Himalayan Snows

2011-12-18T10:15:00.000-08:00

Going back to yesterday

Where memory and memoir begin

A 'Spilled Ink' essay by Don Messerschmidt, from ECS Nepal magazine (Kathmandu), November 2011

“I can’t go back to yesterday,

because I was a different person then.”

(Lewis Carroll, ‘Alice in Wonderland’)

Really? Are we so different that we can’t go back? I don’t think so. I am more inclined to believe actress Audrey Hepburn who once said that “...one should go back and search for what was loved and found to be real.” That’s where memory and memoir begin.

I recently returned to the village where I first lived in Nepal almost five decades ago. I wanted to recapture something of ‘yesterday’. We writers do this sort of thing: revisit the past then write about it, though the memories may be blurred.

It was 1963, and doing village development as a Peace Corps volunteer was my thing. I was ambitious, optimistic, and idealistic. Living in village Nepal for two years was an adventure, a challenge. And while I gave a little of myself to the community, I gained far more in return. It changed my life.

Now, as then, Kunchha, Lamjung has a few shops and houses, a post office, a police post, and a school, and some wonderful folk of various castes and ethnicities. And though there’s been some ‘modernization’, the changes seem more superficial than substantial. I saw one new concrete building amidst the very old mud brick ones that I remember. The house I once lived in apparently fell down; there’s a smaller one in its place. Electricity is new, mobile phones are ubiquitous, and there is bus service now on a very rough road. Back in 1963 we walked to Kunchha two days from Pokhara and seven days more on to Kathmandu. Today, you can bus to or from Kathmandu in about seven hours, and arrive in time for tea.

I was posted to Kunchha with another volunteer. We defined ourselves as ‘problem solvers’. Sometimes we helped the district engineer who looked after trail, school and water system maintenance. For a few months we ran a smallpox immunization program vaccinating 25,000 villagers, mostly children. One spring when crops failed I conducted a district-wide food deficit survey after which an aid agency shipped in tons of rice and wheat. And we tutored several young men in English, each of whom went on to work in development or teaching. They’re retired now and live elsewhere.

Today at Kunchha, as elsewhere across Nepal, the poor continue to eke out a difficult living from the soil, while the more fortunate tend to move on to better opportunities elsewhere, leaving their villages behind looking forlorn.

During my recent visit the local health post officer introduced himself. “I’m ‘Rosey’,” he said. I must have looked puzzled. “That’s what you called me when I was a young school boy,” he added. Ah, but of course. I’d forgotten! Now ‘Rosey’, too, is about to retire, he said. Time flies and memories blur.

Memoirs can take various forms, from short essays to whole books. I kept a journal in Kunchha from which I might begin to craft a memoir (after I correct several naïve misunderstandings that I recorded in a cramped handwriting). I’ve already published a few stories, one about a Himalayan-size thunderstorm, and another about the smallpox campaign. But there is more to tell... Like who’s gone and what they left behind. How life was then, and how unchanged it seems now. And, not least, answering the inevitable question, ‘So what?’

A memoir should tell who we were and what we learned back then, ‘yesterday’. It should reveal something of the inner self and the context of change and personal development. For me, it was a time of discovery and transformation. It gave me perspective upon which to build a life...

“There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged

to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.”

(Nelson Mandela, ‘Long Walk to Freedom’)

2011-12-18T10:08:00.000-08:00

The Tao of Travel

Enlightenments from Lives on the Road

By Paul Theroux

Reviewed by Don Messerschmidt, in ECS Nepal magazine (Kathmandu), November 2011

Paul Theroux is one of the world’s premier travel writers, the author of such titles as ‘The Great Railway Bazaar: By Train Through Asia’ (1975), ‘The Old Patagonian Express’ (1979) by train through North and South America; ‘Riding the Iron Rooster’ (1988) on trains in China; ‘Ghost Train to the Eastern Star’ (2008) retracing some of the 1975 trip; and many more. Theroux likes trains (and a lot more). But, did he ever ride the Janakpur or Darjeeling lines?

Theroux also has 28 fiction titles, most recently: ‘A Dead Hand: A Crime in Calcutta’ (2009). His 1981 novel, ‘The Mosquito Coast’, is one of my favorites. It was made into a film shot in Belize (Central America) in which the final conflagration (a horrendous explosion and fire) was staged with the pyrotechnic help of a contingent of Nepalese Gurkha soldiers stationed in that former British colony.

Theroux has also written the critically acclaimed ‘V.S. Naipaul: An Introduction to His Work’ (1972).
Theroux’s ‘The Tao of Travel’ (2011) is a remarkable accomplishment, a gem of a book, one that every serious traveler and travel writer will want to own. That’s no overstatement. It’s a ‘must have’ compendium of travel wisdom, a treasure trove of insight and ageless observations.

In the Preface, ‘The Importance of Elsewhere’, Theroux writes: “All my traveling life I have been asked the maddening and oversimplifying question ‘What is your favorite travel book?’... Then, the travel narrative, he tells us, is “the oldest in the world, the story the wanderer tells to the folk gathered around the fire after his or her return from a journey. ‘This is what I saw’ – news from the wider world; the odd, the strange, the shocking, tales of beasts or of other people...” Never ending; seldom boring.

Early in the book we are introduced to Dervla Murphy’s practical Rules of Travel. For example: “Choose your country..., identify the areas most frequented by foreigners — and then go in the opposite direction.” “Mug up on history.” “Invest in the best available maps.” “Be cautious — but not timid.”

Murphy is the brave Irish lady who bicycled from Ireland to India and Nepal in the early 1960s to work with Tibetan refugees at Pokhara. After that she made a career of cycling and writing the world. Her earliest books are ‘Full Tilt: Ireland to India with a Bicycle’ (1965), ‘Tibetan Foothold’ (1966), and ‘The Waiting Land: A spell in Nepal’ (1967).

In ‘The Tao’, Theroux introduces us to thoughts on travel by such great litterateurs as Henry Fielding, Samuel Johnson, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Evelyn Waugh. Dickens is also there, and Isabella Bird, James Boswell, Sir Richard Burton and Lord Byron, Emerson and Hemingway, Pico Iyer and Flaubert, and others. Among the earliest are Sir John Mandeville, Marco Polo, and Ibn Battuta.

The vast majority of what Theroux quotes is from Western writers, with a sprinkling of others including South America’s Gabriel Garcia Marquez, India’s Vikram Seth, the Japanese Zen practitioner Bashō whose long walk across Japan resulted in a classic of 17th century Asian travel writing, and the 7th century Chinese Buddhist scholar and “ultimate pilgrim” Xuanzang (Hsüan-tsang) who journeyed to South and Southwest Asia and described the great Buddha statues of Bamiyan in Afghanistan (destroyed by the Taliban in 2001).
The most direct reference to Nepal in ‘The Tao’ is excerpted from ‘The Snow Leopard’, Peter Matthiessen’s 1978 account of a scientific expedition and spiritual pilgrimage to The Crystal Mountain in Dolpa.

Theroux concludes with Five Travel Epiphanies based on personal experience. The first reveals a travel truism. Back in 1963, while boarding a plane in Italy, the young Theroux had no money to pay the mandatory departure tax. The stranger behind him in line saw his predicament and handed him twenty dollars. When Theroux said he’d like to repay the man sometime, the stranger replied: “I’ll probably see you again. The world’s a small place.”

The Tao of Travel (2011) was published - leather bound - in Boston and New York by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and is available on the Internet for up to US$25.

You can read more about Paul Theroux at www.paultherous.com.

Little Princes: One man's promise to bring home the lost children of Nepal (review essay)

2011-09-09T04:48:00.000-07:00

ECS Nepal magazine (Kathmandu), September 2011

Review by Don Messerschmidt

ecs.com.np/living_category.php?category=12&id=445

This book has been described as “Funny, touching, tragic….A remarkable tale of corruption, child trafficking and civil war in a far away land—and one man’s extraordinary quest to reunite lost Nepalese children with their parents.” (from a review by Neil White).

‘Little Princes’ is the epic story of Conor Grennan’s battle to save the lost children of Nepal and how he found himself in the process... Grennan’s remarkable memoir is at once gripping and inspirational... (www.harpercollins.com)

W hen Conor Grennan set out on a round-the-world trip he began by volunteering to work for a few months in an orphanage called ‘Little Princes Children’s Home’ at Godavari, near Kathmandu. It was a decision that profoundly changed his life, and the lives of the Little Princes he writes about.

Grennan first arrived in Kathmandu in 2004, during Nepal’s insurgency. On day one at the orphanage he got a good idea of what love and affection and pure joy the next few years would show him.

As he opened the compound gate and entered the orphanage yard, “All games ceased immediately...,” he writes. “Soon I was lugging not only my backpack but also several small people hanging off me. Any chance of making a graceful first impression evaporated as I took slow, heavy steps toward the house. One especially small boy of about four years old hung from my neck so that his face was about three inches from my face and kept yelling “Namaste, Brother!” over and over, eyes squeezed shut to generate more decibels...” The children soon learned his name and forever after he was Conor to one and all.

After getting over culture shock, Conor became accustomed to life and the children (mostly boys) at the orphanage. But it wasn’t long until he learned that these were not orphans in the true sense. They had been “trafficked” and had parents in villages a long ways from Kathmandu. They were all the tragic victims of a vile scam perpetrated on their parents out of a fear that the youngsters would be abducted and forced to fight in the insurgency. Their parents had paid dearly to have them taken “to safety” in Kathmandu. Unbeknownst to them, however, the perpetrator of this hoax had no intention of caring for the children; he was in it for the money, all that those poor parents could give him, often by going into debt. In Kathmandu, the children were turned loose, often to become undernourished street waifs until orphanages took them in.

The story Conor Grennan tells so eloquently is about what he and his colleagues have done to reunite many of these unfortunate children with their families. In the process, Conor becomes associated with the Umbrella Foundation which runs other orphanages in Nepal. As he becomes attached to the children and sympathetic (in a constructive way) to their plight, he opens the Next Generation Nepal Children’s Home and mounts a worldwide campaign to support it. He was helped by a French national named Farid Ait-Mansour. Their cause was just, and the results that Conor describes are at once honorable, poignant and sometimes painful, but ultimately successful.

Meet Jagrit, a 14-year old boy wise beyond his age. Conor describes him as exceptionally bright and a smart aleck (but “I have a weakness for smart alecks,” he writes). Jagrit lived in an Umbrella Foundation home, one of 170 such children. He had been taken from his family at age five but unlike most of the others he was a true orphan. His parents’ death certificates were in his file. The Umbrella Foundation had rescued him from an illegal children’s home near one of the trash- and sewage-fouled rivers of Kathmandu.

