Middle Passage Middle Earth

dear ones,

life in the slow lane here in budhanilkantha, on the outskirts (literally...) of burgeoning kathmandu. we can see the bright lights big city below us, but our sanity is preserved (slightly...) by looking north in the back up at 8,000' shivapuri and the big dipper just above it.

there is a quiet in this neighborhood in the darkness befitting the looming mass of the ridge behind us. even the spreading conifer trees seem to take on a more evocative and illusive night-time personality. their whorled arms reach out, almost as if to embrace the stranger walking past, with shadow and form conmingling in the silouetted images under the sparkling blackness. they seem to live as our dominating human world turns to rest...

i've just come in from two hours watering the trees and sitting in silence back there. a fine meditation after a long & complex day in the human rights (wrongs...) commission, then almost longer evening coming home across town. living in the super-ego of political kulture is a bit torturous. not quite as painful as the reality of the crimes that our staff must investigage, but the blatant hypocrisy of institutions & individuals on issues related to human rights can be agonizing. so much rhetoric and high-sounding platitudes, but such little true empathy or human concern. it's easy to lose respect for the political leaders who mouth such noble sentiments, then put them back in the drawer when their speech is done. alas...

then, there is the reality of the streets of kathmandu. actually, i'm no longer sure what to think. since i'm taking taxis more often, esp. to come from my orifice over on pulchowk to meet shakun at the boutique on durbar marg, i have time to roll down the window and watch the world go by. what a world! our beloved k'du has grown from a modest town perched in a remote valley in the himalaya to a dense, urban congestion like a malthusian nightmare in the himalaya. the growth has been phenomenal over the past years and the numbers of cars & motorcycles locked into the same city streets as existed 20 years ago is outrageous.

last night it took over an hour to go from the commission to the boutique! about 40 minutes just to get from the stadium to the post office. god knows what was going on, but even when we got past ratna park and the traffic began, to put it generously, flow, i still couldn't find out what had been holding us up -- except for the mere congestion of it all.

but, not to put only a negative spin on the congestion, which is easy & fair enough to do, i'm still a bit awed by the transformation. kindof like seeing josh go from this shy, almost frightened child to this 6'3" young massive man towering over me with his innocent yet playful smile. although k'du may not be quite as playful, the teeming humanity of it all has an odd attraction for me. i actually enjoy looking out the taxi window watching people make their own ways home, on foot, by motorcycle, in their cars, large and small. seeing the nepalis sit in a momo shop eating or buying indian sweets in a well-lit arcade or the mix of middle-class professionals step around the villagers seeking their way around a city that overwhelms their senses and even desires. it's a monumental parade of earthy existence and, since i don't have to struggle at the wheel, like a rat inching my way forward across the city, i can sit back, like at the movies, and observe the beauty, trauma and reality of the world in which i live...

then, later, last night, when i opened nepalnews.com i saw that the young communist league (a new maoist offshoot) had taken out a torch-lite procession at 6:15 pm last night around asan tole, which must have caused the traffic jam. they were protesting the government's searching of their offices for weapons. such is the state of the state here in nepal in 2007. the maoists, a revolutionary movement, is shocked that the government may actually want to know if they are storing weapons in their offices. so they lit their torches and march around the dense urban environment to let the people know that they are a force to be reckoned with and no one, especially not the government, should treat them lightly...

'may you live in interesting times', the sages are said to have spoken. what exactly they meant is for us, the living, to try to understand. definitely the turmoil awakens the senses, but risks the common fabric of life. there is something to be said for mere peacefulness and harmony, when we can find it.

now, a new morning, as dylan sang, a new day dawning, and i've been out in the garden since 5:30 am looking for young, prepubescent bamboo shoots coming up among the P. nigra (black bamboo) and the P. henonis (a 50' variety). the tropical phyllostachus genus, originally from the river valleys of china, seem to love the early growing season, while other mountain varieties are comfortable waiting til late july or august to reach out from the darkened earth toward the heliotropic realms.

for those who don't know, we're the proud parents of some 35+ varieties of bamboo and nigalo (thinner, reed-like bamboos) in our garden. like the children before them, each day brings a new delight of change, transformation and evolution. the native H. hookeranius has exquisite blue and purple culms. there are the tiniest of leaves reappearing after it was moved to our land from my friend punya's garden over in jawalkahel. there's a a thin, arching, 20' variety of running phyllostachus that we brought from bali some ten years ago that is sending up scores of new shoots already. while the 15 new bamboo varieties we were given by the amazing 'bamboo garden' nursery outside portland, oregon last summer are almost all sending up the most petite of new shoots while resting in gunny sacks under a native peach tree in the back yard. as you may have gathered, i can literally spend hours meandering among the bamboo, watching, cleaning, watering, nipping and enjoying the beauty of mother nature's child...

after all, it's that time of year, once again, in the nepal when the short, fleeting springtime shifts up into summer gear and the heat of the day w/ the occasional showers sends himalayan growth spurts in among the trees, saplings, shrubs, bamboo and grasses.

for me, hours in the garden have become a deeply rooted expression of my middle passage through middle earth...

xxoxo, keith