My boots were getting worse and worse. Three quarters of both were hanging off, but in opposite directions. I was tripping on them and flip flopping everywhere. The sound was driving me insane and the conscious effort to not trip over them was wearing me more than the boots themselves.
We were on the other side of the river from the main road when I saw a bus. I didn’t even think about it. I yelled back to my friends. ‘See you in Tatopani.’ I then took advantage of the bus stopping to let a woman off to run across the first wire bridge I could find. I waved the thing down for a ride.
The more I thought about it, the more I was glad I did it. I felt like shit leaving like that, but they knew about my knees, and that day and the next was a fifteen hundred meter descent. My knees were reason enough, but I also hadn’t washed my clothes in a few days and they needed it badly after the sweat and sandstorms.
The bus ride was an adventure. I sat on the floor, bags in my lap, rocking back ‘n’ forth like a ship on the high seas. The road was rough and the driving slow. Nepalese were vomiting and the guy sitting on the chair beside me covered his mouth the whole time. Luckily, the trip for me was only about three hours. It would have been six to eight walking. With a stop for sleep along the way. My friends would catch up tomorrow.
We only stopped once along the way on the bus. During that stop, I got to talking to some younger guys. They were excited to speak to an American it seemed. I was a long way from home. They asked me if I smoked; I lifted my cigarette in response, then they pointed to a ditch about twenty feet away. It was full of weed. Naturally growing marijuana. I had seen some on the climb up, but didn’t bother. I was never much of a pothead. I’d do it sometimes. Mostly when drunk and with others, but it was never a habit. They pulled some off, rolled two joints, and the three of us smoked until the bus was ready.
I arrived in what seemed like a haven, a tropical island paradise. I had just jumped a few more climate zones with that descent. I grabbed a nice place. I would have a private room for the first time on this trek. A big bed. Still no sheets, though I guess that didn’t matter, but it still felt like a king’s chambers to this peasant. There was a garden outside my glass door and the kitchen downstairs had good food.
To continue my luxury, the guest house offered a laundry service, I knew it would still be hand washed and hung dry, but at least it wasn’t me doing the scrubbing and hanging this time. I dropped off all my clothes but a pair of shorts which I hadn’t worn yet and an undershirt and jacket which I considered cleaner than anything else that I had.
I strolled through town and smiled. I stopped into an internet café and checked my email. Already Cathy wrote saying she was in Pokhara. There was another email from a guy named Ron about the biltong business. I wasn’t too concerned with that at the moment. And one from Claudia responding to my Jomsom email. She seemed happy with my words. Not only did she put me in the clear, she said she would wait for me with welcoming and loving arms. I didn’t think she had that in her. My disappearance was just as good for her as it was for me it seemed.
Continuing my exploration of this big-small town, I found a boy who repaired shoes. A shoe repair, the chance. The gods were smiling on me today. I dropped them off and went back to my garden resort to have cake, masala tea, and some well-deserved alone time with a book.
The night was still young after my cake and tea, and I felt rejuvenated by my blessings. There was talk of a hot spring, so I went searching. It was a fifteen-minute walk, but I found it. I felt light in my flip-flops, purposely intended flip-flops, and short shorts. The spring was nice. There were two Nepalese guys there trying to sell beer, popcorn, and chocolates to the tourists there. I grabbed two beers. There was a couple there too, and they had popcorn. After my first beer, we started talking. Then she ordered a beer, and we talked. He got a chocolate bar, and he got huffy. I didn’t give a shit; the gods were smiling on me this day.
I knew she was still going to bed with him that night, and I said goodbye to her back tattoo as she stepped out. Damn nice body, shame she doesn’t share it with more than one man. I finished my beer and walked back in the dark to my little haven, grabbing some bread and lemon water for dinner before heading to bed.
The weather was much warmer already. Just days before I was wearing everything I had, now I was wearing next to nothing. I lay in bed and felt great.
I thought about my trip. It was nearing its end. Reality would soon be back. Claudia was waiting with open arms now it seemed, but that wasn’t worried me.