Jagrit was from a remote village called Jaira, in Humla District. Later, when Conor went to Humla to track down the families of many of the children, he met a postman from Jaira. They talked, and when he heard the name of Jagrit’s father (from the death certificate), “The postman’s eyebrows jumped. He had known him - quite well, it seemed from his reaction. This was good news...” What transpired next is one of the very personal stories in this book that makes it well worth reading.

Many discoveries in Humla brought tears of grief and joy to the faces of the foundlings’ family members, especially their mothers. Each encounter in the villages was a revelation. In time, most of the children either went back to visit home in Humla and other districts, or their parents made their way to Kathmandu to see where and how children were living -- well cared for, eating well, going to school, learning English, and in good health (although some when first rescued off the streets had been emaciated to the point of serious starvation).

In Jaira, a family member recounted the story of Jagrit’s abduction, for that is essentially what each coerced child purchase truly was: trafficked for profit. Conor was told that someone described a “government official” (the abductor, though he was not from the government) “had seen potential in Jagrit as a young boy, who promised to put him in a top school in Kathmandu.” To do so, the “official” asked the father, a poor shepherd, to pay a large sum in advance. Then the five-year old boy was taken away. After that, “Weeks became months, and months became years, until one day there was no hope left...”

Conor describes how he and his translator felt upon hearing Jagrit’s story. “Rinjin and I were riveted. I felt like I had lived the story with him, watching from afar, seeing the father - the shepherd - and his small son, Jagrit, together first, then saying good-bye, not understanding it would be for the last time...”
How many scenes like this were played out in the villages is unknown. What is known is that the abductor made a lot of money at the expense of the parents he duped and the children stolen away and dumped in Kathmandu to fend for themselves.

Fortunately, Jagrit’s story ends on a happy note (there’s more to it in the book). It’s the same for most of the children, like Leena, a small girl who was so traumatized by the time she was rescued that she showed no emotion and spoke no words. Fortunately her new, after a few months, a safe new life in the orphanage brought her out of her shell. She and so many others were brought back to life and, in time, back together with their parents.

This is an outstanding book about a remarkably generous and loving human being working with amazing children rescued from a terrible fate. ‘Little Princes’ is an exceptionally well written story, with a moving conclusion. Highly recommended.#

To a Mountain in Tibet

2011-08-29T17:26:00.000-07:00

To a Mountain in Tibet, by Colin Thurbron, is a great read. It is Colin Thubron’s remarkable account of a pilgrimage trek through west Nepal and Tibet to Mount Kailas. The book has been hyped elsewhere as describing “a world rich in beauty and awe that exceeds our imagination” and “mythic and spiritual traditions foreign to our own.” That’s fine for some readers, but for many of us the sacred kora, the pilgrim circumambulation of Kailas, is more familiar. What’s new to us here is Thubron’s personal reactions to the arduous trek and to the actions and reactions, beliefs and behaviors, of the people he meets.

Right off Thubron sets the scene: “The most sacred of the world’s mountains – holy to one fifth of the earth’s people – remains withdrawn on its plateau like a pious illusion...,” he writes. “Isolated beyond the parapet of the central Himalaya, it permeated early Hindu scriptures as the mystic Mount Meru, whose origins go back to the dawn of Aryan time. In this incarnation it rotates like a spindle at the axis of all creation...”

At times his writing is splendid and superbly crafted. For example, he describes the Karnali river, which he treks alongside to reach Tibet, as “pristine and violent. Its waters seethe and plunge among half-submerged boulders, alternately baulked and released, flooding into furious eddies and slipstreams—a beautiful grey-green commotion in momentary drift, then battered to white foam again…”

All along the way he weaves in a great deal of physical description and popular history. At times he reflects personally on his mother’s recent death. And he ponders, often, the wonders of Hinduism, Buddhism, Bön and other ancient beliefs. While a good travelogue or memoir may attempt to capture one or another such aspect, Thubron has them all.

We wonder, however, about Thurbron’s expertise on Tibetan religions. No doubt he has read up on the subject, for to understand and write about them a travel writer must steep himself both in scholarly explanations and popular beliefs. Sometimes Thubron uses a technique common to novels, of moving back and forth in time and place, from the ‘now’ on trek, to reveal explanations given him by Buddhist friends back in Kathmandu, on the meaning of some event, theological point, or symbolism. But, beyond that Thubron cites no sources. Granted, footnoted citations can be obnoxious in popular writing, but it’s okay to provide a source list at the back of a book to reassure interested readers.

It’s also okay to ask a local expert to check a manuscript, before publication, for any unintended glitches. There are problems here. For example, Thubron describes Bhotia traders coming down from Tibet with Chinese trade goods carried on pack mules and buffalo. Buffalo! Really? More likely yak-cattle crossbreeds called Dzopa. Definitely not buffalo!

He also expresses concern that certain Buddhist lamas in the villages denigrate their religious precepts by falling to carnal desires and getting married. Doesn’t he know that for the local Nyingmapa lamas he meets, followers of Tibet’s oldest Buddhist sect, marriage is customary. It is Gelugpa monks (of the Dalai Lama’s sect) who do not marry.

What I object to most, however, is his choice of descriptive terms for some locals he meets. Are Bhotia men truly “ruffianly” and their wives “squaws?” Ruffian I can live with, defined on a continuum from tough guy (no doubt some are) to hooligan, thug or gangster (less likely). But, it’s unacceptable to call their spouses “squaws”—a notoriously offense term for a woman or wife.

These issues aside, I am otherwise impressed with Thubron’s book. It’s a finely tuned account, especially in passages like this near the end where weary pilgrims struggle to cross the highest pass. Thubron writes that “at the 18,600 foot zenith of the kora, in a moment of blinding transition, pilgrims might pass into purity at the axis of the world.” And there, both exhilarated and exhausted, they shout loudly in praise of the gods: “Lha-so-so-so! Lha-so-so!”

Chatto & Windus/Random House Group Ltd. (London, 2010) and HarperCollins (New York, 2011). 227pp., map, index (no illustrations). US$24.99 (but available on the Internet for less, including ebook and audio versions).

Read more about the award-winning author at www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p=auth117. Thubron’s travel books cover the Mid-East, Russia and China. He also writes novels. Colin Thubron is a member of the Royal Society of Literature, and resides in London.

This book review was first published in ECS Nepal magazine, August 2011. www.ecs.com.np.

Divine Intervention

2011-08-05T08:56:00.000-07:00

Divine Intervention is an introduction to some of the muses of writing. I wrote it earlier, when I was the Associate Editor of ECS Nepal, a magazine of culture, history, the arts, adventure sports and travel in the Himalayas. (You can access the archives at www.ecs.com.np.) Enjoy! /DM

This editor’s job includes advising and mentoring the writers on our magazine’s team. I’m constantly looking for good advice to pass along about improving writing skills. Each of our writers is dedicated and talented, and it will amaze many nave English speakers that they do it in a language that is their second or third. If I could write half as well in Nepali as they do in English, I’d feel proud. So, while I sometimes come down hard on their English prose, I know that their mistakes are not the death of writing. Meanwhile, we can all learn from the wisdom of our elders, and sometimes even some divine inspiration from one of the Gods of The Word.

I recent found a little book by one elder, Samuel Freedman, Lessons to a Young Journalist (2006). In the world of journalism, Freedman is an icon. He has taught writing for over 30 years, has been shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, and is a winner of America’s National Jewish Book Award.

In the chapter of his book simply called ‘Writing’, Freedman describes the fundamental stages of our craft. First, “writing is a series of actions that begins well before fingers tap keyboard and ends well after the mouse clicks on save and close functions.” It’s a six-step process, he says, beginning at conceptualization and proceeding through reporting, outlining, re-reporting, drafting and revision.

‘Conceptualization’ means understanding in a deep and specific way what the assignment is all about, making sense of the topic and seeking a direction to proceed.

‘Reporting’ involves doing the research that, in turn, must be outlined (in whatever way the writer is comfortable), then re-considered, or ‘re-reported’ so that the effort becomes, in his words, “more specific and pointillistic than the first sally.” This might mean returning to the source for more observation, or conducting another interview.

Only when the information is all in mind (and in the notebook) does the actual writing begin. “And when that [first] draft is done, you revise it, preferably after having set it aside for a few hours or an overnight, so you can bring a fresh, critical eye.”

Freedman makes a great point of revising, knowing that many young writers typically embrace “the ideal of the single draft” (as he did early in his own career), in the belief that “To produce a publishable article in a single pass [is] the very definition of a pro.” Hah! Not likely.

And then...?

So, what to do? The aspiring writer has two choices, either put in the hard work of rewriting and revising to perfection, or appeal for divine intervention from one of the gods of writing. The choice of a divine muse is wide open. Freedman prefers Troth, the ibis-headed Egyptian god of writing, the deity of journalism, a likeness of which sits on his desk.

If you’re not into Egyptian divinities, then Nissaba, the Sumerian goddess of writing and wisdom, is a good choice. The Sumerians invited writing and considered it a divine art brought from heaven by Enki.

The Babylonians attributed the invention of writing to Nabu, a descendant of Enki.

Or, if you seek a Greek divinity, check out Hermes Trismegistus, or if Roman, try fleet-footed Mercury.

Closer to home there’s the ancient Vedic goddess Vac, and Sarasvati, her modern counterpart, the Hindu goddess of leaning and the arts and the inventor of the Sanskrit language.

While invoking a deity might make the words flow better, I’m convinced that the writer must ultimately invoke the muse within and take full responsibility for what is passed on to the editor. That product must inevitably be written, then re-written, revised and revised again until the result is, itself ‘divine’; not just cool or groovy, but superbly well crafted.

(For the record, my muse and I easily cut this essay down by 1/4th its original size, in five revisions.)

Write on!
(1st published in ECS magazine of Kathmandu, February 2009)

2011-06-07T13:28:00.000-07:00

Shattered and Made Whole

On the writing wisdom of novelist Stephen King

By Don Messerschmidt

Published as a Spilled Ink essay, ECS Nepal magazine (Kathmandu), June 2011

Stephen King writes spooky thrillers, horror, and fantasy. His many books, short stories and screen plays enjoy a hugely popular following. King began writing novels in the 1970s and is still going strong, with one shattering interruption. His novels tend to have provocative titles that ring with macabre images derived from a vivid imagination (and your own worst nightmares): The Shining, Rage, Night Shift, The Dead Zone, Danse Macabre, Creepshow, PetSematary, Cycle of the Werewolf, It, Misery, Insomnia, Bag of Bones and others.

