a misspelled word sits like a beautiful scar. He photographs a potato bug on desolate ground; silvery concrete crumbling around it like dry cake. Its as big as my thumb, he admires. He lures the creature into the solitary confinement of a water bottle. He questions its existence as those who poked the scar beneath jesus’s rib. A scar of full of light & voices past the bloodied mud of skin. He writes: Is it poiseness? gazing at the thick finger of a creature with monstrous stripes. the word falling from his hands so obvious and wrong and helpless, it struck me profound. Yes, the creature has poise. a stance of confidence, but not in the horror of itself. But it is not poisonous, a vindictive word of vowels turning in your mouth like buckshot. Poiseness makes forgivable sense to the lips. Is it poiseness ,he writes. I write nothing back and sit in awe of the new solution his mis-structured word has now provided.

At the end of dinner in a restaurant miles from home, I looked at the massacre of the table as we’d left it and thought: this was the best Easter dinner I can remember.

It was only four of us; my friend, his mom, his girlfriend. But we were family. We stuffed ourselves with ridiculous amounts of seafood and could barely rise from the table to even cross the room and exit, much less get in the car. And Then expect us to drive anywhere. But drive we did. The sky was deep purple as the evening began to emerge from beyond the distant hills. Lightning stretched across the horizon. I sat in the backseat, full, happy, thinking. My friends mom sat next to me asleep. The couple sat in the front seat driving, engaging with music. I felt overwhelmed. And happy. And sleepy. But happy. And most importantly, loved.

The last month was kind of spectacular. My heart sank when Mercury went retrograde and I drowned in stress. But in the days after, I was surrounded by love. More than I can even write about here. I feel stingy; like I don’t want to tell all of it. Like maybe I should keep it in my heart. But this month I’m writing everyday. I should start with a review.

First, I traveled to Seattle for a long weekend to visit the core group of people I joined in Mumbai. Mostly, it was to visit Natasha and her family. I can’t underscore enough how loving it was, to be there and be so seriously embraced and accepted. Minutes off the plane, Natasha pours out her heart to me over what’s been going on in her life. Her monologue a confession as much a check in and I felt not like a friend but like a brother, entrusted with the keys to her life. She threw her life around me and embraced me with everything she had. It nourished me like a food; and you would think– to look at us from a distance– that she and i knew one another our entire lives. Me chopping vegetables for dinner, her nudging me into painting, into joining a writing circle, into crashing her Saturday morning tai chi class (then positioning me behind one of the two women in class, both with the most athletically muscular and beautiful asses on the planet) into clubbing, into shared secrets, into everything. I returned home loaded with cheese and truffles smoked salmon and so much love pulsing through me I must’ve looked like a maniac, as if I’d just tongue kissed an electrical outlet.

The day I returned to work, I floated in the office. The first person to approach me, Rich from downstairs– I grabbed him and bought us lunch. I had no reason to, other than I felt so happy and human, I didn’t want to be alone. I laughed and talked the entire time. I barely recognized myself from the inside out. I’d gone supernova. I was defying physics.

But that was early March and by the end of the month the feeling began to set and I returned to a kind of normalcy as I polished off the last of the chocolate and shared the full story of my weekend with my friend, my brother, who had himself an awesome story around building a new relationship with a warm and remarkable young woman. He told me a lot about his life and began raving about this restaurant the two of them discovered. Its an experience, he said, everybody needs to have once.

This past Easter weekend he invited me to join them and his mom for a day trip. We drove out to the movies first, then across a couple of cities to find the restaurant. It was busy and we were told there’s a minimum hour wait. We signed up. Walked across the mall parking lot for bottles of water at a superstore, then returned and patiently waited for our table. People pushed in and several families, groups and couples after us I began to hear “the wait will be about 2 hours. So if you just check back in with us in about 90 minutes…” meanwhile more people filed in. I sat next to an elderly Filipino woman who said they need to offer Coronas to people who’re waiting to eat.

I said: I wish you could call a bartender like you’d call for an ambulance. I need a shot of whisky, stat.

An idea she loved. Her pregnant daughter in law squeezed in on the bench between us. We all waited to be called.

And it was beyond worth it. A seafood joint where everything was laid out on the table as if we were picnicking in Louisiana. We ate with our hands and sniffled over the spices. Our fingers greasy and polluted with Cajun spices, my mouth so hot I was afraid to put my lips together. I nuzzled beer and tore open shrimp and crab legs like a final meal for the executed. The catfish was too hot yet i shoved it into my mouth and chewed without using my tongue. It was perfectly cooked and seasoned and dissolved in flavor. The fries seasoned as if they’d been grown in spice.

If you’d asked me Friday afternoon what my weekend plans were, I’d have said Nuthin. As it was, Easter weekend I was surrounded by family. And as for whatever distance I think I’m supposed to maintain just to protect myself, to protect a heart so damaged by abandonment and rejection its more delicate than glass… I was wrong. Stuck in the past. The intimacy at that table; the crossing of fingers across plates, the eating from the heart before the mouth, the gathering of people he felt most dear to him, was almost lost on me. We Are brothers. Not Like Brothers. The intimacy embracing me in Seattle, the warmth and trust I was provided, the stories whispered of, was something reserved for hard core Family. She is my sister. I slept full and at peace in my sister’s basement. I ate until I swelled at my brother’s table. My heart pulses. For whatever I’d foolishly believed, I was wrong. I am deeply loved. There is the life you live and the life you decide for yourself. And after all these years, I… nevermind. And these friends, these people… How do you account for this? Its as if we’d always known one another, always depended upon each other, always been together over the course of our entire lives.

