Hello friends,
Last year, in April of 2021, I moved from where I’d lived for years outside Kathmandu’s ringroad. My cat Marv and I call the top floor—the fifth—of a building in a small alley—home. Hence this newsletter’s name.
I want to write more, and this is where I plan to share it. There’ll be a lot about Nepal, since that is where I live, and also about reading, writing, food—and loss, since that is part of my life, too.
The plan—knock on wood—is to post each Wednesday. I look forward to hearing what you think about this experiment of mine, and if there’s something about Nepal you’ve always been curious about, let me know: I’ll try to answer it if I can.
To kick things off, I’m cheating a little. This is something I began writing in July last year, on the fourth anniversary of my partner’s passing. I think it gives you a good idea of what to expect going forward.
All This I Do
The other night a Letters Live came up in my Youtube feed, right at the top: “All this I did without you.” I almost didn’t click on it. It sounded like an arrogant comeuppance, and was also read by Tom Hiddleston, whom I do not stan, but then I thought it might just be funny, so I did.
Letters Live is just what it sounds like—actors read letters from famous people on stage, to a live audience. It’s unexpected and spontaneous and strangely voyeuristic, the reader bringing something to it that is theirs, despite never saying a word of their own.
It was a love letter from the British naturalist Gerald Durrell to his soon-to-be wife, Lee Wilson. The beginning is funny and yes, a little arrogant (he warns her of the challenges of being coupled to so famous a person as he) but then it takes a turn. He begins to list, in terms that are both poetic and indicative of someone with a deep connection to the natural world, the wonders he has experienced: expanses of marvel and encounters with the wild that few have experienced. And then comes the titular line and its gut-punch of a followup: “All this I did without you. This was my loss. All this I want to do with you. This will be my gain. All this I would gladly have foregone for the sake of one minute of your company: for your laugh, your voice, your eyes, hair, lips, body…” (You don’t want to know how long it took me, after I first wrote this, to pull it up to double check the wording above when finalizing this, typing quickly and biting my lip to stop the tears. I did not watch the full twelve minutes through again.)
**
My new flat is bright and spacious. The rising sun fills my bedroom and living room and in the afternoon, the west-facing patio balcony is the place to be. It’s not quite the rooftop, for there is a flat rooftop above it where the laundry lines live. It is the ninth house I have lived in during my years here in the Kathmandu Valley, and I never imagined I would find myself here, that I could be this happy.
The kitchen is large and airy, maybe my favorite room in the house, but it was the balcony that sealed the deal—when I saw it, I knew this space was mine. So much so that it wasn’t until later, after I’d agreed to rent the place, that I realized I was living on the top of a five-story building, a thing unthinkable to me in light of the 2015 earthquake. The way the earth rolled that day—and for many, many days that followed—has followed me, has been in my mind each time I have been inside a building of any height. And yet, somehow, the view banished it. It didn’t even cross my mind.
Every day as I look out across my corner of the city—people tending their rooftop gardens, the older woman who feeds the crows each morning, children playing, their father lifting weights, the ongoing construction on endless new buildings—I feel a surge of happiness, of gratefulness. Moving here was the right thing to do.
Yet it also drags me back, back to what B— said on a night spent with friends on a hotel rooftop. “I always wanted to live in a rooftop apartment, looking out to a view over the city.” “What? You never told me this.” “Well, you lived outside of town, with the animals.” When we met, I had a small menagerie, and that he had never mentioned this was so like him, so considerate, but even so; I wish I had known.
**
In leaving my old place behind, the thing I feared most was losing him, the memories we’d made in the only house we ever lived in together.
**
My favorite time of day is just before sunset, my house a flight path for the birds returning to the long bank of trees just ahead where they gather to roost each night. The huge tree-filled space belongs to an embassy, apportioned decades ago when Kathmandu was nearly empty, spacious and green. There are very few open spaces that size anymore, and I am grateful for this diplomatic anachronism.
As I watch – whiz, there goes another pair of swiftly moving wings; so close I can feel the displacement of air. A flock, probably crows, but they’re too distant to be certain of, comes in at the tree motel from behind, or the side, en masse. With a noise that exceeds even the usual they displace another group, already in a tree, to settle in the newly vacated space.
As they pass my terrace some come in close, dipping and diving into the space between the buildings. I can hear the sound their wings make and it never grows old. Chattery flocks of mynas go by, with a grace in flight that they otherwise seem to lack when I see them up close.
My favorite are the parakeets. At first I thought they were a rarity, banking off, far to the right, in a sizable flock or small clutch, rarely solo. I was always on the lookout for them, trying not to be too expectant, because I didn’t always catch them and I didn’t want to be disappointed by making that my focus when there was so much else of beauty. The best is when I come on them unexpectedly, looking out the kitchen window at the exact moment a wave of vivid green sweeps by, wings tipped in black. It feels like a gift, every time.
And there are crows, of course.
If you sit very still as the waves come—left, right and above—you almost feel inside of it, part of the flock. Especially when, as just happened, one dips inside the shelter of right angle these two balcony walls make, coming in even closer.
I’ve never thought much of crows. I much prefer the kites, soaring elegantly above, or, in a group, dancing on an air current. But when a crow sweeps in, just feet or inches from you, it’s its own kind of magic.
In Nepal some believe that crows are harbingers of death, and people feed them to pacify death, to keep it at bay. I did not learn this till after B— died. The crows around our old house were so numerous and loud as to be annoying at times. After he died, their din seemed to lessen but I cannot be sure that I am not imagining this, not projecting.
**
This year—four years—is the first time no-one has called or emailed me or texted me on the day, for no other reason than remembering. Though I can never forget, it also felt right, somehow.
Last week someone said to me “You should not be defined by that loss.” It is well meaning, possibly true, but it feels impossible.
It has touched and colored everything that I am, for good and ill, since. What I am trying to do, all I can do, is let the good in. For so long I closed off the memories of happy times because they were even more painful than the bad ones. But I am trying to let him into my life in that way, too, and one simple way is by enjoying the view.
Yesterday I was on the top roof, where the laundry lines are, when a black kite circled and swooped, going wider and dipping lower, dropping unexpectedly into the gap between buildings to the alley below, for what I could not see. The crows scattered noisily and each time the powerful bird came up I saw better, clearer. Closer to it than I’d ever been, I could see its eyes, beak, the pattern on the wings—brown, not black; it is misnamed—the gap a little to the side in the middle of the swathe of tail feathers by which you can distinguish kites from other raptors.
All this I have seen without him. Everything I do now will be without him.
Yet if I include him in the beauty he will be less lost to me than when I tried to shut it all off in self-preservation. I feel like I am beginning a new life here, with him still, albeit in a different way than at the place I left behind. But still here.
**
Time has passed and I now know the rhythm of the parakeets; the call that heralds the beginning of the incoming waves at sunset. The swoops and dives are all around me now, reminding me of shoals of fish darting underwater, which in turn brings to mind his love of scuba diving, something I’ve never done but will one day.
Those bright, diving flashes of green are a part of my day, now. I can’t imagine how I ever stepped out without seeing them.
Doing “all this without him” – that is, living – is harder than I ever thought it would be. I still believe it would be uncountable times better if he was here. But I’m determined to do it anyway.
😍😍😍😍 Thank you so much for sharing your writing with us. This is such a beautiful and touching piece...
First, love the name! Second, love the writing– evenings on your balcony have always been special, and even more so now