I think I've determined I am going to get my hair cut today. It seems like the right time. I've let it go far too long. "What a stupid thing to write about," I hear you say. Yes, indeed, it is a rather mundane concern particularly since I assume most men get their hair cut every two weeks (as the sign in the barbershop when I was a kid suggested.) For me, however, hair cutting is a bit more of an affair since I think the most I've ever gotten my hair cut in a year is 4 times. Ok that is probably wrong--I think there was a time when I got my hair cut 8 times, but that was because I was dating a woman who could cut hair.

Of course my only reason for not getting my hair cut more regularly is that I really disliked the barber my mom took me to all those years ago. There was something about him that made me uneasy. Something in the style of his own hair: short and greased-over. Something about his shop: the jackalope on the wall. The harsh noise of his foul-smelling electric clippers. The black combs in antiseptic water on his mirrored shelf. The collection of True Police magazines with racy covers.

The barber's name was Manny and I hated him.

Of course he cut hair by the book: everyone who came in his shop came out looking the same. That was the model that he took from WWII and from the 50's and he never quite adapted to the 70's or 80's. You might see the odd crew-cut hold out once in a while, but that was rare in the late 70's. I remember once hearing Manny opine to my mother that men weren't coming to his shop anymore. "Damn hippies," I imagine him saying.

When I got into high school I ditched Manny altogether and mostly just let my hair do whatever it wanted, breaking down and going to one of those Mall places with the cute hair cutting girls. That's been the pattern up until now, and Manny's influence still hangs on and I get a strange dread when I try to motivate myself to get my hair cut. Generally there are good experiences. Sometimes a cute girl cuts my hair and flirts with me. Sometimes they say nothing. So its not so bad, I suppose.

"There is something funny in thinking about a cat having her or his teeth cleaned. One can imagine a little cat waiting room with "Cat's Home Journal" or "Outdoor Cat" magazines with that plasticated furniture dentists have. Once the cat is ready to have his or her teeth cleaned, I picture him or her in a teeny little dentist chair, complete with spittoon. "Spit" the cat dentist would say, and Fluffy would bend over and spit."

Xanadu, Lisa's cat was having his teeth cleaned.

I keep meaning to get my haircut, and then when I actually put my mind to it, I end up talking myself out of it. Why? Well my reasons are that it doesn't really look that bad, and I have a burning desire to have Carl Sagan 1980 hair.

I have a courderoy jacket like that.

I think it would be fun to be a Quaker. You call everyone "friend" (as I seem to textually do anyway) and you sit in meeting and don't say anything until you think you have something to say. Of course that is an ideal--I know there would be a bunch of folks just itching to jump up and say whatever they want to fill the silence that they just can't handle, or to promote themselves. Ultimately, I think, the great power of the silence would shut them down. There is no reason to respond to them, and in my weird idea of a Quaker world, they would yammer away and, finding no response, would perhaps find some awareness in the silence.

Then again, yammering seems to be what it is all about, anyway. Cue MacBeth.

Friend Jeff recommends camping.