Briefly: Thought I’d share some gorgeous new work from a poet friend Shane Koyczan

There are too many stories. I may share more later, but I wanted to end this cycle using the last notes taken during my final night in Mumbai. I wish I could sit an novelize our time as a group celebrating Christmas or the incident at the beach or just our entire time vacationing in Goa, India after the tea. But maybe those would be better served as live, stand up stories.

This was my first trip out of the country. Looking back now, I understand why people get the urge to travel. There is a particular endorphine that surges through you while you’re re-adjusting to a different world and lifestyle. God knows what kind of man I could have become had I stayed there another few weeks on my own.

But my last morning in India was spent poolside after we’d been evicted and the villa cleaned for new vacationing tenants moving in later that morning. My taxi arrived and after the requisite hugs I rode through the country-side, my heart aching over the unique beauty around me. The houses, the Christmas nativity scenes, the narrow roads and small farms. It was like the southern part of the states very barefoot country, all green trees and dirt roads.

The driver takes me to the airport. I was so greatful to have a kind, English speaking taxi driver I well over-tipped him and he blessed me and all the family I don’t have.

The plan: fly from Goa back to Mumbai, then Mumbai to Hong Kong, then home. Goa to Mumbai is like LA to San Francisco, if not a touch further. During the flight over the Arabian sea, I understood why I remained so congested so long. The air is quilted in haze. Through the reddish smoke, you can make out fires along the ground, glowing eyes peering through like an intoxicated demon just waking up.

There were no problems reclaiming my luggage after the hourlong flight. But I have a lot of time. I buy water and mango juice and pace the airport. Where do I transfer? I never clearly understood what I was supposed to do. I get confused, lost. A man approaches, tries taking my bag to help me but I don’t understand. He leads me over to a nearby taxi stand. But… But…

What I didn’t know: I’m at the domestic airport. My flight to Hong Kong is at the International Airport, 8 km away.

I’m pushed into a taxi, my bag next to me. The man stands at the car door and firmly repeats: Tip? Tip? I handed him 20 rupees and the man shuts the door.

There are two men seated in front. The taxi pulls off and drives maybe the length of one city block, then pulls over. The driver turns around to me and says he wants 3000 rupees to take me to the international airport. But I don’t have the money, I’m confused and I’m feeling hustled. I’d forgotten that when I first arrived in Mumbai, my price from the airport to the hotel was 1500 and a huge savings since I did it the proper way– getting a taxi from inside the airport and pre-paying for it there. But that was two weeks ago. Now, I’m a hostage.

Then: the man sitting in the passenger seat turns and holds up a $20 bill in American currency. This startles me a bit because I hadn’t seen an american bill in a while.

Here’s the hustle: if I give them a $100 bill, they’ll give me $20 back and take me to the airport. Thanks to my roommates, one of them paying me with U.S. bills, I actually have $100 but in a variety of bills. Not a single Benjamin. They hold up one of the George Washington’s and say: What’s this?

I explain: Its a hundred dollars. $50. Two $20′s. $5. Singles. The singles they don’t understand.

We work it out. They take the money and then… kick me out of their taxi, and put me in another.

The man in the driver’s seat I just paid, turns to a man who comes up to his window and he tells him to take me to the International airport. I get out of the taxi and get into another and we head across the city.

At the time, I wondered if they were driving me in a huge circle and returning me to the airport on another side. I could have fallen for it. I had no clear idea what was happening. But sitting in the backseat I thought about it: The jet I took out of Goa, we boarded and off-boarded on the tarmac using buses to take us to and from the terminal. There wouldn’t be space to do that at a major airport. I began to relax and let go.

The last Cabdriver drove through busy streets and played some Hindi rock music, using an Abba sample. This is my last time seeing shanty style businesses, Christian temples with an illuminated Jesus surrounded by lights. The hustle and bustle of a life I never began to comprehend, even as most Indians accepted me with patient indifference. We don’t circle back to anything except to the airport where I arrived. The fly over looks familiar. I wasn’t kidnapped. Unlike when I arrived, this time I tipped the driver without question. Perhaps my tithe in the name of all the beggars I refused and the driver I didn’t tip when I first arrived.

I get to the Mumbai International airport and… wait. I won’t be able to even check in with the airline for another hour or so. Security guards here are uniformed military armed with automatic rifles. They dress and travel in mini-reinforced trucks, all in matching camouflage. They are all humorless.

For a while I sit on the ground and write and finish my mango juice before I decide to get up and try printing my e-ticket at the nearby kiosk. As I approach it, a man cuts me off. He is tall, thin his silver hair cut short. A bright red third eye. Dressed in working khaki’s. He shows me his taxi badge then points to a dark building on the opposite side of the busy traffic turn around. I see a half finished construction zone, cars turning and darkness.

