We're long overdue here for post, but the truth is there ain't quite as much to write about as there once was. Life is pretty quiet for your trusty, ill windy bloggerman. I suppose the day-to-day in Northern Vermont is every bit as weird and wonderful in its way as any Himalayan sojourn, but it will take fresher eyes than mine to see it. But perhaps I can interest you cosmopolitan readers in tales of Chem Lab at exotic Lyndon State College? Midadventures of doggies Mabel and Cyrus? Smitten, slightly impatient accounts of long distance romance?

What I'm more likely to hit you with in the coming weeks is pontifications on traditional medicine. I'm spending an ungodly proportion of my time studying and working with herbs, and once the lid comes off there may be no stopping the botanical ranting. I'm currently trying to envision the next stage of my (re)education--naturopathy, Chinese medicine, Western herbalism? everything I can get my hands on is more like it--so I have an ulterior motive for sparking some dialogue about these things. I've also recently finished an article for supposed, eventual publication in a Nepali journal about the forms of Ayurveda I observed in Kathmandu. Partly, I admit, it's a platform for me to rage against the dying of the light, as traditional lineages of Ayurveda dwindle and disappear (See also my May 30 post, Endangered Species of Ayurved). Anyway, it's too long to post here, but I'd happily email it in pdf format to any interested parties.

In other news, and probably against my better judgement, I went and joined facebook. There's no place to hide any longer.

Manang to Mustang

I've finally made enough sense of the thousands of photos from my last Nepal trek to make a coherent slideshow. I took the time to add captions to each image, but unfortunately those don't appear in the little thumbnail slideshow at right. To see the thing properly, click on the title of this post to link to the corresponding photo album, and set up a slideshow there. It's worth it! (As of today--September 15th, 2009--I've just finished uploading all the photos with captions.)

Brewer's itch

Here we are--the second beverage related post in one day. It never rains but it pours, I guess.

I’ve been concocting again. It happens periodically, which is funny, because it used be an incessant state. I spent the better part of my college years in the kitchen, bottling beer and tending bubbling crocks of kraut and kombucha. Fermentation itself became an obsession (perhaps at the point when the kombucha mother colonized my central nervous system), and my habit reigned unchecked until a roommate drew the line at the vat of fermenting dumpster-dived bagels mouldering in a corner. The intended delicacy was a variation on kvass, the sour Russian breadcrust-based beverage. (Didn’t make it onto anyone’s list of three, I notice...) Among my prouder creations were a strong, Belgian Abbey style ale made from scratch with a healthy dose of dark maple syrup, a peach-ginger mead that could have passed for champagne, and a dark, half-sour ale that fueled another roommate’s mania for a month straight.
Like most of my obsessions that one eventually simmered down, though a bubble of lingering enthusiasm will rise the surface periodically and inspire me to get out the big brew pot or the mammoth mortar and pestle. The latest resurgence was spurred by a reference I came across recently to a liqueur made by suspending an orange above spirits in a closed jar. I loved the image and the promise of such a subtle infusion, and before I knew it I had filled half a dozen jars with a variety of alcoholic extracts ranging from syrupy to medicinal. My favorite so far is inspired by an Italian drain-cleaner strength digestive liquore called Cent’erbe (‘one hundred herbs’) that my father brought back from Italy once upon a time (he also once notoriously made a batch of garlic vodka, so perhaps these tendencies are genetic). The stuff was bright green and, at 80% abv, tended to peel a layer off your eyeballs. In high school we’d sneak a few ounces of it from the liquor cabinet, and mixed with in a Ninja turtles water bottle with grapefruit juice was enough to lubricate an entire teenage night on the town. The current version, which features a little of every aromatic herb I could find within a two minute walk of my house, promises to live up to its grandaddy in all but proof--100 proof vodka was the strongest base I could find. (The lady at the Price Chopper liquor department was mighty emphatic, too, when she informed me that no, they did not carry pure grain alcohol.) That one is clearly on the medicinal end of the spectrum, but even further out there is a cordial featuring traditional digestive and heart-tonic herbs: hawthorn berry, cardamom, and saffron. It’s cognac-base, and it’s going to get some honey after the infusion is complete. Should digest anything within five miles, including your stomach lining if you’re not careful.
The beauty of liquors, cordials, etc. is how easy they are to make. You can go from concept to execution in about 5 minutes--if you discount the few days, weeks or months it takes for the flavors to infuse and mellow out. The idea is the same as making an herbal tincture, only here the concentrations are much less intense. Basically, you take whatever you’re doing the flavoring with, put it in a jar, and pour some vodka, brandy, rum, or whatever over it. Taste periodically, and strain when you deem it strong enough. Sweeten if you like with simple syrup or honey. You can even add cream; the alcohol should preserve it. Other liquers currently liqueuring on my shelf include blackberry, coffee, and a bitter orange digestive. I’d offer up samples from the website, but Mac hasn’t made that technology public yet.

