[Valladolid, Mexico]
Two little girls with long dark hair that hung in curtains in front of their faces stared at us from outside the restaurant. They giggled and blew us kisses, hiding behind the door frame before reemerging. One girl, the leader, kept holding her hands to her neck in a sort of choking gesture (which I later figured out was a reference to my necklace).
They timidly followed us down quiet, dark streets before finally approaching us. "¡Hola!" said the leader. Then, in English, she said, "money," and held out her empty palm and grinned. She lightly tugged at the necklace I was wearing, and pointed to a ring and to my bracelets.
I gave each girl a jelly bracelet and they ran off.
[Tulum, Mexico]
So far we've gone snorkeling in both clear ocean water (above coral and through schools of fish) and in an underground freshwater pool (through a cave lined with stalagmites and stalagtites). We've wandered through a graveyard and various grocery stores (both full of cultural eccentricities), and we've been serenaded by a trio of musicians while drinking from beer bottles choked with limes. We've ridden fixed-gear bikes around town and down watery dirt roads, and we've traced the outline of two Carribean islands with a moped.
We've taken ferries that cut through popsicle-blue water, and swam in the ocean at midnight and next to Mayan ruins. We've ridden in vans and on city buses among the locals on their way to work, and we've talked, listened, and photographed. We stayed in a hut within lapping distance of the ocean, and we've stood four feet above a party of wild crocodiles.
But I have to say that the highlight of this trip (for me, at least) happened today, when a spider monkey grabbed the strap connected to my camera and wrestled me for it. I was both delighted and horrified, worried that it might actually win.
The monkey was on a leash (which was a little disturbing) that was attached to a tree. The monkey was able to move several feet down a rope highway that had been built for it.
After it finally let go of my camera strap, we began wrestling with sticks instead, sticks that I would let it keep after putting up a small fight. It clearly liked the attention (it seemed to be showing off for me), but probably not nearly as much as I liked having a tiny connection with a monkey.
It surprised me how much it looked like both a human and one of those fake stuffed animal monkeys, the kind with the velcro hands and feet. Of course, the velcro monkey is supposed to resemble a real monkey, not the other way around.
[Tulum, Mexico]
On the bus ride to Tulum, a little tan hand poked out from behind my seat and landed on my shoulder. As soon as I acknowledged it (by turning around and smiling, mostly), it retreated like a turtle into its shell, and its owner let out a little laughing yelp. (The noises were distinctly Spanish, even though no words were produced.) Sometimes, instead of a hand, two little dark brown eyes would peek at me from between the cracks. Again, I'd acknowledge the gesture and the pleased scream would follow. This went on until Martin and I got off at our stop.
Instead of a traditional hotel, we decided to stay at a cabaña, a little cabin made of sticks and straw that sat right on the beach, forty feet from the creeping waves. It was cheap (not cheap enough, it turned out), and was surrounded by tropical plants and surging forest sounds. The moon was full and lit up the area like Las Vegas, which was important, since the generator-powered electricity was terminated at 11:30 p.m.
Miriam, a girl from Holland, took our money and gave us keys. She'd been working at the hotel for three months, after having passed through as a traveler herself. It seemed like an endorsement.
The view was incredible, even at night, and we went swimming in the shallow water before finding our way back to the bizarre little hut, passing clusters of moonlit spiky trees and people lazily draped in hammocks.
But the mosquitos. The mosquitos were relentless, just as the noise of the water crashing into the shore was relentless. They perched on our arms and faces and legs with their wiry and delicate frames, creating patterns of itchy welts in their wake. At some point during the night, the wind that was breathing through the sticks stopped altogether, leaving a muggy mosquito-laden heaviness behind. At some other point during the long night, it started to rain, some of the water sneaking through the thatched roof and through the sheet that I'd been hiding under.
We're still in Tulum, but tonight we've got walls.
I swear I'm having a great time, regardless of how it may sound.
[Cozumel, Mexico]
I bought an iPod before leaving for Mexico, primarily so that I could store my digital photos on its hard drive. The other reason, of course, was for music, but it was the former that determined the timing of the purchase. For the week that I've had it, I've appreciated having hundreds of songs I like in my pocket, but it wasn't until today that I fell in love, incidentally around the same time that I fell in love with mopeds and the deserted side of Carribean islands. I wish I could give you at least a few seconds of my trip around the island, so you could know what it was like first-hand. It was dumbly satisfying in the way that ice cream tastes good and I have no idea how to describe it.
[Isla Mujeres, Mexico]
She was drunk and social. Shortly after her friends left the bar with their kids in tow, she pulled her chair up to our table. Mostly I listened to her talk, following along here and there, sometimes asking Martin to translate either way.
