ROAD BLOG AHEAD

Something landed on my desk today and I just had to share it with you.

While in town today, Lena treated a pilgrim down from Spiti, an isolated region high up in the mountains on the border of India and Tibet with a culture nearly as old as these mountains. She gave him money for food and he gave her something from his pockets - a pair of “interesting” rocks picked up near his home:

Ammonite fossils. Beautiful ones - the specimen on the left is more than 6 centimeters in diameter which is pretty large as these go (though I’ve seen some huge ones in collections.) Despite their appearance, Ammonites were closely related to squid and cuttlefish. They made their appearance on Earth about 500 Million (that’s half a BILLION!) years ago and went extinct sixty-five million years ago - give or take a millenia or two - about the same time and from the same probably cause - as the last dinosaurs. They were (obviously?) sea creatures and these probably lived - and died - in the deep ocean that once lay between what is today the Indian subcontinent and the vastness of Asia.
The totally astonishing thing is that this was found in Spiti, a landlocked region, at an altitude somewhere between 12,000 and 14,000 feet above sea level. A place that is so obscure, so harsh that it’s hard to believe anyone actually lives there. It’s one of the least populous areas within the technical borders of India:

I did a little research and learned how these fossils came to rest among the rocks and geological rubble that comprise so much of the Himalayas, a journey that took them from the depths of extinct oceans to the heights of great mountains. It’s likely that the same process gave us the huge blocks of Himalayan salt common around here. It’s so cheap, I use kilo chunks as bookends:

What I learned is that the land mass that is India spent about one hundred million years crawling northwards after it broke apart from what is today Antarctica, Africa and a bunch of smaller bits. It was only about 40 million years ago that it slammed into Asia and the continental shelves were thrust upwards by the force of the collision, creating the Himalayas. They are, as mountain ranges on this planet go, fairly young. All those rocks, including the ones containing ammonites and other fossils and minerals that don’t generally appear at 14,000 feet, got carried upwards in the process.

So a pilgrim from Spiti who has never seen the sea, came to our relatively temperate little village in the lower reaches of those same young mountains, to see and circumnambulate the sacred lake. In his pocket he carried strange stones from his home whose fossilized occupants may be as much as half a billion years old, to trade for some medicine and maybe a sack of rice and lentils to see him through the winter.

There are so many miracles all around us if only we stop for a moment and take the time to look, as he did, at the world around him. It’s possible that every one of us has some sort of miracle in our pockets. Isn’t it all really in the context?

This is quick. Yes, we are still doing the Tso Pema Medical Emergency Fund. Yes, I will continue doing pitches for donations (right now we need diabetic supplies for instance) as there is ongoing need. But…

Right now, today, the poor of Haiti need help far worse than we do. Today. Not next week, not even wait until tomorrow, but right now. There are THOUSANDS of people dead and dying in the streets in the aftermath of a 7.0 earthquake Tuesday afternoon. After checking around, I’m pretty convinced that the organization I’m going to donate what I can to is Medicins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders.) They were already there helping the needy in Haiti, they do a tremendous job and they have dived right in and begun helping anyone and everyone they possibly can - and reporting clearly and accurately about the situation in Port au Prince. Here’s a link to their page:

http://tinyurl.com/yd38do8

and here is the link to the U.S. page to make donations for Haiti Emergency relief.

 http://tinyurl.com/ycmmc8p

You don’t have to be able to donate a minimum of $35. It’s okay to click “other” and donate what you can - I know from experience just how much difference $5 or $10 can make in a third world country! Please give what you can. If money isn’t something you can spare (and I know these are tight times) then take a few minutes to say prayers, mantra, light a candle or send an e-mail to your friends sharing this information. Think about what you’d want someone to do if it were you, your family, your city that had just come tumbling down in ruins and do that to the best of your ability. We are not separate, we are one vast, sentient amalgamation of beings. Help the hurt.

Thanks.

