Power Cut

Let me start by saying that about once a year, my hands get twitchy for scissors and I give myself a haircut that I invariably regret. It almost always ends in a chagrined trip to the hairdresser, tail between my legs. I never use the same hairdresser twice due to this most embarrassing proclivity toward thinking I can somehow do a better job than them. Historically, I can’t. But that doesn’t stop me trying, because even when I buck up and pay money for a professional cut, I’m often dissatisfied. Maybe my chronic disappointment is fueled by a melancholic temperament. Maybe it’s a deep-seated self-loathing and perfectionism predicated by the Patriarchy. Could be I just have highly tempestuous diva hair and I’ve never found the hairdresser who can manage its mercurial moods. 

I’ve never been what you would call sanguine regarding my reflection, and even I know that the change I seek lives not in the mirror but within myself. It's an itch that no haircut, however good, can scratch. Still, the rigamarole continues, year upon year. Like a reverse Narcissus, I go to the reflecting pool to stare and sigh, not with self-love but with self-loathe. Discontent continues to be a wellspring from which I drink deeply. And if I’m being honest? Now that I’m past 40 the whole thing has become SO… INCREDIBLY… BORING. I’d been conditioned to think a poor self-image made me humble and thus appealing to others, because what’s more obnoxious than a person who peacocks around like they’re Apollo’s gift to the world? But lately I’ve been considering that this is just a hackneyed trope, a lie to keep us in line, an excuse not to shine shamelessly, like the sun. In a universe of such vast complexity and contradiction, I’m thinking that it’s possible to shine both shamelessly and humbly… at the same time. But just because I think it might be possible doesn’t mean I’m nailing it, even remotely. As my own daughter reaches a pivotal age of 12 and I long to be modeling for her the most glorious expression of positive self-image, I’m still over here quietly untangling my own matted knots of media messaging, perfectionism, comparison, and profound insecurity. 

That said, it had been over a year since my last twitch of the wrist. My hair fell past my shoulders, unmolested other than the occasional washing or gathering into a messy bun. “Interesting,” I mused. “Perhaps I’ve grown out of the old hair hacking habit. Learned restraint. Maybe it’s a sign of… Contentment? Self-acceptance?” I wanted to believe that, except I remembered doing a double take on the street recently, oogling a gal with a cute short shag. And later that day, waiting in line at Target, I gave the glad-eye to an androgynous celebrity with an edgy buzz cut on a magazine cover. The next day I googled “pixie cut”... twice. I started wondering, not for the first time, if I could pull off bangs. These were all familiar symptoms and could really only stack up to mean one thing. I was hungry for a change, and this time I could be gearing up for the big one. We’re not talking about subtle layers, or a bob, or even an elegant A-line. We’re talking about a change the likes of which had not been seen since a massive blackout hit the entire eastern seaboard in 2003, a change which shifted the course of my life forever. 

I had lived in NYC back then; had slept on a futon on the floor in a shared room in a shared house near Prospect Park. On that fateful evening, the humidity had been at an all-time high and my hair, which usually hung halfway down my back, was springing out in all directions, electric with frizz. The moment the power went out, my hands began to twitch like a… a… a… well, yeah, exactly like that. Like the newcomer at an AA meeting. It was almost unbearable. The dim light through the windows was too murky to set to work on the quilt my roommate and I had been stitching together that summer. Instead, as revelers and looters whooped it up in the streets below, I felt strangely compelled to pick up our fabric scissors and chop off all my long wavy titian locks, right on down to the quick, in the fading twilight. 

Who knows what mysterious energy moves us to do things we may later regret. I certainly did not question my impulse at the time. I felt liberated then, elated! The burdensome mantle of vanity was cast aside with every fresh snip of the scissor, and by the time I was done it was well and truly dark- as dark as a post-industrial city without power could possibly be. I felt unfettered, light as air as I padded my way through blackness towards my mattress. My shorn noggin hit the pillow and I drifted off to the familiar wail of sirens and the strangely soporific neighborhood mayhem brought on by this unprecedented breach to Brooklyn’s business-as-usual. I smiled inwardly. What was happening here on this auspicious night wasn’t just any power cut. This was MY power cut.  

I slept deeply for 11 hours. When I woke and went to the bathroom, I cried out at my strange reflection in the bright, sober light of morning. I looked like a homely tufted bird. I looked like a curvaceous cockatoo. I did not appear pretty, chic, or powerful, as I had imagined myself to look the night before, in the dark. I started to cry, regret running freely down my cheeks. Passing my hands through the spiky aftermath of this poorly executed whim, I tried whispering to my reflection a mantra I’d learned in yoga class: “I’m not the body, I’m not the mind, Immortal Self I am.” I repeated this for a long time, until I had stopped crying and almost-but-not-quite stopped caring that those lustrous mermaid waves I thought I was so unattached to were literally no longer attached to me, were instead mixed up with empty toilet paper rolls, tampon applicators, and wax-dipped Q-tips in the bathroom trash bin.