Free wifi and food, he says. Good price, he promises. I’ll give you a good deal.

I’ve got more than an hour before I can do anything beyond sitting on the ground. Yet getting here has put me on edge. I keep saying No. He hovers around me and I approach the machine to do my business, but he won’t leave and i’m feeling bullied. Thank you, I hate saying No, I said, but No. I say I just want to print my ticket. He points to it and says, that machine is broken. But there is a working one “Over there.” I let it go. I walk away and came back to print my ticket a half hour later

I sit alone for a while. An older couple sits next to me on the sidewalk in front of the airport and eat snacks and drink water. In Goa, I bought a package of fruit and nuts to snack on for the trip, but wouldn’t open it before getting home… only to discover it had a surprise toy within: a wig! Threaded through the dried fruit pieces and nuts was several long strands of black hair. Like an idiot, it was the only thing I declared coming through customs and they didn’t care. I lost my sealed water bottle as a security threat, but kept a bag of unedible fruit.

Time machines exist. They are called jet airplanes. My travel day lasted at least 48 hours. I arrived in Hong Kong the afternoon of the morning I thought I was arriving in San Francisco. I sent a confused email to my friend holding my apartment key, saying maybe I’ll get there at night. But no– on the plane out of Hong Kong time went backwards, and I arrived in San Francisco the morning of the day I just left Hong Kong.

It was a working day and I returned to the neighborhood around my job. I was bearded and in a long kurta I bought out of FabIndia. A long men’s shirt that went past my knees. It was cold as I expected, despite me just leaving what felt like summer. I went to my friend’s office building and we met outside. I felt like a vendor of some kind. He gave me my apartment key and I pulled out of my backpack for him a gift: a full size chessboard with hand carved pieces. I also showed him the second kurta I bought. People had been giving me sideways glances, walking the financial district dressed as I was. But to me, it was envy. I let my friend see the second shirt I bought and he quietly removed it from my hand and tucked it under his arm. I learned later it fit him perfectly. I had no problems with that.

I jumped back on Bart and finally headed home. It had been a long, transformative experience and a once in a lifetime trip. I got off the train and… didn’t have enough change to exit the station. They only wanted a quarter and all I had was a $20 american bill and some torn, wrinkled rupees. The only change machine I could use was just outside the station.

Annoyed, exhausted, I go to the station agent, pulling my bag.

Look at me: I’m in a 9 day black and white beard, pulling a roller bag and carrying a backpack, all while wearing a long gold shirt reaching past my knees.

Me: Can I leave my bag here for a sec to use the change machine?

Station Agent: (Looking me up and down) There’s no bomb in it, is there?

Me: (Calming down, showing him my palm) There’s no bomb, dude.

I swallow my fuck you, and get change.

Imagine: nearly kidnapped and hustled by Indian taxi drivers, travelling thousands of miles, negotiating customs, immigration and armed and mean spirited security at the Indian airport, having my bags roughly molested and slapped in China, then sniffed by dogs in Oakland… only to be held up by a fucking miniumum wage Bart Station Agent!

During the Midnight Tea In Mumbai, I mingled and wrote and snapped photographs then approached random guests in the gallery and improvised an interview. People were engaged with me, living batteries drawing from the environment. Below is a transcript of a special interview. This one artist wore a bright yellow and orange reflective vest. I recorded him on a cell phone while shouts and chants from around the room exploded in the background.

***

DIRTYRAT: Good evening. My name is James—would you mind if I asked you a couple of questions?

Yea.

DR: What is your experience with art?

I’m a practicing …(unintelligible).

DR: I beg your pardon—you’re practicing what?

Art.

DR: You are. What focus?

What’s my…What’s my…genre?

DR: Yeah

I do public installations.

(we exchange names. His voice was so soft and competing against room noise, I won’t try to replicate what I think I heard)

DR: What sort of goals do you have for your artistic growth in the next year

It would be essentially… the purpose of art is to vent out an emotion that maybe a certain kind of person might not be able to. So in that sense you are the representative of the mask of the culture, of theory, of an emotion. Or you are learning something. So the idea for me would be to be say something final that may not have been said emotionally or culturally and put it out on the floor for everybody to accept or have dialogue.

DR: I consider myself a poet and a writer. Sometimes I feel like I get stuck. How would you advise me or how do you encourage yourself to keep pushing and growing or to keep what you’re doing interesting?

I’d say to fall in love with yourself. You inherently listen to yourself at all times. You need to understand precisely what your body is saying, and what your mind is saying. And Its okay if you don’t consider yourself a poet also. That’s just a label. A label is stuck on the skin of things. So you don’t need to subscribe to that kind of idea in the first place. You’re already sold basically. You are absorbing it.

DR: That’s really powerful. Do… Are there any members of your family that are also artists? Do you have relatives who express themselves artistically?

