Apologies all. I went missing. Forgot to write....actually didn't forget to write, thought about writing everyday then didn't. It was a big week out here. I did a little running, caught up with the cousins over some cardio immediatly counteracted by an Indian carb fest. Did some laundry and on a whim cut all of my hair off. Which hopefully as I mention it sounds casual. It was, really I had to do something. The need for change, a healthy cut, a reinvention...instant. And it was. She ripped the band aid off, grabbed a chunk and there was no turning back and I put on a brave face that translates into a frozen smile in which I go over and over in my head why I told her to do this. She straightened my hair, I left and the day was magical. Blustery but warm. I, like a child who is brave and gets a reward for being so, treated myself to a Brulee tart. Strawberry vanilla - heavan on earth. And skipped along forgetting the recent loss I had just suffered. Half my hair...until I glanced in the mirror and didn't recognize myself. I found a cafe. Unmarked and empty but for a Bob Dylan type sitting on the leopard print upholstery among crates serving as tables and an old green chenile sofa with a round back (See him here). A vegetarian cafe that serves beer. Ah I am home. Not because I am vegetarian or particularly wanted a beer but because the two thoughts don't seem to go together, which is so like me. Schizophrenic. Contradictory. Which one of these things is not like the other? I feel like that.
It was magic and Bob Dylan, long silver hair, sunglasses in the dark interior had his guitar and played - soulful, acoustic, rock - for me and the bartender. Magic I tell you and then he stopped to read the newspaper so I stopped to order another beer (Hunter's Ginger Beer which you should know once me LK and LM wend on a Sunday Saga to find ginger beer...not brew... beer in San Francisco. Alchoholic ginger beer. 4 hours, 3 beers and $12 later we had found one we didn't like at all. But Hunter's is refreshing and delicious. To be sure I will be back for it.) and took up my trashy novel I am reading which is allowed every once in a while. And when he resumed his one man show I stopped and watched but the place started filling up and I was a different person sitting there with no hair. Okay, some hair, chin length hair. And I wanted to leave and sit in front of a mirror and reintroduce myself to me. Find a way to fix it maybe? If this sounds melodramatic it probably is. But it is how I feel and when we don't recognize ourselves in the mirror, and we are at the same time in another country trying to learn ourselves and we go into a salon and tell the girl to cut off our hair so it can be healthy and give her creative license to make is edgy so one side is short, the other side longer - angled in the back - we can become confused because me, maybe not you, but me who wishes she weren't defined by her curly, frizzy now very short hair clearly is. At least a little but, And maybe you wouldn't realize this yourself until you one day without thinking cut if off. Anyway, I guess that was the point. To redefine. Rediscover. So here I am. Hairless. Okay not hairless but there's nothing past the chin so in my world I guess that's the same thing. I think I deserve another brulee tart. And I want my mom. And she's coming, not because of the hair...just because and I can't wait. She'll tell me how stupid I am being and then I'll realize she's right and I will quietly count down the days till my medium length hair is back and pretend like for a moment, I am the kind of girl who can rock any haircut, even if it is totally different lengths in front, Angled in back and still defiantly curling at the end despite no humidity and straightening. A yogi who shops a runner who smokes, a vegetarian cafe/bar and constant rewards of brulee tarts and ginger beers. This is me. Today I am fragile but tomorrow I will be strong, unreadable, laughing and reminding myself why I did this. But today I am leaning on you, expecting you to bring me a brulee tart and cofffee cause I know you would if you could.
*PS Pirate mood might also be instigated by lust for Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow. Also he has nice long hair. Suspect is wig though. Maybe I could borrow it....