“Hey, I’m glad we had this talk,” I said to my unfamiliar reflection. “Whoever you are, thanks for having my back on this wacky journey.” I grabbed the bin full of long strawberry blond locks and walked it down to the driveway, which was already baked in hot morning sunshine. I placidly emptied the contents into the dustbin, walked back upstairs and put the kettle on for a nice soothing cup of tea. I tied a fetching kerchief around my head. This helped me feel less like a freshly hatched chick, and more like a woman with purpose. At 22, I was ready to make a game plan for the next phase of my life. 

A month later, I quit my job and bought a van off craigslist. I threw the futon mattress in the back and other than some clothes, books and bedding, sold everything else I owned. I said “peace out” to NYC and all the possibility for success and love it had once promised. I turned my sights away from the bright lights of Broadway and set out instead for the wide open road and the lure of its majestic national parks. Only once did I have second thoughts; that first night on the New Jersey turnpike, heading into a torrential rainstorm. After years of using public transportation, I’d forgotten how stressful driving could be. There I was, sandwiched between two semi trucks, hurtling into a blinding rain that no windshield wiper could have matched - least of all the 2 rusted puppies barking back and forth on the front of that old Nissan Quest. The nice man who’d sold it to me had spoken only Mandarin, but he had proffered enough thumbs up signs to assure me the car was solid, beautiful on the inside where it mattered most. Squinting into the sheets of rain, shoulders grazing my ears, I longed to be back on solid ground, back on my floor futon reading Middlemarch while my housemates screamed obscenities at each other down the hall. Lonely and dissatisfied, yes, but at least safe from an untimely, unromantic death on the New Jersey turnpike. 

I had to keep my gaze fixed forward. So as not to die, obviously, but also because the power cut had cut me loose from that life and set into motion a momentum from which there was no turning back. It took every ounce of concentration I could muster to focus on the road ahead and stay in my lane. Praying for grace, I drove blindly onwards into the unknown. 

On the open road, incidentally, I met the man I would marry. As months passed and our love grew, so too did my hair. Almost 2 decades and many unfortunate haircuts later, we found ourselves smack dab in the peak of a global pandemic with raging wildfires licking the outskirts of our town in California. Social and environmental unrest were escalating as the polarization of humanity reached a zenith of dynamic tension. Shaken by the state of the world, I was unsure what the future held for humanity, let alone my own small family unit. I’d grown much in many essential ways, cut away much of what felt inessential, but I was still occasionally plagued by the anxiety, vanity, discontent and self-loathing of my younger years. The life I’d built for myself post-Jersey-turnpike had been a beautiful one, rich with lessons and blessings. Yet I remained vigilant, hyperaware that anything I valued could be taken away at any moment. By death or disaster, sure, or by some more insidious process like the slow erosion of health, or faith, or family. 

One particular night I was restless, agitated for no reason I could put my finger on, other than perhaps the destruction of my home by wildfire and/or a total collapse of democracy. I stayed up late. Too late. My family had been fast asleep for hours, and I was well past the cinnamon toast and doom-scrolling phase of insomnia. I’d made it into the tired but wired zone, that no-man’s-land where you may find yourself pacing from room to room, vacillating between obsessive deep cleaning and staring vacantly into space. I was certainly past the point of making good choices when I went to the bathroom to brush my teeth and instead started fingering the waves of hair that cascaded prettily around my face. Reaching for the scissors was the obvious choice. “At this time of night, nothing really matters anyway,” I thought. “At 3 am, everything is meaningless. What even is hair?” 

Anyway, I would not regret this. This time would be different. 

I found a pair of scissors in my office. They were children’s craft scissors, but that was beside the point since nothing mattered.

There was no loss of power to contend with now. I had a bright overhead light to guide my inexpert hand, and all the power I could ever need coursing from my solar plexus, through my arms and out my fingertips. Clumps of curls fell like heavy feathers to the floor, and with them, my worries about the climate crisis, the social climate, the racial climate, the political climate - all the climates. The final result was… actually not too shabby. I went to bed feeling like I did the right thing. “Anyway, it’s just hair!” I thought as I was drifting off. “Like it’s just late-stage capitalism and it’s just the fall of human civilization! None of it matters in the infinity of time and space!” I felt lighter, less attached to all of it. Bonus: I felt sleek and chic, like a sexy French woman ready to take on the Patriarchy, but in lingerie! Ok, so I didn’t change the world, but I had changed my mental state and could finally get some sleep. My Immortal Self had whipped out the snippers and reminded me what’s what. 

In the morning, those formerly adorable short locks were shooting out in all different directions. The crest of bangs that looked so fetching at 4am were at 10am not behaving as bangs ought to behave. This did not feel like a power cut. This felt like a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad mistake. Even after taming it with water, I looked less chic Frenchwoman and more Carol Brady after an all-night bender. I also looked remarkably like a crimini mushroom. I glared at the scissors laying innocently inanimate on the bathroom vanity and murmured despairingly to them, à la Brokeback Mountain, “Why can’t I quit you?”

As usual, the scissors were mute. They didn’t do this. I did this. 