Yeah. My mother was a cook. And she made quite a few things which are not on a menu anywhere in the world. And we consider that pretty amazing, creative. My father is an electronics engineer. Everyone I know inherently has a little bit of artist in them. So I don’t follow labels as such. So in that sense I don’t know why you would already slot something and then unslot it and then ask me back what the meaning of the slot is. It doesn’t make sense. I’m from art school, so. We kind of grew up with the idea that you already have it. And its okay if you don’t have it. You still may have it. You don’t need anybody else’s subscription or uh policies to walk the talk or talk the walk. Its insignificant and very important at the same time. What you are. You don’t need to guess which. Cause its kinda narcissistic. And that’s okay. It’s a very human quality. Its fine. Its absolutely fine. You consider yourself a poet?

DR: Yes.

You shouldn’t start that way.

DR: Because it’s a label? Because it restricts and limits how I view myself?

You must be more than that. You mustn’t just be a poet. I’m saying ‘just’ a poet. Because you might be something… You already put yourself in a box. You might be a novelist. Or you might be the best bedtime story teller to your offspring tomorrow. Or whatever. You already score 100 there. Why would you shortchange the idea of being a poet and speak to 100 people when you can speak powerfully to one person.

DR: That’s really extraordinary. And it also…

It’s not. You’re full of labels, man. That’s not extraordinary. Its like oxygen. Its free, man.

DR: I appreciate that. I appreciate talking to you. Is there anything you would like to ask me or anything you would like to say to an American or ask my artist friends back in the states?

Is it true that guns don’t kill people? (LAUGHS) Is it? Is it true? Cause I’ve got a gun with me right now. That’s my prop for the night. Since the theme is fire. I got a gun. Soon as you say you’re American, understand, people latch on words. So the first thing you say… American. I’m gonna say Gun. So its your job essentially to undo that. Gun. So be the master for the change in that. You come here. Maybe, I don’t know, you have a gun on you right now. I’m not sure. I’m just saying I have mine also. (LAUGHS) Mine’s plastic. Its made in China.

DR: What I was thinking is if I’d had a gun that was made or sculpted from a bar of soap, I don’t think it would be able to kill anybody.

That’s a joke. I have a sculptor friend who makes things from household objects. Yeah, we were just speaking of that. Essentially, boils down to you’re kind of hiding your insecurity by making a toy. You’re trying to show your machismo. But you’re a baby inside. So its pointless flashing your gun out if you’re already having a internal conflict inside. If you deal with that first, you essentially won’t need a gun anymore.

DR: Is there anything that scares you

Yeah. Pretty much. I mean, I’m doing art. Essentially I’m riding on a cannon. I don’t know if its gonna, you don’t know what’s happening next. I’m scared of the next day. I can’t afford to think a week in advance. I really can’t. I don’t have a credit card. I only have a debit card. That freaks me out. Because I don’t know where my next income is coming from. When you’re practicing art you don’t have that. That scares me. I mean, society scares me. You’re not allowed to Be. You have to subscribe to the kind of things you’re asking me. Like; are you doing well in life… what’s your definition… pretty much subscriptions and definitions of everything. Your questions scare me.

DR: I didn’t mean to scare you

I mean. I’m worried for you. I’m not scared, I mean, I’m wondering why would you do that to yourself. Because you’re scaring me. In the process of getting scared yourself. Asking me if you are a poet, you Are a poet. You don’t have to tell me that. Just meet me without telling me that. I could tell you were an artist the first time I met you. Doesn’t matter. I don’t know what your income is. What’s your weight, how old are you, anything. It doesn’t matter. Any more questions?

DR: That’s it.

Its not really an interview, it’s a very casual talk.

Genesis 18:4 4 Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree

India overwhelms all the senses. Art takes those senses and disassembles them, shakes them, transmogrifies them.

I’ve told the story about what happened during the collaborative art ritual in Mumbai to friends and have had edge of the seat responses. Slack jawed and incredulous. I’ve also tried telling it on stage as a story before an audience and was met with yawns, blank stares. Hearing someone talk about art must be akin to hearing a language poem. I sat down feeling like I’d just had and lost a fight and the dude sitting next to me and said. “Turkeys, huh? I think I had a dream like that once…”

It was a once in a lifetime dream that I won’t be able to do justice here. Last Sunday, I ran into a friend just coming out of T—-r J–’s and to his question: “Where did you go, India, right? How was it?” My mind went to the blue screen of death and force closed. I couldn’t arrange the images and the stories fast enough to give an answer that made any sense. I can tell a condensed version in about 15 minutes, I can tell it over dinner or drinks. I can offer you a brief video made by the events creator, Natasha Marin.

So there were twelve of us and our goal was to perform for 12 hours beginning at midnight in one art gallery and then crossing town to complete the ritual in a second participating art gallery noon the next day. Over the twelve hours there were four performing cycles: fire, water, earth and air.

Which is to say: over 12 hours a lot happened. Capoeira, tai chi, dancing, walking, running, standing, writing, painting, washing, & tea drinking. For all that I saw and participated in, there was equally as much activity I missed.

Briefly then on the second, ‘water’ ritual. It was intended to be for women only, though there were at least five guys participating in the tea. I needed to be involved. I carry issues interactive art might just help me deal with.

The women guests were brought in, blindfolded and barefoot. They were made to comfortably lie down on a row of pillows. This was in the front part of the gallery with a huge bay window overlooking the street.