On a soberer note, one reason I’m confident that I’ve found my niche with herbal medicine is that it manages to integrate so many of the obsessions or hobbies I’ve nurtured over the course of my life: everything from foraging to gardening to cooking and brewing to collecting hot sauces (that was sixth grade?) fits neatly into the fold of traditional medicine. Meanwhile, doing it all for the sake of health puts a more positive spin on inclinations that could easily be put to less than wise use. In some parallel universe, perhaps, I might be running a meth lab right now.

Cent’erbe

ingredients:

-modest sprigs of eight or more fresh aromatic herbs, such as peppermint, basil, thyme, sage, rosemary, mugwort, marjoram, bee balm, hyssop, and fennel

-high-proof neutral grain alcohol. vodka is fine, but at least 100-proof is preferable. If you have access to Everclear or other really strong stuff, dilute it down to 65-80%.

Pick the herbs and put them in a clean jar that has a tight-fitting lid, such as a mason jar. Pour the spirits over them, stir or shake to get them wet, cap, and put somewhere out of direct light. Shake it up each day and start smelling/tasting it every day after the second or third day. Adjust herb amounts if necessary by adding more of things--you don’t want any one flavor to predominate. It should smell good and pungent, almost like turpentine. Strain and bottle, diluting with more alcohol and/or water if necessary. Will probably improve with age.

Fuoco Dell' Etna

This is an approximation of a souvenir liquor I brought back from the slopes of the active volacni Mount Etna, in Sicily. In seven or eight years my family never managed to get through the tiny novelty-sized bottle, so I used it to tincture up some bloodroot, an herb with a similarly firey character.

ingredients:

vodka or high-proof alcohol
atomic fireballs or other red, cinnamon-flavored candy

Soak/dissolve fireballs in the booze. put on a high shelf and forget about it.


(apologies for the lack of photos here--I just don't have any good shots of people drinking awful firewater floating around. I'll make up for it soon, however. )

Nectars of the Gods

^What's he thirsty for?

I’ve been spreading the word about the cow with the soda-fountain udder, and everyone wants a piece of the action. I’ve managed to pop the question to a few dozen folks over the last few weeks, and preliminary results are interesting. But before examining the hottest trends, a little philosophizing is in order.

