So, um, where did your hair go?

Yes, friends, my first act in this exploration of beauty was shaving my head. In fact, the decision to shave my head came first; it was only as I was writing through my reasons for wanting to do it that I decided to embark on this more general quest to rediscover what it means to make myself beautiful.

The story is this: in the fall of 2006, I cut my hair short. It was a complicated but powerful impulse, and it had almost nothing to do with whether or not I'd like the way it looked. It was part of the greater movement toward eschewing both beauty and femininity; although when I first got it cut I paid a lot of money to get a "really good" cut, I quickly moved to trimming it myself, in the bathroom, with craft scissors. Now, I'm a pretty healthy, well-balanced, emotionally stable person, and even going through a personal crisis I seem to act in a healthy, well-balanced, emotionally stable way. So if I'm going to act in self-attacking ways, ultimately they're going to be very benign. Cutting my own hair became, at times, a kind of self-attack. I wasn't going to actually injure myself, but I was going to act aggressively against that part of myself that had been causing me pain: my femininity, that part of me that is on display for the world, symbolized by my hair. If it got longer than an inch and a half or so, I felt this powerful, visceral need to cut it back again. There was a certain vengeful pleasure in slicing and slicing until it was once again short enough that I could just run my fingers through it.

Well, I'm in a much better place now, and a few months ago I started to feel that something needed to be done with my hair. I considered several different ideas, but when the right one came to me I recognized it at once: "I'm going to grow my hair long again, but I'm going to shave it off first; start from zero."

I've always been curious about what it would be like to shave my head, and have been half-looking for an excuse for several years. Whether or not this could be considered an excuse, I don't know; I do know that it felt all wrong to consider growing my hair out from where it was. There was too much negativity tied up with my current haircut, too much anger and self-hatred. It would have felt like building on a bad foundation. I wanted a fresh start.

I thought it would be nice to time it with the liturgical calendar, so last Sunday (the first day of Advent, very appropriate) my dear roommates helped me raze the head. Coming up to it, I was increasingly nervous about how it would look, but I decided my goal would be to find ways to look beautiful with a bald head, and then later at every stage of hair growth. To this end I bought a few scarves which I could wrap about my head in interesting ways, and knitted several hats. I figured, if I could get started now, finding beauty in challenging circumstances, I'd be well set to find it later, once my hair was all grown out and easy to make pretty.

Of course, my plan backfired slightly, because I think my nearly-bald head looks AWESOME. But more about that next time, as I discuss... The Shaving of the Head: Aftermath.

and now for something completely different

Up until this weekend, this blog has been Chronicles of the Ephemeral, where I write about whatever amusing and trivial things have been happening to me lately. Chronicles will be back again in 2010, but for this year I'm going to be doing something a little different.

It all started... no, I can't possibly trace this back to when it all started. I remember when I was a little girl, I went through a phase when I refused to wear dresses, and then another phase when I refused to wear pants. And whatever was behind both of those phases (I don't remember) is probably a part of what I'm doing now, and that's way too far for me to go back.

Let's just say this: the notion of personal beauty has always been a little bit problematic. I grew up wanting to be beautiful, and I don't think it was because my parents or society told me that a little girl has to be beautiful or she's worthless. I think there's something inherently soul-fulfilling in looking at yourself and being pleased; in knowing that others take pleasure in looking at you. A beautiful person has the same appeal a beautiful tree has, plus that poignant awareness of how close you are to that person, and how distant. When you meet someone, your physical appearances are the first mutual communication you make, and (all else being equal) it is natural and right to want your appearance to be pleasing.

But we all know to what extremes, and what evils, the desire to be beautiful can lead. I'm not going to talk about those generally; I am going to say that, for me, there came a point where I felt I had to eschew any desire to appear beautiful. Rightly or wrongly, in the emotional state I was in, I felt I had two choices: to abuse my body and mind in an effort to please others with my appearance, or to violently reject the notion that it mattered at all whether others found me attractive. I went with the latter course, not so far as to try to make myself ugly, but just to formally and decisively stop caring how I looked. I cared about decency and cleanliness, and that was all. I got to the point where I often felt uncomfortable if someone told me I looked nice.

All well and good, and maybe that's what needed to happen in order for a certain amount of healing to take place. But now it's time to move past that. Over the course of this year, I want to recreate my understanding of what it means to be beautiful. I want to learn how to render unto the body what is the body's, and unto spirit what is spirit's. I have some ideas of how to begin, and I'm looking forward to what I will learn. And I'm going to journal here, to keep a record for myself and to share with others, who may also be struggling with the tension between cherishing their appearance and loving themselves regardless of their appearance.

