Nepalese embassy.

While in Washington for the Stewart-Colbert rally, I decide to try to get visas for my trip to India and other countries that I might be able to reach.
I enter the Nepalese embassy, a small, neglected brick house and find noone around. I yell "hello!" and still nothing.
Prayers?
Meals?
No music or sound
I wander into the back of the house and find a guy at a desk who speaks very little English.
As we are stumbling along, someone who can ask "can I help you?" comes up behind me.
I explain that I want a visa but I realize that I have no photos and might I just take an application? He says "no problem, no problem. Just put your name here".
"What about the photos?"
"I'll just make a photocopy of your passport photo".
I'm thinking that the photo in my passport already looks nothing like me; what kind of likeness will this be?
I never do get to see it, but he does put a stamp in the book.
"$25, please".
I give it to him in cash, and he thanks me with a big smile.
Nice guy, and I feel like I leaving a real Nepalese experience behind me.


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What twenty years?

Eating outside
I see a man I know.
But don't really.

He looks at me
and assumes I do
But I don't, really.

I point at him..
he looks at me
And says "Mike, Industrial Finishes. "

Twenty years disappear
In an instant.
But, not really. U

We catch up.
We might see each other again
In twenty years.

He's now an 8 handicap.
He hasn't been wasting his time.
Not really.


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Now I'm 64

I love crossing borders.
I just bought my ticket to the Indian subcontinent.


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I don't know

I don't know who I am
Nor where I'm bound,
But hey, it's only October.


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Somewhere

White mountaintops,
through winter clouds,
sailing somewhere.

Appreciate

Appreciate this time.
This day.
This hour.
This minute.
How fast might it change, this minute, this hour, this day, this entire Time?

My grandson was born one week ago and now he is back in the hospital with a severe infection and, when I go out into the world and I see and talk to complete strangers, I can smile and say" thank you" or whatever is appropriate.
Why is that?
How and why do people smile?


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Wedding redux

Wedding poem
Dedication

To the entire villages it took
To raise these two spectacular people

I googled weddings
between Peties and Jacobs
and nothing did I find.
But of course,
How to put
The sweetest smiles
and boundless generosities
Into a search engine.

Differences of traditions
Produce unity and oneness.
Truth becomes the language
For greater understanding.

The winter sun and moon
Are about Time
and you and me.

In the springtime trumpets
Of bright daffodils,
I hear our song

Summer evening;
Opening my arms opens my heart
To you.

Leaves on autumn's earth,
A time to gather together again
Who we are and why.


I'm not going to have any trouble remembering this wedding.



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JUST THIS ONCE

Prices

My guidebook keeps saying that if I can afford it, there There are many good hotels that are worth it. The price: $800-$1000 a night!
Not the typical backpacker's source of information.


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Brains

Humans:
brains big enough
To imagine
The possibility of god
But
No bigger.


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ADRIFT