"We have to do something about Lisa's hair."

I'm sitting on an airplane in Charleston, South Carolina, waiting for take-off. I'm nervous, but not because I'm worried about crashing or terrorists or sitting in the emergency exit row (I'm oddly comforted that I'd more likely die than be expected to play hero). I'm nervous that I might unknowingly do something socially improper. It's a feeling I can't seem to shed, even though I no longer need it. It's coating me like a fresh suntan.

...

Scott's sister's wedding was organized (and attended) by elite Southern socialites, and took place on a plantation right by the Ashley River, in the shadow of an elaborate white columned house with hearty drapes. I'd gone to keep Scott company, take pictures, and shoot super 8 and video of the ceremony. The "videographer," they called me.

...

A week ago I got my bangs trimmed with the wedding in mind, and I consciously delayed changing my hair color, as it's currently my natural (and acceptable) light brown. I packed my most conservative clothing, and I scrubbed the black chipped polish off my fingers. Unfortunately, my most refined dress shoes are made of plastic and glitter, but Scott thought ahead and brought me some borrowed shoes from LA, some dark brown pumps with a fake snakeskin sheen. (At the wedding, two people would compliment my choice of footwear, the only part of the costume that wasn't mine.)

...

I spent time with the bridesmaids and their husbands, all of whom were friendly and (not surprisingly) polite. They all seemed to have grown-up sounding jobs (titles with "real estate" and "consultant" in them) and they looked older than they were (26). Rather than talking about themselves in any regard (their feelings or neuroses or aggravations, like my friends tend to do), they turned the conversation outward, and talked about other people.

...

I could tell Scott and his mother were discussing me (hushed voices) when I came down the stairs. It was my hair, they told me. She told me that it looked best down, and I should wear it that way for the ceremony, and that I should tuck "that part" behind my ears, referring to the remains of my faded streaks. I stood there dumbly, confused that, as the videographer, I'd just been told how to wear my hair by a person I'd met a day earlier (something my own parents have never even dared to do). I nodded, suddenly realizing that my concept of an appropriate appearance was way off. (From that point on, even long after the wedding, I would panic when I'd see her if my hair was anything but down. Actually, I would silently panic about everything, certain that I was doing something offensive.)

As I messed with my hair, I decided to try pinning back the sides with silver clips that were sure to pass the test, and I applied a little more make-up than usual (which meant employing an old stump of black eyeliner that I'd discovered in the bottom of my bag). Scott presented me to one of the bridesmaids (who was wearing an updo and a face full of powder) to see if she could help me even further. The first thing she did was reach for my hair clips. "We need to take these out," she said, with a nurturing and soft Southern twang. "Is that okay?" she said as her hand reached toward my hair.

She led me down to the room where the other girls had gotten ready, and began dusting me with make-up. She poofed up my hair (this is the only thing I didn't allow) and asked for my approval before holding an aerosol can to my head. It smelled like flowers. I thanked her (I meant it), and retreated upstairs to remove my jelly bracelets.

Even so, as the guests arrived for the wedding, I attracted stares not unlike the stares I got in Mexico. I didn't fool them.

...

The ceremony was classy (of course), and pretty. I quietly made the rounds with my various cameras, the heels of my shoes sinking into the grass. After the service, I subsisted on wine and carrots and spoke (carefully) to the guests. I think I made only one major mistake, one that the bride's mother has yet to discover: I ran out of film in the super 8 camera seconds before the bride and groom kissed. I think I gasped and I know I scrambled to change the tape, but it was too late. They are going to hate me, but they don't know it yet.

...

The matriarch of the family—the grandmother—struck fear in the hearts of her own family. I'm not sure how she would respond if someone made a faux pas (perhaps she breathed fire?), because no one ever did. Except for maybe Scott. He picked her up in his car right after flying the red-eye from LA., and, although he was wearing a dress shirt, she told him he looked "rumpled and gay."

(This morning she commented that the wedding, while beautiful, was rather informal. I honestly can't conceive how it could've been any more formal—cocktail dresses at breakfast? I ended up sleeping in my dress last night—do I get points for that?)

I did have fun, however. And it was probably good for me to be reminded of life elsewhere.