One afternoon in June 1999, King was accidently hit by a car while walking along a road absent-mindedly reading a book. In the hospital he was diagnosed with a collapsed lung, multiple fractures of one leg, and a broken hip. His doctors almost amputated the leg, but managed to save it with five operations in a period of 10 days. His hip was so badly shattered that the pain became nearly unbearable. The accident put a serious dent into his writing career.

But not for long.

Some months earlier he had prepared the draft of a book about his craft. He called it On Writing, but he had put it aside unfinished. While recuperating from the accident, King went back to the book manuscript and whipped it into shape.

I may be biased, but of all of his writings I think King’s On Writing is the best. I recommend it to all aspiring writers for its wisdom about writing, and to his avid fans for its autobiographical insights.

Here is a sampling of King’s wisdom:

“Words create sentences; sentences create paragraphs; sometimes paragraphs quicken and begin to breathe. Imagine, if you like, Frankenstein’s monster on its slab. Here comes lightning, not from the sky but from a humble paragraph of English words. Maybe it’s the first really good paragraph you ever wrote, something so fragile and yet full of possibility that you are frightened. You feel as Victor Frankenstein must have when the dead conglomeration of sewn-together spare [body] parts suddenly opened its watery yellow eyes. Oh my God, it’s breathing, you realize. Maybe it’s even thinking. What in hell’s name do I do next?”

Did that paragraph hook and keep your attention by alluding to the Frankenstein monster? Why not? Stephen King likes horror and fantasy!

Near the middle of the book King posits two simple theses: One is that good writing consists of mastering the fundamentals – vocabulary, grammar, and the elements of style. The other is that while it’s not possible to make a competent writer out of a bad one, it is possible – with hard work, dedication, and timely help – to make a good writer out of a merely competent one. So, if you are competent there’s a chance that, with due diligence, you can become “good.”

King also has a rule that I firmly believe in: “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There’s no way around these two things..., no shortcut.” Since he is so successful he must be a good writer, so it’s probably a good idea to advise merely competent writers who aspire to become good ones to read some of King’s novels, too, to see how he does it.

In a Postscript entitled ‘On Living’, King reflects on the meaning of life (after his accident). Writing isn’t about making money or getting famous, or a whole lot of other personal ambitions, he says:

“In the end, it’s about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well. It’s about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy...”

“Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free. So Drink.”

_____________________

Good reading and writing!

Don Messerschmidt is a contributing editor to ECS Nepal magazine. He may be contacted at don.editor@gmail.com.

2011-06-07T13:10:00.000-07:00

A Widow's Gift

Review by : Don Messerschmidt

ECS Nepal magazine (Kathmandu)
June 2011

Widowhood was like a contagious disease” is part of the storyline in A Widow’s Gift, Shanti Mishra’s praiseworthy first novel. As the book opens, Radha, a Brahmin girl child, is married to a young man. But, “Whereas a boy is regarded as an asset to his parents, who expect him to look after them in their old age and to perform rituals on their death..., a girl is always regarded as a burden.” Overcoming that burden is the key to Radha’s story. When her youthful husband unexpectedly dies, Radha’s life is fundamentally redefined. Thereafter she suffers the “disease” of widowhood, as a debilitating burden, painful to heart and soul. Mishra captures these sentiments well, alongside those of love and affection that define Radha’s life. It is Radha’s development as a caring person despite her cultural “disease” that is the theme of the book.

From the first page, Radha’s story reveals daily life in a strict Brahmin society, including the near curse-like restrictions on widows. But Radha as a girl, and in time as a stalwart woman, perseveres and sets an example for all by her generous outgoing nature. The story moves along quickly, there are no slow parts. Yet, the author is able to provide great detail about the richness of Brahmin culture. It is unusual in works of fiction to see footnotes, but Mishra uses them to good effect, unobtrusively, to explain to non-Hindu readers some of Hinduism’s key social and ritual concepts.

There are many moments of reflection in this story. On seeing the young girl wearing her life-long white mourning dress for the first time, “Her grandmother could not control herself and burst into tears, knowing her grandchild’s dark future...” And, Radha’s grandfather explains that she has “no option but to resign herself to her fate. Even if she remarried, she would remain a widow, and that is why even an old Brahmin as poor as a beggar would feel indignant at the very suggestion of marrying her, though she might be rich and beautiful.”

Early in the story, after a devastating earthquake, Radha is left with only her in-laws, and a brother and his resentful wife, a spiteful woman who strives to make Radha’s life miserable. Eventually, however, Radha learns to read and write, then proceeds to make the most of her destiny. It is not always easy. On the annual day to honor Sarasvati, goddess of learning, her feelings come out. She “was excited and wished she could jump and sing as other girls of her age did in their homes during the festivals. Alas, Radha could do no such things! She was a widow wrapped always in white attire. Still, by the grace of God, Radha invariably looked both beautiful and cheerful.”

The book’s main theme pits Radha successfully against stark odds. Do we detect something of the author’s own feelings about the man-made conditions that circumscribe women’s lives? “Whenever she looked into the mirror,” Mishra writes, Radha “regretted not being able to wear colourful dresses like married women of her age. Thinking again about the man-made customs for widows in society, she prayed to God to give her more strength to slowly overcome them. She had to sacrifice and display great patience, so she looked always calm, smiling and loving, though her mind was much occupied by convincing opponents to change their outlook...”

Without giving away any more of the plot it is important to reveal something of the conclusion, for the message it tells. “Remember,” says Radha on her deathbed, “don’t cry when I leave you all behind. My role in the worldly theatre is over. It’s your turn to play your own ideal roles to make this society a paradise. Treat everyone equally, without any discrimination because of caste, creed or wealth – especially widows...”

A Widow’s Gift is recommended for its insightful glimpse into the richness of Nepalese women’s lives, with the challenge to make them better. It is also an important contribution to Nepalese women’s literature. A Widow’s Gift is available at Vajra Books in Jyatha/Thamel at NRs. 295

The reviewer is a contributing editor to ECS Nepal magazine; he can be contacted at don.editor@ gmail.com. The novelist, Shanti Mishra, can be contacted at narayanshanti70@gmail.com.

2011-05-21T08:41:00.000-07:00

Rejection, My 'Darling,' in Broad Strokes

Irecently submitted a poem to a contest based on votes from readers. Then I sent an email asking friends and acquaintances to read it and vote (or not) on the contest website.

‘On The Road Past Thrumsing La, Bhutan’s Wild Mountain Spirits’ reflects my impressions about nature, mountain spirits, and “foggies” encountered while riding across Bhutan with Dochen, my friend and driver. It starts like this:

'many, many foggies'

says my driver

grinning

as we enter soup-thick cloud along the bluff

below the pass called Thrumsing La

Dochen has that way of speaking English

laughingly

so jovially therapeutic

he sets the tone for what’s an

otherwise long rough mountain ride
across Bhutan

up-down-around the twisting road [...]

Some voters posted complimentary remarks:

Wonderful!

I appreciate the wealth of life and place you develop with this poem.

Oh, thank you for taking me on that winding ride through bright and varied vistas, and allowing me to experience the joyful Dochen and sacred encounter of the ‘foggies’” and “In reading your poem I could feel and sense what you saw with your eyes. Very beautifully done...

Thank you, kind readers!

Then an email came from a critical reader, a stranger, rejecting the poem outright in rather broad strokes. Now mind you, not everyone may like the poem, but severely negative criticism is exceptional. “Darling,” he began, then went straight to the point (with bad grammar, syntax, spelling and spacing, and many ellipses...):

Its useless.It posses not any poetic qualities. [...] Common sense and common rules are missing... To vote and win is not what a true poet practice.

I am a poetry teacher and my students compose better than these,” he wrote. “Only emotion and feelings donot make poetry. There has to be a balance of intellect, playfulness, careful use of assonance and alliteration, pun, stress,.[...].Better luck next time.

I replied:

'better than these’ is highly subjective. Every poet has his or her own muse, style, quality, emotion, result. It is a lot like viewing modern art. Some like it, but someone else thinks it trash. It is all subjective...

In return he called me “darling” again, then while laughing in my face he turned spiteful:

It is not so much easy darling... to write a trash, plagiarize from net, and trying to do publicity for getting some awards is not modernity... first read yourself..your interest...your mind...your intuition...your inner reality... then only at your old age come to me and say that u are in the process of becoming a poet... there i shall agree with u.Not now.

Accusing me of plagiarism is the ultimate put down, a very blunt weapon. (Who is this guy!)

What’s needed instead is sincere advice and constructive commentary. Show me where and how to make improvements or explain techniques that might enhance the creative outcome.

And I must ask: Can poetry be taught? Did Byron, Tennyson, Shakespeare, Devkota, or Robert Frost take lessons?

And what, precisely, is a poem, to be so critical of one? “...no one ever has come up with a satisfactory definition of poetry, just as no one can define music or art,” writes Frances Mayes in The Discovery of Poetry. “Those who want to proclaim what is or isn’t poetry have thankless work cut out for themselves. No umbrella is wide enough to cover the myriad versions, subjects, and forms,” she says. “If a poem interests you, better to just go along with Walt Whitman’s assertion, ‘...What I assume you shall assume,/For every atom belonging to me, as good belongs to you’.”

And the moral is? - Several. But none advises quitting. Writers and other creative artists must have thick skins and be prepared for rejection (every writer’s soul mate). It’s easy to trash a poem, and though difficult it is far more helpful (and positive) to suggest ways to improve it. My critic’s only good advice is his very last, a recommendation to one and all:

Keep on trying to write.

Don Messerschmidt is a contributing editor to ECS Nepal magazine. He can be contacted at don.editor@gmail.com.

You can see Frances Mayes’ book, The Discovery of Poetry (2001) at www.HarcourtBooks.com. As ‘A field guide to reading and writing poems’ it is an excellent primer.

————————————————————————————————

The essay about reaction to my ‘foggies’ poem was published in my regular column, ‘Spilled Ink’, in ECS Nepal magazine (Kathmandu, May 2011) and online at: http://ecs.com.np/spilled_ink.php?s_id=40.

Shortly after it was published, I received this supportive comment from an observant reader:

About the criticism that came out of the fog for your foggies poem. I think there's a huge positive for you to take from the anonymous critic's rant. He wrote: “come back to me when you're old.” Although unknowingly, he considers you young. That's a positive.

You can read the complete poem ‘On The Road Past Thrumsing La, Bhutan’s Wild Mountain Spirits’ below, by scrolling down the page to 'A poem'... Enjoy!

Book Review

2011-04-07T08:05:00.000-07:00

The Life of Bhupi Sherchan:

Poetry and Politics in Post-Rana Nepal

By Michael Hutt

Reviewed by Don Messerschmidt

Good poets speak of their times and to their times.

