Boudha

Boudha! It is indisputable that spending the last 14 months in America has totally spoiled me.

Arriving in kathmandu yesterday, you would think I'd never been here before with the way I was overwhelmed...

From the airport, we trudged with our packs out to the street, where we finally got a taxi and then proceeded to immediately get stuck in a crazy traffic jam, breathing in kathmandu's polluted air. And then, then the monsoon rains began, sheets of water pouring down and the car became fogged and the driver had to keep repeatedly wiping the window with newspapers.

And then, boudha. Throngs of people circumambulating the stupa. Lepers and disfigured people, mangy dogs and blind singing beggars. A pant-less baby pooping in the gutter. Butter lamps and incense and the smell of sewage. Overwhelming!

Today we're a bit more well rested and things didn't seem quite so crazy. Now, we're about to hop in a taxi up to the green rice paddies of pharping...

Well, we made it through the dreaded 14 hr flight from Chicago-passing the time watching a movie filled with "bad informations" (as the Khyentse yangsi says you need to not fill your head with), and the oh-so-sweet Kung Fu panda 2, listening to Sigur ros and dozens of Indian babies alternately screaming and cooing on their parent's laps. K and I took turns sleeping on the floor. Exiting the plane into the Delhi airport, I would have known I was in India even with my eyes closed from the scent of spices mixed with BO that immediately washed over me. It doesn't sound good, but last nice it smelled quite nice to me. However, today, India is a bit of a shock to the system, having just spent 14 months in the god realms of the avenues of salt lake and park city!

I had forgotten the intensity of the heat here, the flies, the garbage, the ceaselessly honking horns, the smell of burning plastic, the stray dogs skulking around your legs in the streets, the small children in their white school uniforms-wearing backpacks more than half their size. But onwards we go...me and my nausea (and k) are off to Kathmandu in a few hours...

Location:India!

Sigur Rós - Ára Bátur HQ (recording)

The stories of this book resonate within me

Why did I never hear of Finnish author Tove Jansson until just recently? How is it possible that this beautiful beautiful writer escaped me?
Today I finished The Summer Book, one of the sweetest, most wonderful books I have ever read. The writing is clear and unpretentious...making me want to take up my own pen once again. I can't shake the feeling that this book brought upon me, as though a spell (much like the Swedish author Linda Olsson's, Astrid and Veronika). 

Sakya Trizin!

Amazing Amazing Amazing! There really are no words to describe what it's like to be in the presence of a living Buddha...All I can say is that despite the traffic and skipped meals and sitting on a concrete floor for five hours and being lost and lack of sleep--it was worth it!

And so the alpenglow is over for the night, the sky now purple above the mountains. my daylong headache finally almost gone after ingesting copious amounts of orange gatorade, tylenol, ibuprofren and tea with cream and honey. the headache brought on by money worries? travel worries as the impending date of our departure to asia creeps closer? 'course i'm so happy and excited to go, still...i dread the long plane ride...squashed into a long row of seats in economy class. at least it's only 19 hours...

I haven't been able to bring myself to write here for some time now--too immersed in life to be able to enter this space. The summer has come, and almost gone--the second summer I didn't feel the cold New England sea.

Still, we jumped into the icy waterfall pool in our underwear, there in the woods. We've slept in the hammock under the stars. We've gorged on tomato pie, berries, cucumbers, corn. I've read the beautiful Bitter in the Mouth and lived in a tiny tent in a forest in upstate New York.

Now, we are off to see Sakya Trizin in Vancouver, then on to India and Nepal...