ritual

I am guessing that anyone reading this blog knows the back-story on the last couple of years. If you do, go ahead and skip to the pictures, but just in case you are the reader I met last week and gave this web address to, the short story is that in 2005, I was chugging along towards completing my doctorate, living in Los Angeles, and imposing my *plans* on Orion. By 2006, the blood clots had the upper hand on my body and I was about as mobile as a couch. There were oxygen tanks and hospitals, surgery and long months of short walks. The last year has been me getting back to my life, but as Lexi points out, I was still lugging "the lost years" around with me. It is hard to write a dissertation (or do anything) when you feel guilty and crummy for not finishing a dissertation two years earlier.

So this ritual, performed in Santa Fe at sunset on my last day, was an action to release me from the grip of the past few years. Hair holds evidence of everything that goes through your body and marks the passage of time. We place a lot of value on hair, so much so that even after surgery when my hair had gone weeks without being washed and held the remnants of blood and who-knows-what, no one was willing to cut it off for me. "When you feel better, you'll wish you had it", I was told. Well, now I feel better (!!) and I am ready to get rid of some of it. Thank you, Alexis. Thank you, Jeffrey -- you give a kick ass cut!