Great poets speak to all times. (Michael Hutt)

Foreigners writing biographies of Nepali luminaries is a challenging endeavor. Navigating their life stories requires proficiency in language, history, and social complexities. And depending on the life under the pen other subject matter such as literary art forms and politics must also be mastered.

The life of Bhupendraman Sherchan (1935-1989) was set largely in the context of post-Rana era Nepal (from the 1950s to his death), incorporating a maze of political, social, artistic, and personal complexities. His biographer, Michael Hutt, a Professor of Nepali and Himalayan Studies at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, has done it well.

Alhough Hutt never met his subject in person, as a literary scholar he has long admired Bhupi’s poetry and its significance to modern Nepal. At one point, Hutt characterizes his subject as “the creator of Nepali literature’s most incisive poetic insights.” Bhupi’s life, says Hutt, began with great promise, but it ultimately “descended into ill health and compromised decadence.”

‘Bhupi’, as he was affectionately known, was a member of the Thakali ethnic group from the mountainous northern Nepal district of Mustang. According to family tradition, he was born under inauspicious stars. And although a different astrologer later repudiated that early prognosis, some dark aspects of the omens first predicted apparently lingered, at least in Bhupi’s mind. His mother died when the boy was only five years old, and Bhupi spent his life feeling somehow responsible. It was a shadow on his soul that can be read into many of his poems.

His father, Hitman Sherchan, was a highly successful businessman. Although Bhupi as a student and a young man was apparently always in want of money, he had access to plenty. This made becoming a poet relatively easy.

When Bhupi was sent to India to study in the 1940s he, like many young Nepalese of his time, came under influence of anti-Rana sentiments and for most of his life he professed allegiance to communist ideals, though he never formally joined the Nepal communist party. Later, when he achieved acclaim in Nepalese literary circles, including membership in the elite Royal Nepal Academy, he seems to have repudiated much of his communist leanings.

His friends describe Bhupi as an impulsive person who smoked heavily and had a serious alcohol problem. The drinking affected his social life and, at times, his poetic output. His early death was partly the result of drinking and lack of attention to his health and well-being.

Michael Hutt’s biography describes these and many other facets of Bhupi’s personal life, largely based on interviews with family and friends and from the few writings (by others) that reflect upon his life.

The book has eight chapters. Chapter 1, entitled Thak Khola, the Thakalis and the Sherchans, provides a synopsis of the poet’s ethnic and cultural heritage. Chapter 2, Hitman’s Wayward Son, describes his somewhat problematic youth and schooling. Bhupi’s family life is then described in detail along with his personal philosophy and political leanings in Chapter 3, ‘So Here in My Courtyard...’ (the name of a poem) and in Chapter 4, In the Shadow of Machapuchare. Beginning in Chapter 5, ‘A Blind Man on a Revolving Chair’ (another of his popular poems), Hutt analyzes the important characteristics and significance of Bhupi’s poetry. It was the poem ‘My Courtyard’ (‘Mero Chok’) that first struck the biographer with its brevity and linguistic simplicity. Hutt classifies it, and much of the rest of Bhupi’s work, as Critical Realism. ‘Mero Chok’ “conveyed a message,” Hutt writes, “that spoke directly, and with both irony and compassion, to contemporary social realities of Nepal.” It begins like this (Hutt’s translation):

My courtyard is on a narrow street

What do I lack? Everything’s here

Countless diseases

Unending hunger

Boundless grief

Only joy is missing

Here it is banned.

A longer poem called ‘We’ (‘Hami’) was written about the time that King Mahendra dismissed Nepal’s first democratically elected government of B.P. Koirala (1960) and restored political power to the palace. ‘Hami’, says Hutt, is often cited as describing the national character traits and flaws “that have prevented Nepal from achieving the social and economic development that has been the declared objective of every Nepali government established since 1951” (the year the Ranas were overthrown). “The Nepali people,” he continues, “are courageous, it says, but they suffer from a crippling sense of inferiority. They seldom act unless they are commanded to do so by someone they believe to be greater than them. They are like drops of water [the poem says] which are ‘borne aloft by the sun to be clouds’ and develop an inflated sense of their superiority, but eventually fall as rain ‘into some well, pool or ditch’.”

In similar manner, Hutt points out that many of Bhupi’s admirers see in his poetry a critical judgment of the elite and the powerful. “In Bhupi’s Nepal, the elite know nothing about the lives of the poor and lower middle-classes,” Hutt writes.

In other poems, Bhupi writes passionately about his disdain for Nepalese youth going off as soldiers (lahuré) to enlist in foreign armies. At one point, he castigates them as “brave but foolish” for fighting other men’s wars. In a poem entitled ‘To the Children of Quails, Partridges and Sacrificial Buffaloes’ he puns the term “Gorkhali” (referring to Gurkha soldiers) as ‘goru khali’ meaning ‘mere oxen’, and describes the widows, orphans and bereaved parents that they leave behind. And in ‘The Month of Asar’ he paints “an evocative and romantic portrait of the month which brings the annual life-giving rains, returning to the hills of Nepal like a lahure returning home from service.”

Bhupi also writes poignantly in ‘In Memory of the Martyrs’ (shahid) about those who died during the anti-Rana revolution of the 1940s. Other poems reflect on such subjects as women, love and sex, patriotism, life and religion, and the poet himself.

One of the most often quoted poems (particularly in the wake of the palace massacre of 2001) is entitled ‘This is a Land of hearsay and Rumour’ (Yo Hallai Hallako Desh Ho), written in 1967 or 1968. The last four of its 70 lines are the most famous:

So this is a land of hearsay and rumour

A country standing on hearsay and rumour

A country that has risen up on hearsay and rumour

This is a land of hearsay and rumour

Bhupi’s poetry, says his biographer, provides modern Nepal with cogent reflection on the past, present and future. Bhupi sought to communicate with a broad Nepalese readership, and “In this he was more successful than any other Nepali poet before him.” For Michael Hutt and others “Bhupi’s poetry lives on and even finds new resonance and meaning in the political instability and violence that has plagued Nepal since the mid-1990s.” Hutt concludes that “For as long as Nepali society remains distinctive and recognizable, with its grace and humour intact but its human potential unrealized, Bhupi Sherchan will speak both of it and to it with a potent immediacy that remains his and his alone.”

Bhupi once wrote:

To be a poet

Is to live a meaningless life

And be meaningful after your death.

The Life of Bhupi Sherchan is published Oxford University Press (2010). Professor Hutt’s other books on Nepal's literary history include include Nepal in the Nineties: Versions of the Past, Visions of the Future (1994) and Modern Literary Nepal: An Introductory Reader (2003), both from Oxford University Press

The reviewer, himself, is the author of a biography of a Nepalese littérateur, the award-winning: Against the Current: The Life of Lain Singh Bangdel--Writer, Painter and Art Historian of Nepal (Orchid Press, 2004: http://orchidbooks.com/asian_port.html#againstcur.
You can view the reviewer's publications on Facebook at 'Don Messerschmidt Publications'.

A poem

2011-03-19T16:44:00.000-07:00

(This is the poem referred to in a more recent blog, above, entitled 'Rejection, My "Darling"...')
on the road past Thrumsing La

Bhutan

's wild mountain spirits

'many, many foggies'

says my driver

grinning

as we enter soup-thick cloud along the bluff

below the pass called Thrumsing La

Dochen has that way of speaking English

laughingly

so jovially therapeutic

he sets the tone for what’s an

otherwise long rough mountain ride
across Bhutan

up-down-around the twisting road

sometimes dull and foggy

but in clear sun the view is bold

with naked cliffs streaked white by mountain freshets

tumbling sheer from secret groves above

where jade green moss

grey lichen and

long strands of mist

lie still

whispering

if you listen

with startling clarity from nature's pure

primeval soul

surely

kindly ghosts inhabit this ancient

sacred land

and sometimes

while traversing east across the royal road

each turn

each vista

is ablaze with rhododendron

scarlet

pink

yellow

mauve,

and ivory magnolia,

and birds on iridescent wing that

flit and fidget across the broad carpet

of shockingly bright spring blossoms

their radiant colors and resonant songs

pierce the green dark forest

and sometimes

the sky comes down

to touch the earth and pastures

high up

where yak graze and wild boar uproot the fields in bright daylight

where leopard and rare tiger roam stealthily at dusk

where snow lays close in woodland nullahs long into May

where fir and larch and hemlock stand tall and sharp

against a cobalt sky

where blood pheasant

red panda and

muntjac

feed passively

unseen

unheard

in dense thickets

where prayer flags silently mark and bless one's passage

in the dark

while mountain breezes waft brusquely

unchecked

to bend the tree tops

and dark-clouded storms roil up

to dare a blood red sunset

it seems so far

this wild untrammeled land

so far from din of hectic world and troubled age

and when

along the road past Thrumsing La

great banks of cloud obscure it all

then wild mountain spirits cling tightly

to the cliff's bare face
Dochen's 'foggies'

Now, good reader, this poem was entered into a UK poetry contest online. We got lots of votes, but did not win #1 position. For those of you who read it, and voted: Thanks.

2011-03-18T10:29:00.000-07:00

Leg in mouth

An essay...

When the review of my book on big Himalayan dogs was published, I tripped and fell over the line where the reviewer wondered what sort of “strange fetish” the author must have to pursue creatures “that clearly want no part of him other than his leg in their mouths.”

Well, yes: fetish-obsession-mania-fixation. Mine, all mine, along with scars on body and soul to show for it.

Like the time I approached a Sherpa yak herder’s camp in a deep green meadow high up in a Himalayan forest. As I stepped off the trail and approached his tent, I saw the angry dog. And it saw me. And judging by what happened next, I can confidently say that that was one clever canine. Unable to reach me after lunging in fury to the end of his tether, the big dog spun around, backed out of his collar, and then attacked. I stood stock still, unmoving, scared mindless. It was the yak herder who moved. Fast. He launched a flying tackle and caught the critter by the hind quarters before it could get my leg in its mouth. Had I been recruiting line-backers for the Pittsburgh Stealers, I would have signed the swarthy herdsman up on the spot. And the big dog, too, as team mascot.

Tibetan mastiffs are renowned for their ferocity. Not always, but often enough. I found myself on the dangerous end of that equation several times. Once, while on a research trip high up in another Himalayan pasture, my companions and I were invited to an evening out by friendly sheep herders in a meadow a half hour’s walk from our camp. Our host had some fine big Tibetan dogs guarding his camp and livestock, but he assured us that with proper introductions they’d cause us no harm. I was especially interested in those dogs for my book, so an evening with the shepherds singing songs and telling stories, fueled by liberal quaffs of a strong local spirit called raksi, was a promising opportunity.