While in the lower part of the gallery, Natasha comes over to me, pulls down my shoulder and whispers: Go up there and massage the women’s feet.

Twelve women lay quietly, on their backs, all barefoot. I rubbed my hands together quickly, warming them, then squatted down before the first woman, gently touched the soles of her feet with my palms, and began working. The first tea I performed in, I appeared and preached as Jesus. This felt like an appropriate follow up. I finished, then moved to another. Then another. Warming my hands between each one, as if saying Hello to the blind. Toes cracked.

After the third woman, I began sweating like a beast. I was becoming as water: flowing and moving between. Being gentle yet strong, as I know my hands and grip are powerful. But I didn’t want to drip on people who are blindfolded. Its bad form. So I kept having to angle away my head, which kept me from staring and feeling like a pervert, and allowed me to focus just on the action.

Behind me with a bucket comes Natasha’s husband. Four or so women back he knelt and began washing feet. And somewhere in doing this work, of which I was serious and diligent, I looked up outside the huge bay window and saw parked in front of the gallery were four or five taxis. It’s well after 3 in the morning at this point. Men were seated on the trunks and hoods of parked taxis and stared in at us, at me. What they saw were people laying on the ground and me attending to them one at a time. What did they think? I thought: What would I not do for art?

***

Four of us now, Rachel the last to arrive, Nikki, Bettina and myself, walk downhill to the taxi stand. But we weren’t going anywhere. Memory says there was at least one taxi parked at the stand, but he couldn’t/wouldn’t move. We looked at each other then tried flagging down a passing rick shaw. We had to go across town to Downtown Worli for a group meeting of all tea participants at this wine bar called Vinoteca. Rachel had a printout of the place and some landmarks around it, but as usual with getting around in India, there are no ‘street names’ and you have to get the driver to understand the places and landmarks around where you’re trying to go. Rickshaws are as plentiful as bees and we flagged one down. We showed him the print out, gave him the name of the place we were going, but he shook his head and drove off.

Sounds like a joke: We flagged down another. He had no clue what we were talking about and drove off. Finally, a third driver shows up and he’s willing to drive. Yay!

But the problem is the rickshaw itself is a three wheeled bike covered with a metal hood. It looks like a huge beetle. Not counting the driver, it’ll barely sustain three passengers– forget about all four of us. Time was getting short.

Nikki and Bettina decided to take the rickshaw and asked us to flag down our own and follow them. What else could be done? We waved, the two ladies were absorbed into traffic, and it would be the last we’d see of them for hours, until well late into the night.

So Rachel and I started over from the top. Stepped out into the street and flagged down a rickshaw. First driver: Blank Stare. Rachel shows him the print out so he can read the name of the place and the area– But he drives on.

I’m exhausted after all day shopping. And when did I last eat? How much water or liquids have I had since coffee this morning? I’m dehydrated, in need of a shower, food, and would happily skip this meeting since getting there is suddenly a huge challenge.

We flag down a taxi finally and he tries to help us. I think he turned and asked another driver passing by and that driver had only one idea: Ask someone else.

Rachel and I get into the rick shaw and the driver goes to the end of the block, turns left, drives two more blocks then stops.

At the corner, there are a couple of full sized taxis. One taxi has its hood up with men standing around examining the motor. We pull over and for a minute there’s a group discussion. One man who I took to be either a veteran cabbie or something like a supervisor, pointed to another man nearby, spoke to him in his own language, then told us to get in his car. We transferred from the cramped rickshaw to a larger, european styled sedan and hit the road to Worli.

Its challenging to describe the city, to show you what I saw spinning past us. Its like any city, even my own: clothing stores, seamstresses, flower stands, school yards, lunch trucks, traffic stops. But the logic is wrong. There are sidewalks, but they’re half finished and flow from brick to soil as if the sidewalk naturally assembles itself out of the ground. People are seated on the ground weaving baskets and brooms. Cows and goats mingle with the people. In the school yards, they’re playing cricket. The people walking the street are Muslim dressed in bright white from head to toe. The traffic stops are not linear, with cars waiting in straight lines at a light. They’re more fanned together at angles; dented Suzuki’s, boxy trucks, large orange buses. The storefronts we pass look assembled and sell items I don’t clearly understand. I understand chickens piled in glass cases as if awaiting to be stuffed in pillows. I understand fist sized foods, even if I don’t know whats beneath the crust. But the rest? What is That? What’s really going on?

The sun was setting and the breeze flowing through the open cab window was a food I desperately needed. The driver turned to us and Said Something. Rachel and I looked at one another and shrugged. But I looked ahead of us and saw a toll booth before a bridge.

There was no traffic. It wasn’t until after being in the taxi twenty or so minutes that I realized the ladies, Nikki and Bettina, could never finish this trip in a rickshaw. Rickshaws are perfect for quick trips across town, essential for shopping locals and tourists alike. But I couldn’t imagine travelling this far in that rickety thing. And they certainly wouldn’t let one cross the bridge.

But just on the other side was a street Rachel had on her sheet, and it seemed like this was the area we needed. The driver let us out at a busy downtown intersection in front of a huge, expensive mall. This wasn’t It, but the place we needed was somewhere around here.

