loving this lately
Saturday, December 3, 2011
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Of Note
1) The movies Restless and Submarine
2) Persimmons and walnuts
3) Sweet potato greens soup with olive oil and feta
4) Layers of wool
5) Upcoming: Ali Shaw's The Man Who Rained and Linda Olsson's The Kindness of Your Nature
6) Sigur Ros new album in spring!
7) Spending my first ballet class in 17 years with professional ballet dancers=unnerving
8) A day in the kitchen roasting chickpeas, butternut, apples, pumpkins and their seeds; baking pie, making pumpkin soup and avocado kale salad
9) The sweetness that is my work
10) H&M insanity
11) snow and more snow
Teej!
I've been meaning to post this since I was in Nepal a few months ago!
When the music first began, I was worried it would stop before I’d get a chance to document it. K and I were practising in our room. I was itching to finish and race out to the balcony to record this strange occurence. The music was like nothing I’d ever heard--it rose up from Bhanjang as though to the heavens--this blasting Nepali pop. Little did I know I had nothing to worry about, as the music marked the first day of Teej, beginning at 8AM the first day and not ending until the night of the third! Instead of worrying that the music would end, I soon began to worry about my sanity-or lack thereof-as just a handful of songs were roatated at an ear-splitting volume over the next few days--ultimately boring into my brain.
From what I’ve been able to glean, Teej is a Hindu festival for woman which lasts for three consecutive days. During this time, the men supposedly stay home and cook, and the women dress up and go to temples to pray to Shiva for a good husband and/or the health of their families. The married women dress in shimmering red saris accented with green, moving through the streets of Pharping en shimmering masse. In the evening, the women and girls gather together and dance (to said blaring music).
In Bhanjang, the little village down below Karma Chagme’s monastery, two enormous speakers had been set up in front of the shops in the dirt. They stood there, blasting their music through sun, fog and rain. It was the music from these speakers that I heard that first morning (and the next, and the next). Along with the addition of the speakers in Bhanjang, across the street below the school, a tent was set up next to a small shrine. Banners of triangular colored cloth crisscrossed the street.
In the morning, the music was the soundtrack to the villagers going about their daily routines--the women spreading cobs of bright yellow corn, husks and wet sheets on roofs; sitting in the sun combing their freshly washed, impossibly long black hair; dogs chasing small chickens; laundry hung to dry; men standing around.
Throughout the day, the tent slowly began to fill, first with jubilantly dancing little girls holding hands twirling in frilly dresses; then with more and more women, until evening when the tent became a mass of undulating red in the rain, while men and boys looked on.
Sitting on my bed, the music mixed with the sounds of the monastery: the blowing of horns, crashing of cymbals and thumping of drums by the young monks up in the temple. It mixed with the sound of K chanting along to a loudly playing recording of Penor Rinpoche and his monks chanting and playing instruments--resulting in the most horrific cacophony I had ever heard.
Even after K and I had threaded our way through the lush green fields, where dry cornstalks towered above us and rice grew to our waists, where white cranes flew and goatherds tended their goats, to the other side of the valley, we could still here the music! Even as we walked through the neighboring village of Drolod and climbed up scaffolding whose safety we questioned, to the top of the 118 foot Guru RInpoche statue being built, there was still the music’s echo.
Last night, Teej ended with the women down in the tent singing and clapping out rhythms. What did Teej teach me? How lovely silence is! It made me miss the whirring of crickets, the cooing of pigeons, the occasional honk of a horn going down the mountain.
When the music first began, I was worried it would stop before I’d get a chance to document it. K and I were practising in our room. I was itching to finish and race out to the balcony to record this strange occurence. The music was like nothing I’d ever heard--it rose up from Bhanjang as though to the heavens--this blasting Nepali pop. Little did I know I had nothing to worry about, as the music marked the first day of Teej, beginning at 8AM the first day and not ending until the night of the third! Instead of worrying that the music would end, I soon began to worry about my sanity-or lack thereof-as just a handful of songs were roatated at an ear-splitting volume over the next few days--ultimately boring into my brain.
From what I’ve been able to glean, Teej is a Hindu festival for woman which lasts for three consecutive days. During this time, the men supposedly stay home and cook, and the women dress up and go to temples to pray to Shiva for a good husband and/or the health of their families. The married women dress in shimmering red saris accented with green, moving through the streets of Pharping en shimmering masse. In the evening, the women and girls gather together and dance (to said blaring music).
In Bhanjang, the little village down below Karma Chagme’s monastery, two enormous speakers had been set up in front of the shops in the dirt. They stood there, blasting their music through sun, fog and rain. It was the music from these speakers that I heard that first morning (and the next, and the next). Along with the addition of the speakers in Bhanjang, across the street below the school, a tent was set up next to a small shrine. Banners of triangular colored cloth crisscrossed the street.
In the morning, the music was the soundtrack to the villagers going about their daily routines--the women spreading cobs of bright yellow corn, husks and wet sheets on roofs; sitting in the sun combing their freshly washed, impossibly long black hair; dogs chasing small chickens; laundry hung to dry; men standing around.
Throughout the day, the tent slowly began to fill, first with jubilantly dancing little girls holding hands twirling in frilly dresses; then with more and more women, until evening when the tent became a mass of undulating red in the rain, while men and boys looked on.
Sitting on my bed, the music mixed with the sounds of the monastery: the blowing of horns, crashing of cymbals and thumping of drums by the young monks up in the temple. It mixed with the sound of K chanting along to a loudly playing recording of Penor Rinpoche and his monks chanting and playing instruments--resulting in the most horrific cacophony I had ever heard.
