Kathmandu

            

     Since landing in Kathmandu I've yet to find silence. At dawn, pressure cookers hiss 'rice is ready' after the puja bells are done ringing the gods, a swaddled soft cotton cloth somewhere cries, diesel exhaust pipes rumble by beckoning the roosters to compete with the dogs as the evening's stereos blare before fading with static. The white noise of night buzzes from the old wooden telephone poles tangled with a hairball of black wires. Some dangle with live death. Electricity in the city is like roulette, even the wealthy can lose in an instant.  The quietness I crave does not exists- not even in the dull flickering glow of street lamps hours before the surrounding Kathmandu Valley turns golden with dawn. The sun rises over the royal purple Himalayas alighting the rice fields beyond the city's silhouette of ancient temples and modern high rises; the view from Shilpa's fifth floor.

       Long before the National Anthem blares from the schoolyard below and the Himalayas turn as white as the children's uniforms singing along, my mind wakes to a faint dog's yelping and the low buzzing beneath my window. My tired limbs are ready to explore beyond the high walls where I lay beneath a crystal chandelier hanging far from the fumes above the streets I wander by day. Guilt plagues my steps. Confusion leads. A familiar feeling from my time in Port-au-Prince after the 2010 earthquake, only I didn't come to Nepal to rebuild a school or volunteer with an organization. I came on my own mission, one that I question every time someone asks what I am doing in here. Everything within cringes. "I am here to trek," I say knowing this too is lie; I can't explain my real mission. It is a secret I've vowed to keep in hopes my ego doesn't make the purity of it into something it isn't. 

       Kathmandu suffered from a 7.9 earthquake in April 2015. A year and a half later, I step over bricks from the walls of the Narayanhiti Palace located in the heart of the city. The whole scene reminds me of Port-au-Prince's National Palace: the rubble of a former dictatorship rebuilt by future dictators in form of foreign loans. Its same old story: millions of international donor dollars fall into the pockets of government leaving communities to rebuild themselves. The Kathmandu Post articles on the rebuilding corruption read like the Haiti en Marche, the newspaper whose front page I carried home to remember the Haitian dancers I spent the summer of 2012 in 100 degree rehearsals.

           Unlike Haiti, the first island in the Caribbean to over-throw its colonizers with a bloody revolution, Nepal was never colonized. The British on the Indian border came close, and the Chinese on the Tibetan boarder even closer, but Nepal remained independent with its monarch until the 1990 People's Movement, when the country demanded democracy and ended absolute monarchy. Although the real end seemed to occur a decade later when the Royal Family massacred themselves at a dinner party in 2001. Haiti and Nepal, two completely different worlds, are the same in one definitive way for me: I'm forced to look at my myself in afternoon light- the time when your shadow looms the darkest and biggest. Finding the newspaper in the Port-au-Prince (PAP) airport minutes before departing to Miami was a moment when this light shined, and the shadow still looms onto the sidewalks of Kathmandu.  

           On the cover of PAP's most widely read paper was a photo from the 2012 Carnival de Fluers, Carnival of Flowers of a dancer from New York, the only other blan white girl in the National Dance Troupe, Ballet Balacou. Haiti's biggest cultural event since the 2010 earthquake which claimed the lives of more than 100,000 Haitians was represented by a dancing blan. This dancer was a friend of troupe's Haitian choreographer from days when he was in NYC on a student visa. She flew in a week before the carnival already knowing the folk-dance congo, a dance of courtship and a mockery of the French colonialist dances, and thus was given my assumed role. I had been rehearsing the dance with the troupe for months and was still a flower twirler! The amazing Haitian dancer, who showed up at every rehearsal early (something nearly impossible to do in PAP traffic) ended up twirling a plastic flower after I stood up to the choreographer for his injustice, not realizing I was creating one too by taking her role.

        As I sat in the airport staring at the paper feeling betrayed by the NYC dancer, suddenly the truth hits: I am just like her. I too felt entitled to dance. I was yet another blan (literally translated as light or white skin) acting upon unspoken privileges. The dancers forced smiles at rehearsals were finally understood- envy, dismissal. These dancers gave everything to the only thing that could not be taken from them by the colonizers, and once again were slighted by the hand of their own brother who wanted more the hand of a blan; in hopes to uplift himself from the feeling of colonial reside of inferiority and poverty that still plagues that mysterious island?  

Haitian or not, betrayal is felt in every heart. And everyone is betraying themselves on some level. 