I felt betrayed. Betrayed by my reflection, which never looked the way I wanted it to, but also betrayed by this pattern of discontent which I surely should have grown out of by now. I felt betrayed by culture, too, for the unreasonable expectations it set before me and which I’d swallowed- choked on- my whole life. I felt both too near-sighted and too far-sighted: not quite able to bring my inner gaze into focus, but with an overly sharp and critical eagle eye fixated outwards.

Neither gaze reflected the vision I had in my mind’s eye for what I actually was, which was of course a luminous immortal self. A formless being of light, radiating infinite goodness, infinite love. Except that, due to my conditioning, I admit this light-being would often morph into the shape of a goddess with flawless toned skin, a bodacious bod, and long, luscious hair. Therein lay the problem. An immortal self shouldn’t present as a goddamned goddess. It shouldn’t “present” at all. Surely the immortal self is beyond all presentation, beyond all shape and form, all identity. Maybe even the idea of a light being was too interpretive, too conceptual for what the immortal self truly is. 

Marsha, Marsha, Marsha! Self, Self, Self! All this ideation on the self reminded me of the final betrayal, the one that filled me with the most shame of all. It was my betrayal to the world. Because while society had been crumbling around me my entire life, I’d been too centered on myself to do anything about it. Even as I noticed inequity and oppression over the years, I still primarily fixated on my own flaws rather than trying to fix the flaws of a system that betrays us all when it tells us we are unworthy, too much, not enough. What was I really trying to achieve when I took up the scissors like a sword and started slashing away? Was it mere vanity or was I trying to slice away the systemic conditioning of culture, to slay the monsters in my mind? A flattering, noble interpretation, except that like Don Quixote, I’d be slashing at windmills, because… you know… it was still just hair. Twitchy fingers could be put to better use writing letters to senators, sending political postcards, holding picket signs. These restless hands could plant trees and community gardens, distribute food at food banks. The quiver could be quelled by soothing someone’s suffering.  

Stewing in a remorse more true than any haircut regret I’d ever had, I sighed into the mirror and tried an unconvincing “I’m not the body, I’m not the mind, Immortal Self I am?”  

But I didn’t believe this mantra the way I did in my 20s. I still don’t. I’ve come to terms with the fact that we are all of us all of it: our bodies, minds, AND immortal selves must have a seat at the table. They have to work in concert for it to work at all. We are the inner gaze and the outer. The compassionate detached observer and the neurotic narcissistic numbskull. We are the absolute nothingness in the infinity of time and space, and also the everythingness in the eternal here and now. Acknowledging my incredibly limited understanding of any of it, I do feel that to deny any part of myself is to deny my whole self. So I am no longer interested in transcending my body or mind to abide in some remote concept of an immortal self. My body and mind are inconvenient truths at times, but they are mine. They’re probably born of the immortal self, anyway, somehow, and as such should be loved dearly, like children- forgiven and loved even when they make poor choices or fight for dominance.

Thinking of the body and mind as children makes me feel more fondly toward them and brings to mind the first time I cut my own hair. I was 4 years old, at my grandma’s house in Hawaii. I found scissors in a kitchen drawer. My 4 year old body slipped quietly into the beautiful guest bathroom, the one with a double vanity and pink tile. My 4 year old mind said, “CUT!” And my immortal self must have said nothing, or maybe it just muttered a soft “Oh, boy.” For fucks sake, there I go again anthropomorphizing the immortal self. Whatever. The point is, when I emerged I had bangs, tiny little spiky bangs that sprang forth like a patch of mown grass across the top of my forehead. I was so damn proud. “Look at my haiwdo,” I cried out gleefully! My mom was… startled. She tried to fix it by cutting the rest of my hair shorter to match. I apparently thought my bangs looked snatched when I looked in the mirror, but my enthusiasm was dampened by the mirror others held up. Maybe that was the beginning of me letting the world put a dull on my shine. That’s how I entered kindergarten: spiky bangs and a choppy bowl cut, in a gingham dress with a lace collar. A bold dichotomy, straight out the gate. I love that little ragamuffin, and I’m learning to love all of who she is becoming. 

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that I got a haircut only this week. All that oogling and googling of short-haired lasses’ tresses- it led me not to the fabric scissors, or craft scissors, but to the booking of an actual haircut, with an actual hairdresser- like a grown up! I paid $100 for a cut, then when I woke the next morning and it was puffing out around my ears like Princess Lea earbuns, I went back to the hairdresser for a modification- like she said I could, like a grownup! But that still wasn’t quite right, so that night I ended up just chopping it all off in my bathroom anyway. Of course I woke up awash in remorse. Old habits die hard. But like my mom did when I botched my bangs, I’m going to make the best of it. Like my 4 year old self did, I will celebrate this utter ridiculousness with a resounding “Look at my HAIWDO!” And as I look in the mirror and pat curl-defining serum onto the fluffy Q-tip effect up top, I will audition some new mantras for the next phase of my life: I am loveable, but more importantly, I am loving. I am beautiful, but more importantly, I create beauty in the world for others to enjoy. I am WHOLLY imperfect, but more importantly I offer my whole holy imperfect self as a gift. I let my freak flag fly for the benefit of all beings infinitely across all space and time and right on back to the eternal here and now.