I Just Can't Help It

Every six months or so, there is a Mark Morford column that I can't keep from swiping-and-pasting here. This is one of them, from yesterday's Chronicle.
The purple paragraph is my favorite. I love this guy.

Should You Shave Your Head?

After all, those follicles hold all sorts of secrets. What sort of ritual do you need?

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

Friday, March 9, 2007

We are, after all, big walking talking mutating singing sparkling reeking gobs of hot radiant convoluted energy.

It's true. Energy is what we are. Energy is what it's all about. Science proves it. Physics licks it like a massive popsicle of overt obviousness. We are, ever and always, pulsing and vibrating and spinning at a deep cellular level, at an atomic level, at a spiritual level, a curiously random swarm of electrified molecules and waves and probabilities, all inspired and inbred from the original star dust, and perhaps the most vital thing we've forgotten in this life is that we are actually rather insanely powerful and we can essentially control and manipulate and squirt out that divine energy at will.

Which brings me, quite obviously, to shaving.

No, not shaving of the male crotch, which I wrote about just recently with much touching insight and tender profundity. I speak of shaving the head. I speak of ritual and change and the cleansing out of energies long stagnant or tired or simply in need of a karmic rekindling.

Is it not quite a thing to do? Is the hair, in particular, not one of the more interesting and potent repositories of energy and is therefore shearing away great heaping sweeps of it not potentially intense and dramatic and effective? Of course it is.

For the record, I do not care a single yelping whit about Britney Spears. In fact, I care so little about Britney Spears it makes my concern for, say, Mexican asparagus import tariffs or rare Italian porcelain teacups or Lynne Cheney's secret lesbian spanking fetish seem epic and vital and radiant by comparison.

But then Britney went and did that crazy stupid adorable cry-for-help thing and shaved her head completely bald in a defiant act of silly ugly kick-ass rehab-ready inanity, and it reminded me that, oh yes, what a powerful thing the hair can be -- even if you're only doing it to, say, stave off the shrieking demons of pop-celebrity insanity or so the divorce judge can't ask for a hair sample to test for past drug use. Hey, if bored, vapid pop stars are good anything, it's as reminders of fascinating phenomena they have nearly zero true comprehension of. Mmm.

This is what any good mystic or energy worker worth her herbal tinctures will tell you: Hair follicles are a potent form of memory. Hair is a rather formidable type of cellular energy storage (not to mention a scientifically valid record of behavior that can go back thousands of years), and if you have longish locks those particular tresses have been clinging to your head and recording your id and storing up your life lessons for years, through all manner of drama and trauma and nipple fetish and broken relationship and refreshing orgasm and new iPod model.

Put another way: Nearly every other part of the body, all other tissues and cells and sinews, generally regenerate and replace themselves in a matter of weeks or months. Only the hair hangs around like the taint of love, like a long, flowing reminder of where you've been, like an intimate ticker tape of time.

This is why it is so potent. This is why it is so revered. And this is why it is often the first thing to take a hit when serious change beckons. Ask any female you know: If the long-term boyfriend or husband goes, a dramatic haircut is rarely far behind (of course, men can trim, too, but we tend to have so much less hair that our follicular memory only goes back to, say, the last season of "Family Guy"). Do you need to pull a full Britney? Do you need to shave it all? Well, how much do you need serious drama and a deep cleanse? What sort of ritual do you need?

I speak, of course, from experience. I speak of just recently separating from my amazing longtime SO, and naturally the first thing she did was go right out and get an adorable and rather dramatic new haircut and the first thing I did (given my lack of lengthy tresses) was, well, head to the paint store.

See, here's the good news: Shaving and trimming aren't the only effective spankings of change. I love the idea of dramatic haircuts but also of, say, repainting the bedroom or throwing out your entire wardrobe or burning your old couch, the one you romped and groped and fought upon so many times with your ex-wife, of torching it in a huge ritualistic wine-infused orgyblaze at the beach on a warm summer night when the moon is low and the stars are grinning and the memories are sighing and the police are, you know, elsewhere.

For me, this was the first step: Post-split, I bought four gallons of Ralph Lauren's finest for my bedroom, all to remake the energy and refresh the space and by the way it's not necessarily about trying to kill or eliminate those hard-won memories (which are often precious and cherishable, deep and wet and everlasting and good); it's more about offering up space for change, refusing to stagnate, refusing to wallow or remain in temporal lockdown.

It's about letting the spirit evolve. It's about recognizing the need, that urgent, antsy sort of restlessness in the body, and honoring the feeling to move and shimmy and snap out of old patterns and beliefs and this is true even if it only involves rearranging the furniture or buying a big new television or throwing away all your old underwear or cleaning out the sex-toy box. It is, in a word, mandatory.

Could it be more simple? Could it be more obvious? But could the idea of ritual cleansing be less appreciated in this culture? Because here's the thing: Everyone already does it; everyone feels the need to move and shift and burst out, but we often don't know how or with what sort of intention we should offer it all up.

You gotta be a little bit fearless. You gotta be a little bit crazy, a little bit uncertain, a little bit Britney with how you dance with the energy. And you gotta notice it when you do it. Here's the trick: Those things that you feel most terrified about releasing, that seem to contain your entire identity and without which you wouldn't fully recognize yourself, well, maybe they should be the first things to feel the razor: jobs, cars, hair, photographs, bedsheets, houses, ideologies, religions. To what do you cling? What holds all your fear of change?

Trim it. Paint it. Rearrange it. Burn it honor it love it remember it and then, maybe, shave it. Shave it all. See the bare, lumpy, gorgeous scalp underneath. Then regrow at will. What, you have something more important to do?

---