The quandary, as I see it, is this: one wants at the very least something caffeinated, something alcoholic, something refreshing, and something hot. It’s also nice to have something nourishing. I don’t meant to go any further than this with the psychologizing, but it probably says a lot about someone which of these they opt for, or which they try and combine. for example, I made my alcoholic drink and my refreshing drink one and the same: Chang is a milky rice beer that they make in Nepal. The Newari style, or my favorite example of it (which comes from a hole-in-the-wall in Naradevi) is slightly tart and slightly sweet with a bit of spritz to it. It’s great by itself as a snack or a refreshment and goes well with all sorts of food. As for my other choices, milk is nature’s perfect drink, and can be served up hot or cold. After much deliberation (and a recent bout of over-caffeination) I replaced green tea with tulsi, which is a kind of basil native to India. Really good tulsi tea is divine and could even be iced, if this temperature-fiddling isn’t against my own rules. Sure, there would be times when I craved an IPA, a glass of red wine, or some juice. But I could drink good chang almost anytime, and for fruit juice i’d just eat the fruit. The mouth: nature’s juicer.
My runners up: green tea, salty lassi, Samuel Smith’s oatmeal stout, a good dry red wine (like Salice Salentino). If we’re going to get outlandish, I mean more than we already have, I’d throw in a dessert wine like Muscat de Beaumes de Venise. But that was the point: you have to choose three. Never again shall I taste yr sweet nectar...

So much for my logic. The masses have spoken (yes, those screaming hordes at my doorstep), and the most popular responses are: coffee in various forms (15), beer (10), red wine (8), whiskey (5), grapefruit juice (3). Only one person for orange juice, but lots of people had some kind of juice (total 10). 14 out of 33, almost half, included milk or another dairy product, even if only in their coffee or tea. No one mentioned hot chocolate--but I didn’t conduct this survey in the winter. No one said breast milk, but I didn’t ask any infants.
One-time only answers include: chocolate soy milk, pepsi in a glass bottle, gin and tonic, gatorade, ginger ale, Nepali millet beer, rooibos tea, and mango lassi.

Interestingly, no one took the luxury approach and named, say, vintage champagne or really fancy wine. Goes to show good taste don’t have to be expensive. Neither does bad taste, weird taste, or complete lack of taste. (One respondent, Chris Edley III, did pick a single malt scotch, but later changed it to a cheap bourbon for reasons best known to himself.)

It was predictably common for someone to rattle off three of their favorite drinks after a moment’s consideration, only to realize with a start that they’d forgotten coffee.


Now for the awards:

Most Batshit Insane goes out to The Boat, who chose raw goat’s milk, kombucha and everclear. Boat also tried to name raw honey, until I told him he could have honey even without naming it as one of his three.

Most whiskey-loving goes to Ezra who picked bourbon and scotch for two out of his allotted three.

Most beer-loving goes to Ben M who named IPA and “a good stout” and was stumped to come up with a third.

Most weirdly counterbalanced to Toby Louis David, orator extraordinaire, who chose coconut water, yerba mate, and rye whiskey. Toby’s got his bases covered.

Most desert island-friendly goes to Angela, what with her pineapple juice, coconut milk, and lemonade. You can spot a californian a mile away.

Most eclectic goes to Orion, with Anchor porter, sugarcane juice, and Pu Erh tea.

Most concocted goes to Alden, who included “amla-rhododendron-lemon juice sweetened with agave nectar” as one of his selections, g_d love him.

Most sarcastic goes to J-will, who without missing a beat responded “any three -tinis.” My special contempt goes out to you, J-will, as you will have to suffer for the rest of your days as I make you every kind of -tini you never dreamed of: mochatini, smokatini, gropatini, blokatini... the list goes on.

Congratulations to the winners, especially since neither they nor I knew this was a contest. Any of them are hereby invited to buttonhole me for a free drink any time.

I would be interested to hear what people would choose if we put a localvore-type constraint on this, limiting the choices to beverages produced within one’s local area (bioregion, say, or 100-mile radius, whichever is smaller). Every single ingredient need not be local, but the production should be. If you’re mixing it up yourself, all of the ingredients should be readily available. Here in Northeastern Vermont, my candidates are apple cider, switchel (that’s “water seasoned to taste” with cider vinegar and maple syrup or honey), cow’s milk, and the Double Bag ale or a local IPA. There’s a vodka distillery nearby, but that’s the one kind of booze I never could abide. Go figger. Offbeat choices would include rhubarb wine, mead, pickle juice (Tev? anyone?), a pickletini, fresh maple sap or even straight maple syrup.

some difficult adjustments:

