Dhaulagiri and Cedar

SO. so. Here another slew of entries after quite the hiatus. Now it is Tibetan New Year and we (dearest didi: ms. cedar brant.. and myself) have been on a work retreat at a lovely nunnery backed into one of the forested foothills of the Kathmandu Valley.

For one week it was this: Isan - Painting, Cedar - Writing, Both Sisters: Drinking gallons of Milk Tea. Two days ago we climbed the mountain (Shivapuri) behind the nunnery hoping to do a bit of Himal gazing, the clouds had already hunkered in on the horizon so we settled for getting pushed around by the wind on a gigantic mountain-gazing boulder and watching the foothills fade, row by row into the night. Shivapuri has a long tradition of Hindu yogis living and meditating in the forest, and near the top of Shivapuri lives one such Baba. While we had a plan to hike down to the nunnery in the dark if need be, in the last light of day we came upon the little hermitage with all its prayer flags, a golden lion mouth over the spring, a fire going in the open kitchen and a few friendly Austrian faces peering out from beside the Indian Baba, and we said, lets stay! So we squatted beside the firewood with Baba cooking us rice and curry beside his Shiva trident casting long trident-shaped shadows, and upon closer inspection decided the Austrians (very tall and pale with long shiny black hair and even shinier pointed lil’whites) were in fact vampires, so there we stayed, two mountain-hungry Brant sisters, three Vampires from Vienna, and the sparkly old Sadhu eating rice and drinking the fire smoke into the night. We then curled to sleep in our dark bare concrete room in the temple, which smelled of years of puja offerings (less romantic smell than it sounds, actually we had a conversation about it)

Isan “ ick. what is that smell?

Cedar “ yeah, it does smell a little bad in here, it’s just that stinky Nepal smell”

Isan “ Really? I didn't realize there was a specific stinky Nepal smell?”

Cedar “ Yeah, its this smell I have smelled a lot here, what is it?.... its like stinky puja stuff, that’s it! its built up old puja smell!”

Isan “ oh yeah, yeah, that’s it.”

And so we drifted off in an olfactory cloud of a million lit butter lamps, sour ghee, holy water and milk, heaps of burned juniper, incense, decomposing marigolds and fruits into a remarkably deep and lovely sleep

We woke before light to climb up the white stone steps in the hush and orange sky of dawn, past orchids and golden tendrils of moss, and caught the first pink in the mountains as they slowly emerged like whales form the murky deep, from the night, from the smoke of a million fires warming water in the valleys for tea. We sat in the wind, with mountains like a great rumpled cloth in the morning – a rag used to polish some great crystal orb of stars.

We descended to find the baba in his hermitage in the woods boiling us tea, when asking him about the cow, he snorts and paws the air imitating a tiger with his orange long johns, white beard, and star-like eyes. The vampires had taken sick in the night and so we hoofed it away from them, sleeping pale-ey in the sun, away from the hermitage cow with a bucket on its head, away from the baba over his smokey Shiva fire and down into the large trees where monkeys rustled around in the leaves, and the leaves shown silver, and the trail led down to the Gompa, to the city, to that great blinding warp of golden unknown that strings out, the paint, the gold lining of words mapping mapping mapping our way through this world of living.

Eating Buffalo Thoughts

How quickly place is absorbed, your mind no longer trips on the network of images that create the different-ness but rather enters the flow of it. The sounds, smell, and very air soon become familiar and yet still vibrate with otherness. Something that inspires me here is how much of life is lived out in the streets: public spaces are an extension of the home. It is especially evident with the onset of the cold months.

Coming from a culture that battens down the hatches as soon as the snow flies, squirreling inside for months, it is a complete flip that here people move out to warm up, to be with each other. During the sun hours the courtyards and mandirs are crowded with people warming up. Some of the seniors move entire beds out into the squares and streets to lay and sleep in the sun. The work gets moved out too, tailors and their sewing machines, the metalworkers, the blanketmakers, everyday a group of women sit with their babies and their work (sanding brass Buddha statues) outside my building.

