February 2004 Archives

I chopped my hair off on Sunday. Not all of it, of course -- I suspect I have a funny-shaped head under all this hair -- but a good seven inches or so. It was time. I haven't had my hair as long as it was, halfway down my back, since I was a little kid, and I grew it until I couldn't stand it anymore, and then I chopped it off.

It was sort of symbolic, the purging of my long hair, in the strange way that I make all significant changes in my life symbolic. Every piercing that I've ever gotten (with the exception of the four holes in my ear lobes that I got when I was a kid) has had a hidden meaning, or something it's meant to remind me of. I never share those. The hair, though -- in my mind, that was about shedding some recent burdens that have been troubling me lately.

I've been struggling with my own involvement in life lately. It happens periodically, something like a mild-grade depression that makes me want to distance myself from everything for a while. I'm a big fan of escapism, to be honest. I haven't been called on it this time, to the extent that I usually am -- maybe everybody else is feeling distanced right now, too. No more potential stalkers have come out of the woodwork; in fact, the one I had seems to have fallen off the face of the earth.

I took a trip to the San Antonio Zoo with my friend Kara on Saturday and pulled out my camera for the first time in a very very long while. That was good, too, my return to photography. Then Sunday, the hair went away. It's better now.

So there you have it. My silence is broken, and with it gone, the writing is bound to come back soon, accompanied by new and interesting pictures. Very soon.

I have a necklace made of hematite, with a carved turtle pendant that hangs from it. It fits close to my neck like a choker, and the turtle sits right at the hollow of my throat. The turtle is a rough carving in the polished mineral, all lines and angles, but I like turtles a lot -- I identify with them -- so I couldn't leave without this necklace when I found it.

When I wear my necklace, I'm struck by the way that the hematite conducts heat. I can pull it from around my neck and still feel the warmth from my throat in the body of the turtle.

I was in a foul mood today, from morning until nightfall, and it felt like a great deal of self-restraint not to take my grouchiness out on the world around me. Every time I tugged the turtle away from my throat, it was hot on my palm, as though it had basked in the late afternoon sun, rather than sitting nestled against my throat. I took it to mean that I'm ready for another weekend very soon.

As stressed as I find myself feeling, I should remind myself that my life could be far, far worse. There's nothing like the evening news to remind me of that. I could've exposed my bare nipple to hundreds of millions of Super Bowl watchers last night, for instance.

...Suddenly, things are looking up a bit.

It occurred to me as I was casually browsing cnn.com and came across their current poll question that I hadn't known who would be playing in the Super Bowl today. It's not that I didn't know about the event; I'm well aware that it's Super Bowl Sunday. It's that I had no idea who was good this season, who made the playoffs, and so forth; and realistically, it didn't bother me much that I didn't know. (It's the New England Patriots vs. the Carolina Panthers, for those similarly oblivious.) My level of apathy was such that I didn't even realize that I didn't know until this morning, and ultimately, that's alright with me.

I intend to spend part of my Super Bowl Sunday at the Austin journaller meeting this afternoon. The place we're meeting ought to be pretty quiet, since the rest of Austin will be off flushing their toilets simultaneously during halftime.

Interestingly, I ran into a few of the Austin journallers and webloggers at the grand re-opening of the Museum of Ephemerata last night. They were all doing their part to keep Austin weird, I suppose. The museum was far more crowded than I remembered it; perhaps this is because it was a chilly evening, but indoors, the combination of the heater and body heat made the tiny place stiflingly warm. The group I was with added our own bit of chaos to the mix before retreating outdoors to sit in the side yard, recently vacated by the aforementioned journallers and webloggers.

It's hard to characterize what we were doing over there, other than to say that we were having the same random conversations we always have when C, the cool neighbors, and I get together. We were a bit startled when a woman and her boyfriend came over to talk to us. I thought she was going to ask us to hold it down, but instead, she asked if she could perform an improvisational piece for us. (Actually, I'm not sure we asked. I don't remember having the opportunity to say 'no.') And then she started talking, and I watched her with rapt attention, fascinated. I don't remember a word she said, and I certainly couldn't tell you if her performance was good, but that one moment, taken out of context of everything that came before or after it, was sublime. Keeping Austin weird, indeed.