulders or a blink of your eyes.  It continues.  It always continues.

“My soul wandered, happy, sad, unending.”

OM MANI PADME HUM