The Haircut, May 3, 2023

44 Replies

I think I said recently that I have just published my 10,000th blog during which I have written 1 or 2 poems every day for thirteen years making use of up to 6 prompts per poem.

A week and a half ago,I read a number of those poems to a large writing group I belong to and one comment was that I should vary my line length and not have all the poems rhymed and metered. It then occurred to me that given one poem at a time, this wasn’t obvious, but listening to them 12 minutes at a time might not be as effective. Then I imagined an entire book of them… and started thinking about the four completed but unpublished books that have been sitting in their folders on a shelf all these years along with hundreds of essays and short stories and other poems written earlier and realized that it was the 11 to 13 hours I spent online everyday that were keeping me from seeing these projects through. 

So, I spent the rest of the day looking up and rewriting some of these chapters and essays and poems and I’ve decided that instead of doing the prompts for the next 13 years, I am going to publish on my blog some of the edited chapters and essays and stories and poems from the past. I will be interested in your thoughts about this. I imagine my readership might fall off since I won’t necessarily be linking them to the usual prompt sites, but I hope some of you will hang in there with me and let me know what you think. Yesterday, I had my hair cut for the first time in a year, so when I found this essay on my computer about a haircut 21 years ago, it just seemed to fit. So, here goes:

The Haircut  

He clicked the scissors twice. On the first click, my stomach clenched, but on the second, I felt something break––like a tight rubber band.  I didn’t look in the mirror to see the first lock fall to the floor, but by the second cut, I was ready to face facts.  I looked to the floor where two eight-inch-long tendrils curled cozily entwined, spooned like lovers on a bed.

What was he removing from me, this pert young man in tight pants?  What if my power was in my hair, or my sexuality?  When he went to answer the phone, I bent over and picked up one of the strands, trying to read it like the rings of a two-thousand-year-old tree. This inch nearest the cut was probably growing out of my head, just making its first appearance, during Bob’s final months.

How much pain had that hair been infused with? How much silence? How many words unwisely spoken? How many words held back? Why was that inch not curlier and thicker? Why didn’t it display the strength I’d found in myself during the period of his dying that I hadn’t even known I possessed?

As Alejandro returned from the phone and resumed his task, I let the lock fall to the scuffed floor. The raised grain of the wood and flecks of paint gave an aura of age to the pile of locks which rapidly grew to blanket it. This was the hair I’d pinned to the top of my head as we labored together to empty our old house, to close down our studios and to pack the van for our move to Mexico.

Bob had liked my hair long, uncurly, natural––matching his own wild mane. When I was young, my hair had been my glory, and by keeping it, I’d tried, perhaps, to keep my youth. But now it was as though each snip snipped off that many years. Snip went the exhausting months of selling off all of our household goods in preparation for our move to the house we’d bought in Mexico. Snip went the dismantling of Bob’s eighteen-foot steel sculpture as his oldest son carried it away. Snip snip snip. Onto the floorboards fell a houseful of memories sold off to become parts of other people’s lives. Snip. The long-maned hand-carved wooden Rangda mask we’d bought in Bali. Snip. The last of our handmade lamps. Snip snip, the mask from the Berkeley flea market. Snip. The studios full of tools, the bins of screws and nails. Snip Snip the twelve-foot-long diamond saber saw made by Bob’s own hands with castoff parts from Lawrence Livermore Laboratories. Snip. A lifetime of papers cast on the dump heap: old teaching files, tax forms from the seventies. Boxes of chapbooks, journals, old letters.

Snip went the slow loading of the van with the remaining possessions that would go with us into our new life. Snip went the doctor’s hard news just days before we would have made our escape from our past life and our journey into our new life in Mexico.

Snip went those weeks of single-handedly nursing Bob at home. His death. His memorial. The long drive down to Mexico with his ashes in the toe of his kayak still lashed to the top of the van. Snip went my first year alone as I labored to repair and fill the empty house I’d thought would be ours.

Finally, Alejandro puts down the shears and begins to blow dry my hair, running his fingers through it to the roots––the most sensual experience I’ve had for a year.  He turns off the dryer and I look in the mirror at a woman twenty years younger.

“I must have you,” I tell this woman, “I must have your carefree demeanor, your unencumbered life. Your freedom, your simplicity.”

“You done,” says Alejandro, clicking off the dryer and spinning the chair to give me a better look in the mirror, cutting me off from the past. Giving me her.

 

I couldn’t help myself. I had to check out the links and it turns out that one of them could have been the prompt for my story. It was “short-short-stories“

The photo, by the way, is of yesterday’s haircut, not the one 21 years ago!