Even after K and I had threaded our way through the lush green fields, where dry cornstalks towered above us and rice grew to our waists, where white cranes flew and goatherds tended their goats, to the other side of the valley, we could still here the music! Even as we walked through the neighboring village of Drolod and climbed up scaffolding whose safety we questioned, to the top of the 118 foot Guru RInpoche statue being built, there was still the music’s echo.
Last night, Teej ended with the women down in the tent singing and clapping out rhythms. What did Teej teach me? How lovely silence is! It made me miss the whirring of crickets, the cooing of pigeons, the occasional honk of a horn going down the mountain.
Friday, November 4, 2011
Indeed,
there was
cider,
apple cider doughnuts,
the toasting of pumpkin seeds,
this:
a foot and a half of snow,
a dragonfly frozen on the windshield,
the power out,
huddling 'round the fire,
dad heating water for coffee with a blow torch
fallen trees littering the streets,
everything closed.
a snowmageddon
cider,
apple cider doughnuts,
the toasting of pumpkin seeds,
this:
There was also this:
a foot and a half of snow,
a dragonfly frozen on the windshield,
the power out,
huddling 'round the fire,
dad heating water for coffee with a blow torch
fallen trees littering the streets,
everything closed.
a snowmageddon
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Resigned
As I mentioned last time, I was having a hard time accepting autumn for a few weeks there. My body and mind perhaps confused from all the shifting temperatures lately: boiling hot and rainy in Nepal to warm India to crisp here. But I'm finally resigned! No, not just resigned but even embracing fall! The yellow aspens, the squash, the apples!
And next week I finally visit my family's home after being away for almost a year and a half. I am looking forward to sweet (and naughty) nieces and nephews, apple cider from the side of the road in lunenburg, flaming maples, and my dear family!
Friday, October 7, 2011
Better
Well, I think I'm finally settling back in here--the melancholy has lifted--despite the mountains covered in snow, the forty degree weather, the gray skies. Library books never fail to cheer me. Today three were waiting for me...I'm especially excited to read Vendela Vida's, Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name and Tove Jansson's Fair Play! Oh, and to watch another Susanne Bier movie tonight. Last night I rewatched After the Wedding, one of my all time favorite movies. How could I not love it: India, Sigur Ros soundtrack, amazing acting...Oh, and this blog!
Thursday, October 6, 2011
the last month and a half
trying to become accustomed once again
to the most holy of places
mixed with garbageeverywhereincessanthonkingnoisebeggarspovertyfilth
khenpo telling me i need to be able, "to live at any level," to be able to seamlessly shift between comfort and poverty, west and east
the worry that the indian police would come throw us in jail for not having our PAP's...
and then k's illness. for really the first time in my life being confronted with sickness, and needles, and hospitals. i don't know how k does it...being a doctor
so while Asia was anything but easy this time around, easing back into our american lives has also been a shock to the system...
k back to his gruelling residency and me back to trying to keep us both afloat
and it is fall
coming home, i wasn't prepared for pumpkins and leaves all a'change. the snowflakes that fell this morning as lentil soup simmered, my hands kneaded dough.
i'm not yet ready for the dark...
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Tasty and Hygienic or Note to Myself Not to go to Asia During the Monsoon
Unfortunately, not all things in Nepal and India are tasty and hygienic...
Thus, I have spent the last eight days making sure my husband didn't die from most likely typhoid fever. When I last wrote, I said he was on the mend...oh how wrong I was!
The last five days have found us surrounded by needles, iv's, blood samples and transitioning through three different hospitals here in India--k alternately burning with fever, shaking uncontrollably, sweating, writhing with nausea and unable to eat or drink for days and days. Scary business.
We were in the Namdroling hospital for two days. K laying in a three bed room next to a monk with typhoid. All the monks telling me not to worry, that everyone there gets typhoid and it's not a big deal. Oh yeah, except it can kill you!
Then we went to the Columbia Asia hospital in Mysore, which seemed like a step in the right direction, or at least a few hours closer to the airport! In Mysore, the doctor accused K of being a pill popper for taking round the clock Tylenol and ibuprofen for trying to control his fever of 104...When we said we wanted to be transferred to the Columbia Asia in Bangalore, we were told, "You'll have to take a tax because he's not really sick."
So after a three hour taxi ride last night, we ended up here at the biggest hospital in the area. I was immediately reassured by the real emergency room and how K was immediately whisked away and his vital signs checked and history taken. We are finally in really good hands here. And the best part? k really Is on the mend this time!! He hasn't had a real fever in two days and as of yesterday can actually eat and drink! The gray pallor is Gone! Woohoo...His doctor thinks we'll be able to fly Home Tuesday or Wesnesday-here's hoping...
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
A word of advice-if you ever go to Nepal or India, make sure your typhoid vaccine is up to date!
There had been a lot of talk of typhoid this trip. First, drolkar, karma chagme's daughter-in-law told us how she almost died from it a few months ago (she waited to go to the hospital and got super dehydrated). Then a girl we met named tsering told us how she once had it and was in the hospital for six days...
For some reason, k and I assumed our vaccines were still good... then k developed a fever. Not just any fever, but a fever of about 104 accompanied by uncontrollable shaking chills. A few days later he was also throwing up and having "loose motions," as they like to say here. Unfortunately, we were all too familiar with stomach issues here, but a fever of 104 for three days-highly disturbing!!
Yesterday morning found us in the hospital, k hooked up to iv's. Fluids, antibiotics and pain meds being dripped into his veins. Not a situation you want to find yourself in!
Thankfully, the doctor at the hospital here treats typhoid all the time, so to him this is nothing new or scary.
Luckily, k's doing much much better! He hasn't had a crazy high fever for almost 24 hrs! I'm happy to report he's on the
Mend!
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