I've been back from Nepal for three days and already the memories, along with my tan, are starting to fade. But fortunately, one of the best things about being away was that I kept a regular diary. This is a habit I only seem to observe when I'm in a foreign country, as if my daily experiences at home aren't worth as much as the ones I have when I'm away.
I'm hoping that after a month I might be inspired to keep it up here, but I find writing about the minutiae of my daily existence can too easily become frustratingly banal. I suppose the challenge is to find ways of making it exciting for yourself, writing in unusual forms, focusing more on how you thought and felt rather than just what happened and even sticking in objects you collect on your daily journeys that will bring them back to life when you revisit them.
When I was in youth theatre our director always encouraged us to keep 'actor's diaries' of our experiences to use later in emotional memory exercises, and that must apply as much if not more so to writers as to actors. And as an aspiring poet, I should try and write my diary directly in poetic form, rather than jotting notes on experiences to be distilled later into poetry. When I was cycling around the UK a few years ago I took a collection of Charles Bukowski, and at one point started trying to adopt his un-edited poetic style in my diary writing, breaking the lines so that they still read like a diary entry but looked like a poem. While it's not necessarily work that you'd want anyone else to read in its raw state, it can often be a much more memorable way of recording your experiences.
So in that spirit, here's a poem that I first wrote straight into my diary as we sat around a wood burning stove in a little guesthouse 3,000 metres up and two days into our trek in the Langtang region of Nepal. I've redrafted it a bit to hone some of the language and images, and to try and capture the plodding rhythm of the up-hill walk. I could do a lot more work on it still, but I also have a lot more to write about our time there. I'd like to focus more on the people and politics of the region as well as just the landscape. Pictures of natural scenes tend to be more interesting with a person in the foreground. But this is my attempt at writing something a bit pastoral, and out of keeping with my usual style. Let me know what you think...
We trudge for days
On rocky trails
That lead us down
Besides, then up
And far away
From the relentless
Roar of the river
As she tears her
Torrential path
Through the valley’s
Heart towards
The sea; cold,
Blue and indifferent
To our advances
And retreats.
Hulking rocky
Ship hulls overhang
Our passage, lined
With rusty soil
Run-off, crossing
The grain of
Sedimentary
Layers which remind
Us these mountains
Once were sea-beds,
Turned on their heads
Through slow and steady
Application of pressure.
Silica from ancient shells
Glitters in the dust
Like the stars that clutter
The black night sky
After the sun has ceased
Her worship of the
Brilliant white peaks
Which remind us why
Man first believed
That mountains were
The home of gods.
And why we yearned
To climb them.