44 thoughts on “The Haircut, May 3, 2023”

  2. Ali Grimshaw

    What a great opportunity to share, and reflect on your writing. Congratulations on writing that many posts. That’s commitment. I would choose the action that lights your heart up. There is no right answer. ❤️

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    1. lifelessons Post author

      Anita, Alejandro is a guy… who left Ajijic years ago and is now living in Billings, Montana, I believe. My hairdresser has been Edith for many years. She’s the one who did my haircut.

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  7. Sadje

    This one really touched me Judy. Beautiful, poignant and inspiring too.
    I gave up daily prompts for exactly this reason; it was generating good poetry, but wasn’t exactly what I wanted to write. Go forward and share your incredible writing with us. Bravo on 10 k posts.

    Liked by 1 person

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  9. Anonymous

    I hope you continue to write at least some of your wonderful poetry! Love the haircut — I’m trying to grow mine out a little from the chemo-hair style I’ve had for a year or more!

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  10. slmret

    I hope you’ll continue to write at least some of your wonderful poetry. Love the haircut — am in process of growing out the chemo-haircut style I’ve had for a year or more!

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      1. slmret

        Rereading this, I am amazed at the amount of time you spend on the writing! I have found that I can wade through about 4 hours a day of reading posts and other emails (and junk that just gets discarded, too)! I agree with others who have commented that it will be good to see some of your past come off the shelves and to fruition. Do keep posting, though, as you go through the process!

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  12. derrickjknight

    An excellent plan, with a perfect example. Using the haircut as a metaphor for all you were losing and for what you had to gain was so creative. I have always been impressed at the way you use the prompt words for what you want to say anyway. You have enough inside you to dispense with them and will find that less really is more.

    Liked by 1 person

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  15. Judy Reeves

    Judy, I love the Haircut story and encourage you to Yes! publish more of your wonderful writing that has lingered in folders all these years. Bring all that brilliance and creativity and word play and language celebration to the light and to us! Package it up and send it to journals and magazines and publications so the wider world can discover you and your wonderful observances of humanity and our foibles and our beauty.

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    1. lifelessons Post author

      Thanks, Hammad. I spent most of the day reorganizing and pulling out new material. Only one small temptation to check out prompts…and I found one of the prompts suited my post to a T so I added the link. Letting the tail wag the horse….

      Liked by 1 person

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  19. Lala Ribera

    Hola Judy! This topic is easily a 2 week project. I’ve also got my projects stacked up and the satisfaction of finally getting one book published has already faded… Now the other two books in the trilogy are haunting me! We figure that Dan has probably spun 15,000 jugs for Renaissance Faires and still spinning for the Faire that Jen is currently doing in Irwindale. Musically, BOOM DRAW, the band he plays with, just opened for Israel Vibration’s at Moe’s last weekend. But we are wondering when enough is enough?

    Meanwhile, this winter has wiped us out, especially the big wind storm last month – thinking that I have probably unloaded that on you sometime recently. Oh well, CRS!

    Being the most prolific person I know Judy, you have learned to describe our world in ways that have often helped me to clarify personal feelings that had only been imagined. Your Poetry has dimension… …. gotta go stir the pasta sauce… that keeps me checking for nuggets.

    That said, I keep wondering about those traveling nuns and wondering if the folks back at the monastery have begun hosting Tango competitions??

    Love you Judy and looking forward to your next chapter. Laurie

    >

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  20. isaiah46ministries

    Judy,
    What a wonderful poem on a haircut! Beautiful writing that makes your grief, strength, and courage so evident! I look forward to whatever you gift me. I, too, want to go back to the writing that motivated me to start the blog. Stories that express my faith in God and inspire, encourage, and give hope. I got started on the prompts because those poems and stories finally brought me likes and followers. But, the world (not hyperbole, as each one of us is a world) needs to experience the product of your craft. You are the best wordsmith I have encountered, and I read many books.

    I haven’t started the adult coloring book that you wrote with friends. I think I will take it to Europe in two weeks, and I will color as the plane soars above the Atlantic. Give us what you have, and those who need to read it will be fed with words that nourish our souls. I am excited to read it all.

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    1. lifelessons Post author

      What a generous comment, Regina. I am so happy that my Old Dames will keep you company on your trip across the Atlantic. Please send me a photo of you coloring in it as you soar above. and have a wonderful time.

      Liked by 1 person

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  21. Marilyn Armstrong

    First of all, I love the story. It’s a whole life story in a short essay and it is beautiful.

    As far as following you? I will always follow you. I can’t respond every day because I find I’m doing other stuff. I can’t devote every minute to blogging. But if I were to follow one person, it would be you.

    Are stats all that important?

    I was happy with one prompt and I was okay with no prompts. I don’t like the whole “ganging up” of prompts because to me that’s more “puzzle solving” than writing. I don’t (won’t) write to meet expectations or for better stats. If every prompt disappeared, I’d still write. I will write until my hands stop working. I bet so will you.

    I’ll be delighted to read your essays and stories and poetry!

    Liked by 1 person

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