        When I see the fallen Krishna (God of creation and destruction) temple in Patan, one of the oldest known Buddhist cities, I feel my own temple is in a similar state of collapsed beauty. Lord Krishna's head lays split in two and his missing arms were probably sold on the Chinese black market; the fate of many temple's intricately carved (every inch requiring hours of woodwork) columns and statues before they became guarded.  Once again I am in foreign land trying to rebuild with the parts that are lost in bedrooms, the pain once buried in ruins of memories is uncovered. I betray my temple, each time I open its gates to addiction. It was through Haitian dance that I really began to feel these memories, and understand my escapism when the pain arises. I followed these voodoo dances to their origins in the Haitian countryside, hoping to heal. Only I encountered the reality that binge eating is a privilege when I looked into starving sunken yellowish eyes of children. I left Haiti with the harsh reality that I was living a privileged life, and whining about it along with everyone else obsessed with health in America. We've lost our gratitude.

         The rubble of Newar architecture, the indigenous style of Newari people who built Patan's 136 courtyards and 55 temples in Durbar Square, has been stacked in neat piles: bricks, wooden columns, stone statues, golden pinnacles. The Nepali women and women working to rebuild their heritage, have bodies that are lean, strong and as flexible as the bamboo scaffolding they climb in flip-flops. 

Along the temple's iron construction barricades, the usual tarps are spread with piles of made in China. Dusk is encroaching when Shilpa and I finally stop for the day and take rest on a wall facing the Bhimsen Temple, a temple tourists are not allowed in, only devotees. “I remember hanging out here as a teenager. Somethings never change,” Shilpa says admiring all the young Nepalis gathering in the square. They sip from Nestle cups in their skinny jeans. The ones on the wall next to me are crouched over, their faces glowing blue from their iPhone screens. Like them I drift off into my own world trying to make sense of my mission in Nepal. In Haiti I at least volunteered helping in the camps in between pursing the dance.... I'm doing nothing for Nepal...but I believe in what I am after is ultimate compassion... am I really going to do it? 

           The deeper lessons from Haiti I am reliving in Nepal each time I pass the earthquake's new shanty towns constructed of rice paper bags, old sheets and zinc panels: To truly help others one must master thyself. A confused person can feed and clothe another person, help them rebuild their house,  teach them English, educate their children but how do liberate another from the wheel of craving? We must first liberate our self. 

  

    

the mandala spins

  

Dāna (दान)       

The child,

 hungry.

His tiny palm's

 creases black with dirt

 extends for my 20 rupees.

Exhausted...

Coffee: a 100 rupees

                   20 to 100, rupees reflecting my fears: 

How much do I give?

The mandala spins.

The man without legs, hands in anjali
Eyes rolled back and chanting
on shredded blue baby blanket
His presence in my path asks:
What are doing with your healthy legs?

The mandala spins.

A sari is carefully lifted,
Red toenails in heels
step over the curbside pile 
awaiting a match:
instant coffee cups
Banana peels, wilted marigolds,
a muddy coconut cookie wrapper.
Plastic burns 
Incenses too.

The mandala spins.

Fresh pomegranate juice pours
The young Nepali boys 
Pretending not to stare,
my white skin sips-
The illusion of hope?

The mandala spins 

   

    

       

Hiking is not trekking

In a nutshell, if don't have time to read this whole story:

 trekking is like schlepping when you are not prepared.

       

          In the midst of congested Kathmandu the majestic pearls of the Himalaya's strung across the distant horizon were still far-away gems on a necklace I wanted try on and pretend, for just a moment, I was a dakini; the literal Tibetan translation is "sky goer". To explain the profound and vast meaning of a dakini is like trying to capture one of the clouds beneath the high mountains in which she roams. She represents the enlightened feminine within Buddhism and can be seen on many levels.   In my eyes she represented the gateway to enlightenment, and her dances were the keys to a realm that was outside of me, not within. I ventured to Nepal on a trekking invitation, but deep within I wanted to study the dakini's sacred dances to heal. Anything to to pass through a revolving door of addictions.

