I Am TOAST

As I was out walking in Kathmandu if by "walking" you mean "trying not to get killed" I thought about the last day of my Damascus, Syria, vacation with Little Westside Jonny lo these many years ago.  The city was so compelling that our desire not to miss anything overrode our premonition that the best thing we could do was to stay safe in our hotel room, and so out we went into the funride that was the main souk.  Mostly we walked around shouting: "I'm toast" or "I am FRIED" or stopping, looking around, and saying with a deadpan expression: "I got nuthin.  I am done."

We have a couple of days here at the end of this vacation and my desire to see everything this morning overrode etc. etc. etc. so out I went.  I walked for about an hour on the foaming, frothing, swirling Kathmandu streets until my brain switched into a very fundamental regulatory state where all it could handle was basic life functions like breathing, handling my heart beat and blood pressure, and attempting to ambulate me out of the path of large, dangerous, metal vehicles.  I couldn't look up because the pavement is cracked and irregular and gone; I couldn't look down lest I tangle myself in a morass of electrical wires or impale an eye on something hanging from a shop, not exclusive of dead chickens and bags of Lay's Potato Chips; I couldn't just look to the right or to the left or straight ahead as I needed to jump and dodge all manner of flying things, the worst being motorcycles that would come exploding out of narrow alleys and doorways.  I crossed the street a few times which is as close to hang-gliding as I ever want to get. Whew.

The tableau was very repetitive: banged-up and thoroughly locked metal doorways; trinket shops; food shops; chip and pop shops; and bicycle after bicycle laden with grapes, oranges, and small bananas.  People are hustling.  It looked seriously like if they didn't sell enough they didn't eat.  I have no idea how a consumer chose one bike over another.  The bikes were a trip: beaten into a molten stage and each employing a totally unique, hand-fabricated basket or cage to carry the wares.

Whew.