ABSTRACT
Chorten, mani, and lapche are three different kinds of sacred structures built with rocks that are found throughout the region of Humla in northwestern Nepal and southern Tibet. While chorten resemble small shrines built by stacking cut stone and reinforcing it with mud and concrete, mani are constructed with low, flat stacks of stone that stretch out like walls or platforms. Lapche, the third and simplest category, are essentially cairns, that is, simple rock mounds that any passer-by might add to. I am particularly interested in lapche, primarily because of the democratic and collaborative ways they are produced over long periods. Significantly, each mound can be seen as a “polychronous node”—a gathering of many presences each marked by its own particular time. In this sense, lapche constitute an accretion of nows that are each embodied in the intentional selection and placement of an individual rock. Here the aesthetic act is simplified to the intentional displacement of a rock from here to there, from its formless dimension as an anonymous rock to its newly assigned cultural function as marker, sign, and node. This potential must be transformed through intentional selection for the rock to emanate an aura of significance. I describe chronotopography as a network of polychronous nodes located in between destinations. These nodes are always in the process of becoming, for travelers incrementally add to them by making intentional aesthetic judgments at the moment of encounter.