I frequently wish that I had the ability to share with you, not only the images and the stories of this place where I find myself living, but the sounds of it as well. Something I’ve thought about for the last few years has been doing a regular podcast (for those of you who aren’t familiar with podcasts, they are a bit like a radio show or spoken word blog that you can download as an MP3 file and listen to at your leisure.) A podcast would allow me to include the music, chanting and ambient sounds that are so very much a part of life here in Himachal Pradesh. When I was in the U.S. last summer, I picked up some of the technical bits and pieces necessary to create podcasts. I even took a class on the subject (which went very well) and came up with a name and concept. So far what has stopped me is the same constraints that kept me from being a reliable blogger during 2009. I figured that, if I couldn’t manage to sit down several times a week and write about what I see and do, it was unlikely I’d find the time and energy to produce a coherent audio segment on a regular schedule. I haven’t given up on the idea entirely; I’m waiting to see if I can get back on the horse and stay on it awhile before attempting more new, big projects, particularly something as involved as a podcast. Despite appearances, I am actually rather reluctant to set myself up for public humiliation; if I’m going to do it, I’d like to do it right (and hopefully well.)
Often, when I’m traveling in North America, I will wake up in a darkened room and have to think for a bit about where (and when) I am.  The cues can be really subtle: distant traffic noises, footsteps outside or on a floor above, the gurgle of plumbing or the hum of a refrigerator, sounds I grew up with in urban and suburban America. They haven’t changed a whole lot in the past 40 years. Though if one has a noisy or inconsiderate neighbor, you might be treated to rap music turned up loud enough to rattle the windows or drunken shouting after the bars close. I remember the guy downstairs in one San Francisco apartment building who (briefly) drove the rest of us nuts by coming and going all night long with his muffler-less car. It didn’t take long for him to get busted for drug dealing: if you’re stupid enough not to fix your noisy vehicle AND you’re back and forth every 15 minutes  from dark until the bars close AND you aren’t delivering pizza, well, people notice. At least they do in the U.S. where there are noise ordinances endeavoring to keep the chaos down to a minimum level.

Here in Himachal not so much. I don’t believe that there are any laws governing noise here. There are laws about not feeding plastic bags to cows. In fact there are lots of laws about cows in general and a good few about plastic shopping bags as well (mostly forbidden) but nothing, so far as anyone I’ve spoken to can tell, regulating decibel levels, times of day or quality of noise and it effect on other people. The general idea is that it’s up to individual’s common sense. That would be great - if people in a land where amplified sound, television and radio is still a novelty - had arrived at the place of having common sense. So far, I haven’t seen (make that heard) much.

As I write this, there’s a school program taking place down in town. You’re probably familiar with the Western equivalent: everyone files into the school auditorium, a few speeches are made, a few awards are given to the good students and then the kids get up and put on little skits or plays or read from stories they’ve written while Mommy and Daddy look on proudly? Well, it’s sort of like that here except that there are no auditoriums in the schools. For the recitals and programs, the schools (and there’s a bunch of them) rent a big awning sort of tent and a bunch of plastic chairs and drag them down to the equivalent of the village green. Oh yeah. And they hire “THE idiot” (emphasis is entirely mine) who owns and operates a PA system of microphones and speakers. I know it’s the same idiot because his way of setting up the sound system is to shout “HELLO! HELLO!” into the microphone over and over while turning up the gain until the noise bounces off the nearby hills and squeals loudly with feedback. That’s his idea of the “proper” setting. It ensure that everyone in the valley can hear every word, every sniffle, every fart made by the children, teachers, officials and anyone else within a ten foot radius of a microphone.

Today’s special treat sounds like a dozen eight year olds singing in Chinese to the accompanyment of a xylophone and bongo drums. I doubt if that’s what the instruments really are or if it’s really Chinese instead of Hindi, but I’m on the other side of the lake, about two kilometers up the mountain and that’s what I’d guess it is. Mostly it’s just loud. They’re not bad considering. The kids apparently know this song well and have been practicing. The adults who took a turn singing were not as tuneful I’m afraid. And then we’ll inevitably get a dance performance done by the pre-teens to the worst of Bollywood. That’s predictable:

The good aspect of this is that the programs usually don’t start until late morning and end sometime around 4 pm. Not so with the chanting at the temples which also tends to be broadcast in order to share the love with anyone nearby. Including, unfortunately, anybody who happens to be asleep at sunrise or sunset. Some of the music and chanting is surprisingly good. I’ve come to know the Hindu chants in the past few years and they can be lovely and powerful.

When we returned this year, we discovered that the main temple complex by the lake had received a new paint job. Stunning isn’t it? Now it both looks AND sounds loud! If you look up near the point of the large structure, you can see the loudspeakers.

They aren’t my bette noir however. I am being driving slowly and steadily insane (okay, admittedly that wasn’t a very long drive to begin with) by a certain priest at the Sikh temple complex directly across the lake from our house. They have a long history of broadcasting at ridiculous hours. Before our time, there was a period where people regularly snuck up the mountain at night and cut the wires to their speakers to make a point. Brave considering that every Sikh is essentially an armed warrior. I actually like the Sikhs a great deal as individuals and conceptually too. It’s the particular guy who does the 5 a.m. and mid evening chants that makes me bat shit crazy. Imagine a high, thin (but loud) nasal voice that wavers off key a lot. I may not have perfect pitch, but I have really good pitch and I can tell… Imagine that he obviously loves the sound of his own voice because he turns the speakers up the the absolute max and then whines across the valley for 30-45 minutes. Imagine that this happens about 6 days (sometimes 7) a week, beginning just before first light and at supper time. Imagine that there is nowhere in your own house that you can go where you cannot hear this whiner. Yeah. I buy earplugs when I’m in the U.S. in packs of 50 to bring back here. I also have put out a 500 rupee bounty - anyone who can get this guy to shut up (I don’t care how - cutting the wires is fine) for a few weeks at a time I will happily pay them 500 rupees (about $12 US.) Happily. More if they can make it permanent! Much more.