Scott's mother approved of me, it turns out. She told me I looked pretty at the wedding and that I was nicely unobtrusive (though not in those words). "This is probably something of a culture shock for you," she wisely noted. "Well, it's not Brooklyn..." I replied. Timidly.

"Your feet sure are pretty," the man slurred at me. "Her feet are pretty," he said, more quietly, to his friend. The three of us were sitting on a bench in a hall of bathroom tiles and fluorescent lights, waiting for the late-night G train. I was glad I hadn't put on my headphones.

"You can't even see her feet," his friend replied. I looked at the red boots I was wearing, confirming to myself that my feet were indeed not visible. He turned to me and said, "You'll have to excuse my friend. He's a little drunk." A few more rounds of pretty feet accusations followed, countered with logical replies. I smiled.

The sober friend had corn rows braided in his hair and a tired face. We sat together on the train and exchanged facts about ourselves, but I don't know why. We talked about where we grew up (very different places) and what we currently did for a living, and how we were both waking up early the next day to go to the Bronx.

It's probably what I like most about New York: random interactions, based on as little as opaque shoes. He got off the train first and politely lied, "See you around."

...

The first set of Mexico photos is online (of three). Thanks to Michael Brown and php for making it much less painful to put a million photos online. Yes, a million.

I learned that I’m not very good at knocking on doors and talking to people about politics. I learned this in the swing state of Pennsylvania on Saturday, dropped there by a charter bus with a clipboard and way too many papers and fliers, which spilled out of my backpack onto the sidewalk whenever I leaned over. Part of the problem is that I was worried of being distrusted, of being suspected of unleashing a torrent of oral propaganda, of being a nuisance. I was worried about coming across in the way I might perceive someone with a clipboard who was knocking on my door.

I also learned that "swing states" are real; they are not a myth concocted by calculating politicians or by unscientific polls on AOL. The top sheet of my clipboard told me who the registered voters were and with what party they were registered, and it essentially revealed that in Pennsylvania, it is mandatory that Democrats and Republicans move into homes next to each other. Not only was every other home predominately comprised of Democrats (or Republicans), but in many homes they lived together, just like Arnold and Maria, or like cats and dogs. Madness!

You know what else I learned? The "undecided voter" is also nonfiction. She might open her door to you and say textbook lines about leaning toward Kerry one day and Bush the next, and that her union and her family are urging her to do opposing things. Then you might stammer and say something semi-meaningful (while she attentively listens) and hand her something to read and hope that your effort will tip the scale just enough.

I learned something else. There is a fourteen-year-old boy who canvasses for the election and behaves like a composed adult while he’s riding on the bus, and who is much more mature than the silly sleep-deprived twenty-eight and twenty-nine-year-olds sitting behind him.

One thing that I didn’t want to learn: there is a woman in Pennsylvania who is voting for Bush because John Edwards has a mole on his lip. I would’ve been fine not knowing that.

Many of the people whose doors I knocked on weren’t at home, though it’s certainly possible that some of them didn’t answer the door. After all, I actually caught a glimpse of a large man in his boxers jumping out of his recliner and running out of the front room to hide. I mean, I was pressing my face against the window, but why should that be intimidating? (Not really.)

But I did have some valuable conversations with people I would've never met otherwise, I learned some stuff (see above), I had fun, the weather was pleasant and I was outside in it, I got to see the gold and red October confetti littering the streets, and I suppose I feel a little less guilty about not doing enough. Pennsylvania is certainly going to mean more to me on the night of the election.

Twice, now, my cat has executed a mouse in front of me. As much as I like mice, however, the sporadic dead ones in my apartment no longer seem to faze me. (Apparently it takes exactly five mice to make me jaded.)

The first time I actually witnessed a live murder, I was sitting on the couch eating a plate of food. At first I was alarmed (Should I do something? And what?) and surprised (My obese and lethargic cat is capable of hunting! Who knew?). I quickly realized that, despite my sympathy for the mouse, there was nothing I could do for it.

After watching the hunter and hunted dance in front of me for a couple minutes, I began to ignore them and resumed eating, only pausing whenever she flung the dead mouse in the air, on guard in case it landed on my plate. (Murder is a lot of things, but I never expected "somewhat tiresome" to be one of them.) After it was over (she actually ate it), I felt a little strange toward her, regarding her as, um, an animal.

