humanity correct
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Don't wait until you go someplace. You are someplace.
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[notebook excerpt, Kathmandu, Nepal]
Sitting on *my* balcony at Hotel Florid, her vertical sign hanging just next to me with a dying vine wrapped about her.
The pigeons pull individual stalks of straw from the 2nd story roof catercorner to my room, stealing it for their nest, which they impose on another part of the same structure. They simply redesign, remodel the building erected by man, to suit their needs. And they do so freely, without anyone to prevent them from doing so. Man has built a structure that is impossible to govern -its roof even out of reach.
The corrugated tin roof, adjacent, governs itself, impervious to the pigeons, falling victim only to the leaf and litter which exercises its power as given only by gravity. The next rain will humble the litter and wash it gently to the ground.
The tall brick building with six full floors and three tiered garden-floors atop those provides shelter to man, flora, and fauna. Trees and vines and shrubs and flowers rise from its top like a mismanaged crew cut, it’s concrete, painted support beams add a simple tic-tac-toe design to its red brick matrix. A lone pigeon claims a protruding row of bricks, pacing in single-line fashion before finally nesting on the ledge.
Wires criss and cross from hotel corner to hotel corner. Name signs are fastened to walls with modeling wire and skewered with drainage PVC. The pigeons fly across the street and their feathers float freely at the will of the wind.
People stroll down the street below, it becoming a sidewalk when no vehicles are present. But the vehicles do come and honk their presence both physically and audibly. Motorcycle fights with automobile for space, and compromise is always reached without so much as a word exchanged between drivers.
The rule of the road is that there is none. Horns are tooted, more out of a warning of one’s arrival than of an insistence of one’s right of way.
Locals busy about their day and foreign tourists start theirs with a stroll. Shadows follow their masters as they walk into the sunlight.
An old man squats at a buildings ledge, leaning against the window as he reads his morning paper. Could I read Nepali, I would easily read it in the window’s reflection. The man’s shiny shoes in caramel match his skin tone and he is nicely dressed in white jeans, taupe button-up shirt, and olive canvas cap. He wears shades that hide just below the cap, as he also wears a face mask to guard against the day’s UFOs, which are inevitable in these Kathmandu streets.
A stray dog joins him, as if with familiarity as he pats the dog with uncommon affection, then leaves him only minutes later, taking with him also his shadow. 10 minutes pass and the man turns several pages of his paper before a man joins him, puffing on his morning fix of nicotine. This man moves on, too, leaving Ol’ Steady to guard the window front at Hotel Radiant, just opposite Hotel Florid.
The sounds of construction radiate upwards to my balcony from the reception of my own Hotel Florid.