If you're reading this, I'd love for you to comment and introduce yourself. Whether you do or not, though, thanks for dropping by!

recipe for a perfect summer day

Soon I'm going to have one of these for every season.

Ingredients:

- one merry, adventurous friend
- a small boat... a rowboat is ideal
- a jar of lemonade
- deviled eggs
- a largish river or lake... preferably containing numerous small islands, or best yet, a miniature archipelago of rocks, suitable for wading among
- a half gallon of coffee ice cream.

- optional, but recommended: sunscreen

Instructions:

Gather your friend, along with the lemonade and deviled eggs, and proceed to the boat. Cast off and row away. It is essential to have no set destination and a very generous time limit. Row upstream at a leisurely pace, finding humor in your attempts to battle the current and various small rocks that seem to follow you around. If you have both read Wind in the Willows, it is appropriate to discuss it at this time, and singing that song about ducks dabbling is encouraged.

Once you have each gotten a handle on rowing individually, you may suppose that you would proceed faster if you each took an oar and rowed together. Feel free to try the experiment, if you are both good-natured and apt to laugh at frustrations. It may be helpful if one of you has some experience with sailing, and can assert that, while it may look as though you are zig-zagging chaotically, you are, in fact, "tacking." Choose a goal: one of those pesky rocks that has been two feet away for the last fifteen minutes will do nicely. You can put all your combined effort into passing this rock, and feel a tremendous sense of accomplishment when you have succeeded.

After the goal is attained, it's a good time to head for one of those islands or archipelagoes. I cannot urge the archipelago strongly enough, especially if you are of an imaginative disposition. With your skirt hiked up or your pants rolled to your knees, you can wade between the rocks, and secretly imagine that you are a tropical explorer. Your choice of footwear becomes important at this point. Secure, water-friendly shoes will allow you to wade with the greatest ease and comfort; on the other hand, flip-flops provide that element of danger and difficulty which every tropical explorer ought to encounter. They are prone to slipping off your feet, or if they stay on your feet, slipping off the rocks beneath your feet. They provide the toes and heels little protection against stubs and scrapes, and they will cause significant drag through the water, preventing you from skipping between secure perches as you might otherwise do. The choice is yours, but for my part, I think the flip-flops enhance the experience tremendously.

Identify a good place to sit and rest -- shade is beneficial, especially if you have omitted the sunscreen. Return to the boat to gather your provisions, and sit in the shade, eating your deviled eggs and drinking your lemonade and commenting on such small delights of Nature as present themselves to your eye. When you are both well-rested, return along your perilous path to the boat.

Now you see the tremendous advantages of rowing upstream at the start of your journey. Your return voyage will take less than half the time, and all you will have to worry about is steering around obstacles. Now is the time for rest and reverie and enjoying the beauties around you: the bright wildflowers on the small rocky islands you pass; the damselflies courting; the lazy beats of a heron's wings, with its wingtips just touching their reflection in the water's surface. Gather in these things and save them; you may need them someday, in some darker time.

Land your boat; return to your home; change into cooler, drier clothes. I hope you have not forgotten the coffee ice cream. This is the time for it. Serve yourselves two generous bowls, and enjoy.

notes from the forest-dweller

Heya kids. I know it's been an age since I wrote any kind of update. Here are the latest news bulletins, ponderings, and other stuff:

- I've finally begun working on a detective story. A post-apocalyptic detective story, to be precise. No, you can't read it yet. But I thought I'd announce it, so if you're ever hanging out with me and I get this vague distant look in my eyes, you'll know I'm probably plotting murder.

- One of my oldest friends is getting married today! I'm so excited for her.

- I've started working as a tech at the hospital. This means several things:

a) I get a small raise, in theory at least
b) my feet hurt when I get off work
c) to trade-off for the feet hurting, I get a lot more introvert time in a workday
d) (best for last) every day, I get to see the weird, messy, and thrilling event that is a birth.

- We're almost through the fourth season of Doctor Who. In spite of a terrific companion (I'd never have guessed I'd become such a Donna fan) it's indisputably the weakest season of the new series so far. But hey, it's Doctor Who -- even when it's bad, it's good. And I hear Steven Moffat is taking over the reins, which can only lead to good things.