Last night (execution #2) I yelled at her, asking that she not jump on my bed with the (still live) mouse in her mouth. When she obeyed, I mindlessly turned back to my computer, more or less blocking out the suffering that was going on behind me. At that point something became suddenly clear to me: my heart is a lump of black coal.

***

When I found out I was going to meet him, I wrote it on my list of things to do, not because I was worried I’d forget (I was admittedly kind of giddy), but because I thought that it might be a nice thing to come across later.

- write instructions for coding in-depth documents
- do photo research
- update the publications page
- meet Al Gore

He was shorter than I expected, articulate, and had a firm handshake. He also had presence, and a boxy, Transformer-esque suit.

When I returned to my desk, I marked the last item off the list.

Nothing was coming, so I walked diagonally through the quiet intersection. A man from a utility company (I didn't notice which one) was walking toward me, carrying an orange cone to place on the road. I paused for a second to put in my headphones and then half-smiled at him, though I don't know if he saw me. He mumbled something back at me.

Did he say, "C'mon, miss"? Was he annoyed with me? There was nothing revealing about his tone. Did I get in his way? I hope not. I didn't stop for very long, but maybe it was long enough to piss him off. Could he have really said, "C'mon, miss"? That doesn't seem very likely. Oh, wait. No. He said, "Good morning." Oh no. Now it's too late to reciprocate. I'm glad he didn't say what I originally thought he said, but this might be worse, because now I'm at fault, because I didn't respond. He must think I'm rude. Maybe he'll assume I didn't hear him. I hope he knows I didn't hear him. He's probably not even thinking about it. Why am I still preoccupied with it?

I thought about it for ten more minutes. Agonizing over nothing, essentially. I do it all the time.

On several occasions, I've taken out my house keys when approaching the subway turnstiles, and I've produced my metrocard at the ATM. However, I've never reached for my metrocard at the door of my apartment, and I've yet to swipe my ATM card in the subway turnstiles.

A is mistaken for B, and B is mistaken for C, but B is not mistaken for A, and C is never mistaken for B.

What does that mean? Probably nothing.

Last night it was baked ziti in Park Slope, with friends scattered around the room playing with kittens, watching the baseball game, talking around the kitchen table, and staining their lips burgundy using bulb-shaped wine glasses. Tonight it was a pot luck event in Williamsburg with different friends, a trash can full of pumpkin seeds, and knives sinking into sweet orange flesh.

I don’t go to many dinner parties, although I like them quite a bit. Dinner parties seem like something that other people do but that I don’t (for whatever reason), like going on double dates or taking their laptops to coffee shops.

Tonight I brought with me a bowl full of bright sautéed vegetables. It may have been only my second dinner party contribution ever; the only other time I can recall is when I brought mashed potatoes to a Thanksgiving dinner at a friend’s house a few years ago. I didn’t have a nice bowl to put them in, so I just brought them in the beat-up pot I’d used to make them. Classy.

...

While sometimes I wish email were more like talking (since email is stripped of tone and is inherently slower), sometimes I wish talking were more like email. I don’t always feel clever or particularly social, so it would be nice if I could take as much time as I needed to respond to someone’s question. Responses could then be sculpted and edited down into a perfect shape, like a carefully carved pumpkin.

We were unsure of what we could eat. We'd been told to regard the water with fear and respect, and that the slightest bit could make us sick: Don't even eat vegetables washed in water, and close your mouth in the shower, they said. Brush your teeth with bottled water. No ice, no juice, no food from vendors, etc.

At first we were cautious, pushing pile after pile of wasted lettuce and tomatoes to the edge of the plate with a fork. I wanted to eat it, just like I wanted to eat the fruit and the pico de gallo. What is Mexican food without tomatoes? We did drink the coffee at the beginning of each day, in an act of blind hope—asking each other if it was okay, shrugging, and taking caffeinated sips.

Only one establishment addressed the water issue with a sign (which surprised me a little), something about how purified water was used for everything in that particular restaurant. Of course, at other establishments, one could always ask if that was the case, but I was afraid it might be rude, and anyway, what's to stop them from lying? If I was to get sick, it wouldn't happen until after I was long gone.