     I packed ankle bells, images of the dakinis, Buddhist books and practices, along with a sleeping bag, a water bottle, hiking boots, my favorite t-shirt from the Dali Lama, long under, a fleece, gloves, some water purifying tablets, rain gear, and other winter clothing I picked up from unofficial sponsor, Get-n-Gear in Ashland, Oregon- most importantly the DDD leopard bikini in their dollar bin. I felt prepared for entering the realm of the dakinis until..... Shilpa and I left the trekking office, where the necklace was put back in its case. I could not afford a porter, nor the plane flight directly to the start of the trek, nor any of the gear needed for zero. The dreamy Himalayas were now rocks, which I was expected to climb for eight to ten hours a day, carrying all my own gear. "Landslides from the monsoon rains have washed out the roads. A bus ride to the trek start is dangerous. Can you afford a jeep? Can you carry 40 kilos? (what is kilos to pounds?) You don't have a down jacket, seriously?" 

             My plan for trekking to the base of Mount Kanchenjunga, the third tallest mountain on Earth, would later reveal the way I was living: Relying on more prepared people.

     While I'm planning to wing it, Shilpa, who'd been to the base of Everest, is making the plan that would later save my frozen ass. “We need the guide. I'm telling you. This region is not like Annapurna,” she insists after we leave Ecstasy Nepal, the family-owned trekking agency located in Thamel, Nepal's tourist area originally created by early hippies according to her father, whose seen the area transform over his sixty years from small boutiques selling Nepali crafts, hostels, a handful of trekking shops and tea houses to streets lined with neon signs: New Orleans Cafe, Margarita's Dance club, Spa House.... Within a blink one is peddled by shopkeepers with the same knock off Northface' hoodies (Northfake), Nepali girls handing out menus before being blockaded by those whose shops are displayed on their arms, hand made puppets and flutes dangling above cobblestones.

“Okay, so we split the guide fee but no porters,” I say as I sort through a box of wool hats marked 'sale: 200 rupees'. "I just don't have the money." 

“I guess the guide can carry some of our gear," Shilpa replies. 

“Since you have to get back for Dashin, I'm going to trek the last section solo.” (Dashin is Nepal's Christmas)

"You are crazy."

      And so the itinerary was set: We would trek for 22 days to Kanchenjunga's north and south base camp with a guide. Shilpa would fly back to Kathmandu and I would continue solo through the Milke Dande, a section of the trail my heart was set on after reading this outdated trekking guide a hot outdoorsy guy gave me in Eugene, Oregon when I stayed at his hostel. I imagined returning his guide with pictures from a solo adventure undertaken just like the book's author. 'In the rolling hills of the Milke Dande one can see Kanchenjunga and the whole Himalayan range from Sikkim to Everest.'  This promised view seemed to be perfect closure for the trek, looking back to where I walked, but more importantly, I wanted to know I could walk alone.

       I spent the summer idolizing the authors who inspired me to follow their eastern footsteps: The Heart of he World by Ian Baker, A Journey Across Tibet by Sorrel Wilby, My Journey to Tibet By Alexander Davis Neil. My trek already felt mickey mouse compared to these epic journeys into landscapes far more barren than Nepal's trails lined with tea houses.

“Pick out a hat already or we are going to be late for the doctor,” Shilpa says before picking up the pace like a Nepali New Yorker. Undistracted by sale racks, she weaves us out of Thamel and onto the main road. Popping her head into taxi after taxi, she finds one that would cost me triple.

      The first trekking preparation on Shilpa's 'to do' list is: 'doctor/meds.' I join her on rounds of annual doctor appointments around the city. It was in these offices that I realized the adventure I was really seeking to trek was through the landscapes in my heart, one barren to the idea of motherhood. To arrive perfect and complete enlightenment, 'the view' from which I sought to perform the sacred dance of Vajrayogini, a Buddhist dakini, was only possible through becoming a devout Buddhist, not a wife, nor a mother, a nor maid or any form of domestication that would hinder my practice time. If only I knew then what I know now.

Round one

     'Valley Maternity Nursing Center' is a foreign funded women's care center that opens after five when the doctors leave their hospital jobs. The waiting room is filled with mostly pregnant kurtas, a tradition style of dress, the colors as vibrant as the carnelian streaks from morning puja on their foreheads. The glass bangle bracelets worn by married women holding squirming babies, jingle with the giggles of their toddlers playing on the floor. Indian soap-operas silence some of the otherwise chatty women. I refill my water bottle from the communal machine for the second ultra-sound. “Blatter not full. Come back later,” the nurse said over an hour ago when I laid on the beach towel covered examination table, my head on a pillow case stained with hair oil. The doctor casually sipped her tea in between the women who entered the tiny room with a light knock, thus interrupting each other's exam. We are all women here aren't we? I thought of my gyno at home: the sterile white cold room, his blue scrubs and plastic hands with metal objects ready to prob one's insides. Wearing a soft pink sari as her uniform, the older doctor asked questions that guided her intuition and warm ungloved hands to my problem: ovarian cysts. My intuition trusted hers. I didn't need confirmation of an ultrasound, but complied out of courtesy.

