Fried potatos with omelette and bread, at a rooftop cafe, in the heart of Bhaktapur, Durbar Square, the cultural heart of Nepal, former capital city, not as frenetic as Kathmandu, and not as polluted, well, in the center. My lungs are reveling. The sun is crawling above the hooded misty valley, watched by the towering old town. It´s over and over again and again whelming. I imagine one of my good friends, Simon, who is crazy about potatoto with eggs for breakfast and mountains, sitting next to me, excited, both rubbing our hands, rolling our tows, welcoming another bright day. I can see his smile… sharing experiences, excitement is something I more and more miss. Sitting face to face with the beauty, the one and only, with a silent smile in the unexpression, talking in monologues about the saturating fantasticness. Absorbed and trapped at the same time. Randomly take aware a deep breath, answering the incredibility of this tiny spot on earth with a “Wow. Wow wow wow!” loudly, to turn myself inside out literally – I am here! Companions are a great mirror, occassionally a great wall, even though they deform a bit till destroy, a fullfilment and a pain in the arse. Like chinese travelers, a dead certain one. Rude. Loud. Ignorant, disrespectful and moronic. The best part of it, they always, talking about a country like China you have to generalize, travel in groups and they are obsessed about, they own each other, they are fleshistic. If one of their belongings moves more far than they can spit their regurgitation, panic. Shouting. Questioning. Laughing. At least they are self-ironic. How I survived my travel in China. I remember I said, “Once China, never again!” I doubt that, but I could move around their empire without running into them. How can they get so lost born in a country where you are by birth more a number than a little flag in the lead. But they just don´t get it, young or old, heavily performing a pro version of a traveler or in elephant trousers, they missed the moment when they crossed the border turning their status into a visitor, a guest, a chinese not being in China anymore.
Om. Big OM!!! Relax… they are only chinese. Poor chinese.
Oh Nepal, how I love you. In Bhaktapur my heart stays twisted. I am still searching for an adequate adjective, a word, words, superlatives, but how could it be possible, how I could be possibly able to put such fantastism in a sequence of letters, building words, constructing concepts, images, perspectives, excluding, isolating, one thought, an epic perception, an assumption of senses, a misunderstanding by understanding. Fanatism!
Bhaktapur is much smaller, less dusty, busy, spoilt, no punk rock show posters, less stoners, less hippies.
All in all a good deal. Mode of silence again. No companions, no willing to compromise. But I am sort of a color print in this rosy cheeked, wrinkly brown, glossy grey carved dormant pride, expanding horizontal and vertical, in any direction, like there is just endlessness that tight below the roof of the world. Black ink colors, all what I am talking about since decades. So I am the magnet for the narrow-minded and the rogues. – “Today we are all brothers, doesn´t matter where we are from.” Hanging around with some hoodies, showing off tattoos, stoners smoking, youngsters have to watch, stay put in the pyramid of obedience, gosh I am so glad I don’t need this shit on the road, and pot on top, watching their curiosity and awareness fading… “Are you bored?” – “I am.” Having fun with streetkids on the steps of some temples, taking pictures of us with a remote for whatever electronic device, after denying hundred times I won’t pay for a picture with them and I don’t have money for their snotty noses anyway… playing with a bunch of boys from the neighbourhood ping-pong on a stoneplate, the net some bricks and a piece of string, amazingly intelligent constructed, designed to reuse, the bat wooden, the rubber left the game long time ago. A dog is barking furious, in rage sticking his head out of a common bay window, wooden, planks framing centuries of a men´s fragility and brilliance, mysterious watching carvings, with a wink of darkness, second floor of a beautiful old historic medival house, adored by stubborn impermanence. Left of the tennis table an old pond, a flooded former water well, a meter or so below ground level. Who smashes the ball into has of course catch it. Childhood memories… everywhere is history and people, families, communities following the wandering stretch of the sun, invading through on of the labyrinth´s alleys, turning their faces towards walls or fences, their back on the sun, charging warmness for the shaded hours of the day. Eating. Drinking tea. Knitting. Combing. Petting. Butchering. Playing. Sorting crops. Sleeping. Sharing presence.
This country kills and leaves me bursted into tears to slice me again.
I needed to cry.
Who hasn’t seen Nepal doesn’t know what beauty means.
Souvenir street seller demanded a chat with me in private. I expected, with a 99% plausibility, because they are, loiterung, for lurking they are too wasted, at nearly every corner, touristic corners in particular of course, “You smoke? Weed, hashish, black, what you want. I have. Sir, wait!” But surprisingly, “You are interested in human bones? I have.” He pointed on his left thigh. “You want to see? – Ok no problem.” Not that I don’t want to but it feels not ok to encourage them to sell their ancestor’s bones – Why so moral? Guess, why should I take a look at bones, human or not, what’s the difference, what´s the deal anyway. He wanted to buy my boar´s teeth I bought on Palawan. Offering me 500$, I bought it for 15. But wouldn’t sell it for 1000$. There has to be a limit, even if this is materialism, even in Nepal.
With every word I attempt to describe my Nepal, I fail, I soil the plentifulness, the potential of experience. Naming what surrounds us, tryign to put it in order, makes live easier as we are used of and we know it, but not as we are created for. Captured in recreating.