Days into our stay, the girl from Holland told us that even the locals don't drink the water, that they aren't immune to the offending bacteria. It made us braver, and perhaps over-confident. (The pico de gallo was excellent.) Miraculously, I was okay.

I wasn't ready to return to New York, but I must say that on the first night I was back, I did feel a tinge of excitement when I loaded my toothbrush with paste and turned on the spigot.

I was fourteen in February 1989, and Black History Month was being celebrated at my school. Even though it was a public school, it was terribly small; the entire eighth grade consisted of roughly forty people, and only three teachers taught all of junior high.

That year, the three teachers (who governed like self-appointed royalty) decided that there would be a Black History Month play. I don’t remember what play it was, but the cast was enormous. In fact, every black child in the seventh and eighth grade had a part in the play; it may have even been required.

In the weeks leading up to the performance, the cast spent long afternoons in the auditorium, rehearsing lines, learning where to stand, and learning how to project their voices. Naturally, since there were no understudies, attendance had to be perfect on the day of the play.

It was Janet—the girl playing the lead—who was out sick.

Having already employed all of the black students in junior high, the three kings were in a dilemma. Rather than doing something predictable—postponing the play, reshuffling the cast a bit, or having someone play two different parts—they nominated someone altogether new to play Janet’s part, someone who hadn’t read a word of the play, and, incidentally, someone who was white. They nominated me.

I only had a tiny bit of acting experience, and I’d only played secondary characters, which I preferred. By that point I’d decided that being on stage was fine, but having the responsibility of the lead was terrifying, even under normal circumstances.

I was wearing denim shorts and an oversized t-shirt that day, and had a bad perm that made my shoulder-length blond hair coil like Christmas ribbons. I stood on the stage, in the midst of my faux black family, and read the unfamiliar lines straight off of a script that I glaringly held in my hand. I felt like an undeserving idiot.

For the uncomfortable entirety of the play, my black family seemed to accept me as if I were one of them, even though I hadn’t rehearsed with them, and even though my skin was the wrong color. Even though the situation was clearly absurd.

I’d almost forgotten.

I'm pretty sure she lives in the apartment nearest to the door of my building. She's stout, Puerto Rican, and matronly, and her age is really hard to gauge—maybe 60? She's often standing on the stoop (come to think of it, I never see her sitting), and I have a feeling that she knows most of the people on my block. Somehow, she seems to be the block's mother.

A friend of mine works next to my building at his girlfriend's vintage shop. He sits outside the shop all day long, smoking cigarettes and playing with the neighborhood kids after they get home from school. Whenever I observe him being part of my block (talking to and joking with the people he encounters), it makes me feel a little bit envious or sad or introverted, because most of my neighbors are strangers to me.

Anyway, the woman. She smiles at me, even if we barely speak, and she holds the door for me when I'm carrying my bike. I like her, even though I don't know her at all.

Every day she wears the same black scarf, wrapped around her head kind of like a chef's hat. She must have a lot of hair under there, based on the shape of her black crown. I wonder if anyone else ever gets to see it, or if she keeps it only for herself, coiling it up in privacy each morning.

At this point, it would be a little disconcerting to see her with actual hair, instead of the black cotton cylinder. To me, her hair is made of cloth.

[Tizimín, Mexico]

Sometimes I like the bus ride as much as the destination. For one, it's really the only time I am doing nothing for long enough to totally absorb what's around me. I love slicing through villages like a spy, watching small huts, clotheslines, and bright concrete walls hum past. The people I see lean in door frames below, poke their heads out of cottage windows, and walk their bikes down dirt roads, unintentionally arranging themselves in the most picturesque way possible. It's so captivating that it's frustrating, because I'm never allowed to put my camera away, for fear I'll miss something. (I miss so much.)

Yesterday on the bus to Rio de Lagartos, a brother and sister kept us company by talking to Martin in lightning sentences and smiling for my camera. Once we arrived at the fishing village, we ran into them repeatedly, or, more accurately, they ran up to us repeatedly, asking to have their photo taken and handing us small, green fruit.

The bus ride from Cobá to Valladolid, a few days before, was crowded and dark, but interesting nonetheless, as we were cruising though jungle. The headlights of the bus illuminated tangled green walls for a shallow few feet on either side of the road.

