This one is from a rickshaw ride, but I’ve taken many taxi rides in the last week and a half, and I absolutely LOVE it. The taxi drivers bob and weave and beep and brake through motorcycles and bicycles and dogs and people and buses and cars and other taxis and huge potholes and piles of trash and fruit carts and some times even a cow. It’s incredible to participate in what looks to be undrivable conditions with what seems to be no organization. Yet, it works. No yelling, no accidents that I’ve seen. This mass chaos is navigated with immediate response and probably a calm resolve to get from a to b. While waiting for my father to purchase his turquoise I was lectured to by a Tibetan man about the importance of calming the mind and removing the chaos from ones essence. Truthfully I need daily reminders of this and there are many westerners here to study buddhism at monasteries and such, but perhaps it’s tailoring the response to the daily chaos with the precision and mindfulness and flexibility of the common taxi driver that is the answer.
How about these two huh? Same plane, same destination. Kathmandu, Nepal. One, fully outfitted in hand sewn buckskin, carrying a deer foot purse and packing what looked to be a freshly skinned bear pelt for a coat. The other, snappily dressed in a fashionable blue blazer, a fresh hat with coordinating blue band and superfly pleather bag, again..in blue.
This maybe doesn’t sum up Nepal, but it does have a certain irony. Way different class levels living side by side, with the truth seeking tourist thrown in for good measure.
Been here a week and am still adjusting. We are pretty much all the same, just different.
I don’t know. A half buried lizard in a bag and a snake tombstone with explicit instructions not to dig up. The landscape is strange around my daily work environment.
This has been the longest stretch I haven’t written. I know you are all gone now. I’ve looked at my stats. Wide open. No traffic. Starting from scratch. Some of you have been kind enough to ask when its coming back. Had some technical issues, had some personal changes, had some career changes. It’s been a weird 3 months. Seemed to have lost myself some. Some of that is good. Some isn’t. I could wax nostalgic, fill this with cliches, try and piece something together. But I’m not going to. Lets just say, ultimately we are all alone. Sometimes we get to share some time with someone and that time feels wonderful. Sometimes that someone is only around for a short time, sometimes a long time, but ultimately..we have to figure it out on our terms. And that’s ok.
