The edge of the mountains was as far as my ride would go. I slipped some yuans in his hand and watched as he drove off. I began my journey into the Himalayas, planning to hitchhike to the border or as close as I could get to it, but half-a-day passed before I saw another soul.
The sun was already starting to make its wintry descent when I saw another person at a fork in the road. He was wearing an old Chicago Bulls jacket and sitting cross-legged eating sunflower seeds on the grass. He had silver hair and walnut skin, tiny cracks of light in the places he smiled. He gestured for me to join him. It felt as if we were the only two people for 100 miles.
He asked me where I was going, how I was getting there. He lit up a cigarette as I pantomimed everything that would happen if I should fail to warn the Dalai Lama or prevent his killers from carrying out their mission.
Chicago Bulls guy nodded thoughtfully and put out his cigarette.
“Come with me,” he gestured. “Put on your coat. It’s going to be cold.”
I got on back and we rode higher and higher above the world. The wind cut like steel knives. Even after being huddled down in all my gear, fur-trimmed hood over my head, a pair of gloves on each hand, and a pair of mittens on top of those, my knuckles still caught frostbite from holding onto Chicago Bulls guy’s sides. Despite the cold, I was in awe at the raw beauty around me. I could almost touch the blue sky with my eyebrows and feel the snowy peaks with my hands.
Hours later, another fork in the road called us to rest. We stood on the edge of a cliff and urinated together, watching our streams dissipate into the ethereal nothingness, never touching the valley below. Carpets of pines spiked the distant mountains as far as the eye could see. An icy stream trickled behind us as we lay there looking up at the sky above. We were at the top of the tree line, and I was filled with that certain peace that comes with knowing you’re floating above the clouds where nothing can touch you.
Finally, we decided to get to it. This was the end of the road. Chicago Bulls guy was headed downhill while I would continue higher towards the snow. It was a sad goodbye as I realized that he had probably saved me from freezing to death. I tried to give him some gas money, a symbolic gesture, but he closed his eyes and shook his head. We waited there for the next rider to come. He would make arrangements with the next person who passed by. I’d have to save my yuans to pay the new guy.
There was almost no one on the road at this elevation. When the new guy approached and lifted his face mask, I got a bad feeling. He had a scraggly mustache and shifty eyes, a short and shitty character who seemed like he kicked dogs. But the likelihood of someone else passing before nightfall was starting to fall below zero. We’d already waited more than an hour in the freezing cold to even see this guy, and I was pretty sure Chicago Bulls guy had plans other than riding into the glaciers.
Chicago Bulls guy worked out a deal with this new ride. He turned to me and explained the situation. He wished he could take me farther. He wished he could do more. “You’ve done more than enough,” I told him, and in a sudden outburst of emotion, embraced him as he took me in his avuncular grasp and patted me on the back. All the while, the new guy was probably wondering, “Do these guys even know each other?”
With a shout in the air, Chicago Bulls guy wished me luck, and we buzzed off in different directions.
The new guy and I climbed higher and higher in elevation, and were surrounded by a panorama of glaciers and snow-white faces scraping the silver blue sky above the clouds. At this elevation, there was only one mud-brick shack to mark any sign of human existence, and it didn’t look like anyone was home. We passed stacks of prayer rocks perfectly piled along the roadside; colored flags waving tangled and tattered by the wind, hanging on; surviving.
It was hard to judge the hour, for the sun seemed about even with us in altitude. There was no clear horizon. The mountain peaks rose majestically above the clouds, and as we began to descend through the boulders toward the downside of a rocky face, we flew down a narrow road, which wound about the mountain’s slippery edges. It happened in slow-motion. The whole world seemed like it was tilting. It took me a moment to understand what was happening. The mountains seemed to have lifted themselves up from the roots of the earth and were turning themselves sideways. We were no longer in communication with the earth. We were falling.
I reached out my hand to stop the earth from spinning at the last moment. That moment of finally hitting the ground, I felt nothing. My hand shot out automatically, my gloved hands ripping into the screaming gravel, the crash and downhill ice-slide which now dragged us toward the howling edge. I dug into whatever I could grab as if I could somehow stop this, clawing with all my might until there was nothing left of the gloves except my fingers, the rush of my heart, and then darkness.
Time passed.
I came back to consciousness first. We were hanging halfway off the edge of a mountain. One foot more and we would’ve flown over the side and smashed into little red satin stains like torn ribbons across the side of the snowy mountain, a little fire burning for some yeti to spot in the distance and howl for our souls.
I crawled out from under first. The motorbike was cumbersome to lift off of us, pinned as we were beneath it and hanging halfway off the side of a cliff. I managed to pull myself out from under and helped the new guy who was trapped beneath the wheel, his legs dangling over the snowy death-drop.
