What Was I Thinking? -- Pokhara, Nepal

I'm starting this post from Easy Cafe in Lakeside, Pokhara, Nepal. Rather than listen to all the hocking and honking (these are the sounds of  Nepal), I've turned on Bon Iver and retreated into the safety of my earbuds. Matt sits next to me, reading Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own and Three Guineas. He needs no earbuds, as hocking and honking have long since become his norm. Fake red and white flowers decorate the table, and the couch on which I sit has more cushion than my poor backside has experienced in the last week. Combined.

Nepal is not a land for people who enjoy Tempur-pedic mattresses. Or just, you know, mattresses. In general. Soft things on which to sleep or sit or lounge. I've recently relocated from Ice View Hostel to another room in Matt's homestay (Matt and I are flatmates now), and my "mattress" consists of two thick blankets on top of wooden planks. 

I have bruises on my knees from sleeping on my side. That's how hard my "mattress" is. 

Matt is jealous. I think Matt has only one thick blanket. I'm sleeping in the lap of luxury when compared to Matt. However, my room is significantly louder than Matt's, because the neighbors to my right are a family of hockers. And Nepalese people wake up quite early, I'm learning (they think that you're suffering from depression if you stay in bed until nine). So at five am, my eyes pop open to the sound of someone belligerently dredging sludge from what seems to be a slimy, fathomless abyss (but I'm told is just their lungs) and spitting into the sink.

Nepal is full of people who shamelessly make all the noises. Spitting, nose blowing, snorting, etc. Matt says that they honk while driving to be polite. A considerate way of saying, "hey there friend, I'm right behind you. Please do try to not stand in front of my motorbike." I attempt to apply this same logic to the sounds people make when just going about their lives, but for some reason, I can't seem to make hocking feel polite. 

I'm stuffed to bursting with Paneer curry and marsala tea. Masala tea can cost as little as twenty five cents a cup in Nepal, and I'm definitely taking advantage of this. So far, my record is three cups of chia in one day. And I still have four weeks left in this country with which to fully explore my chia capacity. I'm expecting great things from myself. 

Matt's homestay father, Ganesh, is an English teacher at a nearby village on Phewa Lake. So on Wednesday morning, Matt, Ganesh and I hopped into a cantankerous old bus and headed down the bumpiest road of my life thus far towards the school. 

I'm really not sure why I'm going... but this is fun. Crazy bus ride along the lake towards a small Nepalese village. Yes please. 

Ganesh gave Matt and me a tour of the school, introduced us to a few students and to probably all the teachers, then left to supervise some examinations.

"Why are we here?" I asked Matt in confusion. "Did he want our help with something?"

"No, I think he just wanted to show us how examinations are done in Nepal. Want to go for a walk?"

"Yes. Yes, let's do that." 

 

So Matt and I went for a wander in the very non-touristic towns around Phewa Lake. 

Matt has lived in Pokhara since August, and has picked up what I consider to be an impressive amount of Nepali (probably because my vocabulary includes "Namaste" for a normal hello and "Namaskar" for a respectful hello. And... ummm... no, that's about it). So whenever locals speak to Matt and my kiwi friend answers in full sentences, the faces of the locals light up.

"We're so happy you speak Nepali!" they exclaim.

I shuffle my feet a bit. Speaking Nepali is not something I'll be doing anytime soon. It's still hard for this yoga instructor to not feel pretentious and out of place bringing my hands together in a "prayer position" and saying "Namaste" as a greeting, not as an ending to a yoga routine.

Matt and I walked back to the school and told Ganesh that we'd catch a bus back to Pokhara.

"Take care of her, Matt," Ganesh gazed at us with great solemnly. Which I found to be a little overkill, as we were just catching a bus, not trekking into the wilderness.

"And she can take care of me," Matt said, being all gender sensitive.

"No," Ganesh reprimanded. "In our culture, men protect the women. We protect them physically and mentally. You keep Yammee safe."

Yammee. Why is my name always hard for people to say? 

"What do you think he means, protect women mentally?" I asked Matt when we were out of the school grounds.

"No idea."

Bus ride back to Pokhara. I think I spent about half the journey in my seat. The rest of it, I was entirely airborne. Entirely airborne, and making all manner of grunts and oofs and screams and laughs. Which seemed to amuse the rest of the bus full of people with callused backsides who seem to have overcome the law of gravity and can remain glued to their seats, regardless of the bus's violent lurching.

I've decided to postpone my Vipassana meditation course. After a lot of tortured soul-searching (quitting/postponing makes me feel like such a failure), I discovered that what I need most at this point in my life is just to be in one place for a while. To be in one place, to have a flatmate, to settle in. To have a favorite cafe, a favorite seat in a favorite cafe, a room that's mine and place to put my toothbrush.

I'll register for Vipassana again when I'm already settled. When I'm living in France or Seattle or wherever the hell I end up. When I've had the time and space to develop a healthy mediation practice and feel prepared to meditate from four am to nine pm every day. For ten days. At this point, I've never even meditated for over an hour. And that was... what... two and a half years ago? Since then, painting has been my meditation. Gardening. Walking through nature. Practicing yoga. I have not just sat in silence, focusing on my breath, since May, 2014. 

And I signed up for a Vipassana course? 

What was I thinking? 

I was thinking that I want to be the kind of person who can sit in silence for ten days, focusing on breath, letting go of thoughts, becoming more present. And the only way to be that person is to, well, sign up. 

But that kind of thinking gets me in trouble so often. Like it did in Morocco. I wanted to be the kind of person who could just book a flight to any country and make things work. With little money. With lots of creativity.

So I did it. 

And I suffered. So needlessly. Because I wasn't ready to be that person. Hell, four years later, I'm STILL not that person. Which makes me feel like a failure in a lot of ways, but it's better to feel like a failure than to be unsafe.

The fine line between excuse and reason is hard to navigate sometimes. Am I afraid of Vipassana so I'm just finding excuses to postpone the ordeal? The incessant itching of my scalp from psoriasis that makes concentration difficult. The intermittent, inexplicable pain in my throat that scares me. The chronic pain in my thoracic spine I've lived with since I was fourteen that makes sitting for hours incredibly painful. The need to find a place for my toothbrush. To have a friend. 

Are these excuses or reasons? 

I don't know. 
 
I guess the question to ask is... will I ever be more ready than I am now? Should I wait for that time?

I think so. I think I will be more ready than I am now. And at this point in my journey, I don't think ten days trapped in my head in my body would be healthy. It would be more needless suffering.  

So I'm going to try to congratulate myself for respecting my needs instead of beating myself up for failing. Failing to be that person. And I'm going to try to direct my life to be more prepared for Vipassana in the future. 

Yes.