“I can't hold it anymore!” Shilpa knocks for me and within minutes more blue space gel is squirted onto my belly. The nurse's gold and maroon paisley printed cotton scarf and matching gold and ruby rings glide across my belly. I close my eyes and listen to her bangles delicate music and try to take my mind off needing to pee as she presses the wand deeper into my abdomen.

“You married?” I feel my chest tighten, my breath stops.

“No. Why? Am I pregnant?”I look at the monitor, a screen that looks like cloudy blue like a planet in outer space. No oxygen seems to exist until she answers.

“Why did you come in for an ultra-sound?” she looks at me. And it hits me. In her eyes I am western woman without rules, without ritual, without reverence. I won't allow myself to wear Nepal's bangles I love so much until I get back to America's shores, the land where we make my own meaning.

“The doctor thinks I have cysts.” The nurse smiles as if I'd said I have cookies. Her smirk says I'll pour you some milk. She squints into the monitor, and her grin fades with concentration. She begins mapping constellations across my planet. Clicking the mouse to draw lines in the small black holes that I notice in the blue cloud representing my ovaries.

“Oh, yes.” She prints out her constellations on a glossy photo paper and wipes the blue space gel off my belly with a shredded piece of clean cloth. “Take to the doctor.” She hands me the photo of my outer space, which should be the inner space that I understand by now! I feel like an misunderstood alien not only in her eyes, but in own my skin. What have I done to my body?

I sit back down next to Shilpa and her mother, happy she doesn't understand English. “So? Are you-” I ask.

“No.” She looks sad. I feel guilty for being ecstatic that I'm not. She made this appointment to check her body's health because she wants to have a baby with her husband. To her its the miracle I deny.

“I have cysts.” Tears stream from unknown facet of denial.

“Don't worry. I have issues too.”

We wait another two hours to be called back in so the doctor can deliver our equally bad fates. If the cysts grow one more millimeter I must be operated on immediately. I promise her I will find herbs and refuse the list of prescriptions. “I want to see both in two weeks.” Shilpa and I nod knowing next week we will be trekking.

Round two The Dentist office.

Dentist: You have some cavities. Would you like them filled?

Me: How much?

Dentist: For the cleaning and filling 800 rupees. (8 bucks!)

Me: Great!

Dentist: open wide.

Me: FFffffffffffffuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuccccccccccccccccccckkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk!

Dentist: Americans, so sensitive.

There is no such thing a Novocaine in Nepal.

Round three The eye doctor

This appointment I request, ready to embrace an easier denial I've been carrying for years: I need glasses. We visit the number one eye doctor in Nepal, “Asia's game changer!” according to the newspaper article Shilpa's mother proudly shows me before calling him with genuine concern, as if my eyes were hers. Her love and kindness is the heart of so many Nepali women, in whose homes I was made to feel not only welcomed, but loved as if I was their child too.

The eye doctor returns to Nepal from his global cataract conference in China during my final week in Nepal. Living up to his name- he changes my game. I returned to America seeing in HD, a definition so crisp and vivid some days I don't want to look. Nepal's lens magnifies how in America we suffer from having too much.... too much stuff...too many tasks...too many choices....

         The kind of choices we make in supermarkets. Rice from every country! I wander Wholefood's bright clean isles for the first time in six months, in a state of awe. Until I can't decide which rice will make me the most moral and healthy. I crave the simplicity of Nepali rice sold from a woven sack. Good rice vs bad rice, the familiar game arises. But something in me sees through the emotional saga of what rice. Anxiety is replaced with laughter. I realize the impermanence of this rice and this body that will eat it. I realize this teachings I've spent the last month hearing about conceptually in retreat for a split second, and carries me through the isles. I fill my cart with sheer gratitude. And sadness. Images of hungry eyes that met mine in Kathmandu are still vivid and blinking. 

     By the time I reach the check out line, the impermanence of my bank account hits. In America I'm poor. Back to the reality that here organic food is a privilege, whereas in Nepal, fresh food is affordable by most. In Kathmandu street food is on every corner: baskets of fruits, carts of fried sweets, skewers of meat. Restaurants served thali a daily lentil and rice meal for 150 rupees ($1.50) which most people seem to afford; not so say some people don't starve. In the countryside, agricultural livelihood is the way of life. The concept of America's food deserts (places where fresh food does not reach) did not exist in Nepal.