*nodding my head up-and-down instead of wagging it side-to-side like a slinky pet
*driving a car that holds together more than 10 mph down a road that holds together and not using the horn to try and chat amiably with every other vehicle on the road. driving my own car at all. driving on a particular side of the road (actually, no trouble there so far)
*eating not rice. eating not rice with sharp metal implements.
*placing garbage in the proper receptacle
*respecting/comprehending others' sense of personal space on public transportation (not such an issue here in Vermont)

other than these minor points, i'm doing just fine, thank you. actually, i've just realized my approach to being back from nepal is to try and bring nepal to where i am, often with hilarious results. last week i had my best friend and his dad attempting to scoop rice up with their fingers, while their womenfolk looked on with undisguised, abject horror. it was priceless.

there's a Gary Snyder poem I oughtta quote, if I can locate it . . . or failing that, here's the relevant line: "America, I could almost love you again . . ." Yeah, almost.

(top) No more of this for a while: A yearly Buddhist dance at the Bhutanese Gomba in Pedong, Darjeeling District, India. They ended up pelting those paper-mache penises at the crowd--apparently part of the idea behind this day-long, absurdist spectacle is to remind the monks and lay community alike not to take the trappings of the religion too seriously. Spring, 2005.

(second from top) Or this: Kanchenjunga Himal (3rd highest peak on earth) seen from Darjeeling.

8 July '09

Here's a novel setting for an illwind entry: the slick, frankly bewildering Changi airport in Singapore. It's full of features you'd never find in Nepal, including moving sidewalks ('travelators') and the free (if time-limited) internet I'm taking advantage of now while waiting for a 4 AM flight to Tokyo. In another 24 hours, with any luck, I'll be back where I started 10 months ago: New York City, in my mother's cushy, slightly funky Upper West Side apartment. With a whole lot of digesting to do.

The last month in Nepal was a whirlwind. It's full of stories, naturally, including at least one I haven't figured out how to tell. This last month also included a 2-week trek in the Annapurna region, blissfully deserted thanks to the monsoon (which hadn't actually hit yet when we were there). Photos, and maybe some of those stories, should be forthcoming here. For now, some poems I scribbled out in the airport bar . . .

Transit Zone

Airport bar, the tropics.
“Singapore’s Favorite,” reads the dubious banner. This place
could be anywhere.
Amidst the manicured cactus garden
low murmur of transiters’ chitchat
under jet engines’ hypnotic whine
A place to kill time. In ones and twos,
the international sippers and smokers
percolate through.
A dozen inflections of English
Different strengths of Marlboros,
various dilutions of alcohol. Skies clear
above the nighttime city glow.

Every traveler a capsule of history,
a story waiting to be told. I picture
cartoon-style thought bubbles
hovering over every insular head.
Or at least give us signs with some basic information:
port of departure _____
final destination _____
We owe each other that much.


Dakshinkali, Fourth of July, 2009

The photos shows two naked white backs
bent low, heads down, side by side,
next to three clothed ones. White limbs
and brown are sunk ankle, wrist-deep
in glistening muck dotted with fluorescent shoots
of paddy, the pattern of which is being extended
to fill the oblong terrace.

An image that seems to beg post-hoc captioning
but here’s how it came about:
a shout of “dhaan ropna aaunupardaina?”
from across the fields, aimed at
the presumably oblivious tourists.
shouldn’t you/mustn’t we come plant some rice?
A. called back, “ma dhaan ropna aau?”
Shall I come plant rice?
“ropna aau!” come plant!
We slipped off our rubber sandals,
ubiquitous footwear of the foothills
and vast plains stretching away south,
and there we were.

It would have been as simple as that
to become adopted. Had we stayed 5 minutes more
we’d have shared the family’s mid-afternoon meal,
beaten rice and potatoes one can guess;
stayed ‘til dark and we’d have found ourselves
put up for the night. No way we could have left
before the next morning’s rice meal, and after that
escape would have been impossible.

