to be honest, there are times i can almost forget where i am. we like to think that every place is so different, or that we don't carry internal imaginings of a place, but that is not true. i find myself relying on a catalogue of images, words and stories to makes sense of what i see.

i had only just arrived in mai wa, a small tibetan village in northern sichuan, when my mind thought my eyes were playing tricks. wait i thought i was in tibet, not afghanistan or the middle east. up strode this boy, head wrapped in a scarf leaving only the blacks of his eyes to reveal life beneath. he pierced through the narrow slit as though it was a highway to revelation. eyes darting back and forth, unsure what to make of the white man in his midst. for several silent minutes he stood, and i too, neither ready to break the ignorant silence. then he suddenly turned and disappeared. as he strode away i was struck by the fact that i could have experienced the same turbaned non-verbal interrogation in central asia or the middle east, but with much different implications.

as i stayed among the nomads longer i saw more and more turbaned men. every time i could not help but recall the fanatics from newscasts. these appearances become markers for us, even the non-racist. we profile in a way. images arise in our minds, and the associated rhetoric follows, giving us a beginning point from which to make assumptions. albeit assumptions that are more concoction than experience. with too many parts unfiltered political rhetoric we look upon the world with a recipe of discrimination.

i am not sure what i am trying to say with this story--but we need to evaluate the images in our minds, and especially the rhetoric related to them. i would never intend to judge a people by something other than how i've experienced them, but my first reaction to what i saw full of sterotypes. now this is a bit of an exaggeration, as i did not really think the boy to be a radical, but i was stunned by my immediate response to his garb.