My right hand is so pretty, I almost drove off the road this morning staring at it in the sunlight.

No, I wasn't born with amazing hand genes and I'm not crazy (shut up, all of you). But yesterday, a local artist tattooed my hand with henna, and today what used to be an ordinary-if-freakishly-pale hand looks magical, covered in curli-cues, leaves, flowers and vines.

(As I sit here writing, I keep stopping to stare.)

Henna is actually a plant; ground and mixed with additives like lemon juice and coffee it turns into a dye that's used all over the Middle East, Africa and the Indian subcontinent to make brilliant red-brown tattoos that stay on the skin for a couple weeks before disappearing. It's traditionally used by women at special occasions - weddings and births, for example - lovingly applied by other women and imbued with an almost mystical significance.

I'd been interested in the practice, called mehndi, ever since I went to an Indian wedding a few years ago and saw the bride's hands and feet, crossed against her sari fabric and covered in gorgeous intricate filigree designs.

Portland-based artist Mary Kearns, 30, has been doing mehndi for the past 10 years. She taught herself, she said, after seeing it done, and she makes up the patterns herself. I don't know what I was expecting when she agreed to tattoo my hand, but I certainly thought the process would be more elaborate than it was.

She arrived carrying nothing but some plastic bottles of henna capped with different-width tips and an album filled with designs. She asked me to give her an idea of what I liked - hence the album - and then she set to work. She was so good she didn't need to map out the design at all before starting, and so clean about it that all she needed was a tiny little napkin to blot the henna tip every now and then.

My pinkie was the first to go.

Kearns drew a curving line along the base of my fingernail, then extended it down my finger in swirling shapes. The henna paste comes out black and smelling like eucalyptus oil, and I had to sit still and leave it on top of my skin to dry. It went on cold. As my hand filled with the design, it got cooler and cooler. Henna was used in the deserts of Africa, Arabia and India to cool the skin, Kearns said. As long as the paste stayed on, you'd stay cool as a cucumber.

The design was finished within 30 minutes, and Kearns told me to try not to move my hand for 25 to 40 more minutes to let the paste set and dry. Then it would flake off, she said, leaving a very light trace of yellow dye underneath. I wasn't to wash my hand until the next morning, when I'd wake up with the design in dark red.

The flaking began in the car on the way back. Next morning I woke up sluggish (at 5:30), dreading getting up in the dark - until I remembered my hand. I jumped out of bed to go see what it looked like. Like a work of art.

But the cretins who sit by my desk don't think so.

"It looks like you doodled all over your hand with a pen in class," someone said, honestly.

"Did you pay money for that?" asked another. "It'll wash off, right?"

I don't care if they don't get it, sitting over there with their plain workaday hands, mere tools to my cherished masterpiece. Me and my right hand are doing fine, all by ourselves.

Get in touch with Mary Kearns at: 761-0636 or mary421@hotmail.com.

To talk to Gray-based mehndi artist Genevieve Levin, who runs ReMarkable Body Art, call 657-4131 or e-mail blakbird@maine.rr.com. You can find her Web site at www.remarkableblackbird.com.

And look up the song "Henna" by Cameron Cartio and Khaled on YouTube or the mp3 search engine of your choice.