April 1999     

Last Dance Congratulations, Erich Pedestrian Safety NALSA SABER Graduation Pledge Seven-Year Reflection Small Claims and Cinnamon Rolls Church of the Earth Y2K Nuclear Threat Tribal Members Speak INS Are Thought Police In re Robin E. LOVE, Debtor Selected Crime Beat Reports Living Large: Downtown Haiku Variations The Light William Stafford perspective Spring Wave Poetry Notes

In the summer of 1996, I travelled across much of Asia. This is how I spent one day on that trip. The setting is outside the tiny town of Leh, Ladakh, Northern India, high in the Himalayas, near the border with Pakistan.

today i am squatting by this stupa. the ladakhi air is so thin that silence is palpable. i can hear for miles. i am so high that the sun overhead seems giant and near, but the wind is cool, endless. it makes the prayer flags overhead stream, quivering. the zanskar mountains across the valley are so huge, so eternal. i sit here, just sitting. nothing living moves. the air is thin and i feel light as i inhale, but i feel heavy, as grounded as this stupa, when i breathe out. time rolls on, but leaves me behind. the silver thread of river glitters on the high rocky floor of the valley spread below me. the sun nears the horizon, and i am so still. i can feel its movement above me, like a giant pendulum driving the cogs that make the earth turn. and i am so small. the himalayas are impossibly huge, impossibly brittle, piled on one another like sword-backed giants clambering over each other, sunward. this is a continent of altitude. how can i explain the depth of this crust? in an instant, in a thousand years, the shadows advance, like a tide. i try to be a stone, silence, a stupa. i will grow old forever here, but only for this tiny instant.

It’s hard to believe, but within a week of that day, I decided that I would go to law school. Now three years have passed, and I’m looking back, taking stock. This place gave me power to find out answers, to assert my will, to make people listen, to make ambition reality. But at what cost? Doors have opened, but I’m afraid that windows may have closed.

I have changed: I am impatient, I am demanding, I am judgmental. I feel superior and I feel righteous. I’m not sure I like it.

I am afraid that I will never again sit for hours and hours watching the sun traverse a himalayan sky. To all my friends, teachers, and classmates: I hope that we all find the time.