Travels with Pete the Perch—Tibet

November 14, 2010

Pete and I took a whirlwind trip to a Buddhist monastery in Nepal this past weekend. The scenic panoramic grounds surrounding the cloisters were pastoral and bucolic, but the food was downright dreadful. Upon entering the centuries-old monastic temple, I discovered that Pete is allergic to a certain Tibetan incense that he said, in his Don Knotts-esque Incredible Mr. Limpet voice, “smelled a little fishy.” Pete and I encountered a group of barefoot, robe-clad monks. (What is the collective word for a group of monks, I wondered? An Om of monks? A transcendence of monks? A nirvana of monks?)

Anyway, they expressed an interest in my portly, bulgy-eyed travel companion and commented on his noticeable reticence, despite the huge mouth with lips the size of a pair of phthalo blue plantains. They said that he seemed quite at peace with his apparent vow of silence. I told them Pete’s just shy, has difficulty mingling in crowds, and claims he feels like a fish out of water, but he is otherwise outgoing. They knowingly smiled and bobbed their shiny polished shaved heads contrapuntally, not unlike a shelf of bobble-head dolls being transported over a cobblestone footpath in a rickshaw.

Exhausted with jet lag, Pete and I retired to our unadorned accommodations, a room with Spartan appointments and furnishings: a stone-walled room with a single unglazed window the size of a child’s tackle box, a wash basin on a simple teak stand, a roughly hewn hand-crafted table and chair, and a bamboo cot covered with ivory-colored, chemical-free, hypoallergenic Rawganique® hemp linens (5.5 oz. per sq. ft., by the feel of them). With no pillow visible, I asked Pete if he did not mind my using him as a pillow. “As long as you don’t snore,” he quipped, a bit tersely I thought.

As I attempted to find a comfortable sleeping position, I anticipated a case of cervical radiculopathy (colloquially, a “crick” in the neck) the following day due to Pete’s cumbrous, elephantine girth. Just as I began to doze off into sweet slumber, I thought I could hear echoing, through the candlelit labyrinthine monastery hallways, the low susurrations of the monks intoning a vaguely familiar chant: “Fish, fish, ooh ooh ah! Fish, fish, ooh ooh ah!” Surely, I was hearing things in my sleep-deprived delirium.

I flipped my fuzzy aquatic bolster onto his back to lay my cheek on the cool white polyester underbelly, and he began to snore.

 
 
 
 

Comments

[Roger James]

I would not mind being included on your site.
Is this a problem?
Perhaps under an other or etc. category!

Roger James

[Michael Johnson]

You are welcome in any part of my life, Mr. James.