It was almost dark when our host arrived to guide me and my two assistants across the meadows. Within minutes of starting out we were surrounded by five vicious dogs from a neighboring camp. They leaped at us menacingly, darting in and out, snarling and snapping and sounding their loud dark bark, a noise that someone has compared to a ghost barking from deep down in the creature’s stomach. We shouted and hollered back, a din that was surely heard for miles. As we swung our staves and threw stones one dog veered away yelping in pain. With his mates distracted we made our escape. A few minutes later we reached our destination, shaken but unhurt. Our host’s dogs were alert to our arrival, but the reassuring voice of their master kept them calm and quiet.

We spent a grand evening with the shepherds, eating, drinking, ‘talking dog’ and listening to old songs and the wisdom of life in the high pastures. I took notes by candle light, though upon reviewing them later I suspect that my pen was affected by the raksi.

Later, in the black of night and feeling no pain, we started back to our camp. To avoid the terror of the pack that had attacked us, we detoured along a hillside well above the pastures and the dogs. They barked hoarsely in our direction, from afar, but none came up to find us.

Next day I sat outside my tent in the early morning sun finishing my notes: “By evening the sheep and goats have been herded back from the pastures to camp,” I wrote, “and the big dogs are turned out guard them... They are not herding dogs in the sense of steering or rounding up their charges.., they are guard dogs. Their sole purpose is protection,” from leopards, wolves, wild dogs called buwaso or dhole, and human intruders like us. When an enemy is detected “the darkness comes alive with frenzied barking and snarling, and shepherds shouting” - the noise of experience.

A shepherd song extols their virtues: “Thrice in the night, our dogs make watch rounds of the meadows,” one stanza goes. If you are ever out there in the dark, beware! That’s when these big dogs clearly want no part of you other than your leg in mouth.

(Unpublished essay by Don Messerschmidt March 2011)

Fact and Fiction, Salt and Swing

2011-03-11T15:14:00.000-08:00

Fact and Fiction, Salt and Swing

"And another thing all readers know about reading but we hardly ever mention about reading is how sometimes you have to be ready for a book’s salt and swing, you have to be prepared likewise for it to speak to you, and if you read it at the wrong time, too early or too late, the book just seems clogged and dense and self indulgent and mannered and foolish, and you just don’t get it at all, and privately you conclude that your friends who mooed with delight over it have lost their little tiny tadpole brains, but you can’t say that aloud, much, so when they ask anxiously what did you think? you have to lie and say you were about to start it when suddenly you found you only understood Basque or were arrested for impersonating a cockatoo or something like that. You know what I mean.”

What a starter!

Brian Doyle wrote it. I like his notion of seeking a book’s “salt and swing...” In his longer essay, Brian asks: “When are readers ready for the books they read?” So, I ask: “When are writers ready for the books they write?” I recently drew up a list of troublesome books written about Nepal, whose authors seem to have been ill-prepared to write, or who simply neglected to check the facts or tell the truth. One is the 1970 novel And Not to Yield by James Ramsey Ullman. It was begun in Kathmandu’s old Royal Hotel while Ullman was working on Americans on Everest, the official account of the 1963 American Mount Everest Expedition. Ullman’s novel is about a young American climber who falls in love with a mountain and with a Sherpa girl. His passion draws him to Solu-Khumbu, to the girl’s village, and there, in reciprocity for her love and Sherpa hospitality, he introduces toilets to the hapless folks. Toilets, no less!

Unfortunately for Ullman, the notion of introducing outhouses to Sherpas is akin to introducing dal-bhat to the Nepalese. Introducing outhouses to Sherpas is the book’s fatal flaw. Because he didn’t accompany the expedition to Solu-Khumbu (due to ill health), Ullman didn’t know the facts – that there are toilets attached to virtually every Sherpa house, already. Sherpa toilets are the source of valuable ‘night soil’ to spread on the potato fields. Ullman wove the plot around a defective notion. Was he ready to write this book? Are his readers ready to know the truth? Another kind of flaw occurs in Maurice Herzog’s Annapurna, the classic account of the 1950 French Expedition to Annapurna-I. The French were the first to summit an 8,000 meter peak. (There are 14 “eight-thousanders” in the world, all in the Himalayas; Annapurna-I is 8,091 meters high.)

Conquering Annapurna was a victorious ‘first,’ although Herzog lost his fingers and toes from frostbite and his summit companion Louis Lachenal lost all his toes. And to save those two men’s lives, the follow-up summit party (Lionel Terray and Gaston Rébuffat) lost their chance for the top. Back in France, Herzog became a national hero and a powerful person in the mountaineering world, including a stint as Minister for Youth and Sport in the government of Charles de Gaulle.

Annapurna was an instant classic, a tragic thriller, and a disappointment. Revelations by another mountaineer-writer, David Roberts, have exposed the untruths in Herzog’s account. In True Summit (2000) Roberts describes Herzog’s incredible hubris and a long list of self-serving omissions, inventions and half-truths. In fact, he says, the Annapurna expedition was torn by dissent and severely undermined by its leader’s egoistic determination and grandiloquence. And, when other members of the expedition attempted to publish their own but different versions of the expedition, Herzog successfully suppressed them. The biases written into Annapurna are the “salt and swing” revelations in True Summit, subtitled ‘What Really Happened on the Legendary Ascent of Annapurna’. Are you ready to read all the sordid details?

Good reading!

The starting quote is from a Brian Doyle essay entitled ‘A note on finally being ready to tackle certain books’ published in the The Sunday Oregonian, Portland, Oregon (USA), on January 23, 2010. You can read the whole essay at www.oregonlive.com/books/index.ssf/2011/01/a_note_on_finally_being_ready.html.

§ This essay by Don Messerschmidt was first published in ECS Nepal magazine (Kathmandu),

March 2011 (www.ecs.com.np)

2011-02-02T12:06:00.001-08:00

AVAILABLE NOW - the long-awaited book... Autographed copies available directly from the author; write for information (dmesserschmidt@gmail.com)

Big Dogs of Tibet and the Himalayas: A Personal Journey (Orchid Press; www.orchidbooks.com)

by Don Messerschmidt

A century and a half ago Tibetan mastiffs were first imported into England, and only three decades ago to North America. During the Chinese Cultural Revolution these remarkable high altitude livestock guardian dogs were nearly annihilated, but they have recovered and now are (surprisingly) in high demand, for very high prices, among the nouveau riche of modern China. Today, thousands of these dogs are found around the world, promoted by many breeders, raised as pets, guardians and faithful companions. Some have scored high marks at international dog shows. Interest in Tibetan mastiffs and related dogs – their history, breeding, temperament, function and future – has never been as high.

This is a book of discovery of the exotic and relatively rare breeds of big dogs from Tibet and the Himalayas: the Tibetan mastiff (best known), the rare KyiApso (the ‘bearded’ or ‘shaggy’ Tibetan mastiff), the Himalayan mountain dog, and the least known Sha-kyi (Tibetan hunting dog).

Where do Tibetan mastiffs come from? What is their function? What did the early explorers to Tibet say about them? What do they look like? Are they as ferocious as often described? Why is there so much popular interest in this exotic breed today? What is their future? And, are they, in fact, true ‘mastiffs’? This book answers these questions, and more. It relates stories about them from Tibet, the Himalayas and the West. It also follows the author’s own discovery of the big dogs in the high yak pastures along Nepal’s northern border, in north India and across Tibet. Meet ‘Amjo’ from Helambu, ‘Kalu’ (an international champion) of Kathmandu and ‘Bhalu’ his son in Canada.

Research on Tibetan dogs is contentious. Marco Polo wrote about them in the 13th century, but did he ever see one? Did he go to Tibet? And is the translation of his description of dogs “as big as donkeys” accurate, or mere hyperbole? This book challenges some of the conventional wisdom about the big dogs with evidence to show how some dog fanciers have gotten it wrong. It questions the notion that there were gigantic dogs in the past, an idea that has inspired some modern breeders to create enormous critters, mistakenly evoking a mythical past. It also discusses the relationship of shaggy KyiApsos to Tibetan mastiffs.

§ 7 chapters, illustrated; with annexes.

§ Personal accounts of big Tibetan/Himalayan dogs by the author and others.

§ Assiduously researched, including some little known and remarkable descriptions by early explorers, mountaineers, missionaries, diplomats and spies.

§ An important study that all big dog owners will want to read and own.

Some early viewer’s comments:

“I’ve just completed a wonderful morning reading through your canine charivari... it’s a cracking book. It is patently both a labour of love and a work of exhaustive scholarship. You’ve done a magnificent job.” -Charles Allen, author of popular historical books on Tibet, the Himalayas and South Asia.

“You do know that the s**t is going to hit the fan when you publish, right? You're going to tick off a *lot* of people!! Personally, I think that could be a good thing for the breed if it gets some folks thinking...” -A Tibetan dog breeder (anonymous)

More recent comments received:

v The history-lovers version of Marley and Me, Messerschmidt's memoir is an enjoyable dog romp through the Himalayas. I loved it. (Reviewed on Amazon.com)

v   I'm reading ‘Big Dogs’ right now... and it's hard to put down. Fascinating. I can hear the mountain dogs barking as I read.   (from an old Nepal hand)
v Don - I'm enjoying every word you've written about our lovely dogs. You have stimulated the TM world in a big way! (A TM dog owner)

v  I received your book today and havnt put it down! It's so fantastic : )) I can't wait to finish it... (A TM fancier)

v I am pleased with the book since it represents "the eye of a researcher" and it "kills" [some of] the beliefs we have taken for granted. (A European TM owner, on Facebook)

v      Don Messerschmidt’s Big Dogs of Tibet and the Himalayas is a good example of a lifelong passion distilled into print... What’s most notable here is Messerschmidt’s obvious love for Tibetan mastiffs, as well as his continuing admiration for the people of the High Himalayas who own and depend on them.
...Reading these pages, one wonders at times what sort of strange fetish Messerschmidt must have to pursue creatures that clearly want no part of him other than his leg in their mouths.
...Soon we come to the best parts of the book: Messerschmidt’s many experiences as a Tibetan mastiff breeder, and his hand in strengthening the line’s stock in North America... (In that last sentence, the reviewer is referring to Chapter 4, about my own Ch. Saipal Baron of Emodus, aka ‘Kalu.’ He, and other Saipal dogs from the Himalayas, figure prominently in many Tibetan mastiff pedigrees in Europe and America. See the complete book review at peacecorpsworldwide.org/pc-writers/2011/02/10/review-messerschmidt/)

v An excerpt from the book is printed in the Winter 2011 issue of Modern Molosser magazine. Check it out at the MM website: www.modernmolosser.com/.