We walked up along the walkway not seeing any addresses, names of buildings or anything helpful. We turned to some guards at a hotel driveway and they pointed us inside. We asked the desk clerks if they knew of Vinoteca and one called, then handed the phone to me. What the woman told me, I repeated aloud for Rachel. Its not far. We’ll have to cross the street and go back a few blocks.

I wrote previously about crossing the street, but crossing the street at night is a different, scarier prospect. But Rachel and I are alive and well and that moment was our first bonding experience.

Truth told, finding Vinoteca wasn’t so bad. We had to walk back three or four blocks, passing vendors frying remarkably smelling foods and found the place just beneath the fly over (you’d call it: overpass). It was good to see and meet the other members of the tea for the first time, even as I was so dehydrated I couldn’t think. I ordered and downed two quarts of water before I began to feel my brain reconstitute. I ordered food.

Nikki and Bettina eventually showed up, an hour or more behind Rachel and myself. The ladies barely wanted to talk about What Happened. I didn’t push them for details. I could only imagine.

Briefly: we covered the roles for the upcoming tea, expectations and otherwise checked in on where we were, and what else we needed. After dinner and some pictures and story exchanges, as a group we walked from the wine bar across town to Our Fearless Leaders’ apartment. Ten or so of us, walking together, proudly, through the streets of Mumbai. People stared and we shouted back. Kids on the street playing, saw one of the white women in our group, then ran up to her and began shooting her with his toy gun, laughing. We crossed the street, arms raised at idling cars and shouted: We Love You! to keep drivers from hitting us. How could you hit anyone who says they love you? We stopped in front of a Buddhist temple. Its important we stay on ritual. We gathered in a circle, held hands and silently prayed while local Indians sat nearby on steps or the sidewalk and watched us crazy Americans. What were they, or any of us, thinking? After the day, I was relieved to have a moment to stop and pray to anybody…

What to wear at the Midnight Tea in Mumbai? The three of us, Nikki, Bettina and myself needed a clothing outlet, stat. That morning we sat at the end of a picnic table in the courtyard. Karuna stood next to me sketching a rudimentary map of where we should go. She told this to me, the weakest link, the easiest lost, while the ladies sat across the table from me and talked and at the far end the man who owned the residency sat with two people, eating lunch.

I took Karuna’s sketch and Nikki, Bettina and I crowded into a rickshaw and zipped over to the shopping district. It had the feel of a farmer’s market sprouting from the sidewalk in front of fancier, more expensive shops. We walked through carts dripping with handmade jewelry and shoes, fruit juices and lunch foods. The ladies ran their fingers along necklaces and earrings as if playing a delicate instrument.

Past the vendors, was the entrance to a building full of small clothiers crowded next to one another. I was once told if I ever wanted a suit made I should get it done in India. But there’s no time for a suit. The shop windows hung with fabric and leathers. We entered one shop at random, stacked with hundreds of dresses and saris. The ladies looked at a few then were lured upstairs to a small attic full of clothes. A salesman half-heartedly buzzed around us, pulling random pieces down from hangers and draping them across a table for show. Pretty, some… but no sale. More women wandered in. I felt useless as an asshole on a jar of peanuts, or rather: as any straight man would be in a dress shop. But I was still intrigued watching the spell that fell over them as they considered fabrics and tried on dresses.

Variety was one thing, but nothing felt right. We agreed to cross the street– an experience in itself. Cars don’t stop, they weave and dance, pull up just past a bumper and… just roll forward slowly until they find a way around. Indian’s have learned to drive by studying the nature of water. Move forward until you stop. Everyone honks to signal their intention as honking is a language. There’s no anger as in the states. Everyone knows no one knows what they’re doing.

So crossing the street is an adventure. Pedestrians do not have right-of-way they have right-to-die. And in crossing street, need great patience, confidence and a reliable intuition. A car will not mourn you. No car here is free from scratches, dents and blood on its bumper.

As far as clothing, I didn’t know what I wanted. As far as fashion, men don’t have as many options as women. I would have been fine in a long white shirt as I’d seen Arabic men wear. But what I saw were jeans, simple t shirts and handmade sandals. All clothes I’d left back home. I’d have to keep looking.

In their shopping daze, the women naturally separated. Nikki wandered ahead scanning the shops entered a separate story as I fell with Bettina into a pit of brightly colored saris.

We found ourselves in a huge, fancy shop. The ground floor was all glass cases full of gold jewelry. Bettina asked if they had saris and we were led upstairs to a mezzanine of shelves lined with folded saris. Two men turned it on and began laying out saris on the long Formica counter. Yard upon yard of brights decorated and designed fabric.

One man stood behind the counter and ran game. When Bettina asked to try one on, the other man standing by and watching us, leapt into action. He created a butterfly fold against her waist and wrapped her with a yard or so of fabric, fastened it with an elastic strap, wrapping her again then draping what was left over her shoulder. After a while, with her sitting and considering her gorgeous options, the salesman behind the counter pointed to the other man and told him to make us some tea. Do you want tea, he said. We’ll make you some tea.