         I long for Nepali rice harvested in my trekking guide's village and cooked on an open flame beneath the Himalayan canopy of more stars than I ever knew existed returns as I pour the plastic bag of rice onto an electric stove top. I am just like the Nepalis: We want a different life.

         Most Nepali's I met in Kathmandu and the villages near where I trekked, go aboard in search of a modern conveniences, but something deeper too. They want to work in systems that are fair. “If you work hard, you can get ahead in America,” Shilpa says, “In Nepal people remain in their gar (family home) and most can't afford higher education. And a college doesn't mean a good job. Kathmandu is overcrowded and in the villages there is no opportunity. Young Nepalis want out.”

       I think of all the immigrants lined up to work in the American factory I take for granted. I don't believe in this machine, yet reap the benefits. I been clocking out in hopes its different somewhere else. 

         Unable to see greatness is born from the muck of our weakness, I look through duality's lens. I see the pollution coming out of the paper mill's rear, destroying rivers as I look down upon the clean white paper I write upon in search of  'the view' I ventured east to realize.

   

     Back on Peak's Island in Maine, I take off my glasses for a break from HD. 

Winter's sanctuary

I'm taking January off of writing to do a meditation retreat in Maine. The story will continue next year! Looking forward to sharing the journey into the Himalayas again in February.

                                             "The greatest act of kindness is to tame you own mine."

Operation Katmandu

   

                                         

                              "Where is Kneeee-pawl?" My Tennessee grandmother asks.
                              "In the Himalayan mountains."
                              "Oh well. It'll be cold. Watch out for 'em avalanches!"
 
                 For my other kin-folk, a quick history of 'kneeee-pawl".

                Nepal, the size of North Carolina is bordered by India, which is fives times bigger than Texas, and Tibet, which is almost six times bigger than California. Nepal is the little fish in big ponds. Although one-third of the country was lost to the British East India Company during the colonization of India, Nepal was never conquered. Nor was its neighbor, Bhutan. The rugged Himalayan mountains bordering, what is today known as Sikkim, India's most Northern state, tremendously helped Nepal's sardine sized army compared to Britian's during the wars of the eighteenth century.
                                  Why I am comparing fish to this landlocked country?
           
               Because I compose from the shoreline of Palm Beach, a land that has me gasping for air the more I reflect on Nepal's awakening waters. I drive down perfectly paved roads lined with shiny cars and nearly empty public buses. Mile long plazas edged by hedges manicured as perfectly as the women who shop them. Target, Tj-Maxx, Burger King, Wendys. Target. Tj_maxx, Burger King, Wendy's. Target Tj-maxx, Burger King, Wendy's. Safe in our own A/C bubble at the red light, we politely only look ahead. Or down to check Facebook. The stillness has me biting my nails. I press the windows open. The silence spooks me.

 
     . The third most polluted city in the world according to the Kathmandu Post. The city is one of the fastest growing ones in Asia at 4% per year. 2.5 million people are  live in the Kathmandu valley; in 2001 it was estimated to be around 600,000 people. Still Nepal is basically rural with only 17% of the total people living in cities according to World Bank.  If you visit, these far away random facts will choke you. Be prepared for:
                                                                     Operation Kathmandu

       I long for Kathmandu's rush hour suffocation as I cruise through monotonous south Florida. The exhaust of retired old buses other countries sell for cheap. The bicycles overloaded with oranges or balanced by wicker baskets of greens. The scooters the entire Nepali family squeezes on. The cows drinking from cloudy puddles. The tourist only taxis and the Mercedes of government officials. The uniformed school kids, the colorful saris, the monk's crimson robes all wearing face masks. Without marked lanes, the streets are home to thousands of independent shops stacked atop of one another. Somehow, I never once saw an accident. Some spontaneous current sweeps everyone along, as did the human traffic lights. Their was a strange sense of calmness in the midst of what appears to be mayhem. People yell without anger. Boys pound the sides of the jammed buses without threat. The passengers touch like the shops, finding space and naturally filling it. Yet, when the fumes still linger through my face mask and refuse to rise from the city's oven-like buses, I long for Maine's vacant highways and fresh air.

