Day 26 - ART!

        Woke up at 6 a.m. After I had my morning diarrhea, Jim and I went to breakfast. He went to shit and left me alone at the table, where I overheard a guy at the table behind me try to woo a waiter to work at his restaurant in Bombay. The guy was into it, then whispered to him where to buy weed. It went something like "Follow the streetlights to where they change color to green..." It made me sad that I don't travel the world trying to run a business. The woman he was with was incredibly impressed and I wondered if these guys have this scam worked out together in advance.

        Jim and I parted and I walked past this Irish couple we met in Keylong a few days ago. They asked me to sit and I said "no I have to go to the custom embroidery shop." Katie asked what I have to embroider and I said "A shirt that just says 'I have a large penis," direct from the remote land of Ladakh. They laughed and so did a guy at the adjacent table. Then I walked to the embroiderer. One guy, a Ladakhi, selling shirts like "I got Leh'd in India!" His English was poor. Perfect. 

        I asked how much to embroider text on a shirt. He said he has high and low quality shirts. "How much for low quality?" He said $5. I asked for a medium. He handed me a notebook to write what I wanted on the shirt. He read aloud "I have a large... What's this word?" I said "I can't really explain it, it's an English thing." Thank God I have so much practice harmlessly lying to strangers from my tours with The Best Thing Ever.
 

        He asked for a deposit so I gave him 150 rupees and he said it'd be ready by 6 tonight. I was very polite and kind and smiley, a trick I learned from watching Colin deal with people when we lived together. 

        I left and walked back to the Irish couple and told them I'm really excited. We talked for an hour or so. Jim arrived at some point and said he wakes up with a headache. Katie explained altitude sickness gets worse when you sleep because your breathing is so shallow, so you should eat honey in the morning to replenish.

        They told me we're riding the same bus back to Keylong, by coincidence. They left to go to the monastery Jim and I went to yesterday, so I decided to put up more of my signs.

        Jim and I discussed possible means of attaching the photos to the paper, as we have no tape here. I suggested mud and he said "bullshit."

        I said "I AM an expert at that, it may be time for a bullshit model." (reference to one of my songs)

        I left the room and tried mud but it wasn't sticky enough so I tried what I thought was wetter mud but after smearing the back of the photo with it (using a stick as a paintbrush) I realized it smelled exactly like bullshit. I stuck the picture on the paper and it stayed pretty well. Then I painted shit onto the back corners of the paper until I heard someone walking up the path and I got up quickly and pretended I hadn't been playing in cowdung by myself. 

        I walked past the bulls who live in that confined cement area on the way out from the guest house and found the first street pole with flyers on it already. Most of the shit had fallen off the back of the paper while I walked over there so I reused old tape from the flyers already on the pole, then walked off quickly to avoid being spotted.

(you can see the bullshit on the upper right corner of the photo of me)

        I walked far into central Leh and reused some more old flyer tape,

then walked even farther to a tar spill on the sidewalk. I used it as adhesive, took a quick photo,

then passed by the others to nonchalantly take more.

        I bought a bottle of water then washed my hands on the street. Now I'm sitting in the sun hoping the embroiderer doesn't look up the word "penis" before I pay for the shirt (is this the first time anyone has ever written that sentence? Probably). Porn is illegal here and I told him which guest house I'm in.

        I walked down the street and found the only bar in Leh – it serves every type of booze. It is very hard to get to, I think the cops shut down all the other liquor establishments here.

        I walked past my signs again and saw some Indian tourists taking photos of the one I put up with bullshit! They were laughing. It's for reasons like that that I do these things.
        Then I walked past the other two notes and they are GONE! I hope the cops aren't looking for me, it's not like I'd be difficult to find. I wish I'd waited til tomorrow to put them up.

        I realized these "will embroider any design on a shirt" places are a unique opportunity so I'm gonna ask one to embroider my face on a shirt.
 
I went looking for Jim because he has the guest house key and I need to retrieve one of my spare passport photos to show the guy to embroider, but Jim was nowhere to be found.

        I found a secluded part of Leh I'd never visited before, paranoiacally trying to avoid the cops, and meditated, mostly for the air quality. In addition to having very thin air, most of Leh is full of cars making it hard to breathe in the streets. I've been getting headaches, for the first time.

        While meditating, I realized we are here to use our talents every good way we can. I also realized all the negativity and mental illness of my youth was due to taking my teacher's (and everyone else in the 90's') instruction to "be different" to the extreme. I thought you had to find unusual means to happiness, too. I only recently quit judging mentally healthy people as excessively normal.

        Oh good, the bullshit poster is still up, hours later! Probably b/c it's outside of central Leh.

        I went to pick up my shirt and the guy said it'll be ready at 8. I walked around trying to find an embroiderer who'd put my face on a shirt but the power goes out here so regularly that they have no idea when or if they'll be able to do any work.

        Jim told me his part of India regularly sells their power to Delhi, where, in the summer, everyone's running so much electricity that they'd have no power if not for this. It just means McLeodGanj (and Leh, apparently) goes without power for days.

        Eventually, I found an embroiderer and showed him my passport photo but he said it's too small to embroider so I gave up on this idea. I'll have to get a face-shirt some other time.

        Jim and I went to China Bowl. While we waited for the only waiter to come over, Katie and her boyfriend walked in. There were no empty seats so they left, but first I invited them to the bar later. They said sure.

        After dinner, before we met up with them, I went to pick up my shirt. Unlike when I ordered it, the store was packed... with women. I was relieved to hear that the power had worked long enough for him to finish it. He showed me the finished product long enough for me to see that he'd gotten the spelling right, then I quickly hid it and paid him the remaining 100 rupees. He looked like he wanted to say something but, again, my experience conning people into letting The Best Thing Ever play in their business without their permission came in handy and I knew to continue monologuing until Jim and I went outside and cracked up.

Jim said he thinks the embroiderer looked up the word penis between when I dropped off the order and picked it up because he looked embarrassed but I didn't care.

        Oscar Wilde said the only interesting artists are bad artists because good artists live entirely through their art. I must be a good artist then. I don't know if I could handle life without that, but that's why women get so bored of me and why I'll need to settle down with a woman married to her work as I am to mine.

        Anyway, we went to meet the Micks and I showed them the shirt. They laughed but Katie asked when I intend to actually wear this thing. I said "job interviews, weddings, you know..." She asked if it was a parody of the dumb feminist shirts people order from that place. I said "well those are dumb shirts and I did decide to make the stupidest shirt possible but it's not a direct parody of anything."

        The 4 of us went to the bar and commenced a fascinating 5 hour conversation about Buddhism (climaxing in Jim admitting that he's in a cult, but one that works for him), psychology (Katie is so astute and interested. She said my "slow neurons of autism" theory sounds a lot like the effects of LSD. I didn't know it slowed down neurons), and Aaron and I discussed hardcore and he loves Rival Mob, who are the most recent hxc band I've gotten into.

        Anyway, we drank 4 big glasses of rum and coke each. They're my favorite people I've met on this trip other than Irma. I've only met 5 people in India though. Aaron and I thought we were close in age, but he's actually 20. Cool guy though.

        That discussion of religion was so rare and amazing because we're all open and smart enough to actually listen and understand. They both assumed I'm atheist b/c my true religion is psychology, but in reality no one religion has it completely right or completely wrong, because none of them was built for any of us individually.
Here is the only picture of Katie I took: