The two chummy grandfathers decked out in their finest merit making gear implored us to wait for a minute in the late afternoon sun while they used a nearby public restroom.
"We will walk the path together," they said.
My friend shrugged. We waited. To the amusement of the two public restroom janitors lounging in bright orange coveralls on small stools nearby.
A courageous crinkled leaf let go of the nearly bare branch and spun in a loop to the ground. The whole city spins clockwise.
We met our new found friends exactly halfway around the city on one of the best marked and most frequented circles, the Lingkor. The whole place is circles though, just rings upon rings intersecting with rings. The whole mentality of these people is circles too, endless loops upon loops though which they cycle but rarely understand. So became obvious as the grandfathers took it upon themselves to explain the rotten tons of prayer flags littering the mountain, the gaudily peeling painted buddhas all over the rocks, the garbage and graffiti everywhere, the rows of nearly dissolved paper cups of water. That is, if the word explain can be used to describe the what was quite like the effect of a handful stones thrown into a still pond. Circles.
As we wound our way to the top of a small mountain and around the city in a loop that resembled something much more like a strand of yarn tossed to the floor than a ring, my mind too began to spin...
Lazy thoughts looped around as the record of this past week rolled through:
A friend here today and gone tomorrow with only a missing day as proof that she had been and was indeed gone again.
A joyful reunion at a bus stop I almost never stop at with a friend who I could have sworn I might never see again.
Classrooms where my students were teachers and their students were studying the letter 'p' in a wild reminder of the true meaning of back to basics.
A house full of meat dumplings and mountain climbing trophies and a room full of idols watching to make sure the stacks of noodles dried properly.
A walk down an alley only to have the disquieting experience of introducing my blind friend to a deaf girl I happened to recognize.
Endless bags in tidy rows filled with all manner of dried what in another universe might be considered cheese.
A kilo of fresh yak butter given by a generous student to a slightly horrified teacher then given to an excited monk and a teacher turned relieved.
Text messages coming at haphazard moments declaring love from Sisters who can honestly share it.
A tea with a student during which the afternoon sun was just a bit too comfortable and sleep treacherously close.
A monk who's really just a silly boy yelling my name across the busy street then playing a frightening version of human frogger just to get across and shake my hand.
Local friends homesick in Beijing begging to send me something from the city.
An honest conversation about hard questions and elusive answers with a Brother who's favorite parable features a shepherd just crazy, or just devoted, enough to leave ninety-nine sheep in search of only one.
Lessons... and teas... and noodles...
"You will sleep so good tonight," my friend said as we downed the last dribbles of sweet milk tea and got up from the well placed tea house to finish our circle, by now sans grandfathers, around the city.
We parted at the intersection where I flagged down the first bus I saw and realized immediately that I was perhaps the last person that they could phsically stuff on... only to be astounded when about a dozen people got on after me. Leaned over a grubby yellow seat and a woman with a man sized bag in her lap my face rested on the cool window and I steadied myself against the erratic shudderings of the bus and was warmed by the people pressed next to me.
When the bus looped near my school I squeezed burst from the dingy exhausted doors and gasped for breath that wasn't being recycled immediately by others next to me.
Circles, rings, loops, coils, wheels spinning round and round and round. Dizzy.
I stood on the dusty darkening street as the remarkably crowded bus sputtered away and acknowledged that, though I can make no sense of the whirlpools of motion and thought that erode and define this city and people, they exist, and I too am caught in their inertia.
Nevermind... to move linearly in this place would be nothing short of fatal, anyway.
So here we go, round again...
