Himalayan White
Two days to drive from Thimpu
we must abandon our jeeps and GPS and wait for amenable weather. My host’s name is Pencho. I try to ask him the name of his silent daughter. Pencho just laughs. I look away. ‘There are many ravens,’ I say. Once more he laughs.
I am woken by the insistent spinning
of a prayer wheel at the edge of the village. From my window I watch men and beasts jangling up the slopes toward a cool summer. The following day it is our turn to climb into the thinnest air. We are soon possessed by the desire to suspend our sentences.
I crouch in a forest of prayer flags,
surrounded by the colours of the five elements and the susurration of prayers being peeled from flags by wind, but it is hard to believe in the existence of other sentient beings in need of blessings. It feels as if we are the first rush of mortals into the mountains, and over the next ridge we will find deities constructing another impossible dzong.
After a storm, the huddled yak are parted
to reveal a capsized bull, hoarfrosted but jelly-eyed. It mewls. Someone must break its neck. The rest of us distribute its load among the survivors. A squinting guide delivers what may be a proverb: Although my eyes are open, they can also close.
Days in, a running stream defies reason;
provides the ghost of a mirror; diminishes its own miracle with our rough reflections. There is an argument. Nothing is explained. As always, my understanding is incidental.
Upon our return, the women pretend not
to care: we have only been walking. It is in the village rather than on the ascent that I truly appreciate the difficulty and simplicity of life at altitude: it is as if every dying wife takes with her one piece of Life that does not do what it says it will on the label.
After a hot stone bath prepared by Pencho’s
daughter, I find my host in a grand mood. Later there will be a village fête of some sort. For now we sit by the light of butter lamps, sipping fearsome moonshine. His daughter serves us buckwheat noodles, looking bored. We three eat in silence until there is a clang outside the window. Curious, I rise and see a young boy standing over a dropped dramyin. Pencho’s daughter is at my shoulder. I turn to her, and she to me. Her cardboard mouth contorts into a music-loving smile and I join the yak-line for love.
|