I picked up the back end of the bike and struggled to keep it standing as the new guy rolled to safety, groaning and holding his sides. I rolled the motorbike a safe distance away from the edge and collapsed. I blacked out again.
When I came to, I felt wetness. My hand was bleeding profusely through the glove, my fingers caked with gravel mixing in with bits of bone. My coat and one leg of my jeans was slightly torn. It was mostly my hand that was the problem. Thankfully it was only flesh and blood; no skeleton was revealed.
Despite the miracle of our survival, the new guy seemed focused on the broken headlight, which fair enough, was smashed to smithereens. He groaned and cursed and rubbed his elbow in pain. I felt numb from adrenaline. I wondered how long it would be before this would start to sting.
Trained agents know how to heal themselves in any situation. I deployed a roll of gauze and moved like an Eagle Scout. It was immediately soaked, but the pressure seemed sufficient to slow the loss of precious life fluid. I’d need plenty of that to make it out alive. My adrenaline would soon start to fall, and the cold would settle in with the setting of the sun, and the road would seem impossibly long, the horizon becoming a mirage.
“Are you okay?” I ventured to ask the new guy, who was now picking up his motorbike and starting off in a definite downhill direction.
He growled and grumbled like a flea-bitten mongrel, and it suddenly became very clear that he planned on abandoning me there. After all we’d just been through, I was expecting a little camaraderie. He pointed to the road, the road that seemed to fall into eternity, down to earth from the ridiculous height where we were, a point on the horizon, that southern point of light. He’ll meet me there, his torn glove said.
I watched dumbfounded as he lit a fresh cigarette, limped down the hill on his dead motorbike, and like a ghost rode away into the horizon, transforming into a small puff of smoke on the tundra.
I guess the old man was right. It’s good to carry stones in your pockets.
I tried to take a shortcut through a field of mountain scrub and sage. After an hour of effort, walking over and ducking under the stiff branches, I found myself fighting through wrestling holds like a half-nelson, stretched and hanging like a scarecrow ready to get double-teamed and clobbered by sprinting cacti, holding hands to double-clothesline me to the ground. Two hours later, I was back where I started, the sun sinking lower behind the mountains, down to earth, the white city in the distance. I could feel the wolves closing in, silently howling. I thought of lying there under the starry evening and freezing to death in the snow. I thought of not being able to write my dying thoughts to My True Love, my dreams of walking up to that island bungalow where we fell in love quickly fading. I’d always believed that despite how long it had been, she would be there, waiting for me to come home, the two of us in the water beneath the cacao trees, making love to an audience of monkeys, her cries in my ear, her hand on my wet back as I fall backwards and ride a shooting star into space. Hang onto dismal hope as you lie surrounded in snow; drift off into the light with a blissful smile as the wolves drag your frozen carcass to a secret place.
Light shined like an oasis. I saw movement on the horizon. The glint and flash and trail of exhaust bringing life to desolation. Who sent you? Sign of mercy, gift of angels and blue dust, sparkling from some distant height, watching my travails. The truck approached me like a dream, fleshing-out metallic through the hazy mirage.
I waved frantically with my good hand; the SUV slowed and stopped to pick me up. It was painted gold, and inside was a cab full of Tibetans, each of their faces brown and rosy, smoking with the windows closed, cancer ranking fairly low on their list of concerns.
I began babbling and showed the driver my bloodily-wrapped nub. He nodded and I got in. The truck was warm and smoky and thawed my bones, which at that moment, seemed as stiff as ice.
As we drove off, the sun seemed to hang in the air just above the horizon, everything painted the golden color of peach and yellow hues. I saw a white city glowing in the distance as I came in and out of consciousness. The golden SUV sped like a shout echoing into the nothingness. I saw wild horses running across the plains.
Mountains loomed high and fields of yellow winter grass stretched into eternity. I listened to the driver chanting mantras, his voice deep and gravelly like the Om; a deep sense of comfort washed over me, and I passed out against the window. At the end of the horizon, in a glowing beam of light, the white city lay ahead, waiting for me.
We drove toward the golden horizon and passed that guy still coasting along on his battered motorbike with the dead engine. I saw him now with motoring goggles over his eyes, beard frozen with snot crusted all over his face.
“Fuck you, buddy!” I screamed out the window as we roared past, laughing like a maniac. The Tibetans looked at me puzzled, wondering what kind of psycho they’d just picked up off the road.
“You don’t understand,” I explained. “I know him. We crashed together. He left me for dead.”
