frontier hair lines

yes, I'm having the bad hair days now.

the timing they predicted was pretty much spot. three weeks.

one time when I was in New York with lisa, when she lived there, I hadn't had a haircut in quite awhile and was looking pretty shaggy. we came up with an idea we thought would be fun, which was to spend a little too much money and get me a haircut at The Plaza Hotel.

it was fun, until I looked in a mirror when it was done and saw my father's face staring back at me.

that's kind of what I looked like yesterday.

now, you could do worse for hair than either him or me. I don't remember his hair turning grandpa white...it became more ash blond the older he got, still quite viable...or really receding into infinity...there was a hairline, but again, the envy of his age group. I always felt I would also be lucky in that way.

and so have I been.

as far as vanity goes, there's a lot of stuff I'm pretty vain about. I get uppity when someone challenges my word choice. I get pouty playing trading leads with a more talented guitarist than myself. I wasted some hours once arguing with a guy who thought The Beatles had no talent.

I don't know that I've been vain about my hair. I've never thought it looked ok...always off kilter to me. no one else seemed to have trouble with it...

in my "hair vanity" file, I always find these lines from "Just Like This Train" by Joni Mitchell, from Court and Spark:

Settle down into the clickety cIack

With the clouds and the stars to read

Dreaming of the pleasure I'm going to have

Watching your hairline recede

(My vain darling)

so I don't feel like I'm losing my raiment. and I know for a fact that I am surrounded with people who will see me when they look at me, hair or nowhere.

the John Lennon caps are on their way from Britain. I'm heading into a kind of isolationist chemo week Monday, so only the girls will see the transitional me's, I'm thinking.

in a few days, all gone. eyelashes too, they say.

I haven't had the predicted clumps so far, and I'm still vaguely presentable. yesterday was the first day I stood in the bathroom and cleaned the hairbrush a couple of times. lisa asked to come in, and I said, I'm warning you, I'm having a bad hair day.

she came in anyway, and stared with horror on her face. just watched, frozen.

later that day I said to her, you know, that would have worked as a private moment for me, too.

so, how is all this for me?

new.

certainly not unlike some nightmares we've probably all had.

the shock of the new.

shadowy.

but I'm the guy that immediately assesses the damages in a hard situation. can I still drive the car or is it totaled? I lost this...do I still have that? look...still walking. can I still do the gig tonight?

I'm a compulsive manager. how do I manage this new situation? what is perspective?

perspective is...this was predicted. therefore, by Bennett rules, we couldn't count on it happening. but if it does happen...we can't be surprised.

why is this happening? why am I losing my hair?

because I am making a firebreak in my body. because I am taking in "poison", as Stew Greisman called it, fighting the cancer's dictatorial lust for life with some very very very controlled death.

I need to want to live even more than this out of control growth does. and there are going to be some blackouts in the war effort.

it's my hair. it's not my voice, my playing, my particular mental orientation, my eyes, my legs, etc. etc. etc.

and I am given to understand, it's temporary. people have seen hair loss from chemo grow back fuller than before.

given the chance.

so, faithful readers of the blog will know just how I intend to cope with this something-short-of-a-tragedy:

yes, the free association school of medicine. the Henny Youngman grief control clinic. Google Center for the Healing Arts.

"when I get older, growing my hair, not so long from now...."

"as I get older, they say my hair is thinning.

but, who wants fat hair?"

yes, the classic I expect to hear at least once from a well meaning friend:

"hair today, gone tomorrow"

better, to me, my favorite Burma Shave signs of all time:

within this vale

of toil and sin

your head grows bald

but not your chin

Burma-Shave.

(actually, whenever someone says something a little too ponderous for that person to really contain, I will often add "Burma Shave" to their observation...)

"I'm not losing my hair...I still have all of it, in this box..."

from my beloved Police Squad tv show..."and where are you from, Baldymore?"

Jefferson Airplane (Hairline) had no such thing in mind on their lyric sheet for "The House at Pooneil Corner" from "Crown of Creation"...they were just trying to get away with being naughty when they said,

& you wonder what you can do
& you do what you can
To get bald & hi

yup...I'm getting balled...heh heh ... heh heh...

guess the Beach Boys have a song, "She's Going Bald", predating Persus Khambatta by a number of years...

oh, no, I'm not done. more later...