DON MESSERSCHMIDT, author and anthropologist, is a Himalayan specialist and an authority on Tibetan mastiffs from the ‘Roof of the World’. He has spent over four decades studying them in their natural setting and their places of origin (and has scars to show for it). Dr Messerschmidt has bred, raised, trained, and shown Tibetan mastiffs internationally. His own companion, the International Champion Saipal Baron of Emodus (aka ‘Kalu’), is well known in the blood lines of many fine ‘TMs’ in North America and Europe.

Don’s writings about Tibetan dogs have appeared in Dog World, Rangelands and ECS Nepal magazines, and in The Himalayan Times and various dog club newsletters. His other writings have appeared in Alaska, Summit and Himal magazines. Dr Messerschmidt is an accomplished magazine editor and writer, an ethnographer, biographer, and consultant on rural development projects.

In this book, the author describes his life-long enchantment with the big dogs and his quest and discovery of them in old writings, as well as on the Tibetan plateau and in the high pastures of the Himalayan borderlands. He has traveled widely in Nepal, Tibet, Bhutan, India and Pakistan.

Contact the author at dmesserschmidt@gmail.com

Rural Nepal goes mobile-global

2011-01-14T15:33:00.000-08:00

Spilled Ink, ECS Nepal magazine, January 2011

Text by : Don Messerschmidt

Only 18% of people in the developing world have access to the Internet, but more than 50% owned a mobile phone handset at the end of 2009 (a number which has more than doubled since 2005), according to the International Telecommunication Union. ―The Economist, October 30, 2010

It’s true. The mobile phone is ubiquitous in the developing world, and omnipresent in Nepal. What does it mean for social relations and the economy, for farmers, shop keepers, writers, researchers and (not least) the postal system?

When I arrived late one afternoon in remote Sirkot village of Ilam District after a stiff climb, I learned that the persons our research team needed to interview lived an hour’s walk back down the mountain. “Not to worry,” a Nokia wielding villager said. “I’ll phone. They’ll come up.” Everyone seems to have a mobile phone―men, women, children, farmers, school teachers, students, shopkeepers, guides and porters―in constant use, spreading news, coordinating work schedules, chatting with neighbors and family, negotiating market prices, taking orders, setting up meetings, making advance reservations...

Our Sirkot hosts told us that their son was off working in the Gulf, one of Nepal’s thousands of young remittance men. “Does he write often?” I asked. “No,” they said. Then his mother put her hand up to her ear and extended her thumb and little finger in the universal sign of a mobile phone call. “He phones. It’s hot there, he says, and he misses Nepali food, dal-bhat.”

Rural Nepal now has roads, electricity, toilets and piped water, but mobile phones are most indicative of the ‘new Nepal’, linking the nation to the rest of the world.

I remember the first telephone land line across the central hills in the 1960s, when I was a Peace Corps Volunteer. Telecommunications to my tiny village west of Gorkha was over an archaic system using vintage wall-phones with ringer cranks, powered by two big dry cell batteries. Messages came and went by text only, laboriously relayed orally, letter by letter through 14 stations, one to the next. The receiver stations were located every half day’s walk along the historic postal trail, the ‘hulaki bato’. With so many opportunities for error, you can imagine the jumbled correspondence we sometimes received. Garbled, like the end of the children’s game of ‘Telephone’.

Dharma, our friendly telephone-wallah, had a bushy handlebar moustache, bright twinkling eyes on a wrinkled face, and a broad smile. He was happy to pass messages to us. We lived next to his office and we always knew when one arrived. He’d repeat each English letter, one after the other so loudly that the last operator and half the district could hear. Like this: “Himal ko ‘etch’!” (H). “Europe ko ‘eee’!” (E). “London ko ‘ell’!” (L); twice. And “Ooyal [oil] ko ‘ohh’!” (O). “HELLO”~!

Phone calls through the international exchange at Kathmandu were not much better―a lot of shouting going out (as if volume enhanced transmission), and garbled replies coming in. I phoned America only once then, but gave up when what I heard back sounded like frog croaks. Those were the days, pre-globalization!

My recent visit to Sirkot in Ilam was on a socio-economic survey for the Nepal Electrical Authority (NEA) Kabeli Corridor 132 kv Transmission Line Project, from Tehrathum south through Panchthar and Ilam to Jhapa District. We were 10 researchers spread out across the hills, keeping track of each day’s progress by (you guessed it) mobile phone. Hand held electronic telecommunication is transforming Nepal in ways not dreamed of just a few years ago.

Rural Nepal has gone mobile-global. All those calls from the Gulf, to the village down the hill, or for checking current market prices are changing local social and economic relations. And where there’s no electricity yet there are solar-powered phone chargers.

What will this do to the ‘hulak’, the postal system? Will letter-writing go out of style? Do mobile phones spell the end to postage stamps and spilled ink?

Keep on calling!

The author is a freelance writer and contributing editor to ECS Nepal. He has a mobile phone of course, but don’t call: he’s currently in America where he can be contacted by email at don.editor@gmail.com. The hydropower research described was conducted for the NEA by Nepal Environmental & Scientific Services (NESS) (P) Ltd.

2010-08-03T11:55:00.000-07:00

Notebooks with Character!

Most people live in a “white zone”... in a fog, on auto pilot, nearly unaware of what's going on around them.
..not if you’re a writer.

Good writers are good observers. Good writers avoid the “white zone” fog and are well aware of what’s going on around them. Alert. Perceptive. Writers keep notes. One of mine reminds me to “Buy a notebook that is portable, not too big, not too small. Carry it with you all the time. Now look around with wonder, paying attention to everything. Eavesdrop on life...”

Eavesdropping implies listening, overhearing, nosing around (also lurking snooping, prying and spying...). The point is: observe and take notes on life. Carry a notebook and fill it up.

A well-kept notebook is a treasure trove, chock-full with experience rich in promise, both insightful and mundane. Intriguing. A safe place to collect, play, experiment. discover.

I know a writer whose notebooks fill a small shelf by his desk, well-thumbed from frequent “look-ups.” They harbor great memories, facts, random thoughts, and potent ideas. Things not to forget, he says. Full of life with eyes wide open. He uses them to scribble, sketch, and create, looking ahead to the day when something jotted down becomes a writing prompt. He takes notes on what fascinates him, as observations and insights for future essays. He starts every trek with a new one, pristine, unblemished, wrapped in plastic to keep it safe and dry. Always has, he says. Later, when he returns home with his notebook full-up, it’s inevitably watermarked and ink stained, with torn pages and broken bindings. Notebooks with character!

Think of your notebook as a spare drawer to drop in bits and pieces of knowledge randomly collected, to pull out later when you sit down to the serious business of putting thoughts to paper. A valued storehouse.

Whether you write fiction or non-fiction, stage plays or poems, your writer’s notebook is a vital tool in your craft and life. Use it to frame an opening scene or a climax, and to contemplate plot, character and setting. Jot down the clever turn of a phrase. Rumors spread. Facts confirmed. Dialogue overheard. Sketch people and places, in words. Ask questions. Make outlines. Capture some of the mystery of life.

Describe scenes that you might use later ― the sizzle of frying thakari, the tingling taste of red-hot achhar, the forlorn expression of a lonely man, the intense beauty of an orchid in bloom or a butterfly in flight. Use it to put laughter to words when you see a comical expression on the face of a pet. With a little practice you may even portray the smell of a politician’s duplicity or greed, and the despair written all over a poor widow’s face. Fill your notebook with feeling ― with peoples’ joys, frustrations, accomplishments, sorrows. Slices of life.

Use it to focus on the world about you; where you’ve been, where you’re going, with whom, when, why and how, and what you learn along the way. Take note of what’s happening in that Jawalakhel café you like, or in your favorite Thamel coffee shop or bookstore, while walking to work or riding in a micro and, of course, from the books you read.

With so much happening, keep your notebook at hand in a pocket or in your backpack, on your desk as you write, and by your bed as you sleep for those brilliant ideas that come flash-in-the-night.

But don’t use it as a diary. A writer’s notebook is a journal, not a confessional. Be up front with it, not furtive. It should be more about the world around you and less about your inner yearnings. Fill it with potential, out in the open. (And yet..., while the intent and content of diaries and notebooks are different, more than one scorchingly good short story has been pulled off the pages of a scorchingly personal diary.)

Here’s another provocative note I’ve kept for a moment like this: “Make your writer’s notebook so integral to your life that you feel naked without it.”

Put it on, and wear it well.

■ Good Journaling!

The “white zone” quote is paraphrased from Beth Erickson’s ‘Writing Etc.’ blog (filbertpublishing.com). The two other quotations come from one of my notebooks, borrowed sometime past from the writerly wisdom of Jessica Page Morrell in Writing out the Storm (1998, Collectors Press). See also Writers and Their Notebooks, edited by Diana Raab and Phillip Lopate (2010, University of South Carolina Press) and Notebook Know-How: Strategies for the Writer's Notebook by Aimee Buckner & Ralph Fletcher (2005, Stenhouse Press).

Don Messerschmidt is a contributing editor to ECS Nepal magazine and can be contacted at don.editor@gmail.com. This essay appeared in my recent column - 'Spilled Ink' - on writing and reading, in ECS Nepal magazine.

2010-06-06T07:47:00.000-07:00

What's a List?
In my quest for good books, good writing, and good books on writing, I’ve acquired Getting the Word Right: How to Rewrite, Edit and Revise by T.A.R. Cheney―a book with many lists, and Umberto Eco’s far more esoteric The Infinity of Lists―all about lists.

One is for writers, a primer on rewriting. The other is for readers, scholarly but not obtuse; semiotic―a study of signs, symbols (including lists) and their meaning.

Cheney’s Introduction begins with a list: “This is a book about writing, rewriting, rereading, reviewing, rethinking, rearranging, repairing, restructuring, reevaluating, editing, tightening, sharpening, smoothing, pruning, polishing up, punching up, amending, emending, altering, eliminating, transposing, expanding, condensing, connecting, cohering, unifying, perfecting.”

Too long and wordy...? Cut! The most inclusive word “to convey all these related and connotative meanings,” says Cheney, is revision. “The idea of re(vision) is clearly there―a writer must periodically re(look) at what he or she is writing,” he goes on listfully. “When you, the writer, ‘see again’ the words you’ve written, you’ll find something you can revise to make your work more accurate, more concise, more helpful, more euphonious, more humorous, more serious, more in-keeping-with-the-times, more appropriate, more dramatic, more heart-stopping, more memorable, more... or somehow better than the words that had originally arrived to convey to the world the vision your mind had seen.”

Cheney’s Chapter 1 begins (lower case, alphabetical): “axe, cut, compress, condense, decrease, delete, drop, eliminate, eradicate, excise, hone, lop, pare, prune, reduce, remove, revise, rewrite, sharpen, slash, streamline, tighten, trim, whittle...”