- Amazon.com gets major kudos for doing the right thing. I (stupidly) signed up for one of those "free one-month trial, we'll renew you automatically at full price unless you remember to cancel" deals, just so I could get my dad's Father's Day present on time. And of course, I did what everybody does on these deals, and forgot to cancel, and wailed in horror when I saw eighty dollars suddenly subtracted from my account. But Amazon, may a thousand blessings rain upon their heads, has a policy whereby if you cancel before you ever use their service, they'll refund your money. And they stick to it! So kudos to Amazon, who only takes advantage of suckers a little bit.

And to wind up quickly (because I have to go get ready for the wedding now... oh by the way, another person who did the right thing is Jenn, the aforementioned old friend who's getting married today: she picked a very pretty bridesmaids' dress, which I will be able to wear, happily, on many other occasions. Yay Jenn! And congratulations! And have an awesome time in Ireland!)

AHEM. To wind up quickly, despite my tendency to digression and rambling:

- I have rejoined the Jesus club. What? Yes. I know that's an absurdly big announcement to make at the end of a rapid-fire news bulletin, but I want folks to know, and I don't feel like writing a big long blog about it. At least not right now. I'd rather just talk to people about it individually... so if you want to hear more, holler at me and we'll have coffee or I'll write you a letter.

DEATH and DOOM and DISASTER

There are some bad things that can happen to a person in this world. One of the worst ones is to have written a long piece of work that you kind of liked and had high hopes for, only to discover that your computer has erased it or your little sister has burnt it or some such. That is a calamity that can undo the strongest of souls, and I don't really like even thinking about it. But let me tell you about another thing that can happen, that's not quite as bad but still pretty devastating.

Suppose there's this puzzle, right? On this website, maybe? And suppose you discovered it a while ago and thought it looked cool, and sat down and tried working it out, and quickly discovered that it was going to be a bigger task than you thought, but also a pretty interesting one? And suppose you had spent the last several days going back to it and trying new ways of working it out, and had many times been tempted just to look at the answer because you really wanted to see the solution? But you always resisted because you knew it would be ten times more satisfying if you managed to solve it yourself?

And then suppose, on your fourth or fifth day of looking at this puzzle, you went back to the website with a fresh new way of working it out all lined up. And then you discovered that it was gone. GONE. Replaced by a totally different puzzle, about some stupid cities in Europe or something. No trace of it remaining anywhere. And no way of finding out what the solution was.

I think that would be a pretty horrible thing to happen, and could sap a person's will to live, at least for a couple of hours.

In other news, the International High IQ Society is henceforth my mortal enemy for life. You will RUE THE DAY, International High IQ Society! You will RUE THE DAY.

top ten, on the evidence

Yesterday it occurred to me to sort my entire iTunes playlist by play count. (That makes it sound as if I went through them one by one and ordered them myself... not entirely out of character, I grant you, but happily iTunes does it for me with the click of a button.) The top ten are as follows:

10: Greensleeves - The King's Singers
9: Libera Me, from Faure's Requiem
8: The Girl Who Fell from the Sky - (main theme from the soundtrack to Castle in the Sky)
7: First Impressions - Yo-Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer, and Mark O'Connor
6: Born - Over the Rhine
5: The Destruction of Laputa - (a choral version of the main theme from Castle in the Sky)
4: Sister - Sufjan Stevens
3: Corpus Christi Carol - Jeff Buckley
2: Agnus Dei, from Faure's Requiem
1: Black is the Color of my True Love's Hair - Nina Simone

Interesting that none of the songs I call my top three (Hallelujah, The Boxer, and Isis) are on the list. I think this is mainly because I mostly listen to those songs on CD. But it's a pretty good sampling anyway. Evidently I listen to songs on my computer a lot when I need soothing-- a lot of those are high on my "songs to calm the troubled spirit" list (particularly "First Impressions" and "Agnus Dei.")

Well, anyway. I thought that was mildly interesting and wanted to share. Y'all should post yours as comments. Come on, it'll be fun!

the second thing that made me grin like an idiot today

I was going to write a breezy post all about what I did on Valentine's Day, but then I started reading Rinkworks' I Think feature. It's been a while, and I'd forgotten how brilliant it is. So here is my Valentine to you, and to Sam Stoddard as well (he deserves one from me, after all the years of enjoyment and thought-provocation his website has given me): click this link. Read. Refresh. Repeat.

http://www.rinkworks.com/ithink/

It's good stuff.