This is where I began to learn how prices are fluid. How sales is seduction of the parts of your psyche you don’t always know how to control.

While Bettina took a couple more minutes to consider some jewelry I went back to the street to look for Nikki, but it was too late. Her trail cold. What choices would she make? The street around me spinning, busy. In her shoes, I’d go home. We’ve been separated for several minutes and we all knew we had to attend a mandatory meeting across town later that night.

I went back to Bettina and she and I walked up and down the block, looking. Finally she turned to a vendor at random: Did you see a woman in an orange head wrap? Of course he did, and pointed off to where we’d just walked from. Everybody we asked saw her, but she was gone now.

We gave in, flagged a taxi and found Nikki and our fourth roomie, Rachel, just leaving the compound on their way to the meeting. We dropped off our packages and joined them for the walk back to the taxi stand. It had already been a long, exhausting day for us all. No one could have guessed what the night was going to bring.

NEXT: Yeah, that post the other day about how easy I can get lost? LOL! That was nothing…

I listened to the directions over the phone and wrote down the landmarks the voice gave me: Chuim Village, Out of the Blue Restaurant, Khar-Danda, Carter Road, Sea on your right, Cafe Coffee Day, Tall building, Lesutra, Green Gate, Last Ship. Just take lefts, look for a tall building and a green gate.

A week into my stay with Luke at the hotel, I needed to move. That was always the plan as I was to share a room at an artist colony with three women artists, me the first to check in. I didn’t want to leave the hotel. My time had been stellar and Luke was a good friend. But I packed and looked at my sloppy notes and my shoulders sank. What I wrote made no sense.

I told the woman on the phone I’d be there in an hour. I had to shut my eyes and quiet my mind to listen through her accent. She said come, but the room wasn’t quite ready. There was a party last night and the building’s owner was still asleep having stayed up drinking.

Luke decided to come with me, to my relief. He wondered if the place I was going was cheaper and if there was room enough for him. (There wasn’t.)

It was late morning. There was a rickshaw parked just across the road. We looked inside and woke the driver who was probably drunk. His eyes red and as we stirred him, he seemed disoriented by us and the directions and landmarks I recited to him and he kept saying No he had no idea what we were talking about… and I didn’t either. But he agreed to drive. He motioned to his meter which didn’t work. 50 rupees, he said. I thought: Fine. Let’s go. And I shoved my suitcase down in the back of the rickshaw and we drove across town through mild traffic.

We came to a stop at a congested intersection. A young teen boy approached and slapped the side of the taxi with a bouquet of plastic spinning flowers. They were worthless. Cheap and hideous yet had more color and life than the boy. As the flowers spun, he leaned against the frame of the taxi, his expression sullen and defeated. Next to us another taxi waited and the passengers and other driver watched to see what if anything might be exchanged. Luke gave nothing. I shook my head and showed the boy my empty hands. The boy gazed down at his flowers and spun one of them weakly, then pointed his thumb and three fingers towards his mouth. Our driver stared straight ahead into the non-moving traffic. I saw a parade of cars flow crossways and in the distance, a woman selling the same plastic flowers. She in a long black paisley sari. Finally the boy moved on as did the traffic. We passed workers. People selling food, men carrying bamboo poles, pushing long carts full of metal rods and work gear. At an open trench several men flaked with mud stood staring down into the hole while one man drilled.

The driver let us out at my first landmark: Cafe Coffee Day. We walked up the narrow street as I drug my suitcase. Pack Light, travel websites advised. I’m happy I got the message.

We looked around for other landmarks. Green Gate. A building called Lesutra. Last Ship. A middle aged Indian man approached us to help. I took out my crumpled, sloppily written directions. The man pointed to a building and we approached it. It was a hotel. Its lobby smooth, cave-like walls. Dark, clean, expensive looking and air conditioned. We asked the men at the desk and one recognized something. He pointed us down the street behind us.

The street was narrow and steep. On either side tall apartment buildings rose. Two of them fancy. A third was a huge complex behind an intimidating fence with broken glass embedded in the wall to deter burglars. At the end of the street, another huge apartment, this one with colorful sheets and clothes drying on the staircases facing the sun.

We found the place. The name of the Institute, what we’d been calling it and the name we were given via email exchanges with the owner, was not what the building or location was called. We opened the ‘green gate’ onto a modest courtyard full of flower bushes and a couple of sculptures of 8 feet tall, full figured nudes. It was intimate and gorgeous– a large kitchen, then 3 or 4 separate bedrooms and an office on the ground floor. Upstairs were two or three more rooms and a patio with a wall of potted plants. Karuna, the woman I spoke with earlier on the phone, approached us. A student of the artist who owned the place. We talked for a while, though I’ll never describe her as friendly. I tried explaining what the Midnight Tea event we were here for was about, but my words stopped making sense even to me. Luke had to get back across town to meet with another ceramic artist he commissioned to make some tea cups for his project. But he didn’t seem to hurry after he met a young american woman, a filmmaker, who was packing to leave the hostel that day.

Karuna took me upstairs to my room they’d just finished cleaning. Then asked for money and directed me how to get to the ATM back down the street.

