sunday, Sunday, SUNDAY!!!!!

well, this was a cool one. i suppose it makes sense just to go in order of events, right?

i got to play this morning. i've been playing so long now that it seems like it shouldn't be that big a deal, but for me it is darn near every time. with all apologies to my atheist friends, music is my language i share with the eternal. whatever label you want to put on it is up to you. i attend a methodist church. i play drums. and as soon as i hit that downbeat, the moment i feel a stick hit a drum and things start crashing and banging i am in a dialogue with God. i am perhaps not by nature predisposed to feeling the presence of the universal consciousness, but when the wall of sound goes up it is for me like the ultimate meditation. but loud. and physical. and good. through music, it is well with my soul. and so i thank everyone in the band and i thank God for what we laid down today, and i thank the congregation for letting me make that joyful noise in front of them. i really, really needed it this week.

part the second is a bit less uplifting. since i got back home i've had an issue. i've had plenty, i guess, but i've had one that i can control and this afternoon i did something about it. my hair was long. and it was getting crazy curly. while i was 'inside', i didn't have anything to keep it under control, so it was crazier even than normal. but i also took plenty of showers, so i spent a lot of time with it wet. the problem i had was that each time i climbed out of the shower here at home, each time i brushed my teeth, shaved, anything...i was back there. i would catch sight of myself in the mirror and it was just like i was looking at myself in the polished sheet of stainless steel that passed for a mirror in the ward. the wet curls that i had come to see as part of the way i am supposed to look became something that kicked off highly unnerving shift in the universe. i tried hard to fight through it, to let time pass in the hope that i would get past it - after all i have any number of follicularly-challenged friends who would kill me or shearing it off - but in the end i couldn't do it anymore. this morning it just became too much. so when i got home from church i ate lunch, then went to the bathroom and busted out the clippers.

i started with a good long guard in an effort to exercise some restraint, but when exorcising demons exercising restraint isn't exactly the name of the game. ultimately i ended up with hair no longer than my beard, and a major side effect i had forgotten: my beard doesn't connect to my hair line. there's a gap on each side of about 1/2 inch that only has about 10% of the hair it should. so suddenly my cure had become another disease, and the razor had to make it's appearance. i don't feel like having a clean-shaven face is an option these days - i tried that a couple of weeks ago and just felt exposed and a little freaked out. so the option? goatee, or technically, van dyke. so now i look a lot like edward norton in 'american history x', except scrawny and terrifically non-threatening.

but in the end i'm ok with it. i may not be able to do a decent barry gibb impression for a while, but that's alright. at least i can see myself in the mirror this afternoon without my head swimming and my heart racing. i'm leaving that experience behind one bit at a time, and today it was one hair at a time. hopefully that will be the last pruning i will have to do in order o move on.