I was pleased to be hanging out with someone who was from the island, even though she was rather stubborn and repetitive. She told me over and over, albeit in a friendly way, that I would be pretty if only I didn't have a nose ring, and that it was urgent that I have a baby. (I didn't bother arguing with her.) Regardless, it was good to interact, and to learn.
I learned that she was 42 years old (the smoking creases around her eyes made her look slightly older), and I learned that her family had lived on the island for the past hundred years. She has two "bambinos" who are in their late teens, she said, and she loves where she lives and has no interest in travel.
I also learned that she'd had a Cesarean section. In an awkward moment, she hiked up her skirt and pulled down her underwear slightly to show us that the operation had left no trace of a scar.
She left the bar after we did, but I caught a glimpse of her from a few blocks away, speeding down the street on her moped.
It's raining for the first time since I arrived. I hadn't noticed the dearth of sewer drains until now, now that the water has turned the narrow streets into a bathtub, water that's currently knee-high. (They say it recedes within an hour.)
I'm at a table in a bustling restaurant, with a notebook, a mug of Dos Equis, and a wine glass full of limes in front of me. People are rubbernecking at the falling rain and the collecting water, noting the weather between their bites of pasta, and watching others wade past. A minute ago a pack of kids ran by, laughing and splashing each other with beige rain.
For now I'm on Isla Mujeres, the Island of Women, named for hundreds of small female statuettes once found here. We came directly from the Cancun airport (careful to avoid the resorts) via bus, taxi, and a windy ferry ride through bright blue water.
The people are friendly, but it's clear that there are two divisions of them -- the locals and the tourists. Originally I'd wondered if my urge not to stand out as a tourist would eclipse my urge to take pictures, but of course in Mexico I stand out no matter what, and here on the island at least, it's expected that I act like a tourist. It's made me less shy about carrying my camera around my neck, but regardless, I prefer the genuine Mexican culture I occasionally glimpse, even if it makes me feel a little more like an intruder. (These glimpses are certain to be more frequent as we move further inland.)
It's unclear how much of the decor is designed to appeal to tourists and how much of it would look as it does without the island's main industry. In any case, the place is lovely. The buildings are brightly painted in blues and pinks and yellows, and the palm trees, whose trunks have been painted white to protect them from the elements, resemble Clydesdales. Instead of cars, people drive bikes, mopeds, and golf carts.
One store after another sells locally made goods (traditional blankets, jewelry, toys, ashtrays), and each vendor desperately tries to convince you to try his store, rather than his neighbor's. Amigos! Come inside! They ask you various questions to engage you and hold you there for as long as they can. Where are you from? How old are you? They refuse to give up, calling after you even when you're several stores away.
There are stray cats and dogs everywhere; dogs sleep on sidewalks and abandoned couches, and cats pick through open trash bags. They're all skinny, abnormally small, quiet, and, for the most part, skittish. Last night Martin and I bought them a single turkey sandwich, throwing small chunks in their direction, which caught them by surprise, accidentally making them dodge and cower.
This afternoon he and I rented a moped and sped around the island (past the dogs, the shops, and the electric-looking water), amidst weather that was light blue and perfect. Since I was riding on the back (rather than driving), I could pay less attention to mechanics and directions and instead focus on the scenery and the soundtrack playing in my headphones. It seemed a little ridiculous, it was so stereotypically pleasant. It briefly made me think of my cubicle, where I'd normally be at that hour.
...
The water in the streets is cool and brown. I walked through it slowly, wearing a skirt and flip-flops, past a father and son tossing a volleyball, and past other tourists and locals, seemingly enjoying the break from normalcy. Since it's meteorology and not money or language, it seemed to bring the two groups a little closer, at least momentarily.
***
I'm beginning to disconnect. Even the internet feels far away, despite that it's right here.
[written 9/22/04]
It wasn't necessary for her to tell me she didn't get many visitors; I could tell, by the way I was so carefully followed around the apartment by the twenty-nine sets of eyes.
She refers to herself as a "rescuer"; she fosters cats and finds them homes, when she can. Otherwise, they get added to her collection. In her pre-rescuer days, she told me, she had a more socially acceptable number—three—but even that was thought to be excessive. Tonight I brought her her thirtieth.
She's about 35 years old and lives in a spacious one bedroom Manhattan apartment that looks and smells completely normal, minus the furry creatures sprinkled around the place. They were everywhere—on every shelf and table top, beneath every piece of furniture, behind every door. Right after I walked though the door, a black long-hair pawed at my thigh as if I were a scrathing post, using painless disarmed weapons.