Late afternoon, I was alone. Luke had returned to his hotel. My first roommate wouldn’t arrive for several hours. I found a bucket and using some travel laundry detergent, hand washed my clothes. I walked out onto the patio, with its mosaic tile floor and flowers, and read while my clothes dried. I found a book on Indian sage Ashtavakra.

While reading, the sun and breeze perfectly warm and affectionate, somewhere in the neighborhood a speaker crackled to life and I heard a sound that nearly stopped my heart. Above the sound of children playing in the street, above the honking of passing taxis, from the speaker came a Muslim call to prayer. The sound was part blues, all spiritual. The singer not singing so much as intoning, moaning. His voice so deeply haunting to me, I stopped reading and looked up as if the sky had just opened. No, something in me opened. I wanted to weep. He took his time singing, his voice summoning notes long and sticky as taffy. It was a sound that embraced and held me and everything within me softened. I felt compelled to pray, for myself, to give thanks, because while he sung I couldn’t think of anything else. Everything within me stopped and, long after the song had finished, remained quiet.

I stumble into the hotel lobby from the cab—deliriously out of my head. I’ve spent a day on two airplanes, with an hours layover in Hong Kong into this, my first arrival in another world. I ask the desk personnel, all dark Indian’s in ill fitting suits, for Luke, my contact, and I’m glad to have printed his email with his last name. An older man, who could have been everyone in the room’s father, grabs my bag and I follow him into the worlds smallest elevator and the door shuts. It is smaller than most closets and the silence between us awkward. The lift takes us up one flight and Luke’s room is across the hallway when the elevator door opens. We knock and gently ring the bell and a man whom I recognized in an on-line chat, hangs his head out of the door, groggily. He and I would later talk about his being a privacy advocate, so I’ll back away from even describing him. I’ll say he was the most generous, warm and kindest dude who immediately put me at ease with a very late night conversation and brewed water for me using his camping water micro-filter. When I look to my phone, its 10 minutes to 5 and I lie down in my clothes and fall asleep on the twin bed.

The phone startles me awake. Its near the end of breakfast and this is our friendly reminder. We go down to the dining hall for a Indian breakfast of vegetable soup, steamed rice cakes, dosas, the crepe styled rice pancakes and some English tea. I stuffed myself, looked up and saw a cricket match broadcast on television. The game takes a commercial. I’d heard that public kissing was socially verboten, so the ad where a pair of lovers kept stealing kisses by touching their fingertips together stood out.

I faced Luke and behind him a glass wall and behind that the driveway to the hotel. There was a huge fishtank outdoors and then, to my left, a cow the color of gold, slowly wanders towards the shaded driveway. A security dude calmly walked towards the cow, loosely holding a broomstick. Cow and man looked at one another, then the cow lowered his head, turned and walked away.

Luke had to meet a ceramicist across town and asked me to join him. We flagged down a rickshaw driver and sped through roughly assembled streets to another neighborhood. We walked a block or so, came to an apartment building, and went up to a room where a young woman named Raina met us. The apartment was nice sized, bright and uncluttered. Raina was focused, confident and sharp. Luke commissioned her to make some things he was planning to use for the event we were in town for. She showed him drafts of the cups he ordered and they talked about specifications and how much she was charging. I looked around admiring her sculptures and kiln sitting in the corner.

We don’t stay long. Back on the streets we talk about going to the ocean. We flag down another rickshaw driver, but we can’t get him to understand the phrase Carter Road and she shakes his head in that Indian bobble-head way, uncertain of the ocean or the road adjacent to it and drives on. Another driver motions for us to get in and he speeds through the streets, past vegetable carts and oxen-drawn carriages to Carter road and the blue green Asiatic sea. We walk and talk and I sweat and snap photos. We bird watch and I realize these are crows, but not American crows. They’re nearly blue black with a light gray ring around their throats. There are people doing laundry and laying clothes and sheets flat on the beach under the sun to dry. There are plenty of people hanging out, couples seated on benches. A group of kids—a couple of them shyly approach me just to shake my hand. While we walk, we decide to go off road and wander through the low overhanging trees and bushes at the shoreline. The ground is muddy and we walk as on eggshells. Along the ground are many pencil sized holes and for a minute, Luke squats down and points his video camera towards a hole to watch for something to emerge. Nothing did. Indians walk around us, sit on low branches and smoke bammer-smelling weed.

We return to the walkway and our conversation and just meander, circling back through a neighborhood where a group of Muslim men seem to assemble before or after a prayer service. There are sidewalks, but no one seems to use them. Everyone makes their way along the street with cars and taxis and motorbikes whizzing past, honking. Women in long flowing saris walk past us, as do heavily mustachioed men and loose dogs. Food carts alternate with small temples to gods I hadn’t heard of. Luke tells me about some local Indian women he’s supposed to meet that evening and asks me to come along. He’s more friendly and social than I and I’m happy to not be alone. I’m overwhelmed, my senses bugging out over the newness of everything and finding myself so far away from home. I don’t know what to think about anything. Even the fact I just saw a different ocean laid out beneath a new sky in another country was almost lost on me. I like to think those kids on the beach shook my hand in welcome to congratulate me on making it safe and sound and let me know I’ll be ok.