I focused on what I was getting out of all this. Why had I come and had it served its purpose? I learned a lot but nothing that I had expected. I knew that to figure out who you were as a person; you had to make yourself uncomfortable. You had to take yourself out of the familiar. Away from the people you know, the environment you know, the life you know. Who you were in this moment revealed a lot. And the more extreme the change, the better: a different country, a different culture, a different language, all alone. I’ve noticed I adapted more quickly now. I became more comfortable in these scary and new worlds more quickly. Today, when I left my new friends to go ahead, I realized it was really an inner voice wanting to be alone and to get another glimpse into my soul. I was happy with whom I was. It was a rare gift to get to feel that way.
More than anything, I learned that freedom was having the most important thing without owning it.
34
I stayed another day in Tatopani, mostly in the hot springs. I brought my beer this time. I watched people eat their popcorn. And they watched me drink my beer. We were both at the movies, enjoying the show in our own way.
My friends arrived that evening and luck would have it they stopped in the same guesthouse I did. They immediately told me I had made a good call with the bus. It was a very long, boring downhill walk that even had their knees singing. I wouldn’t have made it, I thought.
After they did their post-trek routine, we went back down to the hot springs. Aviva was wearing a bathing suit. She had a good-looking body and the same magnetic smile. I had always wanted her since our rooftop conversation before the trek even began, but it wasn’t until our closeness in that steamy water, I could feel the heat from her body more than I could from the water encompassing my flesh.
I got the feeling she wasn’t a big drinker, but she had a few with me and she got tipsy from the two she had. She was still the happy, energetic spirit that carried us through the trip, but now she was quieter. More still and sent her energy out in a subtle yet feminine way. She was sexy. She was a woman.
I watched her get out of the hot springs and she turned around and watched me get out. Our eyes didn’t lie, but we were both to go to our own beds that night. Despite my desires and sense of freedom in this foreign world, I still thought of Claudia. I thought of her, and I thought of myself. How selfish I had been in my life with the women I had taken for myself. Most of them looking for a good man. Seeing something in me they wanted to keep for themselves, but I never let them. I would give them my heart, let them touch a part of myself, but only for a short time before I moved on. I told myself I wouldn’t do that with Aviva. She either saw that or was too timid to make the first move herself.
I was peeling beer labels off of beer bottles, but I told myself that this is one flower I would leave. One flower I would admire from afar.
THE NEXT DAY, I WOKE up. We walked more, and we talked more. We ate. I missed home.
The rest of the trip was downhill, both literally and metaphorically. It was all downhill except for a quick trip up Poon Hill to look at the three 8000 meter mountains we had just walked through. It was a good closure to an amazing trip.
35
The trek was over: 308 kilometers, 100 hours, 19 days, diarrhea every day, and vomiting in the middle of the night at least once a week. But it was all done now. It felt good. I would enjoy my last few days in Pokhara. We arrived yesterday, tired and frustrated, but ultimately with smiles, stories, and laughs. Coming down
the mountain, we walked out of the tree line - the weight of the journey came off my shoulders. Not literally, I still had my backpack and satchel on, but the weight of the real world immediately replaced it: car horns, street vendors, harassing taxi drivers, and chaos.
The next day, I finished my Christmas shopping. I got a shave in a barber shop which cost me one euro, and they did it with a straight blade. One euro and not a scratch on my juggler. I had thought about keeping my Jesus beard for the great return to France, but it was ugly, and I thought about Claudia and how I would want her when I got home. I wanted nothing impeding that. I’m sure women love Jesus, but I doubt they want to jump his bones. People don’t trust you when you say you love them in an eternal, indifferent way. The way Jesus would have. They found that phony. Maybe it was. You could tell somebody you wanted to eat them, devour them, and they melt like butter to be consumed. Spread them over toast if you wished. If you loved somebody in a possessive, consuming way, you would possess and consume them. If you loved them in a pure way, if you allowed them to be, yet be loved; they would just be, usually without you. Besides, Claudia was an atheist.