All day I shuffled the plastic roof table to stay in the sunlight, the paper, and ink balanced on surrounding chairs, my ‘camping’ hair tied in a knot and tucked up in the little wool cap that these days only comes off in the night from turning my head too many times on the pillow. On the roof top next to mine the neighbor women watched, amused by my drawings of the brooms, basket, and rice that seem so ordinary to them “Why?” They ask and I explain that these obects are beautiful and that we do not have them in America, they are pleased by this, saying how important the broom, nanglo (flat drying basket) and Dhan ( unhusked rice) are to their culture, then they go back to debating the worth of an expensive pair of blue jeans the little sister had just bought.

In the afternoon the butcher girl brings me a plate of food: beaten rice, cilantro potatoes, pickle, garlicky greens, and an unknown. She is 28, unmarried, and beautiful. Returning home at night I often see her blow-torching a chicken or cleaving a buffalo stomach, her waist-length hair swinging with each blow in the dim light.

On our roof she is telling me how she refused 5 arranged marriage offers, that they came to ‘look’ at her and she didn’t want to ‘go’ with any of them, that yes they were rich, but they must also care for her and then she will care for them, that if they do bad habits she will not look away, shewill be angry. I nodded in a hopefully cross-cultural “go girl” sort of a way.

We then moved on to talk about Christmas, and she asked what we call the man with the... she mimes a long beard

“Santa” I say

“Oh Santa, he is so beautiful!” exclaiming this her face brightens like….well, like Santa.

I tasted the ‘unknown’ food on my plate. It was like cream cheese, breaded and deep fried in spicy masala. At the neighborhood Boje’s (parties) I have been served a span of unknowns, the Newars are notorious for meat and often it is in a sort of jello form. They also make chutney from fresh aloe. Taste wise; I actually prefer the dried fish jelly to the aloe achar.

“Yo ke ho? Mitto Chha” What is this? It is tasty, I ask.

Buffalo Brain is the response.

“You like it? I made it myself” again a Santa-like beam.

I thank her and I thank the empty space of the shiny black Buffalo.

The sky is paling, the sun going, I wrap a blanket around my waist and continue drawing the broom. My hajuramma appears to rearrange the drying radish and perch on a small pile of bricks in order to look down into the street, I go over and lean over the warm concrete wall, together we watch the white-trousered men take in the last sun and the grandmothers already in shadow perched together like chubby pigeons, wrapped in layers of woolen shawls.

kathmandu

HajurAmma

It is morning and apparently the full moon eclipse cleared the skies. After a string of foggy hazy mornings that set a deep chill to the bones I am sitting on the roof with coffee and my HajurAmma soaking in some winter rays. We sit together on cornhusk mats, her shiny little feet tucked up and under her long red shawl, my feet large and be-woolened in some hippy Himalaya socks. She is repotting various plants, sifting the dirt for kera (insects) that she claims are bad for the flowers, plants… she is fierce when it comes to insects and I have learned not to show her any that I find, like the beautiful hairy caterpillar I found during another sunning afternoon and pointed with childlike enthusiasm “ Hernus H.Amma, kasto ramro!” (Please look grandmother! How Nice!) Which then resulted in her furrowing her smooth brow and herding the little fellow onto the edge of a basket with a stick and dropping him over the edge of the roof into the street below, claiming that it was not nice and would bite us all over and make us itch.

I look around the rooftop garden and notice various things I have thrown away that she has retrieved and used, plastic bottles, Green Magma jars, and plastic bags. The other day she gave me a lesson on composting, telling me to put my vegetable waste in one bag and other waste in another bag and that then the vegetable waste will be put into the land. Roger copy that.

Now that flower season is tapering I no longer find the little bunches of chrysanthemums tucked into my doorjamb or windowsill in the morning, but mustard greens are in full swing so I will find a big leafy bunch on my doormat, we have grown more familiar so that it is no longer a quiet shuffling offering, but often accompanied with (if my door is locked) loud banging and shouting in Newari until I open the door, some mornings there is still a quiet surprise like the gundruk. Gundruk is this tasty ‘thing’ made from fermented greens ( I think) some friends who do not share my taste for it say it is Rotted Grass, whereas I prefer Aged Spinach, in any case it is a winter food and looks like dried black seaweed hair. One morning I went to put on my bike helmet and inside was a big nest of dry gundruk, yum.

