The setting sun silouetting the Monkey Temple transports me evokes eternity. This city below the Himalayas was famously one of the great stops of the the Silk Road as well as the Hippie Trail through Asia; Kabul, Goa, Kuta, Koh Saen Road in Bangkok, and Bali. I've been to four of them. I can't find the hash I had bought at the trailhead of Langtang Glacier. Two grams. It has to be hidden in my bag and I'm worried that the flics will find it at Charles de Gaulle aeroport. Douane officers are skilled at finding thag which is not lost, but can not find. Hopefully I lost it, while I was straggling around the pitch-black street of the Thamel, where Lance once moe fell into the open sewer. Soaked in sludge.
This morning he threw away the clothes, since he was leaving for New York. The architect had been a good travel companion on the trek to the Langtang Glacier. I don't really like reefer, but I do like opiated hash. There is plenty of hash in Paris,but nothing as good as here.
I wonder if anyone in Paris will talk to me. It's been eighteen months since I was last in the City of Light. I called Olivier from the GPO and he replied to my request to crash with him with a warm, "Quais." but almost as if he had something to hide. Like Cindi had returned to LA or he was fucking one of my old girlfriends or he was snortinng heroin or didn't have any money. Not a problem since I could always work for Albert at the door of the Balajo.The uncertainty of what awaits in Paris has my mind working overtime. Is NORTH NORTH HOLLYWOOD my salvation?
Time will tell.
I read about the Yusef Hawkins trail verdict in the Herald Tribune. Joseph Fama was convicted of second-degree murder. White versus black. Race war. I haven't seen any of that out here, although the Nepali army responded to the call for freedom by shooting the protesters and the same had occurred in Bangkok.
Four months ago Andy drove me to JFK on the BQE.
Hopefully tomorrow there's a USA direct phone booth in the New Delhi Airport, so I can call New York. A six-hour lay over awaiting the Air India flihgt to London then back to Paris. No one will be waiting for me there. I have used New York City to gauge cities on this trip. the best were Penang, Bangkok, Chiang Mai, and Kathmandu. I was happy to pass fast through Jakarta, Medan, and Singspore.
Returning to the East Village isn't so appealing, but I have to renew my lease in August and pursue a literary career, instead of working on 47th Street slinging diamonds. I'm checking out of this hotel in an hour, having survived the attack of blood-thirsty mosquitoes. I must have killed a thousand lasst night, even though I taped over the windows and door with masking tape, leaving smears of blood from my smashing them ith a rolled-up Herald-Tribune.
A taxi will take me to the Kathmandu airport.
No more lepers, no more beggars, no cows wandering the streets in a bovine stupor, no distant drumbeats, no monks, no cremations, no raga dirges from the Moneky Temple, no naked fakirs, no communist rallies against the king, no smiling sherpas,no temples of the Dhubar Square, no glancing north to the gleaming snow peaks of the Himalayas, because today belongs to a plane.
Leaving Kathmandu.
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