I got myself some patches to sew onto my backpack and jacket. Another conquest under my belt. Then, I bought my bus ticket to get back to the capital. Once the chores were done, I went to a small garden right by the lake called Jiva where I had a massage and a tea. It was a beautiful, quiet garden. I had my tea, a massage from a beautiful Nepalese girl for 30 euros and only 30 meters away from my books.
Relaxation was the only thing in sight for the next day and a half.
THE LAST DAY, I HAD lunch with everybody from the trek. Cathy, Matt, Friedrich, and Aviva. Matt bought me a book to say thanks for leading the way along the trek. It was ‘The Prophet’ written by a Lebanese-American guy. It was spiritual, poetic, and short. Most of them bought postcards to send home, but then had trouble writing on the back. I wrote most of theirs for them and they seemed impressed. Exposing myself has never been a problem, and even though I was writing for them, I knew I could write from myself and the same feelings and thoughts would apply. They thought it was a magic trick. It wasn’t magic or a trick, just a secret some of us had.
I packed my bags. With the gifts, I had to leave most of my trekking gear behind to include my beloved Legion backpack, that fucking summer weight bag that was not intended for mountain weather sleeping, and my walking poles that held my weak leg up for so many kilometers, forward, up, and down.
My last night, I went to a bar across the street from the guesthouse I was in. I met a woman and a filmmaker. Talking to the woman brought the filmmaker over. I told my stories. She wanted to sleep with me. He wanted to make a movie of me. I was flattered, but left without doing either or giving them any contact to see it through later. This trip was a transition from one life to another. And this transition was over and I didn’t want it to last longer than the three pints it took me to tell it.
Leaving my friends was sad. The trip was over, but I was excited to be going back home. A changed man, I thought. No longer drowning in my despair, but a trekker of great mountains. A pilgrim of Buddha, visiting his tree and retreating for ten days in silent meditation in a place just outside of town from his place of enlightenment. I was a sole adventurer, embracing the solitude and sharing with strangers and fellow travelers.
I wanted to share this experience with somebody. Everybody. But I wanted to tell it all poetically. I didn’t feel I could do that. Then I felt it more valuable containing it all for myself. Selfish perhaps, but if I shared it all, would it still have the same worth? I wasn’t sure I wanted to risk that.
36
My first week back, I mostly hid at home. Claudia and I lay naked most of the time and were happy. Distance did that to people. Everything that were problems before seemed nonexistent. Was it because I had changed or was this just an illusion because of the emotion of the return?
My fragile stomach seemed to balance out, and I was slowly re-acclimating to the real world. It took me a few days to get my lost baggage from Air France, but they did eventually arrive and Claudia adored her gifts, especially the backpack. I knew she would like that one. It was an ugly green with purple linings. It had drawstrings and way too much stuff on it, most of which didn’t make it seem like a backpack, but she liked weird stuff like that.
She had it with her as we were sitting on an empty beach watching Maverick play. It was the first day the sun had come out since my return. It was December, but it was Marseille. It was a nice day.
I noticed that when I walked around town, I still had the urge to look at everything as a picture and to say ‘Namaste’ when I entered a shop or passed somebody in the street. The smells were strong and nauseating. So much perfume, I nearly died the first time I took the metro in the morning rush. I was easing my way in though, even had two beers and a kebab the previous night. Civilization.
I knew I’d have to live again soon. I would have to start a routine. I would have to decide about my teaching and my business before January.
I had two worlds I was living in simultaneously and I had to do my best to find a balance between these two worlds.
37
After a couple weeks back home, I decided to let my friends know. We went to O’Malley’s, our pub. It was good being back with the boys. Getting drunk. Looking at all the pretty girls, the trashy women, the pretty boys, and the desperate men. The smell of piss and alcohol was still the same, a nice cocktail of smells that burned the nostrils about the way beer shits did.
I went out with them about three times over the next week. Claudia went back to the way she was before I had left. And just like that, life was back to normal as if nothing had changed. My experience, my travels, my learning was still there, but it seemed more like a story now. No different from any other story I could have just read. Learned the lesson, let it hold me for a while, and then felt it fade away, but never really noticing it was gone until it was too far away to call back.
