Sunday April 28, 2002

I gotta kick this little monk's ass up on to the net. Recently I spent an entire day evaluating every moment of my existence in relation to the afternoon I spent on top of this hill in Pelling, Sikkim. I listened to the cicadas making their racket, I played with the dirt and stones, I took pictures of monk kids, and I stood there with my hands on my hips. I tried to keep going on through the sickness.

What I kept thinking in-between day-dreams was how insignificant that day will be in the sweep of my life and how pivotal the day in Pelling was. This monastery has some crazy shit that doesn't exist anywhere else in the world -- like the only sacred murals of Buddhisatvas having sex. I have a little bit of it here for you. I wanted to tell my friend David about it that day, but it was really just sentimentality and I was the only one who possessed it. I wanted to tell him, while we were at the burger shop, about the little kid sleeping in the grass while another kid bashed cymbals over his head. That I wandered around what was essentially an abandoned ancient outpost, staffed only by a few deformed children.

Now, watch as this monk kid tries to whistle for the cameras. I had to get setup with my camera, and by the time I was ready, he couldn't whistle. I tried to whistle to get him to start but I think it was me turning the screen around on my vidcam so he could watch himself that got him going. Every single second of footage I shot on this day is worth public viewing. I think I'll do the chattering, ringing cymbal thing that this kid can do next.

click for monk action
the whistling monk kid
1:07 minutes
or download 2.6 megs