Mountains of Stars

 

As was common for our time together, Erika is responsible for some of my best memories in Nepal. She was preparing a gift for a wedding and it‘s no easy task to try and buy something appropriate in a country that’s not yours, and very much the country of the person you’re giving to. Ideally, western gifts, brought over in luggage are a welcome prize, but that’s also difficult. In part because that would have meant months of hauling the gift around in the very precious real estate of her already overstuffed and frequently reconfigured bags. But, it’s also a global world, a global economy, knowing what rural Michigan has that Nepal doesn’t, that would also be desirable to people you don’t really know is a somewhat ridiculous challenge.

She was having trouble motivating and I had art supplies and a new hotel, so with some convincing she decided to try her hand at making a gift. Hand made gifts, especially on a deadline are pretty risky, but once the process was started there was no going back. It was obviously the right answer to this problem.

She fussed over it all night. Old versions were cut and pasted into new versions. Perceived errors were remedied again and again until the page was twice as thick with water color pigment (see last post). But she did it, through the night and into the day she made a one-of-a-kind piece of art that memorialized how special the experience of being invited to a wedding in Nepal was for her. In my opinion that’s the best kind of gift. But she wasn’t totally satisfied so she got them a bunch of chocolate and some other things too.

Her fastidiousness lasted late into the night, and I considered retreating to my room, by this point we had both had some uncomfortable moments with groups of Nepali men so we we’re especially glad for the trusted company, even in the cold. I found myself making a little bed out of extra hotel room blankets on the roof and looking up into the starry sky above Kathmandu. There were no drunken boys trying to grab me, no one angrily selling me a tour, just Erika painting silently, and a surprisingly quiet valley that the dogs had taken over for the night. They went about their work, and she went about hers, and I laid on the ground knowing full well a memory was being etched in whatever part of my brain is impenetrable to age and disease.