         
 
        I land in Kathmandu fifty hours of travel later. Of the five immigration kiosks, two are working. The fit Americans here to rebuild a school are in my line. They kill time playing a game called bouncy, stretch and 'stay hydrated' as the Chinese, Indians, Europeans and I looked on from our stiff places in line. The mystery meat I blessed during the flights has my belly rocked; if only my body could agree with my prayers. The excited Indian children are too shy to join when invited. We Americans, the confident, spoiled, happy babies of world.
   "Would you like some help?"  the self appointed American assists my line with the finicky screen. His kindness, makes me question my own as we fill out my form.
 "And purpose of visit?"
"Pilgrimage." I select the button beneath the tourist option. I am not just another foreigner here to take pictures. Nor am I here to build something new. I am here to learn the sacred Vajrayogini dance. 

       Apparently, Port-au-Prince's humbling has worn off.  In Haiti, my theater project at an American summer camp forced me to take off a costume I didn't realize I was wearing: Cool and in control. Entitled to teach. The Haitian dance troupe I joined gave me a new costume I reject: the privileged American; One that Nepal would teach me to wear with humility.

            Its past midnight by the time I clear customs. My Nepali friend, Shilpa, spots me in the crowd of bewildered tourists and shouting taxi drivers. I am chauffeured to her home. After spending the summer working minimum wage at a bakery in Ashland, Oregon to pay for expensive dance classes, sleeping on a friend's couch, and scrounging meals from the refrigerators I was babysitting for, I awake in palace life.

         The marble staircase ascends five floors before leading to a rooftop of the world: a view of the Himalaya's white silhouettes looming above the city's smog. Every floor is filled with statues and paintings taking one back into a time when Kathmandu was at its royal height; days far gone. Shilpa's Newari family, one of the original peoples of the Kathmandu Valley, has been creating Buddhist art for generations. The lineage of artisans her father continues to support can be seen working in his building across the street. Each morning the works in progress are brought by for review before being delivered to his curio shop in a Durbar Mar, the Worth Ave of Nepal. The leisurely morning routine of tea and the door bell ringing with art has been replaced by coffee and scrolling Craig's List for last minute holiday help ads. Most of the South Florida gigs require slutty Santa suits; too bad I'm in a fat phase

   
    The five foot golden Tara statue in the living room captures me whenever I pass. Tara is a tantric Buddhist deity who is known as the "the mother of liberation". I look at her beautifully carved abs, slender fingers in mudra, meditative stare and golden jewels with awe and envy. Her three eyes are slit open and 'gaze compassionately into emptiness'; an expression I read about over and again, but have no realization of. All I know is I want to embody Tara and not my flabby clumsy limbs that cannot remember much of the choreography I spent all summer learning. Tara's deeper meanings would remain oblivious to me until the final days of my journey with Shilpa, one that led me to the heart of Buddhist dance.
                                             Dance as an offering. Dance as prayer.

         I snap out of fantasizing how I can get as hot as Tara when called to breakfast in the courtyard. Her mother serves the first of the sugary, strong 'milk tea' that replaces the coffee addiction I developed in freezing New England. A plate of hard-boiled eggs that have been lightly pan seared and dusted in turmeric is served. Following Shilpa, I use my fingers to scoop the cumin flavored cauliflower and potatoes into freshly baked roti bread. Her mother fills my plate asking rhetorically if I'd like more.  I would not learn to fend her off until (like her husband and children) I cover my plate with both hands and refuse to move them until she puts the pan down. Most of the time, I only pretend to stop her. I want seconds, thirds, fourths, anything to stop the battles between my head and heart: Writing vs meditation.  Memoir writers seek the I, my, me. They try to solidify identity into a story, while true Buddhist meditation seeks to undo the story and dissolve the I, me, my. Traditional dancer vs. free form artist. There is form to be followed to receive the lineage's wisdom. Who cares? I want to make up own dance.  Buddhist nun vs. motherhood. Kids = real job!  All the facets of self glaring at each other, not realizing they apart of the same diamond. A diamond in the ruff.
 
          Kathmandu's hidden lessons for "the dancer on pilgrimage"  are ones I am still trying to understand. Why are the well educated, well off Americans so at war with themselves? Maybe its just my war. Everyone else seems to be happily Christmas-ing along one item at a time.

         

          This war is exhausting.  I've been fighting it for so long. It feels normal to fight against how things are and how people are. Stuck in how things should be. How I should be. How to get to the next best place. Its never enough: more more more. next next next. America makes the battle lines within me more violent. I am trying to hide from the draft in Kathmandu.

                                                           Do you spy the monkey?

