Sitting in Pokhara listening to a discussion on federalism in Nepal...
I flew this morning from Kathmandu to Pokhara. The skies were that dark, troubling grey that is unusual at this time of year in the Himalaya. We'd had days of absolutely cerulean, clear skies -- so crisp that we could see the trails across the Valley on Chandragiri 20 kms away. But something changed in the world over night and there was a chill and something foreboding in the sky in the morning.
Our flight bounced around a bit en route to Pokhara. It's only a 30 minute flight, but Sita and Surendra were a bit uncomfortable by the way that the small plane was shaken (not stirred...) while in the air...
This morning, I was out in the garden early as I woke about 5:30 am. These days Shaku and I are in Leah's bed. It used to be Ezi's bed, but it was moved up to Leah's room (which used to be my study...) when Ezi returned last summer to the US to start college. We'd gone to bed relatively early, 10 pm, so when I woke when the computer turned on on its own (I'm used to this odd curiosity...), I decided to put on a jacket, my cashmere scarf and take a look at the yard while the light came back into the world.
Gita was a bit surprised to see me standing there by the pond when she came in the compound about 6:00 am. She's there that time most days to help Leah get ready for school, then us for work. If there is a true spirit to our home, I'd nominate Gita. She's been with us for 20 years, since just after Joshua was born. Sometimes I wonder who has the better life as we leave at 8 am for work and the mean streets of the city while Gita smiles gently, closes the gate and steps back into our lovely garden to spend the day while we don't get home until nearly 7:30 pm every day. What Gita enjoys most of the week, I long for when I get home on Friday night when I am in my boxers and wearing my crocs til Monday morning. If I can stay in this sanctuary for the whole w/end, I'm content.
This morning as the two Kalis (Kali mere and Sano Kali) were chasing me and themselves around the garden, I went back to where our dhungri bas is growing to observe the bright bursts of dense sheaves of rose colored peach blossoms and the five white petals and yellow stamen of the plum blossoms. Spring brings such beauty for free in our backyard.
There's always much to do back there and the source of endless joy and timelessness. This morning I found myself tossing stones that I'd piled up by an old unused green metal guardhouse in the way beyond. I began to create stone fields around some of the larger bamboo a year or so ago. These were bigger boulders, so heavy that I could just carry one at a time to pile them around some of the clumping bamboo that I didn't really want to spread very far from their cluster center. Then, a couple weeks ago, I started to do the same with smaller, fist-sized stones that I'd collected over the years while digging out the soil. I just toss them around these big bamboo culms so that they look like stone seas that surround the bamboo shoots, separating them from the open fields and defining their space. There's a bit of a Japanese zen style here, but for me, it's just a childhood pleasure, a boy's delight, in tossing these handsome stones onto new piles, forming rocky mandalas around these magnificent vertical grass stalks.
Nature... such shapes, textures, colors, images, full of life and cold, heavy and inanimate... all solid, material, impressive, beautiful, unusual, unique... if there was/is no mind of g-d, then all credit to the wonders and miracle of how atoms and energy combine to amuse and delight we human creatures... could they have really all been created for our pleasure... if so, thank-you, if one doesn't think too deeply on such things, they give great joy and satisfaction...
sometimes that's just enough...
I flew this morning from Kathmandu to Pokhara. The skies were that dark, troubling grey that is unusual at this time of year in the Himalaya. We'd had days of absolutely cerulean, clear skies -- so crisp that we could see the trails across the Valley on Chandragiri 20 kms away. But something changed in the world over night and there was a chill and something foreboding in the sky in the morning.
Our flight bounced around a bit en route to Pokhara. It's only a 30 minute flight, but Sita and Surendra were a bit uncomfortable by the way that the small plane was shaken (not stirred...) while in the air...
This morning, I was out in the garden early as I woke about 5:30 am. These days Shaku and I are in Leah's bed. It used to be Ezi's bed, but it was moved up to Leah's room (which used to be my study...) when Ezi returned last summer to the US to start college. We'd gone to bed relatively early, 10 pm, so when I woke when the computer turned on on its own (I'm used to this odd curiosity...), I decided to put on a jacket, my cashmere scarf and take a look at the yard while the light came back into the world.
Gita was a bit surprised to see me standing there by the pond when she came in the compound about 6:00 am. She's there that time most days to help Leah get ready for school, then us for work. If there is a true spirit to our home, I'd nominate Gita. She's been with us for 20 years, since just after Joshua was born. Sometimes I wonder who has the better life as we leave at 8 am for work and the mean streets of the city while Gita smiles gently, closes the gate and steps back into our lovely garden to spend the day while we don't get home until nearly 7:30 pm every day. What Gita enjoys most of the week, I long for when I get home on Friday night when I am in my boxers and wearing my crocs til Monday morning. If I can stay in this sanctuary for the whole w/end, I'm content.
This morning as the two Kalis (Kali mere and Sano Kali) were chasing me and themselves around the garden, I went back to where our dhungri bas is growing to observe the bright bursts of dense sheaves of rose colored peach blossoms and the five white petals and yellow stamen of the plum blossoms. Spring brings such beauty for free in our backyard.
There's always much to do back there and the source of endless joy and timelessness. This morning I found myself tossing stones that I'd piled up by an old unused green metal guardhouse in the way beyond. I began to create stone fields around some of the larger bamboo a year or so ago. These were bigger boulders, so heavy that I could just carry one at a time to pile them around some of the clumping bamboo that I didn't really want to spread very far from their cluster center. Then, a couple weeks ago, I started to do the same with smaller, fist-sized stones that I'd collected over the years while digging out the soil. I just toss them around these big bamboo culms so that they look like stone seas that surround the bamboo shoots, separating them from the open fields and defining their space. There's a bit of a Japanese zen style here, but for me, it's just a childhood pleasure, a boy's delight, in tossing these handsome stones onto new piles, forming rocky mandalas around these magnificent vertical grass stalks.
Nature... such shapes, textures, colors, images, full of life and cold, heavy and inanimate... all solid, material, impressive, beautiful, unusual, unique... if there was/is no mind of g-d, then all credit to the wonders and miracle of how atoms and energy combine to amuse and delight we human creatures... could they have really all been created for our pleasure... if so, thank-you, if one doesn't think too deeply on such things, they give great joy and satisfaction...
sometimes that's just enough...
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