I met my new hair guy tonight and he is swell to the hip-and-oh-so-cool and back again. There are people I meet who make my soul vibrate like sound waves hitting it the second I shake their hand. Jesse Gray is one of them. We talked all things life; his favorite book is Inspire, a title that sent me straight to Amazon. He likes the Bourne Supremacy trilogy, unless he's in a comedy mood; in which case he'll be watching Dumb and Dumber. He has a son and a wife who is "amazing and smart". Jesus is his homie and he loves people, which I find particularly fabulous. The haircut is never the thing, says Hair Guy. It's always about the relationships. I can dig a person like that.
I told him that I write. That I like words. That what usually happens is that I write in my head constantly about what's around me and how it hits me. That a title will dawn on me and all the words rolling around in my head gather around it like bugs around a light bulb and form sentences. "I'll write about this encounter tonight", I told him. What will you say, he wanted to know. I'll know it when the title comes. And then, just like that, I remembered what he said when I sat in his chair and he told me how he was going to cut my hair. "I'll strengthen your perimeters," said Jesse of the Hair.
Encounters with others, when we're paying attention, can do that; shore up parameters that have gotten jagged or angry; closed off or wounded; despairing or apathetic. Perimeters can fold up on themselves or strangle. So we, Jesse and I, in the time it took to cut and color, paid attention and dared to be real where an hour before we were strangers, and made no requirements before we'd take down walls. That's how friends are made and hair is cut.
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