Martin ended up standing somewhere in the middle of the bus, unable to see anything, but I was stuck at the very front, wedged between the glass door and an assortment of strangers. It was the best place to stand, I decided, because I could watch all one-and-a-half hours of the trip through the giant front window. Tunneling through the jungle like that was something like watching the beginning of Dr. Who.

At one point the driver pulled over for a car stranded in the nothingness and added eight people and their luggage to the platform where I was standing. Perhaps that would happen anywhere, but at the time it seemed like a particularly nice gesture. (I randomly ran into the stranded people two other times that same night, which taught me something about the size of the town and/or about the town's abundance of night life.)

I've seen two types of long-distance buses on my trip; the more common type have TVs and padded seats (which are always made of the same busy material). The second type have no TVs, slightly less comfortable seats, and open windows. I like the latter better, mostly because of the open windows, and I suppose because they're grittier and make me feel closer to the outside. (One even had a small ant problem. How much closer to the outside can you get?)

Bus drivers personalize their vehicles by decorating the front window with stickers or fringe or various other ornaments, much of it loaded with religious symbolism. They also have a tape deck within reach, one that's connected to speakers throughout the bus. They tend to play traditional Mexican music, current Mexican pop, or a variety of old American music.

The driver between Tizimín and the Cancun airport had a fondness for Michael Jackson's Thriller, which he played at least twice on the drive, though he mixed in a couple Bee-Gees songs to keep us guessing.

(By the way, I just got home.)

[Valladolid, Mexico]

While the town of Tulum seemed to be built along one main highway (with shops and sidewalks mirroring each other on either side), Valladolid, in contrast, is more like a grid. Instead of opening itself as if it had been unzipped, the town is composed of narrow streets and sidewalks that bend around brightly painted and chipped concrete walls.

Fewer people speak English here, and tourists aren't especially prevalent. (Actually there haven't been all that many tourists anywhere, as it seems to be the off-season, but it is clear which towns are prepared for tourists and which consider them a novelty.) In Valladolid, we get stared at a lot.

[Today Martin showed me a picture he'd taken of me showing some children the LCD screen on my camera. (They really like it when you take pictures of them and then show them the digital results.) Despite all of the sun I've absorbed since I've been here (I've accidentally become the tannest I've been since high school), I looked incredibly WHITE standing next to those kids (and tall and light-haired, and shaped differently). Sometimes I forget, since I'm the one in that tall, white body.]

Here, as with other towns we've visited, whole families pile onto a single bicycle, a moped, or a "trici-taxi," which is a three-wheeled bike with a giant cart on the front. Young kids, Catholic school girls, tiny Mayan women in white dresses, and men with wide-brimmed hats walk or pedal by, or lean against bright Crayola walls. Little boys play games that remind me of horseshoes, and teenagers hold hands on park benches.

There are rows of shops on every block, and people selling things on the sidewalk in front of the shops -- fruit and nuts they've grown or bagged, or clothes and handkerchiefs they've sewn. Music is always playing from somewhere (some of it unpredictable, like Duran Duran). People are working and playing and living all of the time, and practically everywhere I look could be a scene from a painting. For every picture that I've taken, there are hundreds that I've framed in my head.

I think I could live here, for a few months at least, if it didn't mean completely disrupting my life in New York.

...

A couple nights ago we walked in on a party at a restaurant near the town square. As we stood at the door, the musician at the front of the room welcomed us in English and told us to have a seat. He was young (like the rest of the party) and was playing bongos. As he sang, the red, yellow, and blue lights of the karaoke machine lit up his face and cast a giant shadow of him on the wall to his back. The stage was kind of pitiful, but he was talented; he sounded like some of the Spanish music I have on vinyl.

We watched the partiers like we were watching a documentary; they danced and sang (taking over the musician's role) and laughed. We chatted with our waiter a little, had a couple of drinks, and left an hour or so later. As we walked out the door, the musician spoke into the microphone with a thick accent, saying, "Good night, my friends, good night." It sounded melodramatic enough to be really awesome.

Last night we returned, and our waiter made us a rose out of a napkin, a red marker, and a straw.

Standing out can be good, you see.