Meet Nick Cibrario . . .

By Mary Santarelli

While teaching in the Nepalese mountain village of Bhimpedi as a Peace Corps volunteer in the early 60s, Nick Cibrario fell deeply in love with the picturesque “Himalayan kingdom,” a culture entrenched in Hinduism and Buddhism, epics like the Ramayana and Mahabharata, and Sanskrit verses from the Bhagavad Gita.

Seemingly a million miles away from the Kenosha farm where he was raised, Nepal shaped Cibrario’s “spiritual journey” and inspired his writing of Garden of Kathmandu Trilogy. Interestingly, the trilogy was published twenty years after its completion, but the similarities connecting the author’s works of fiction to actual events that took place in Nepal in recent years have drawn international attention to Cibrario.

His Garden of Kathmandu Trilogy predicted the assassinations of the Nepalese royal family—something for which Cibrario earned the reputation as “psychic” by reviewers from the region. The Pomelo Tree, written in 1977, portrays a yogi who predicts the crown prince, just a boy at the time, will assassinate the king and queen. Times of India reporter, Sudeshna Sarkar, revealed the eerie coincidence: “A year after the book was published, the imaginary prediction comes true when the Crown Prince Dipendra apparently killed his parents and seven other relatives during a dinner in the palace. In the last book of the trilogy, The Shamans, the young daughter of a shaman predicts the death of nearly all members of the royal family, another imagining that also comes true. The second book, The Harvest, published in 2005, the year King Gyanendra staged his coup, again uncannily describes a violent protest of students involving the destruction of shops, restaurants and hotels near the royal palace…That, too, came true in April 2006, when the Maoists aligned with the seven-party opposition to lead 19 days of continuous street protests against the royal regime, finally forcing the king to step down.”

Cibrario downplays the haunting coincidences. “I don’t believe in clairvoyance, but I find that if you really listen to your inner voice, you see things clearly, and you can predict events and experience great insight.”

He is currently working on a fifth manuscript, Return to Kathmandu, which reflects the mystery surrounding the 2001 massacre of the Nepalese royal family.

A quintessential explorer, Cibrario credits a better understanding of Buddhism and Hinduism with guiding his fiction writing. “It’s just a different way of looking at things,” he said, humbly admitting that the breadth of knowledge he’s acquired as a teacher, scholar, author and artist merely “scratches the surface.”

Cibrario’s Nepalese journey began after graduation from SJHS in 1959 and undergraduate work at the Teacher’s College in Union Grove and UW-LaCrosse. He joined the Peace Corps in 1962 and met President John F. Kennedy while training in Washington, D.C. Shortly before Kennedy’s assassination, Kennedy sent Cibrario a letter of encouragement while he was abroad.

When Cibrario left Nepal in 1964, he spent two years at a Jesuit Novitiate, where he regularly attended Latin Mass and studied theology, Latin, the New Testament, and Greek. He earned a B.A. in English and psychology and completed graduate work at the University of Pennsylvania in South Asian Studies as part of a one-year National Defense Scholarship.

In 1970, Cibrario returned to the area and accepted a position as an English and Latin teacher at Horlick H.S. in Racine, which marked the beginning of a 30-year career in secondary education.

In the mid-70s, Cibrario studied graduate-level American Literature at Marquette University and returned to Nepal on sabbatical to begin work on his trilogy. In 1977, he finished his first manuscript, The Pomelo Tree, and proposed to his girlfriend, Geri. A year later, they were married, and he continued work on three more manuscripts. By 1981, the Garden of Kathmandu Trilogy was complete, but it would be not be published and widely acclaimed until two decades later.

Meanwhile, Cibrario and wife Geri started a family, and while they raised three children, he continued on the quest for knowledge. “I’m not some great scholar. I’m just a student,” said Cibrario of his lifelong passion for other cultures and languages.

In addition to studying Greek via correspondence through the University of Massachusetts, he completed an intense three-week course in Cambridge Latin in London and traveled to Italy for several weeks to earn graduate credits studying ancient ruins.

Cibrario retired from teaching at Horlick in 2000, after taking hundreds of students on educational tours of London, Paris, and Rome. He then expanded his creative energy to include painting and sculpture.

“I try to connect my artwork to my writing,” he said.

Cibrario continues weekly study in oil painting at Racine’s Wustum Museum and will have his first solo art show at the Racine Art Guild in August 2009. Cibrario’s artwork has also been shown in the Pollard Gallery, the Anderson Arts Center and the Wustum Museum Gallery.

Cibrario’s most recent novel, Secrets on the Family Farm, was published in September 2008. The adult novel, set in 1951, borrows the setting of a Kenosha County farm from Cibrario’s own childhood (where he helped his father and Italian immigrant grandparents), but is told through the point of view of a 10-year old boy, Adam. The novel explores the societal tendencies to suppress disturbing issues and family secrets in the post-WWII and Korean War era.

Much of his Kenosha memories are infused in Cibrario’s creativity. He and his siblings attended Whittier Elementary School when it was a two-room building with only two teachers for eight grades. There he fell in love with poetry of Frost, Sandburg, and later, T.S. Eliot. Back then, he never dreamed he’d be an accomplished poet himself one day, with verse published in Root River Anthologies (’87-88), Yes Press, the Wisconsin Poets Calendar (’97), and the Christian Science Newsletter.

Affirming that learning is a lifelong journey, Cibrario continues to study Sanskrit, the language of worship and sacred text, every Sunday evening.

He and Geri have been happily married for over 30 years, enjoyed raising three children, and are now reaping the rewards of parenting by spending a great deal of time with two young granddaughters.

Looking back on a prolific career, including miles traveled, pages written and canvases painted–he sums up those along with the importance of maintaining strong family bonds in one simple heartfelt reflection: “I’ve been blessed.”

Cibrario’s books are available at www.amazon.com or through his website: www.pomelotree.com. He can be reached directly at: nickcibrarioracine@sbcglobal.net.