My explanations ran a mile long and swirled like cigarette smoke around the driver’s head, who closed his eyes while driving somehow and in a deep gravelly voice chanted prayers of a mystical power and energy and lulled me into a deep sleep.
Hours must have passed. Then there was only darkness. The Tibetans dropped me off in front of a dusty little building at a one street trading post. There seemed to be little else but a canteen and a clinic for miles and miles, only the loneliness of the steppes beyond. I walked inside the clinic and called out to see if anyone is home. A college student, looking like the Nepali version of Doogie Howser, came down the staircase. Without asking questions, he started carefully unwrapping the bloodied gauze, now stained a deep burgundy. I winced and gritted my teeth as he pulled out bits of gravel with the precision of a jeweler.
My hand was wrapped in fresh white bandages. I took the painkillers he offered, and without words, without sound, gestured that I felt lightheaded, feverish. “Altitude sickness,” Doogie said. “You came up too fast. Your body has no oxygen. You’ll be in pain for about a week. Maybe forever. Depends. Try to drink lots of fluids. . .”
Everything went dark again.
I found myself staring at a monastery sitting at the top of a mountain. I was standing at the gates greeted by a white yak. Beyond there were two Tibetan angels. One angel held a puppy. Another held the leash to a giant dog. “Won’t you take a picture, brother?” they called.
Something about the symmetry and the way they called me brother made me not refuse. I held the leash and puppy and stood there smiling. It was the last photograph before I would be reincarnated into my next form. Just a keepsake you receive later on in Nirvana when you finally become enlightened and rescued from the endless repetition of life, living and dying over and over again until finally you realize that it doesn’t matter. You’re greeted at the gate by two fair-looking maidens with white dogs and a white yak and told to smile in “3. . . 2. . . 1!” And the shutter clicks and you’re handed an uncountable amount of Polaroids, all taken at the end of one juncture of incarnation to another. In this photo, you are Chinese. In this photo, you are an American. In this photo, you are a Jew. In this photo, you are African. In this photo, you are a monkey. In this photo, you are a frog.
I walked amongst the spirits of limbo in this beautiful border town of living and dying. Everywhere I looked there were young monks, cheerful guides into the afterlife, walking about in burgundy robes and shaved heads, rosy cheeks and brown creases in white smiles. They folded their hands and bowed their heads in greeting as I passed by. I did likewise.
At the top of the hill, I arrived at the main temple. It was a grand old structure fortified by great white walls and dusted by blowing sands from the mountains surrounding. The expanse of the blue supernal seemed endless and touched the very realm of the infinite itself. The endless plains of desolation between this life and the next stretched in eternal emptiness where wandering spirits flew about searching for a way to the next life.
Covered by a heavy brown curtain parted just in the middle, I walked into a sanctuary full of older monks seated and chanting meditations within the incense-burning darkness. The great hall vibrated with a deep rumble of meditating monks. I held a stick of incense and stared at the golden Buddha before us, unsure of what to say or how to pray, my stick smoldering with blue wisps of smoke rising in the gold-choked darkness.
I entered a sanctuary emblazoned with the stars of brightly colored tile moving in swirls both clockwise and counterclockwise, alternating with the spin of pinwheels in an ever-changing wind.
“Stop right there,” a voice said from the darkness.
As I turned, a monk materialized from the shadows, his bald head gleaming and his eyes glittering, his robe drenched in burgundy blood.
“We’ve been waiting for you.”
“I know.”
The monk seemed stunned, but only for a moment.
“Where you going?” the monk asked me, eyeing me curiously. “It’s not your time yet.”
“I’m just following the signs, to the highest mountain.”
The monk smiled knowingly.
“Come, I show you.”
He led me through the door to a sunny courtyard beneath the bright blue sky. Sitting lotus-position on the ground surrounded by a pep squad was a monk pouring trails of sand between his fingertips, the sand of a million colors transforming the concrete into a mandala spinning, spinning a wheel of life and death. As sand flowed freely from his knuckle, five peaks formed on top of the clouds.
“The five peaks of Meru,” the monk said, quietly touching me on the shoulder and looking me in the eye. “Home of the gods.”
As I continued to watch, the mandala was completed. The monks cheered excitedly and observed in wonder at the detail and perfection of the artist’s hand. The sand formed a chrysanthemum of colors, twirling like a kaleidoscope, wrapping me deeper into its web.
The artist bowed his head and began murmuring a prayer to which all of the monks calmed themselves and folded their hands respectfully in prayer, and as if in answer, a wind came from the east and began scattering the colored sand in different directions.
“No!” I cried and moved to recapture the lost grains, but the monk held me firmly and shook his head.
We watched as the mandala was slowly obliterated, the sand in all directions, and the monks themselves began to part.