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when the cat's away the mice shave their heads
Thursday, October 3 2013
My normal behavior regarding my hair is to let it grow for eight or twelve months until it starts to bother me (either physically or æsthetically) and then I cut it back radically. I've only shaved it twice, but there is a nice milestone-marker-in-a-life quality to just getting rid of it all and starting again from scratch. I know Gretchen is not a big fan of the shaved head (due to its extremist right wing cultural baggage), but she's off on book tour, so I figured I could get away with shaving it. I wouldn't have to be out in public any time soon, and by the time Gretchen returns, some hair will have grown in. So this afternoon while I was sitting on the can in the brownhouse, I impulsively grabbed the scissors by the window (a tool I normally use to clear the thorn-bearing canes that spring up almost overnight across the path), went outside, took off all my clothes, and started cutting off my hair one fistful at a time. I threw the hair (now decidedly salt & pepper in color) into a Barberry bush (which, at this time of years, is covered in red berries as well as thorns). I like for my hair to be available for birds when they build their nests, though at this time of year it stands a better chance of ending up in a squirrel nest. Then I used a pair of electric hair clippers that I keep in the greenhouse basement (since the greenhouse area is where I always cut my hair these days). I finished the job in the upstairs shower with a razor. I don't remember actually using a razor on my head the last time I shaved it, and it's possible I didn't, since the act of dragging a razor over the dome of my head felt alien. The skin up there seemed to fear it would be cut, especially if the razor wasn't in perfect condition (and my razors rarely are). It's also a lot of work to shave that much real estate, particularly the way I do it, which is without a mirror. Thus I have to go over the surface repeatedly, hoping, statistically, I'll eventually get all the hair that needs to be gotten. But then there's the problem that the human head is not a perfect ovoid. My head contains a number of indentations, and hair at the bottom of those is hard to trim off at skin-level. I did, however, eventually manage to get it to the point where it felt shaved. In my post on Facebook, I said "i was tired of looking like John Denver so I took things in more of a Walter White direction."
The picture I posted on Facebook. It got 22 "likes" and 31 comments.
How my hair looked back on September 14th. I'd been complaining about it looking John Denveresque since June.
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