flying into tomorrow - - - travelling for four months in the cabin of a baking hot lorry no english spoken only flies wavering listlessly around the trail of cigarette smoke. You will never be alone you will always have to make a decision as to how to adjust your collar. you look at me strangely but that is only the result of your brain nerves which whirr in a spiral fashion around the coils of your midnight dreams
taking things to extremes
you smile not in the way that the grass is green but in the way that a cat jumps back when you step upon its paw. make a move. go on, its your turn to move. it is true that push may come to shove but only then can the shove melt into the emerging golden stove and unravel like a masterpiece to sit upon the threshold stroking one's chin in mild-mannered musing loosening all ties waving gently to the listless flies. do you have another five rupees? the bandwagon is departing and this time no-one will be left behind.
it was vincent who encouraged me to do some automatic writing and i must say it has become quite a ravishing activity not to think for one jot about what one will write - a liberating release of words keep the pen flowing as long as the pen does not stop moving that is thy aim. also good for identification of latent ideas or aspects of your consciousness that you may not be aware of, in a freudian analytical sort o fashion.
upon entering nepal, ioana and i did not want to follow the advice of everybody and get hustled onto a bus straight to pokhara or kathmandu. in time, we would come to appreciate all the attractions pokhara had to offer but first we wanted to follow a trail not recommended to tourists. it was a twenty-something hour local little bus packed periodically with people and bags of rice as well as a goat clambouring on, stopping on and off at chai houses during the night, high-strung warbling music stringing our passage beneath the noble dark pines, to arrive at five in the morning and sleep somewhat on the pavement as the little village world woke up. there it was tourist non-central. lots of wide open curious eyes following our passage. we didnt know where our passage would take us "maybe we will hitchhike about" manglesen sounds like a prepossessing place, the capital of the district of achcham. ioana had heard that manglal meant happiness in sanskrit, and i knew about the hindi phrase "apki yatraa mangalmay ho, have a nice trip" and somebody said there was internet there, but actually no private cars were plying the road. we didn't get beyond the river that morning. it invited us to wash, then to linger and bathe while the local children gathered round. i was conducting english conversations, turning shyness into slowly flourishing tales of who thought who was forty years old; ioana got the chalk pastels out and encouraged the making of artistic endeavour.
later that evening there is Sambhoo, the veteran who had served us chai and tales of a life in mumbai, now back in his village helping the wayside wayfarers to book a place on a bus - there is always confusion at the bus stands - "there is no bus tonight. come and sleep in this room for eighty rupees and get the bus at six o'clock tomorrow" by the stream in the evening a youth from kathmandu introduces himself as sahundra and regales us with his disgust for the litter strewn everywhere along the bank and filthy habits of the uneducated local population, and the twisting roads which twist and twist through these mountains and create many hours of travel before one gets anywhere. the tyranny of distance. the cost of living in the mountains, compared to the plains where the bus sails along at a constant swift pace. sambhoo has seemed a reasonable, if effusive, gentleman so far, but at that point his wandering conversation begins to wander more circuitously: "the bus will leave here at six o' clock tomorrow morning. thank you for coming to nepal, you have the very much welcome in my good country. do you have sixtyrupees i am a poor man Thank you have a nice stay," he beams his loquacious smile while neaby sahundra mouths "don't give him anything; he will spend it on drink"
here, in the outskirst of pokhara, the warm soupy effluent from cement construction activities fills the neaby watercourses and turns them opaque grey.
after writing the above words, couchsurfer Abu in Kathmandu appraised me of the fact that it is in fact the underlying carboniferous rock which turn the water that opaque grey, and i breathed a little sigh of relief.
i feel that i have learned quite a lot about photography from ioana, particularly her style of focussing on a close up something - particularaly flowers - while the world elsewhere recedes hazily. also in technical issues like reducing the camera exposure to allow less light to flood the picture, emphasizing the shadows. rather than pressing and shooting, thus objectively capturing the world through the lens of the camera, i have come to see the role of the photographer as the same as that of an artist, capable of manipulating the visual world in order to construct the desired image.
could baked breat around sticks in the fire, covered with honey, eaten with onions fried in olive oil and garlic, accompanied by salted peanuts then a slice of yak milk's cheese, then honey and bread, salted peanuts be said to be a beautiful diet? i ask myself. i am growing familiar with the feeling of ants crawling over me and biting me, and of mosquitos flying round me and biting me too. i had no iodea this day was to be so shanty. i took a walk down the hill to the lakeside and there asked a gardener across the military barbed wired wall if he could fill my three bottles with water. this he did with a smile and also gave me two big sprigs of mint, upon my request. there were people making noise while bathing on the opposite bank of the river. this i had already done in the morning, when i swam to a big half-submerged branch and broke off little branches, with which i made a fire and baked bried twisted round sticks, and ate it with onions fried in olive oil and garlic, then laid back and looked at the trees.
now i can feel the force of the raindrops pressing against my back through my plastic sheet. my blessed plastic sheet! if it wasn't for you i would be getting a thorough whipping. the plastic is being thoroughally whipped, the whole world is being whipped, the trees are dancing electrically they are responding with glee to the wild wayward tugs of the wind and the rain. i want to dance gleefully too! huddling beneath the buckled sheet the earth is trembling with the roll of the thunder the whole world is being gleefully whipped
water in tumultuous waves is being visited upon the earth pouring in tumultuous vehement droves.
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