Beyond the Sky and the Earth_ A Journey Into Bhutan - Jamie Zeppa [123]
And she has a point, I can see that, from some other part of myself, perhaps from some distant future place, looking back, I can hear that she is offering very sound advice. Unfortunately or fortunately, I do not know right now, I cannot take it. I close my eyes and throw my stone and make my wish.
Love
Un paysage
quelconque est un
état de l’âme.
—H.F. Amiel,
Journal Intime
Love Is a Big Reason
Behind the frosted glass sky, the sun is a blurry orb of weak light. A tenuous blue-tinged mist like woodsmoke lies over Kanglung. The bare branches of trees tremble in the cold; the ground is rusted and blighted by frost. Inside my house, my bags are scattered over the sitting room floor, half-unpacked. Presents for various people are piled up on the altar, magazines and books for students, chocolate and newspapers for the Canadians who didn’t go home. I arrived in Kanglung a week ago, heart singing to be home. Now I am weeping into a cup of black tea. I don’t know why I have come back. I don’t know where I belong. I don’t know what to do.
I have come back because I have not had enough of these mountains. Because I have not finished with Bhutan. Because Bhutan is not finished with me. Because I am under a spell. Because I am in love.
Today I picked up my timetable. I will teach Tshewang’s class this year, which should not have been a surprise to me, but the sight of his name on the class list was a jolt. I don’t want him in my class. Before, we had that small, dubious, precarious space. A relationship would have been difficult but not impossible. Now it is unthinkable. Except I am still thinking it.
I swallow the last of the cold bitter tea, and put on a sweatshirt. Outside the college gate, I begin to run slowly uphill, fighting against the slope, my feet pounding on the tarmac. I run until my lungs are full of knives and then I stagger back.
At home, I swab the grimy floors with a virulent mixture of hot water and kerosene. I drag mattresses and quilts outside and drape them over chairs to air. Mrs. Chatterji waves from the balcony upstairs, where she sits reading in a cane chair. From the college store I bring three tins of paint and a paintbrush; I paint the walls in the sitting room and the bedroom. I move the divans, the desk, change the order of the books on the shelves.
I sort through stacks of notebooks and paper and photographs. I burn boxes of old letters. I make lesson plans for my first class on William Blake. I go to a staff party and make a strenuous effort to converse with Mr. Matthew. This is where I belong, in the staff room, talking with colleagues. I have come to my senses.
I stay up late reading a history of the English language. I turn off the lights and my senses betray me. I pull the blankets over my head, roll and twist and turn. I want to see him, I want to talk to him. I want to hear him laugh. I want I want I want. I meditate on the cycle of desire, the endless wanting and grasping that lead us to wrong understanding, wrong speech and wrong action, and the negative karma they generate. I meditate on the body, breaking it down into bone and hair and fat, decay is inherent in all component things. I meditate on the certainty of death. I fall asleep, empty at last, wanting nothing, free.
I wake up in the morning with his name in my head. Tshewang. It means the Power of Life. A crow flaps noisily into the pine tree outside my window, regards the world intently with its black-bead eyes, then lifts itself effortlessly up, and I watch as it wings its way toward the mountains at the far end of the valley, stark outlines in the cold north light. I remain rooted, caught. I cannot extinguish this hunger, this hope. If any should desire what he is incapable of possessing, despair must be