Instead I fled the lush hills
back down into the Valley’s grind and haze
and on to shiny unfathomable places
like the one I come from, like this one.

In four months our rice will mature.

The Rains
For Ben Ayers

i.
Perched on the roof, book in hand
He never heard the kite
Until she was upon him
Apparition from the gaping blue
That, taking him perhaps for a hitchhiker,
Latched her talons onto his extended thumb
the message clear as skies
after a hard rain: come on
relinquish your mass
So that when he failed to wing up out
Of his chair, off mortal ground
The brown bird wheeled around
Hovering on steady wingbeats
Not a dozen feet away
And fixed him with her yellow gaze.

ii.
The girl finds playing cards. Bustling down
Market Street, she can’t help but find
The Jack of Hearts wedged under a standpipe.
Not two days later it’s an ace, clubs this time,
Followed shortly by a diamond four. No fool
To ignore such signs, key plot twists in The Story
She quietly stoops to collect the winking red and black
And white faces. Tucks them neatly into her wallet.
For--future reference? routine inference?
A source of some distress, then, to come here
And find entire decks strewn carelessly
Cards face up and down, soaked and tattered,
Wasted bits of storyline,
Sheer potential overwhelmed
With wantonness. By early afternoon
The rains come and wash the evidence away.

iii.
In second grade mother’s mother died
Leaving a grandmother-shaped hole.
Genny knew. She would stir
Her pots of black beans and collards
Magic dishes I can’t stop tasting
Head wrapped in clean white cloth
She scrubbed the floors of our long apartment
Like no one has before or since
Never learning the name of our second,
Terrified cat: Proust’s Morel and Charlus
Scarred products of a lab and a Bronx deli
Portuguese’d to Moralio and the white one.
Stirring heavy, fragrant pots she absorbed
The news from mother with, I imagine,
Barely a nod. I know, dear. Sound of rainfall.
City noises. She passed me in the hall.

Endangered Species of Ayurved

Top image: Bishunath Karmacharya, traditional baidya and head of the Banepa Ayurveda Sangh (association). He wants to pass the tradition on and is willing to teach anyone willing to learn, at no cost. On the floor in front of him is a box of Yarchagumba.

Lower image: Keshab Baidya, a traditional Ayurvedic doctor/pharmacist in Banepa, Nepal. With his son pursuing a different career, Keshab is the last of his lineage. Above his right shoulder, a jar of shuddha paro, purified mercury, is visible.