So? Cheney likes lists. They catch your attention. They make his point.

Umberto Eco is also passionate about lists; lists qua lists (sans revision), lists in the extreme. 400 pages worth of lists! Infinity is an exegesis on lists found in classical literature. He explains our infatuation with them, their purpose and types, with copious examples. And though Cheney is not on Eco’s list, you get the idea: a list is a list is a list.

Infinity is also richly illustrated with list-like art, colorful paintings of stacks, rows, piles, lines, series, heaps and jumbles. List-like imagery, framed.

Eco tells us that some lists (like Cheney’s) are accumulations, a “sequence and juxtaposition of linguistic terms belonging to the same conceptual sphere.” Because they form “a sequence of words or phrases that all mean the same thing” they are also congeries. A list without conjunctions (as: and, or, nor, for, so, but, yet) is an asyndeton, but with conjunctions (e.g.: and, and or, and nor, or for, etc.) it’s a polysyndeton.

When list-like phrases have repetitious beginnings, common in poetry, they form an anaphora. Here’s an Nepalese example excerpted from Bhupi Sherchan’s ‘I Think My Country’s History is a Lie’ (trans. Michael Hutt):

...I hear that Amarsingh extended the kingdom to Kangra,

I hear that Tenzing climbed Sagarmatha,

I hear that Buddha sowed the seeds of peace,

I hear that Arniko’s art astounded the world,

I hear, but I do not believe it...

A more complex example of anaphora takes up most of ‘Poetry and Painting’ by Balkrishna Sama (trans. Laxmiprasad Devkota):

When I want a shapeful dream I write poetry,

And when I want a dreamlike shape I paint;

When I want you to speak to me I write poetry,

And when I want you to smile with me I paint;

When I want to cry for you I write poetry,

And when I want you to cry for me I paint;

When I want to touch your heart I write poetry,

And when I want to catch your sight I paint;

When I want to die for the living I write poetry,

And when I want a life for the dead I paint;

So poetry and painting go side by side

As the very moon and her moonbeam―

In poetry soul is the painting

And in the painting soul is the poem,

And so, my love, my eye is your painting,

And my heart your poem.

The moral is that lists everywhere have form, structure, purpose and meaning―and names, says Eco; and may need revision, says Cheney...

■ Make a list!
This essay was first published in ECS Nepal magazine (Kathmandu), May 2010, in my column 'Spilled Ink' (about writing).

Feedback? Your reaction to this or any other ‘Spilled Ink’ essay is welcome, as are suggestions for future topics. The author is a contributing editor to ECS Nepal. Contact him at don.editor@gmail.com.

Travelers' Woes: Culture Shock

2010-01-13T13:39:00.000-08:00

Travelers’ Woes: Culture Shock
By Don Messerschmidt

The term ‘Culture Shock’ was invented in 1954 to describe the typical reactions of travelers and aid workers and missionaries experiencing the stress of a strange new place for the first time.

Traveling to somewhere with a different culture? Recently arrived and wondering “What is expected of me? How should I act?” Are you happy you’re here? Or is “everything” going wrong? Are you disillusioned and ready to go home? Such questions are the hallmarks of ‘Culture Shock’.

I remember my arrival in Nepal, inexperienced and naïve. It was 1963 and I expected to stay only two years (that was then!). I loved it. The scenery (no pollution). The people (welcoming, friendly). The food (exotic). Everything. I felt wonder, excitement, exhilaration. I was eager to fit in. But the initial euphoria didn’t last long. The first time I felt sick, or couldn’t express myself properly in Nepali, it began to fail. Unbeknownst to me, I was in Culture Shock.
The term ‘Culture Shock’ was invented in 1954 to describe the typical reactions of travelers and aid workers and missionaries experiencing the stress of a strange new place for the first time. Since then it has been expanded to include students going abroad to study and tourists leaving the familiarity of home for the first time. The original concept and its symptoms were defined by Kalvero Oberg, an anthropologist who had lived abroad for many years. Today, virtually every introductory Anthropology textbook describes its effects, sometimes with poignant examples.
According to Oberg, Culture Shock has four phases. Phase 1 is the ‘Honeymoon’. Everything is pleasant and you’re excited, curious, happy, unconcerned. Soon, however, as things begin to fall apart and discomfort sets in, you feel discouraged. You cannot understand the language. You do not like the food. You become ill. You misunderstand some local custom. Enter Phase 2 ‘Rejection’. If allowed to run its course, rejection leads you progressively downhill to Phase 3 ‘Regression and Isolation’. At that point, some people give up and leave for home. You may feel it all to some degree. I did. But, don’t give up. It may seem hopeless, but with perseverance and a sense of humor it is survivable. In my case, as I became accustomed to Nepal, I achieved (with great relief) Phase 4 ‘Adjustment and Adaptation’. Full recovery. I settled in, and Nepal became a center point in my life.
My first experience of Culture Shock was in India when our Peace Corps group stopped over in New Delhi before continuing on to Kathmandu. The flight from New York to India was long and tiring (on PanAm One, in a Boeing 707). That was followed by an amazing―no, shocking―bus ride from the New Delhi airport into the city. I wrote in my journal that the narrow roadway was crowded with all manner of “people, animals and bicycles. The taxi-wallahs and bus drivers all maneuver through traffic with one foot on the gas and one hand on the horn.” We closed our eyes and held our breaths, while the street people scurried out of the way. So many extraordinary sights, new smells, strange sounds. As I fell asleep that night at the International Guesthouse, a lot of indecent mosquitoes attacked the bed netting. And I heard jackals for the first time, serenading us with their nocturnal ‘singing’.
The following day more contrasts assailed us in the bazaar: “women in beautifully colored saris, men in trim cut suits, children in rags or naked, sick and lame”, I wrote. We saw the rich in chauffeured cars, alongside the poor pulling carts or carrying huge loads on their backs. We were besieged by men with trained bears, monkeys or cobras, or selling knives, bracelets, flutes or shoe shines. I had never seen anything like it. I took a snapshot of a beggar with his dancing bear. He harangued us for baksheesh, chasing us down the street. But my friend and I had only a 100 rupee note. What a scene! On advice of a passerby we ducked in the front door of a government emporium, and escaped out the back. We never saw beggar nor bear again, but the experience shook us.
Years later I read an extreme account of Culture Shock in Paul Mann’s Season of the Monsoon (1992). Mann describes South Asia from a Western stranger’s perspective as a place “that can break your heart”. It affects people, he wrote; it changes them, “some for the better, some for the worse. I’m sure it has something to do with the extremes of the place. People see things their minds cannot cope with―fantastic and terrible things. I knew men who lost all sense of reason… Some men who became drunks, despots or drug addicts. Some died for their sins. Some were sent home tied to stretchers because they had gone mad”, all extreme reactions to Phase 3 Culture Shock-Rejection and Isolation. Whatever you are inside, Mann goes on, whatever kind of man or woman you are, good or bad, the shock of it on first sight brings it out in you: “To the extreme”!
Culture shock is a curious thing, but very real. It is a condition every traveler should understand.■
Previously published in ECS Nepal magazine (Kathmandu), January 2010.

2009-11-25T09:47:00.000-08:00

STARTING OUT . . .

The following blog was posted November 25, 2009 to ‘thewritersedge’ group at http://writersdigest.ning.com/group/thewritersedge.

Two questions have been going through my mind lately. Both have been raised here regarding (1) how each of us began writing, and (2) how we have been affected by difficulties writing. I am working on the answer as part of the introduction to an anthology I am planning that will feature my non-fiction writings on the Himalayas (many years' worth).

Here's the DRAFT introduction to my essay. Comments are welcome.

"In 1952, H.W. Tilman, the inveterate British trekker, mountaineer, raconteur, and author of Nepal Himalaya, a book of exploration, introduced the world to “mountaineer’s foot”, a belittling malady that he defined as “reluctance to put one in front of the other.” Writers sometimes suffer an analogous ailment. I call it “writer’s cramp”―a temporary reluctance to put words to page.

"It’s not writers block. That’s a far more serious problem. No, not that. Writer’s cramp is more a mild bewilderment or hesitancy than a prolonged despair. It’s not unlike the avid trekker who wakes up one morning and feels that this is not the time for hitting the trail. Maybe after lunch. Maybe tomorrow. Yes, tomorrow. I’ll think about it today, then get back on the trail tomorrow...

"I experienced temporary writer’s cramp a few days ago when someone asked how did I become a writer. The question gave me pause, and my otherwise expressive output linking keyboard to computer screen suddenly froze up. It was overwhelming; almost half a century of good and not-so-good writing experiences, buried in a back closet of my mind, tumbled out. As I began digging through those memories, dusting them off, I realized that I could only do justice to the question by mulling them over, distilling them a bit, then putting them into some sort of order to write about, tomorrow." . . . .

DRAFT - Please don't quote me just yet (call it 'quoter's cramp')...

2009-11-25T09:36:00.000-08:00

What are you reading now?

The Writer is a monthly magazine full of ‘Advice and inspiration for today’s writer’, it says on the cover. While thumbing through a recent issue I stopped cold at the following advice to writers, by other writers:

Read voraciously...

Read everything you can. A mix of contemporary and classics... Read like a writer – try to understand the choices, the governing intelligence and design of a work. I am appalled by how many ‘writers’ I meet answer with a blank stare when I ask ‘What are you reading now?’

Precisely.
Becoming and being a good writer is predicated on becoming and being a good reader – of books and articles, of history, biography, travel, poetry, all well beyond the daily news. “Read like a writer” is the best advice I know to tell others who are becoming writers. And aren’t we all still becoming writers, even the most experienced of us?

What does it mean to read like a writer?
For a writer to read well means that you not only seek entertainment or escape or new knowledge, but that you also examine how the author has structured her article or book. What’s the angle? For what audience? What critical choices were made – what’s left in, left out? What strikes you as really good, interesting, provocative, insightful, useful? What do you want to remember, to try out or mimic in your own writing?

Reading well also requires reading aloud, listening to the words. A recent book by Alan Cheuse, an American novelist, is entitled just that: Listening to the Page (2001). In it Cheuse emphasizes the importance of reading before and with writing. His book is in three parts: Reading, Rereading, and Writing. Say it again: reading, re-reading and (then) writing.

Another author on writing is Francine Prose (I love her surname; what’s more appropriate for a prose writer than the name Prose?). Like Cheuse, she has written an equally provocative book, Reading Like a Writer (2006). Right off (on page 2) she reminds us that long before there were writing conferences, writers’ workshops, or creative writing classes and textbooks, “writers learned by reading the work of their predecessors.” Prose mentions learning from Ovid’s meter, Homer’s plot construction, Aristophanes’ comedy, and both Montaigne’s and Samuel Johnson’s lucid style.

