Oh oh oh, feel that. This is Jungle Heaven (hotel) in Bardia National Park, (south)west Nepal and this is where I am, this May 25th, no wifi, thank goodness, quiet and nature and hot hot.
But never fear, because
Because today I rode on the back of an elephant and we rocked with every enormous step of her enormous legs and her tail would switch when I placed my hand on her back and I ran my feet over her sides and it was tough skin and coarse hairs and soft grey and pink in folds and nothing more than this and her eyes like billiard balls of soul and a trunk like evolution remembered function and hilarity at the same time and strength plowing on and on.
We crossed muddy swirling rivers and stomped delicately through jungle forest ground, a pathway from times before, and I have scratches on my swinging legs from where the trees told me namaste and smack smack get that ant and flick that bug and rock and rock back and forth.
Get this: the jungle...sounds like a jungle. it is real. and alive. The bird calls and howler monkeys and the occasional branch snap from unseen wild things and even the sun sounds like the jungle. I have been placed back in the world when humankind did not exist and how this will exist long after we finish our weird and wicked journeys here. Maybe not the rhinoceroses(because screw you poachers, and the market that demands it *really mad face*)one of whose path we crossed today, but what will likely outlive us is the way the sun settled itself between bare branches of stark trees on grasslands by edges of jungles and rocky banks of drying rivers, and the leaping of the tall deer and the scurry of the smaller ones and creepy spiders dangling on shoulders and tree stumps and elephant dumps...this will be here. At least that is the kind of timelessness I believe in...or maybe I am just hoping. I am just hoping so much that we don't mess this up for every other living creature around us, whether they are massive rhinos that grunt and charge you and then think better and bundle off crashing intothe bush (adrenaline like this is what my ancestors faced down sometime, in ancient days of caves and wild and everything the same, prey predator hunted hunter)or the human-whistle-tune-bird that echoed in the distance, or the geckos that spring across the white washed wall in front of me, or the crickets roaring up around this jungle darkness, all.
Watch your step, humans. There is so much more to where we live than just us.
In other news: it is one week until our last night in Nepal all together.
Whatever/wuteva don't matter I don't care nope not affected by this hahahha noooooooopppppeeeeeee
*stares at you*
Here is my face from yesterday, our last day in the classroom:
And I didn't cry ... probably because we will be returning on Tuesday for lunch and a final meeting with the teachers so I have postponed all my feelings until then so lalalalalalalala can't hear you don't tell me it is time to go.
But it is, and by the time I post this and by the time you are reading this (a different now than the now I'm living this...now) I will be even closer and maybe this makes you happy (finally this crazy girl is coming home) but maybe it makes you look at your month and say wait that crazy girl is coming home? Where did the time go.
...and I just misspelled something in that last sentence and autocorrect was all: the word you want is 'here'. And I was like, no I promise I want where...
but here is where
the time went.
time went here. Here.
Truth: I am still here. And will be yet. And here is where I was and here is where I am and here is where I will be.
I want to roll my body in paint and high five the wall I am looking at and I want to scratch the surface of the earth and get it under my fingernails and run my face over the tufts of grass around the path and I want to make something to tell me that I am here.
The locks on the doors here are strange and simple and intricate all together, and this place is jungle heaven and in Lamahi, we learned yesterday that our hotel name literally translates into 'door to heaven' or 'heaven's door' and this is something. This is maybe how I've been feeling the divine every time I am greeted by namaste here and I think heaven is on earth where you learn to create yourself and your space into a broken and changing harmony, create who you are in space and person and place and peace and pain. That's what I think, what I take in every time I breathe deep on the rooftop and right now feeling the sweat roll over my body because the power has turned off now and my fan is no longer the nighttime percussion to the wind instruments of the insects, feel so complete(ly) the heat, and that is everything I feel, I need, knowing I am constantly on the threshold of heaven for myself.
And maybe I overstep and maybe this sounds too self-serving but I write this as a pinprick in the sky, less, because the only air I breathe is mine for a moment and if you asked me to (let) go, I would, and this life is not mine to keep but mine to live. That is all I can do.
Here.
-k
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