Yesterday I took a long-overdue trip to Banepa, a sleepy Newar town slowly transforming itself into a modern city. In other words, it’s a lot like what Kathmandu must have been like in the seventies. The main strip, all that most tourists ever see of the place, is all traffic and bustle, with the usual assortment of shops, fruit peddlers, pan-spitters, etc. But head ten yards off this long, straight, dusty thoroughfare and you’re in another world of quiet brick-paved streets and brick-and-woodwork houses. Ducks puttering around the streets, and women scrubbing sudsy clothes just outside their doorways.
My mission was to meet with a couple of the old-timer Baidyas I’d met once or twice before, men who still practice (or if not, still know how to practice) rasa shastra. They work with minerals, metals, and animal parts like deer musk glands and conch shells as well as countless herbs from India and from the Himalayas. They are clinicians, too, but what separates them from so many other practitioners is their skill and knowledge of medicine-making. The first baidya I sought was Keshab Baidya (his last name indicating that his family have been Ayurvedic doctors for generations). I’d spent a wonderful couple of days with him during the winter watching him make medicine and tend to the few patients who came into his pharmacy-room, crowded with hundreds of jars of raw ingredients and finished compounds. This time I went straight up the back way to his herb room and got a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach when I saw it was cleaned up, practically empty. Could he have fallen ill and died so suddenly in a few short months . . .? A possibility that seemed all the more real and disturbing because of the recent, sudden passing of another old man I had loved, on the other side of the world. But going around to the main entrance of his house, I was greeted by his daughter-in-law who explained the herb room had just been moved down a few flights. My worries weren’t entirely unfounded, though: Keshab-ji wasn’t well. He was suffering from a failing heart. The move was to make it easier to access his work without having to climb up flights of stairs. Just now he was resting, and I sat amongst the hundreds, thousands of plastic jars and waited for him to appear. When he finally did I barely recognized him. It was his presence more than any specific physical characteristic that had changed: he seemed such a thinner, slighter figure than the engaged, lively man I remembered. After exchanging 'namaste's we just sat there, not exactly looking at each other but acutely aware of each others' presence, for a good 5 minutes. Something in the man’s eyes had changed, too—instead of a lively sparkle there was a dull sadness, a sense of resignation. It wasn’t hard to guess what this might be about. Finally he broke the silence by asking me, in his typical style, 'what would you give for hepatitis B?' I'm never sure when he does this if he's quizzing me or if he’s genuinely curious what herbs a foreign ‘baidya’ would use. But somehow, that's what I seem to be both to him and to another, salty baidya I’ve been hanging out with. Not a peer, really, but in some sense one of their own. The salty baidya, Shyam Man Shrestha, referred to me recently as a 'kaviraj,' an almost embarrassingly high compliment meaning something like 'king of doctors.' Then yesterday dear old Keshab Baidya said in Newari, when another old Newari man came in gestured at me, grunting a question, that I was an "American who knows everything about herbs." This is hardly true either, but the thing that really struck me yesterday is I may be the closest these old baidyas have to an apprentice, someone to carry on the tradition. And i'm very far from that, really. But in Keshab's case it's so clear that that is what's missing, the next generation. That’s what’s behind the dullness in his gaze, the resignation in his movements. Eventually I broached the subject with him by asking if the boy I'd seen once helping him by grinding some herbs was still coming. Nope, not really . . . all of sudden he said straight out, “after I go, my kids'll wait a few years maybe and then they'll say, ‘look at this mess, we could put this room to a better use . . . and they’ll throw it all away. All this tens of laakhs worth of medicine.’” There’s no one to carry it on.
One of the reasons i'd come back was to buy some bhasmas and other medicines from him to bring home. I didn't want to suddenly start talking business, but I brought it up by asking what he thought the most important bhasmas and non-perishable medicines were. We compiled a list of 10 or so things (shankha, abhrak and mandur bhasmas, shilajit, some guggulus . . .), and I said I would like to buy them from him. He told me to give him a week before I come and pick up what he puts together for me. Leaving his place, having arranged this, I felt some of the weight of tradition settle on my shoulders, and let me tell you it was a strange feeling. I have a chance to carry on parts of their lineage, in however small a way. Later, at the Nawaranga guest house in Dhulikhel amongst people who feel after 8 months like old friends, thinking about the whole scene with Keshab brought a tear to my eye. I could feel the pain of this old man, bearer of such a proud and venerable tradition, watching it come to a dead end.
Of course Ayurveda is not in danger of dying. By some estimations it may be more popular than ever. But it’s losing it’s old-growth, it’s deepest-rooted lineages, as the younger generation pursues easier, more lucrative and more prestigious occupations. In flirting with the New Age it is in danger of severing its links with the past.
For my Ayurvedic student friends: there is still an opportunity in Banepa to come and learn the techniques of classical rasa shastra hands-on. Bishunath Karmacharya, a first-rate baidya, is willing to teach whoever wants to learn, for free. The catch is that he has no longer has a workshop. An interested group of students, though, could come to Nepal and study medicine-making intensively for months with a rare teacher for little more than the cost of building a rudimentary workshop/lodging (plus food and airfare of course). If anyone is interested in such a possibility, contact me!

final day of panchakarma--
blessed and decked out with a massive mala (flower garland), tika, and bhadgaole topi (bhatapur-style cap), i'm thanking Roma didi, who cooked almost every meal for me for 25 days