Okay so here, if I wake up without earplugs, I know exactly where I am. Fortunately, it’s not jut the whiner in the morning, there are other, more pleasant and interesting noises as well. The Buddhist monasteries (there are 3 with a 4th under construction) greet the dawn with horns and wake the monks with deep, sonorous gongs. This is repeated at bedtime and more elaborate horn playing is sounded for various special occasions. Have you ever seen Tibetan horns? They have a plaintive sound that echoes across the valley as they must have echoed across the high, cold upland plains of  Tibet. The small ones are big, the big ones are huge and there are some huge ones as well, though I have no picture handy of the biggest:

The Nyingma Monastery, whose courtyard sits right down at the lake, has a lovely, large bell that was given to them and is rung to signal certain hours and rituals:

My nextdoor neighbor is a Hindu pundit and also does puja at dusk and dawn. I find myself looking forward to that as he has a wonderful voice that rises joyously into the air and through our adjoining wall. Their ritual finishes with the blowing of a conch shell, something else he does well from years of long practice. I find myself anticipating this beautiful, eerie and uniquely Indian noise as an important part of my daily experience and missing it on the rare, odd occasion when he is out of town and it doesn’t happen. It’s like living next door to a cathedral and having the bells not ring one day!

Another very common sound around these parts is the sound of weddings, both the ritual processions accompanied by a traditional band and the (less pleasant to me) late night party where more Bollywood and dance music is played until all hours. Occasionally those get loud and rowdy enough that the police are called, but it takes a lot for any sort of intervention to occur. Usually they just go until 2 a.m. or so and everyone in the neighborhood is grumpy the next morning from lack of sleep. But it’s a wedding and weddings are THE biggest social event in people’s lives up here, definitely the single biggest event in the lives of the individuals being married. Part of the multi-day ritual involves the groom taking his new bride home. This is accompanied by a band that is as large (and as skillful) as the groom’s family is able to afford. It might be 3 musicians, it might be 10. They might play all the traditional folk tunes with verve and skill or they might know 4 songs and do them all badly - you get what you pay for. The closest I can come to describing them is to say think of a Mariachi band playing in the Indian tonal system. You might well have an accordion. And then throw in the possibility that it’s a really good band and has a bagpiper. Yup. Bagpipes are an essential component of a really good Indian wedding band. And when they’re good, they’re utterly delightful. Sorry this picture isn’t better, it was taken at twilight as the groom and bride (in all the spangles at the rear of the procession) passed by our house on the road home.

All sorts of things go by on that road. I might also be awakened by the indescribably horrific blaring of truck horns right under my bedroom window by someone coming a little too fast around the curve. The horn is an essential driving tool here in the Himalayas (actually anywhere in North India) and they are very, very, very loud. Some of them attempt to play tunes. It definitely will wake anything that isn’t completely dead, guaranteed. Or I might be awakened as I was this morning, by whistles and shouts and the sound of multiple baa’s and maa’s as a mixed herd comes down out of the higher elevation to their winter pasture:

This is the leading cause of early morning traffic jams:

I’ve only really scratched the audible surface as it were. I’d like to share with you the sound of Kinnouri women circumnambulating our sacred lake while singing “Om Mani Padme Hung Hri” - to the tune of “Happy Birthday to You” (try it, it’ll become a total earworm.) Or the screeching of a band of monkeys attempting to take over a new territory and battling with another troop. To let you hear the neighbor women calling and laughing to each other in village patois as they come down the mountain with bundles of firewood balanced on their heads or the little Tibetan monklets (some as young as 5 years old) yelling to each other as they charge through town on their one day off from school, excited at the prospect of spending their one or two rupees on something sweet.  The gongs and bells, the horns and drums that mark the progression of the sun and moon in their courses across the day and night skies are the background to the rest. And, if you go up to the top of the mountain where it’s very very quiet, no village sounds making it all the way up there, you can hear the prayer flags - the Wind Horses - luffing as they gallop in the cold breeze that blows all the way from the other side of the Tibetan border, carrying the prayers and hopes of a refugee nation to every corner of the world.

