Road Effects

Driving this morning provided a new visual experience for me. Thin snow layers drifted across the road the way sand shifts on sand dunes in epic movies where people must make long journeys across the desert.

I dreamed last night that my dad was blow-drying a mannequin with a round brush. Mind you, he was catching hair underneath, but I could tell he had done it before and had just never told me about it. He was in my classroom, working on Shelby the mannequin head, like it was his closet passion, like my new education choice had awakened in him this desire to learn the same things.

Like, instead of going to gun club meetings, he was really going to sit in on night classes at pulse beauty school.

I didn't know whether to be impressed, or jealous, or horrified that the father I thought I knew was a lie.

I also dreamed about the TV show "being human"
And taking a walk through strawberry fields
But you couldn't see the strawberries because they were covered with bouncy, sticky, awesome-to-play-on marshmallow fluff that was browned on top.
And there were fields of mushrooms too.
And there was some sort of dissonance in fairy land where all the blond people were going gray and turning into greedy monsters inside who could lash out at any moment, and some of my traveling companions had been blonde, and as they turned gray, I began to distrust them.
One of them was my younger sister.
I don't have a younger sister in real life.
Apparently the blondes were not having more fun.
At the end of this long journey
Where I kept deviating to roll through the marshmallow fluff
We sat on picnic tables with our feet on the benches
And our parents came in trailers with peanut butter and jelly to ask how it was and take us home
And there was no epic monster fear
Or fairyland
Or vampire stealing blood and catching a skin-pitting disease from a cancerous patient he killed in a "coup de grace" which was really just hunger and fear of being caught stealing from the blood bank in a hospital
Or werewolf catching the skin-destroying disease from his vampire roommate
Or dark, soaked scene in the rain where the two confront some Gandalf-figure and he tells them he won't help them because they brought the trouble on themselves
Or tribal leader dressed in animal skins wading through the strawberry fields to warn of the blonde uprising.

Even if Dad is a closet hairdresser, it's much better sitting next to him on a bench than going through all that.

It's like finally getting through Candy Land and getting to knock your piece onto the carpet!

Sad Eyes

I'm sitting alone in my school on the couch and I am so content.

It takes so much effort to be around people.

For some reason, nobody came to this corner, this comfy couch, except a few nice people who didn't try to talk to me.

Right before I left the classroom, soon to discover this place of rest, a girl told me I had such a spirit of happiness and she would certainly tell me the day that I had a sad face.

This is now in past tense.

The sad face was to come sooner than than I expected.

I found out as my teacher made an announcement (directed at me) to the entire class that the comfy chairs I had been sitting on were off-limits and were basically part of the teacher's lounge.

I was so embarrassed and wanted to cry.

I asked in front of the class if she was talking about the seats I was sitting in and then apologized much.

Somehow I felt that I redeemed myself in that way.

But the thing is, I didn't know so I shouldn't have felt bad. And so my bliss wasn't wrong while it was happening.

I went home and decided it was a good day after all.

After a five
Hour
Nap
Full of dreaming
And resolving in my sleep.

Green Light

Driving around after an ice storm is a beautiful experience.

What I mean is the trees buckling under the weight of this beautiful ice, strong and immovable trees, not breaking but yielding to the wight of solid water.

My favorite part, though, was when the ice began to fall. It was as if God was glittering the earth. The sides of the roads I drove on were covered in shards of bright, sharp, glass-like ice.

Speaking of glitter, have you ever noticed that glitter glue never works?  Ever. It's like, you buy it, and the tube his too hard to squeeze, or it only squeezes in the middle and you can't get any out of the ends. And then you get frustrated and put it away for a year and it seals SOLID shut, because it is glue, after all, and then you end up cutting it open. Why doesn't Roseart just give us a dang jar?

I'm sitting on a train now. This train is constructed in all shades of gray and has fluorescent lighting that gives a yellowish cast.  The funny thing is, I think if I redecorated this train in rich blue velvet and gold-leaf ceilings and French wallpaper and dark wooden hand railings, it would still be the blandest place on earth. Even if there were incandescent lightbulbs. It's just the nature of being on a train - the movement, the feeling of necessary evil-ness of getting from here to there.

I am also wearing lace floral tights, a peach dress, floral boots, an aqua long-sleeved shirt and a light blue scarf.

Dress code at school is all.  Black, and Today is Saturday. 

I saw a quote by Will Farrell that goes something like this: " before you marry someone, you should make them use a computer with really slow internet to find out who they REALLY are. "

I'm glad no potential mates were with me in Kenya. Kenya has pretty sketchy internet.