Hong Kong, where 'east meets west'

                                                       

              Hong Kong is the #1 RE-export city in the world. Goods are shipped from mainland China to ports all over, such a the Port of Palm Beach, the place where I end up after most adventures: broke at my parents house, and trying to make sense of my life. I sit on the seawall watching the cargo ships loaded with  Tropicana containers. Like an exported fruit shipped thousands of miles from its native soil, I reflect on my journey to Nepal, trying to better understand my own American roots. I hope you enjoy the juice...



                                       
                                                Wal-mart isles begin here: Port of  Hong Kong

    Like a well programmed consumer, I shopped for the cheapest ticket to Kathmandu, which left me with a 20 hour lay over in Hong Kong. I probably would have saved money by purchasing the more expensive ticket, but looking back...venturing into the Asian mid-night was worth every Hong Kong Dollar spent for a four am conversation that once again made me realize: I am running. Yet, its foreign lands that exaggerate just who you are. 

                     The mirror reflects the closest when the furthest away from home. 

                                                                          

       I look up the weather before departing San Francisco: 30 degrees. 14 hours later I land in a humid armpit. The heat and palm trees remind me of my Floridian childhood. I'm sweating in my wool sweater and leather boots, feeling like an idiot for not realizing 30 C is 83 F. 

        After a 45 minute double-decker bus ride from the airport (located on the island of Hong Kong) to the mainland, I'm lost looking for the Sincere House hostel in the Kowloon neighborhood. The Chinese street signs feel like props in a film I agreed to, but I forgot my lines. The only one I remember is my mother's voice, "Don't leave the airport in the middle of the night. Its dangerous!" I wonder through seedy piss and fish smelling alleyways, wondering if I should have listened. Not just this time, but all the times I let her wise words slide beneath a rug of defiance, woven with threads of fierce independence. To begin recalling all the times I wrote her off is beating a rug out. I don't want to see my dirt. Not here. Not now. I've been up for 20 hours am a navigating with an internal compass that can't find its true north. It points into an addiction fueled past leaving me more lost in the moment: somewhere in a Cantonese current; the main ethnicity of Kowloon.

     The foreign sea of bodies, lean like fish, swim across eight lanes of traffic onto sidewalks lined with street vendors selling everything from Doc Martins to baskets piled with strange roots. The stores are packed with young Chinese people shopping in between selffies. Instagram is legal here, unlike the neighboring communist China. Trash cans overflow with styro-foam to go boxes. The air is thick and lingers with exhaust fumes. Some wear face masks. Their sandaled feet are without any dirt. Groups of girls pass with powdered faces like the Cathway Pacific airline stewardesses. They remind me of geisha dolls with their white porcelain skin, red lips and penciled eyebrows. There slender fingers as delicate as their soft spoken voices asking passengers what they'd like for dinner. 

      "I ordered the vegetarian meal. No, I won't take the pasta dish. It has gluten!" The man seated in front of me reminds me who I've been for past eight vegan-ish years: snobby, strict and ungrateful. As the stewardess informs they only have meatloaf, I say thank you, wishing my meditation teacher in Maine could see me now, eating mysterious meat somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.  

    "I'm not cooking this Tyson chicken! It's from slaughter houses where they burn the peaks off and let their feet grow around the cages," I bitch during a retreat where my work/trade is cooking.

"That's all in your mind. Is any of that happening in this moment? In this kitchen there is a package of chicken." 

"But it did happen!"

"I agree. It's a slick world."

"Why not buy organic free-range?"

"Do tonglen or dwell in your negativity. It is up to you, Anna."

      Tonglen is a Buddhist practice where one breathes in the suffering of another and exhales healing prayers. It's a practice of exchanging one's pain for another's. I tried explaining this to my younger brother only to confirm his belief that his sister is crazy and off to a country where she will get even crazier. He asks what I am going to do Nepal as he drives me to the airport. I consider explaining how I want to do 111,111 prostrations with a shaved head; my image of Buddhism that would later be shattered in the land where Buddha was born.   
  
       "I am going to trek the Himalayan mountains with a Nepali girl I met this summer at a Nepalese Temple in Portland, Oregon," I say as he cuts off other drivers at 100 mph in his brand new BMW. By the time we reach the airport, I yell at him for driving like "an asshole"... For hitting the dog the night before.... For everything I held in while staying at his house for the past few days. He hands me a wad of $100s for my trip and says be safe. I walk to the nearest bench and ball for losing my patience and leaving on a bad note. He gave me the money but I won't ask for because I don't feel I deserve it. The money I can't figure out how to make yet with my odd jobs that I convince myself I do because I need as much time as possible for my spiritual practices. Practices that Nepal made me realize I am hiding behind. My brother shows up shamelessly; this I admire and am utterly repulsed by. 
         Siblings, those we love enough to hate on. Hate that hardens one's heart to know the its softness of love beneath.     

