Looking for More Flow

Looking for More Flow

 

I’m looking for more flow.  In my hair and in my life.  In the spirit of autumnal renewal, when women realize they need a new haircut, a new wardrobe, a new home, or at the very least, new organizing Tupperware, I decided to let my hairdresser do something different last week.

Different is not usually what I allow her to do.  Usually, I say something like this.  “Cut the back two inches down my neck.  You know how I like the bangs, shorter in the middle, longer on the sides.  Hair no longer than three inch layers all around, angled around my cheekbones, and no longer than my chin.  There, now go have fun with that artistic license I’ve left you.”

And she, sweet as can be for five years, always, gives me exactly what I want.  Then I go home, and rewash and blow it dry, to get more of exactly what I want.

But this week, I was feeling reckless and tired of wearing a hairstyle that didn’t blow in the breeze.  On the Yoga mat, I had noticed how good I was at holding on to a pose, and how bad I was at flowing into a pose.  I have a friend, who annoys the hell out of me, when she says, “how we do one thing, is how we do everything.”  Helpful advice to me, a self admitted spiritual seeker.  But like all truths that ring with the sweet notes of chalk squeaking across a blackboard, I couldn’t stop noticing how I do everything.

Like my hair. Foamed with mousse.  Blown dry with precision on a round wire brush.  Hair sprayed with extra “hold that style into the next millennium” spray.  I finish with  hairspray to the ends of my fingertips, and come up from underneath my bangs to get that just right air tousled look.  When I am done, my hairstyle looks perfect and chic, or like a helmet, depending upon whether you are asking me or my daughter.  I feel safe and protected ~ from the wind, from the rain, from flying objects at my head.

But recently, the “how you do one thing is how you do everything” mantra was dancing through my day, when I realized that the way I approach my hair ritual is a metaphor for my life.  I use resolve, care, discipline and force of will to get what I need to feel safe at all costs.  Safe from a bad hair day.  Safe from looking in the mirror and being surprised by unruly locks. My hair was only one example of the way I micro manage everything in my life.  I like to control surprises the way air traffic controllers do.  Zero tolerance.

So this week, I went to the hairdresser, saw her swinging, kicky hair, that moved when she did, and told her I wanted that haircut.  The kind where the long side bangs occasionally fall into your eyes, and you have to brush them behind your ear.  A flippant, breezy, I don’t need styling products kind of do…because I’m all about the flow.  “Well” she said, “we can definitely do that.  It is all in how you cut it.  We’ll have to grow your sides out a little, just down to here, and then I will texturize it.  All I do is blow dry my bangs, and turn my head upside down and dry, and I’m done!”

Perfect.  The new me would have hair that wasn’t afraid of the wind.  I would get dangling earrings to go with my natural haircut.  My hair and I would announce to the world, that I knew how to go with the flow and let go of perfect.  I knew how to shrug my shoulders and accept that I have baby fine strands of hair, stick straight, except for the coarse, shiny grays that like to stand on end.  Why, not only would I be casual about my hair, but I would Let Go and Let God have a go at my finances, my relationships, my make-up drawer.

The new me is looking an awful lot these days like the old me, except with a bad haircut.  I can’t put down the can of mousse.  I cheat, and roll the ends of my hair on the round brush to force a flip.  I shake my head and try to spray at the same time, to capture a windblown, “who cares about my hair anyway” look.  A week into the new me this much is clear.  All I’m doing is flowing from one bad hair day into another.

“I don’t think this new haircut is working out” I say to a friend, in part to let her know that I know my hair is looking horrid.  “Why?  You don’t like it?” she says.  “Like it?” I think.  How could I, a woman of my taste, possibly like this?”  Does it look fine to her?  This worries me.  Does she not see the marked difference between how gorgeous I looked a month ago, and how unkempt I look now?  Are my beauty rituals wasted on friends and loved ones who can not distinguish between finely coiffed and frankly crappy?

I don’t want to give up on the shapeless, yet flowing hair too soon.  For one thing, it would be great to be free of the perpetual sticky coating on the bathroom tiles from hairspray.  Great to discover, that maybe I don’t have to hold on with a death grip to the way it’s always been.  Not my hair.  Not my body.  Not my usual response to life.  Maybe I will learn to flow with the best of them.  Ghandi.  Mother Theresa.  The Buddha.  Or maybe I’ll just get a haircut.