I’m hoping you don’t all faint from shock or anything, but yes, this is a new blog post. I promised myself - and many friends and family - that I would take up the blogger’s hat again in the New Year and so here I am. For awhile I wasn’t sure that I was going manage to do this on January 1st. The kind of crazy fate and circumstances that have made me be more absent than present last year, seemed determine to converge today. Although our internet connection has been pretty stable for the past few weeks, we woke up to a signal that was coming and going faster than blond starlets in Hollywood and that finally crashed altogether late morning. Making matters even more complicated was the electricity that also bounced up and down. That’s a much more common phenomena around here and we have ways of compensating for it in the short term but, when it goes on all day, the compensatory goes as well. So. Here it is about 9:30 PM Indian time and we appear to have light and connection to the outside world. Maybe they’re bouncing signals off that gorgeous, big moon that rose a couple of hours ago over the Eastern mountains. The winter months’ moons over this part of the Himalayas are breathtakingly beautiful. Here’s hoping that my friends in the Western Hemisphere where it’s daytime, get treated to as fine a moonrise when it’s your turn.

Can I say how very very glad I am that it is now officially the year 2010? (Yes. by the Western business calendar - I know there are scads of other systems out there that might designate this anything from the year 2 to the year 25218.) Of course it’s purely arbitrary to think that January 1, 2010 heralds something different than December 31, 2009, but I personally really need some change and I’ll take an arbitrary and capricious marker such as a date change if that’s what I can get. Something like a new calendar year, with broader connotations of change and beginnings, might just be the handle I can attach to the remnants of my once-indomitable optimism. I definitely need some leverage on the rudder of my personal flagship to get it headed back in a more optimal direction than it has been dragged by the undertow that was 2009!

All of which is a complicated way to say that, on a personal level, much of the year 2009 sucked. I won’t get too colourful with that metaphor and I don’t need to go into long or graphic detail here. That would bore you and me both since almost all of the suckage had something to do with the state of my health. This included an emergency abdominal surgery that I would have as soon not had, as well as surgery I wanted (knee replacement) but could not have due to an almost constant series of infections and autoimmune issues that left me pretty well sidelined and housebound much of the year. Munching pills and laying in bed doesn’t make for a very exciting blog most of the time. I’ve been feeling better this past week and seeing some improvements which make me optimistic about this being a better year all around.

There were some really bright spots to the past 12 months. Most of them had to do with people - it’s been an outstanding people year. I’ve made some wonderful new friends (waving at Kim, Kelly, Jo and Chandra to name just a few of many fine folks,) feel closer than ever to the ones I’ve kept through all the chaos (Sylvia this means you. Tien, I’m hoping to dance a bit at your wedding) and, through the miracles of social software, have reconnected with some people in my life in delightful ways - friends from childhood, former loves, awol family members and those whose lives took them in different directions than mine. Those connections with people kept me sane during the days in bed and looking forward to seeing them gave me incentive during some hard times. Then, of course, there is the absolute miraculous fantabulousness that is my daughter and grandkids! Doting on these doesn’t even begin to describe it. I am just… smitten. Never knew it was possible to love as hard or as deeply as this after all my mommy love went to daughter V, but it’s as intense with them as it was with her and gets stronger with every little change, every word and song and dance and Easter egg they dye:

My time with them in the States was grand and, through the wonders of the web cam, I get to see and talk to them regularly and be a part of their growing up, even though I’m on the other side of the planet. Virtual hugs aren’t as good as real ones, naturally, but I am so glad to live in a time and place with the technology we now have available!

Especially since letters and parcels STILL take 2 weeks to go from Oregon to India and cost an amount large enough to give me the blind staggers.

A few other good things… Well, actually there are many other good things going on, I’ve simply been too often sidelined by little things like trying to walk and breathe and haven’t reported them well. I’m going to change that. I want to tell everyone what the Tso Pema Medical Emergency Fund is doing (lots of great things for good people in need) and what’s happening here in our little corner of the Himalayas. I want to post pictures of Sonam Yutron (the invalid whose need for a wheelchair inspired the formation of the Emergency Fund) WALKING around the lake. First she started with crutches and a lot of help:

Slowly and with assistance she has become more and more mobile and people passing by her little house often see her outside, enjoying the sunlight. The utter joy of seeing someone who hadn’t left their house in years do kora and be able to participate in community events is so great. I want to wax enthusiastic about the traditional regional textiles that I’m studying, trying to record the motifs and construction before they vanish with the old craftspeople who hold all their secrets in their heads. Working with the knitting patterns, learning from the old women of Kinnour and Lahoul, is something I have been able to do, even when stuck in bed. I look forward to sharing that with my friends who are interested in such things!

So, although I don’t actually make New Years resolutions anymore, I do have a kind of new year determination to resume blogging in a consistent way. I know that receiving comment and feedback really helps motivate me, so please, leave all the comments (and compliments ) you like. Nag me if you need to. There is so much wonder and beauty here to share, I promise not to be selfish and keep it all for myself in 2010.