When I ran track as a sprinter during high school as the slowest member of the team (every team needs one of those), starts were very important. Hear the gunshot and GO!  I felt that I was not a pro at this. I always waited for other people to start just to make sure I wasn't false-starting.

Ladies and gentlemen, these days things are different. I am redeeming myself while in my car.

If I'm in front of everybody at a green light, I GO.

At first, I waited, hesitant because if other cars weren't driving beside me then I must be doing something wrong. But then I did a little self-talk: if the light is green, you can GO! 

So now, while drivers to either side of me are just realizing the light us green, I'm catching the next green light down the line and earning a few points for my former runner self.

Debra

Today everyone in my class is shampooing a woman named Debra.

She's a brunette with no eyelashes who never quite seems to look you in the eye. And her eyebrows are so drawn on.

She's our very first mannequin head and see are all so excited to learn how to do everything to her hair!  Each of us has exactly the same one, no doubt made from exactly the same mold, but if I stare at a few of them for long enough, I can pretend they all look just a little bit different from one another. Maybe we give them each a soul.

You have no idea how relieved I felt to succeed at shampooing and conditioning Debra's hair. I had been afraid that after our first practical exercise I would become the one student who couldn't do anything and had to get extra help for everything because she just couldn't understand, because that's what happens to me sometimes and I always thought I was bad at handling hair.

I think I'm gonna take her home this weekend and paint her up so there's no mistaking she's mine.

Thinking starry night or something.

After this initial relief I feel like u felt when I walked into the third floor in Paley library at Temple university where all of the art books were. I discovered that I was living a child's dream, just with advanced picture books - stacks and stacks of them, as far ad my eye could see. Pictures in colors I could only imagine, just waiting for me to crack open their covers.

This time it's like I get the Barbie head, except it's the real deal. Every girl wants to play with Barbie's hair, and cut it, and braid it - but I get the real hair AND the education to go with it so Barbie's haircut doesn't turn into a hack job.

Instead of fear there us now apprehension.

Last night my mom and I were talking about hair and my dad came down to talk about how this morning while it was still dark he saw a raccoon running down the street.

Talk about a change of subject.

But he tries to be supportive. He's supportive of what I'm doing, just not interested in the details. Kind of like how I tend to leave the room when my parents start to talk about finances or my sister starts to talk about her job or her new apartment.

I pride myself on being interested on what other people have to say, but then maybe I misplace that pride. Just like this one guy I met who was very interested in telling me about his social strengths and weaknesses who told me, "I used to think I was very good at dealing with people, but I'm finding out that I'm actually not good at all!"

And I thought it was good that he realized that because if he uses the words "dealing with" when it comes to interacting with people, that means he definitely doesn't do it well.

Debra will teach us all how to interact well with plastic people well! And maybe even real people, if we call her by name and talk to her and treat her gently. I have high hopes for the future of this group of future cosmetology professionals.

Beauty school

Whenever I use the phrase 'beauty school,' I think of the movie grease and the girl Frankie who failed tinting and talks to her friend with horrible pink hair.  And then an angel comes to her and sings: "beauty school dropout, go back to high school!"

So I make a point to use the phrase 'cosmetology school' to avoid those associations in my own head.

I made this comment to the class that was questionable: "I'm so relieved to meet you all; I was really worried you would all be like these really tough girls who were all pierced and tattooed and like mean and you all seem like really normal and I really hope we can be a group of good friends."

Um, so, this presents the idea that I don't like tattoos and piercings and I only like people who are like me and I also was just talking g to fill space. And it like pressures people who are badass to not be themselves.

I hope they forget unit if they didn't like it.

I hope Paul Mitchell doesn't test on animals.

That would suck.

Showers

Our bodies sing. 

Somebody told me that who knew about electrons and all the space within us. I thought it was beautiful. 

You know how our heads feel the water tempe differently than the rest of our bodies in the shower?

I change the temperature several times throughout the duration of my shower. I wonder if other people do it. 

When I was in another country, shower temperature didn't matter so much. But my hosts didn't let me skip a day.  If I didn't feel dirty, or felt like skipping a day, I had to answer twenty questions as to why I didn't want to take a shower, and unusually from srevetal people. People in developing countries are cleaner than we imagine them to be. Man - they use shoe polish over there. Do I use shoe polish?  Does my dad own show polish even?  Only people in the military and old people own kiwi black. 

But our singing bodies, these are why I believe so strongly in picking up vibes from people. Our energy is real and it travels outside of us to either people's bodies. we can feel each other's energy and it can change our lives. 

When I was in Kenya I used the word vibes and wondered a little if people understood. But I think they did.