The cats represented every shape, color, age, and disposition, like poster children for political correctness. A third of them were related; a fourth, feral. "I've only touched that one once, when it was sleeping," she said, as she gestured toward an animal in the corner.
A few of them followed us as we walked through the rooms, but most just sat and stared, boring holes into me with their round cat eyes. Who is this visitor? I was a curiosity.
She showed me a few of the things they'd destroyed, and the places they'd taken over. One had sunken comfortably into her laundry bag; another had urinated on a coat that had been hanging in her closet. "This one is the reason I never go on vacation," she said, referring to the amount of money she had to pay for a particular cat's health. (She confessed that she spends about $100 per week on cat food and litter alone.)
I imagine that there are actually twenty-nine reasons she never goes on vacation.
When I thought I'd seen them all, she mentioned that there were probably ten more under the bed. I peeked under the dust ruffle, and, sure enough, roughly ten more sets of eyes glowed and blinked in my direction.
...
The stray didn't want to be put in the carrier, and I felt bad to force it against its will. It was quiet, though, even on the subway. It formed a ball in the corner of the carrier and looked around with wide eyes. It was to become the thirtieth.
Once we were in the rescuer's apartment—in the tiny, standing room-only bathroom with the door closed—the stray clung to me and rubbed against me, while growling at her new host. "She really knows you, doesn't she?" It surprised me, but it seemed to be the case.
I haven't completely finished, but it's functional! Please let me know if you have any problems or come across any broken links. I've been working on this for months, since, for one thing, it involved archiving all 700 entries, one at a time. I feel like I've just run a marathon or something. Except that, instead, I was sitting at a computer, eating Lucky Charms straight out of the box.
Hope you like it.
The capital letter E, formed with green clay, is stuck to the front door of my apartment. It's about an inch tall and is positioned at eye-level. I think there was a letter following the E, but it fell to the floor into an unreadable mass. I have no idea what it means or who put it there; regardless, I've left it up. Perhaps a new letter will come tomorrow, spelling a message out one character at a time, like a patient Oujia board; a ransom note. I sort of doubt it though.
I've been feeding the stray cat daily. Sometimes I lower food into the alley (I copied my neighbor's contraption, I must admit), and sometimes I hand deliver it to her, walking past the trash and down the metal stairs, into a moat made of concrete. When she greets me at my door, I put food in a bowl in the hallway, leaving it there overnight. One morning, when retrieving the bowl, I found it had been emptied of food but had been replenished with a single shiny copper penny. I don't know what that means either.
I've suspected for a while that my state of emergency was perpetual (always being busy and never saying no). But when you're in the middle of it, it's hard to see beyond the present, beyond the next few items on the list. I am convinced, however, that the stress I feel at the moment is elevated a notch above Lisa-normal, a level that almost hurts. Kind of like if I were strapped to The Machine in The Princess Bride.
Today I ate my lunch while pacing on the sidewalk and discussing web-related code into my cell phone for half an hour, flour from the white dusty bread decorating my face and phone in powder puff fashion. Breakfast was eaten in the glow of a computer screen, and dinner was a slice of pizza on a moving subway, catching crumbs in a brown paper bag.
Part of the problem is my impending vacation, as everything needs to happen before next Thursday, when I leave for Mexico. Suddenly I will have no computer, no projects or appointments, and no social obligations—nothing but the psychological dust that's stirred up from having slammed on brakes. I'm curious to see how that goes.
Yesterday I was dreading today. Today the alarm started bleating at 5:24 a.m., but I suppressed it until 6:15. (I'd gone to bed at 2.) By 6:45 I was wheeling my bike out the door of my apartment, taking the subway to another part of the city.
For close to an hour, I stood in other people's way, tilting my bike one way and another, playing gatekeeper to the passengers getting on and off the train. I wondered where they could be going so early on a Sunday morning, besides coming home after a late Saturday night. (Unimaginatively ascribing one type of lifestyle to others.)
Once above ground, I had to force my sleepy brain to see the world in photographs, to frame and to ask permission and to capture. At 7:45 a.m., the hardest part is being social.
I'd been asked to photograph a bike tour around the city (minus Staten Island), while riding along and being part of the organism myself. I'm sure I only dreaded it because I wasn't sure what to expect, and because I was without the comfort of having any friends join me for the day-long event. In the back of my head, I knew it'd be fun; I just didn't know exactly in what way.
The routes were broken up into segments, separating the men from the boys; the shortest path was 15 miles (Harlem to Park Slope), and the paths increased in increments: 35 miles, 55 miles, 75 miles, and an impressively insane 100 miles, which practically traced the outline of the city. I was a little jealous of the 100-milers, not necessarily for their endurance or commitment, but because they got to see parts of the city still unknown to me. (I really want to explore the Bronx, for one.)