   I depart for Kathmandu with a heavy and surprised heart..  for once I am not travelling on a tight wad budget. I'm travelling with gifted dollars that make me question my worth with each purchase, and eventually remind me of unconditional love during the coming months. 

      Somehow I finally find the Sincere House, the cheapest hostel in Hong Kong according to a Google search.  On the 12th floor of a weathered cement building, Keith, the Chinese guy who checks me in, tells me how loves the The Heat after he sees my Miami passport. "American coaches. So good. Keep players on court, off streets." I share how Dwayne Wade's foundation gave me money to teach children film after school. "You like true American. Good person." 

         I close my eyes wondering what it means to be American....we are good people, whose corporations AKA a government that does bad things... By fault, we are guilty, so we try to  be extra perfect....if only gluten-free could equal guilt free...Sleepless, I step outside my tiny stark white hospital like room. 

        Keith is leaning over the balcony strung with laundry like all the floors below the open courtyard. Jet lagged? He asks and the conversation carries itself into the dawn. 
-Where do you live in USA?
- I just came from California where my brother lives.
-My sister is there. I've been waiting for visa for 13 years, only less than ten to go.
-Wow. 
-I can't wait to get to America one day and buy a mustang from the 70s. Yeah, an old one.  Make up for all the years I lose.
-Lose?
-Yeah,not getting to America sooner.
- So... you are waiting to start your life? 
- I'm missing out on the good life. 
     Keith goes on about all the things he wants in America: to go camping, drive across the country, have a big house and a pool, buy a semi truck like his sister's husband in LA and have a Mexican drive it. Keith works 7 days a week; on Sundays he does half days. This buys you a shoe box apartment in Hong Kong. He wants spacious living and ease, the life I reject yet live, and now judge him for wanting. Like him, I realize I too am waiting for life to start. In Nepal I'll become a real Buddhist. A real writer. A real dancer. 

        Our conversation reminds me of ones I've had in Haiti and British Guyana. Trying to tell people who have it harder than me, that having it easier is actually harder in other ways. Impossible. I can barely wrap my mind around it, let alone theirs.  

                                           No puking street food in the hostel elevator.

     I wonder the dark streets until I find a street vendor frying things. I dip into strange sauces feeling grateful and guilty for spending the first of my brother's money. Skinny locals stop and eat one stick of fried mystery before moving on. I've eaten five and now feel like the fat American. 

      Hong Kong is alive, although most shops are closed until dawn frames the city's race to build higher skyscrapers than Malaysia. On certain blocks it feels like Miami Beach as Asian looking Amy Whinehouses in high heels stubble out of night clubs,their dark eye make up looking as smudged up as their dates. Other blocks are all suits and ties. The skeleton homeless lined up outside an ancient temple confirms: Hong Kong has the highest income gap in all of Asia.  

          Of the 7.2 billion people crammed into Hong Kong, there are 55 are billionaires. Before departing for Kathmandu I hang out with their kids in the airport as I sip my $8.00 cappuccino in the cafe across from Chanel; loafers are $20,000 Hong Kong Dollars. I stand next their flawless skin, shinny straightened hair and Comme des Garcons t-shirts that will be knocked by Forever 21. In the cosmetics shop I watch a teenager purchase $40 Dior lip gloss in every shade. I search for dissatisfaction with the material world on their beautiful faces. I want to see how money doesn't lead to happiness. Because that's what Buddhism promises. And to feel better about my holey goodwill sweater and bitten fingernails. I look like shit because this body will one day die. It won't go with me, only how I lived.  I feel a tinge of doubt in my justifications for not taking care of myself as I stare into the cosmetics magnified mirror at dark circles under my eyes. Doubts masking the lies I tell myself. Doubts that unveil themselves in a retreat I will attend with other lost westerns looking east.  

       The same romantic feeling I had of exotic Haitian voodoo dance healing me creeps up the moment step outside the Kathmandu airport: What was I thinking? Ancient Buddhist dance! This city is going to swallow me just like Port-au-Prince, and spit me into the harsh reality that people are suffering way worse than me. Ironically, like Haiti in 2012, I travel to Nepal one year after its earthquake.    This time I packed light. Too light.