There’s also Ernest Hemingway’s dialogue. And Jon Krakauer’s non-fiction action. And so many other great writers-as-mentors, classical, recent and contemporary, to learn from. “And who could have asked for better teachers: generous, uncritical blessed with wisdom and genius, as endlessly forgiving as only the dead can be?” she asks.

“In the ongoing process of becoming a writer,” says Prose, “I read and re-read the authors I most loved. I read for pleasure, first, but also more analytically, conscious of style, of diction, of how sentences were formed and information was being conveyed, how the writer was structuring a plot, creating characters, employing detail and dialogue. And as I wrote I discovered that writing, like reading, was done one word at a time, one punctuation mark at a time. It required what a friend calls ‘putting every word on trial for its life’: changing an adjective, cutting a phrase, removing a comma, and putting the comma back in.”

“I read closely, word by word, sentence by sentence, pondering each deceptively minor decision that the writer had made... I can remember the novels and stories that seemed to me revelations: wells of beauty and pleasure that were also textbooks, private lessons in the art of fiction.” And the same for non-fiction, of course. Ultimately, all writers know (she says) that “we learn to write by practice, hard work, by repeated trial and error, success and failure, and from the books that we admire” (emphasis added).

Good writing and reading! – with thanks (while writing this column) to books and authors I admire.

First published in ECS Nepal magazine (Kathmandu), November 2009, in my regular monthly column on writing, called 'Spilled Ink'. (www.ecs.com.np)

2009-11-07T12:14:00.000-08:00

On the Meaning(s) of Words We Use

Here is part of a discussion excerpted from Brevity, a Creative Non-Fiction website and blog (http://brevity.wordpress.com/) dated November 6, 2009. It is all about defining ‘Creative Nonfiction’ (often acronymized as ‘CNF'). The source that the Brevity editors have tapped is a blog called ‘Pansy Poetics’, by Steve Fellner.

Also on Steve Fellner's blog (but not in the Brevity blog) is a set of vignettes, and commentary about writing vignettes. Since we CNFs (Creative NonFictioneers – my term) sometimes use vignettes to portray important information in our wordy creations, Fellner’s vignette about writing vignettes is also well worth reading.

Note, too, that following the Brevity/Pansy Poetics discussion of defining CNF (below), I have penned a few more observations about the meaning of words we use, especially derogatory monikers...

- - - - - <<<>>> - - - - -
The Brevity Post:

Creative Nonfiction Defined: Yes You Can
In Teaching Resources, blogs we like, creative nonfiction onNovember 6, 2009 at 10:10 am
(Excerpted from Brevity’s Creative NonFiction Blog at brevity.wordpress.com)

Oftentimes, at the end of a long day of manuscript sorting high up in the Brevity corporate towers, we will push back our chairs, throw some Miles Davis onto the big speakers, pour small offerings of Blanton’s Single Barrel Bourbon, and wonder at people who have trouble defining creative nonfiction. “Really,” we might say to one another. “It’s not a mystery. What we do is pretty straightforward. Can you pass the Blanton’s, Mr. Jeeves?”

So we were pleased when running across poet/memoirist/blog-provocateur Steve Fellner’s discussion of definitions on his blog Pansy Poetics. Here’s a bit, but the entire post is worth reading as well.

I tell (my students) they need to break up the word. Creative. Non-Fiction.

Non-Fiction=The Real=Autobiographical Experience and/or Texts and/or History=”The Content” of the Piece
For the “Creative” aspect of the definition, they need to ask the question, “Where would the author locate his artistry in the piece?”, “What special formal strategies does she employ?” (ie point-of-view, diction, organization, etc.”)

“That’s why,” I say, “Journalism and diary writing cannot be creative non-fiction.

There’s nothing inherently special about its formal strategies. It’s simply meant to convey. To an audience. Or to oneself. It’s not meant to convey in a way that is special or artistic.”

Of course, there are an infinite number of ways to deconstruct this definition. (Even though I think it’s pretty good.)

The endless battles about this definition as a result of that can go on and on.
But it offers a starting point rather than simply raising your hands in the air, and offering nothing except to claim no one can pin it down, that it transgresses boundaries and refuses to be defined. Of course, it refuses to be defined; that’s why we’ve become writers, to fumble our way towards a useless, necessary naming.
#
- - - - - <<<>>> - - - - -

More on “useless, necessary naming” and sometimes socially derogatory terms:

The Pansy Poetics blog is written by a gay writer. It is interesting (in a way) that in the excerpt from Brevity, above, one paragraph from Steve Fellner’s original blog is left out, the one about being a CNF writer who is gay. (Oh, well..., but to their credit the Brevity folks say that “the entire post is worth reading”.)

For the “full monty”, go to http://pansypoetics.blogspot.com/ and scroll down.
And, by the way (for my non-American readers), one meaning of ‘pansy’ is ‘gay’, in American slang.

Ever notice how some members of minority groups―e.g., ‘gays’, ‘blacks’, and others―use conventional slang about themselves and their identity so openly. It helps to disarm such words and weaken otherwise derogatory connotations.

When I travel in the Nepal Himalayas, for example, I’m seen by the majority locals as a minority white foreigner. The modern slang term for us in Nepali is ‘kuiré’ (pronounced ‘kwee-ray’), from kuiro meaning ‘fog, mist, haze’. It is a relatively new term in the Nepali language; the first time I ever heard it used was around 1982. My Nepalese friends tell me it is derived from the fact that many Americans and Europeans have fog-like light hair and light eyes (often blond and blue, respectively). That slightly foggy or hazy look gives us a foggy-headed and hazy-minded (i.e., uncomprehending) demeanor.

In polite company, calling someone a kuiré is considered inappropriate. But, personally, I don’t mind using it to refer to myself. In some parts of Kathmandu I have introduced myself, jokingly, as Kuiré Baajé and am often called that openly. It literally means ‘light-headed old man’, Baajé is a Nepali term of endearment and respect for an elder male.

I have observed that over time, the more I use the word kuiré for myself, the less of a derogatory load it carries. Using it disarms it.

Keep on writing! /DM

2009-09-15T11:09:00.000-07:00

Trekking and writing, Neo and me

2009-09-15T10:38:00.000-07:00

Trekking and writing, Neo and me

First published in my regular monthly column SPILLED INK. 'ECS Nepal' magazine, June 2009 (archived at www.ecs.com.np)

Yaks grazing, pony and mule bells jangling, sore knees and writer’s cramp greet me daily on trek. I can deal with the physical exhaustion by a good night’s rest, but for writer’s cramp I turn to my friend Neo for help...
“Who is NEO?” you ask...
Meet NEO™, a type of word processor, but not a computer or conventional clickety-clack typewriter. He’s a light-weight (under 2 pounds), battery- powered Writer with a small screen, variable font size, and conventional keyboard (no cramped fingers). The company webpage (neo-direct.com) touts Neo as “simple”, “flexible”, “affordable”, with an “incredible battery life”. All true. Neo is a powerfully convenient device that serves writers superbly well while traveling far from home, and any time you are away from modern conveniences like electricity, ‘off the grid’. And, he can never tempt you to check your e-mail or surf the web. Instead he focuses you on your writing.
I first heard how well Neo performs a few months before I set out on trek. So, I brought one with me ― the first in the Himalayas? ― to try out under some truly austere conditions, off road, on rough and dusty mountain trails and in humid jungle camps. At the end of each day for almost two months Neo’s simple interface and standard keyboard worked better for me than scribbling illegibly in longhand.
“Take notes, brainstorm ideas, generate reports, keep a journal, compose an article, dash off a poem...” says a Neo advert. Now, add the ultimate: “Write while trekking the Himalayas”. The Neo is so simple, versatile and durable you can take it anywhere in the world with ease, and with the assurance that your writing will be recorded and saved. Neo automatically saves your text, so you’ll never lose it. And, with its eight huge files, you can write for days on end.
While trekking, Neo rode safely in my backpack. At rest stops and evenings I propped it on my knees or bench or rock, then quickly and easily recorded the day’s events and inspiration. Curious onlookers watched in awe as I typed up my notes and crafted early versions of several essays and magazine articles. My friend Neo held up flawlessly (as expected) in the face of wild thunderstorms, two days of blizzard, several treacherous avalanche crossings, and other jostling on the high and wild trails.
It performed marvelously even in the dark (in the glow of my Led headlamp). It runs steadily on three alkaline double-A batteries for 700 hours. That’s nearly a year at two hours per day!
Neo’s built-in software is deceptively simple, but impressively powerful. With a few keystrokes Neo can: ● move within or jump between files ● select or find-and-replace a character, word, line or entire file ● copy, move, delete or recover ● check spelling (there’s also a built-in thesaurus) ● count characters, words, pages ● link files ● switch keyboard options (QWERTY, Dvorak and right or left hand settings) ● check the battery, and ● easily insert any of over 80 special characters (including linguistic, math and currency symbols).
When you finally return home after traveling, simply connect Neo to your computer by a standard USB cable, open a text file on your computer, press ‘SEND’, and Presto! ― your masterpiece-from-the-field transfers in seconds.
When I trek writing by hand is cumbersome and exhausting, my friend Neo saves me from frustration. Afoot in the mountains, in jeeps or busses, or on yaks or ponies, or elephant back in the jungle, Neo is there for me. He’s also the answer for frustrated city-writing on those dark days of load-shedding. The Neo Writer is my constant companion either ‘on the go’, or at home sitting out in the garden...
Good writing!
-Don Messerschmidt

The NEO writer for journalists and educators is made by AlphaSmart and marketed by AlphaSmart Direct and Renaissance Learning. It is inexpensive (US$219 retail), so no need to take out a loan! There’s also a rechargeable version. If you are interested in one and want to know more about its use and durability, contact the writer at don.editor@gmail.com, or check it out online at www.neo-direct.com.

Note:
Reference to “those dark days of load-shedding” above refers to the serious problem with electricity supply in Nepal, and in many countries. In India, for example, power outages during June 2009, when temperatures soared daily to well over 100° F., caused massive discomfort and rioting in the streets. Similar protests have been staged on the streets of Kathmandu during prolonged power outages. Being a writer under such circumstances is difficult at best. No fans and no air conditioning (nowhere cool to sit and write). No refrigerators (hence, no chilled beer). No lights (except LED headlamps, perhaps). No computers (except laptops on short-life batteries).
Speaking from personal experience as a frequent traveler/writer, the NEO is a godsend at such times! DM

Transparency: The NEO that I used on trek and in wild places away from the comforts of civilization was supplied gratis by AlphaSmart. That aside, I highly recommend it for writers traveling 'off the grid'.