I didn't know if I was going to be a 15-miler or something more; I figured I would try that and then take the subway to meet bikers on another part of the path, to get as many photos as possible. Instead, I randomly started riding with two men—N. and George—and, to my surprise, I eventually found myself completing the 35-mile trip with them.
I've never ridden anything close to 35 miles (or ever really thought I wanted to); it felt like an accomplishment, especially on an anorexic amount of sleep. It's a little bit bizarre to me that hard physical work can translate into entertainment, but somehow it works out that way, or at least it did today. (You bond with other bikers, even ones you don't speak to, on account of experiencing the same phenomenon.)
N. was well traveled and interesting and spookily observant, and George was a friendly life-long New Yorker. George's knees were in decline, and I'm really just a casual biker, so we agreed to ride at a slow pace. (George and I liked having each other as an excuse to ride non-aggressively.)
We talked and pedaled (and paused for pictures), and we sped past picnics and rugby matches, rolled over water on four different bridges, and saw glimpses of the day in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and back in Manhattan. We got stared at and were asked questions about the ride (what's with all the bikes?). We rode in packs of three and packs of 30 (which makes avoiding cars easier). We saw baseball games and landmarks and sailboats and skylines. (The weather was a benevolent sunny 77 degrees.)
The end of the ride was a little anticlimactic, except that one of my shoes disintegrated minutes after I climbed off my bike. I'm not sure what I expected to happen; confetti? For me?
At 5:00 p.m. I could barely carry my bike up the stairs to my apartment, I was so exhausted. My muscles now feel like they've been poisoned, and I'm walking like a droid. Today's ride already feels far away, even if my muscles claim otherwise.
[A roll of Super 8 film lasts three minutes and fifteen seconds, and is fifty feet long.]
Martin and I made the film Coop for Flicker, for a project called Attack of the Fifty-Foot Reels. We shot the film in April, a few blocks from my apartment. It was required that all of the editing be done while we filmed (including the titles, which are spelled out using bird seed), and, of course, the film had to be shot chronologically.
We weren't allowed to even see the film before it was shown in front of an audience, made up largely of other people who'd submitted films under the same guidelines. The only changes made to the original film are: an end credit has been added, and the music is now paired with the film, rather than played simultaneously on CD. (Yes, it was terribly hi-tech before.)
See the film. (Here's a smaller version for dial-up users. Watch the big one if you can! In either case, you may have to wait 5 minutes or so.)
[Thanks to Scott and Lisa for their help getting the film online.]
Dan is the god of light for Dracula, the musical. He sits in a perch on stage right and presses buttons, producing lightning, making the ground look swimmy during the dream sequences, and illuminating the actors' faces as they belt out notes. He gives his friends free tickets for the show (or at least he did in this case).
It had gotten bad reviews, but I don't really understand why. It seems like such a giant undertaking, making it all come together for an audience; the set alone would've been enough to entertain me. I suppose it's something like the Olympics, when you see an incredible diver and the commentator says something inscrutable about the extra splash, despite the diver having just performed an almost inhuman airborne maneuver. Maybe Dracula is like that diver.
I was more fascinated with the special effects than I was the story (which surprised me, since the opposite is true in movies). I wanted the stage to be transparent, so that I could see the people running around like little elves beneath it, seeing what they do to make it all happen. After the show, Dan answered some of my questions by taking us through the set and explaining how it worked, and (even better) telling us stories about when it didn't work so well.
We continued our conversation in a long, skinny dive owned by a former boxer. It was filled with framed pictures (many of the owner, posing with Muhammad Ali) and the deep laughter of a man straight out of a Scorsese film.
***
On Thursday I found myself sort of by accident in a bar in Soho that was hosting a Battleship tournament. The bar had opened up the wall facing the street, and its patrons dotted the sidewalk, some of them wearing combat helmets. If you listened carefully, you could hear battlefield noises roar in the distance.
I didn't know anyone there, and I'd come alone, but somehow I ended up on the American team (which consisted of two other people, one of whom didn't actually participate). We played Japan, which was a unit of four stylish Japanese girls sitting on the other side of the bar, clustered around a tiny table. They announced their targets with cute accents, laughing like Dracula into their microphone whenever they were successful, which made the patrons (including me) collectively smile. The whole game, which was dominated by Japan, went something like this:
Japan: B-4.
US: Hit.
Japan: Hah. hah. hah.
US: G-5.
Japan: Meece. Hah. hah. hah.
I had to leave before the game was over, but I'm pretty sure we lost, due in no small part to the vampire mind tricks played by the opposition.