It was as sad as a dead Christmas tree, but I knew the sadness would fade away too.
MARSEILLE WAS THE CULTURE capital of Europe this year, and Claudia and I decided to be there for the opening event. Living in Le Panier of Marseille put us at a five-minute walk from the Vieux Port. Fireworks, tourists, locals, drunks, and thieves all showed up. This all made it nearly impossible to get into the center Vieux Port area, but we tried.
We eventually settled for a more spacious area in the back for some breathing room and to meet up with a friend of Claudia’s who we were supposed to meet in town.
She kept checking her phone and looking around.
‘So where is he?’ I said.
She didn’t respond. She looked down at her phone again and then looked around.
‘Okay.’ I said.
We waited around for a while. I was looking around at all the people and things going on in the streets. I was just admiring the atmosphere, but she just kept looking for this other guy. It made me wonder how close a friend this guy was to get my cold Claudia so agitated. It pissed me off. I hated jealousy, and one thing I taught myself well being with Claudia was just letting that shit slide off.
She was never jealous. Too the point you’d think she didn’t care about you. I got good at that too.
Her special friend never seemed to show.
‘Let’s work our way to the middle and see what’s going on.’ I said.
We walked in.
She kept looking around, phone in hand. It was only about a minute before she ran off into the middle of the crowd without telling me. Maybe she didn’t run. But she disappeared quickly.
That’s motivation, I thought. I should have just told her he was in the middle all along and then followed her. I lost her though. I lost her, and I was still doing the no cell phone thing. I saw cell phones and Facebook as a sickness. So about a year before leaving for India, I had gotten rid of both. I liked it. Most people didn’t, especially the people I worked for. It taught me patience,
but it didn’t teach other people patience. At that moment though, I wished I had a cell phone. So I just walked back and forth between where I lost her and where we were hoping she’d be doing the same thing. She was on a mission though, and I wasn’t the goal. She also knew I didn’t have a cell phone.
After half an hour of walking around in circles looking for her through crowds and half an hour of just sitting still and trying to enjoy the show, I decided I had given it a good enough effort and went back home.
I called her when I got there to let her know I gave up looking for her. It upset her. I didn’t care. Despite letting jealousy slide off, I was upset with her for just leaving me like that for the possibility of meeting some other guy. Anger aside, I thought I did the right thing by heading home to call her. Regrouping wasn’t working by finding each other in the crowd's chaos. We needed communication. We had always lacked communication.
She called back about twenty minutes later, saying she never found her friend and was heading home. I wanted to laugh. Laugh at her. Laugh at every girl that’s ran away from a man just for the possibility of being with another. Mostly I just wanted to confront Claudia about it. But I had been drinking and a man can’t win a fight when he’s drunk. Even if he wins the argument in every way, he’ll still lose because, ‘You’re drunk.’
‘I had two beers.’ I’d say.
‘I can see it in your eyes.’ she’d say.
‘You’re an idiot.’
‘You see how mean you are to me? I deserve better than this.’
‘Yeah,’ I’d say, ‘Maybe.’
‘We’ll talk tomorrow.’
‘I don’t want to talk tomorrow. I want to recover tomorrow. I want to talk now.’
This is the point where she’d already be turned away to go to bed. Depending on how loud the argument got, the door would be slammed at a corresponding loudness. The above scenario would have only caused a hard shut. Not even worth a slam. One good thing about the apartment Claudia and I were in at the time was that it had no doors. It had the main floor with the kitchen and living area, then a larger basement area. We slept in a large open area in the basement. You could see it from the main floor as there was nothing there but a railing to keep from falling. It also had a curtain we put up. The downstairs also had a wine cave we used for storage and then there was our bathroom. People didn’t like that we didn’t have a door for the bathroom, but at least it was downstairs. The only door to slam in our apartment was the one leaving the apartment. I always liked that.
Sin and Zen, #1 Page 14