We exchange plates of popcorn and now its tangerine season so I bring home bags of the little jewels and we sit in the sun peeling and eating, she organizes the peels and seeds into neat piles. One night she walked into my apartment, unfurling her had to reveal a crystal like piece of rock sugar and one pale green cardamom pod, “Khannus” “eat”.

As I work on my computer (on the roof where its warm) she sits or lays down to sleep next to me, she also encourages me to stop working and take a nap on the corn mats in the sun. Now when I bring my yoga mat on the roof she makes funny yoga imitations points at the mat and says exercise garne?

At night I will make tea and we sit together on the floor in the cold room, bundled and drinking warm tea, often when I am drawing she will watch and run her hands across the smooth paper. When I was packing my bags (moving!) I found some body lotion, she was greatly amused watching me smother my arms and legs and then she took some and hitched up her skirts, shawls and followed suit.

Today I am moving and she came to my door very early, with a steaming mug of tea and hot chapatti, in Nepali she asks why I am going? Who I will eat with? Who will I talk to?

Oh grandmother, I feel endlessly fortunate to have moved in to your building, all the hours watching eachothers faces in the winter sun, living our lives next to one another, my drawings, and your pickles. Both of us alone and quietly watching the others habits. My time here feels full of love because of you.

I go to get a taxi to move my bags back to Kathmandu and when I return to get my bags there is a pink plastic bag on top of my backpack, it is full of flowers and herbs from her pots. The whole neighborhood watches as I fill every inch of the taxi with my bags, rolls of paper, books, I look around for HajurAmma, she is not there, I smell the fresh sage from the pink bag and look up, there on the roof, she is smiling down, her hands in namaskarasana pressing to her forehead, the early sky like pale blue flames behind her.

browline

Here we sit on the roof furrowing our brows against the sun.

techno temples

In the morning dark, the Ganesh temple across from my room is bathed in oil lamps, incense, flower petals, soft footsteps and hands moving about the tiny old temple. By night a wall of blankets circles the temple, floodlights are strung between buildings and a DJ moves in.

It is Wedding Season here in Nepal. As I sit typing, my little dark apartment is flooded with the vibrations of techno from the temple square across the street. Most nights I am put to sleep by the cadence of the Newari men who gather with drums and harmonium in the Mandir (little covered sitting structure) at dark, sitting cross- legged, leaning to share the huka, and continuously chanting from piles of leaf-like papers, with the onset of Wedding Season that has all changed. It is time for Katie Perry to have her turn in the Mandir, along with re-mixed Jay-Z and Justin Timberlake and his boys, this square is getting turned up… so I have developed the skill of falling asleep to the consistency BEAT.

In the morning all the flags and blanket walls will be gone and the women will be carrying their brass plates with burning pools of oil, pressing petals to their wispy hairbuns, tossing water and rice, ringing bells.

All over the city, Nepali style brass marching bands process with the newlyweds. A procession, a personal parade, and all traffic jammed and waiting and listening. The sound is so loud and joyful I forget that I am stuck on my bike in a column of chugg-chugg- chugging exhaust. All the women wear these impossibly lovely sequined saris and at night it looks like little human shaped galaxies bumping along on the back of motorbikes, each bead and sequin flashing, burning in the erratic lights of the street.

happy december

The red stones are self-arisen Shiva lingums, aniconic stones that live in the streets and courtyards all over the city and are worshipped daily. They are my favorite objects in this land, although I flew over one at highspeed in the dark peddling home, I don't know what hurt more: my skinned shins or my pride..as the dark air erupted with teenage laughter.

The other images are: radishes and citrus in the morning markets, men eating in the building next door to my apartment, motorcycling outside the valley, a child in the traditional cloth of the Bhinsengaar caste ( the family name in my neighborhood), citrus harvest in my hallway.

My Home, CHYASAL

NET

Photos from walking around my lovely neighborhood.

FLAME

TOOTH

GROUP

TOSS

ZIP-OFF SLEEVES

STICKS
NAP

NET