Thanks to
Natalie, who found me on the Internet in the midst of hair-pulling research for
this month’s hairpisode.
September 5, 2014: A conversation with my writing
group friend Jade
launched me into a hair-brained quest:
"I'm wearing the Nirvana shirt I wrote Dustflakes
in today,” I was telling her. Dustflakes
was the first bit of short fiction I wrote and published outside of university. "Coincidence? I think not. This shirt is magic."
"Dig the magic shirt," Jade replied. "I'm
rocking mini pigtails today; I always seem to flow better when I've got my hair
up."
"There may be validity to your 'hair-up-equals-better-flow'
theory," I said. Now might be the time to mention I’m envious of Jade because
I have a bit of a pigtail fetish. I rarely have enough hair for pigtails. My
hair makes me feel as though I’m carrying a clawless, sleeping Persian cat
around on my skull, so I regularly, and I mean
"R-E-G-U-L-A-R-L-Y"—get it a) thinned out, b) cut short-short, or c)
both simultaneously. Did I mention this fetish to Jade? No. "I have to
keep tucking my hair behind my ears when I'm trying to concentrate," I
said instead. "Then again, Violet Baudelaire from Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events ties her
hair up with a ribbon when she's inventing."
As we laughed about this, it occurred to me: this could be a thing. Before I knew it,
I was on a quest. Searching for web sites about hair, I found Hairpisodes. I
emailed Claire to ask her if it was, indeed, “a thing.” She replied: “Intriguing
question – sorry I don’t know more about this.” She suggested I write up a
hairpisode.
September 6, 2014: A "quick google" of "pulling hair up AND concentration" soon became The E-Trichotillomaniac Monologues
until I found this
news article, about a study technique inspired by an
ancient Chinese scholar. The writer of the article doesn't name this scholar—fantastic
sleuthing, journalist—but I think I found him anyway: the
politician Sun
Jing.
As a young man, [Sun Jing] was
diligent in study and often forgot food and sleep. When he felt sleepy, he tied
his hair to the roof beam. Therefore, when he dozed, he would feel pain and
wake up as his hair was pulled upward by the rope. Then he would go on with his
study.
This is interesting,
I thought. The Earth is teeming with ways
to try to fight distraction until we surrender.
September 7, 2014: By this time, I’m wondering why
I’m getting so deeply into the symbolic significance of hair for the Chinese,
since I'm not Chinese (I'm an Oztrayleeahn).
Plus, I’m distracted again. I majored in English, so I keep remembering
something I once read in Imagery and
Symbolism in T. S. Eliot's Poetry by Nidhi Tiwari. In Eliot’s poem “Sweeney
Erect,” Tiwari notes the destructive winds that tangle the hair of Ariadne,
lady of the labyrinth. Tiwari identifies Ariadne's tangled hair as a symbol of
Ariadne's "confused state and mental agitation." (pg. 56)
Now to tie this messy word-mane into
a sloppy bun:
When I tuck my hair behind my ears I'm
taking my mindset—tangled from the destructive winds of thought, memory, and
emotion—by the hand and placing it somewhere not only where it'll friggin stay
put goddamnit, but also familiar to me. This illusory control over my mindset
is strengthened by concrete surrogates: words, art, and gestures building into
actions. Similarly, when I push my fringe back and it falls down again moments
later and I restrain it with a bobby pin (ensuring the crimped part is facing downward
to grip the hair more effectively), I'm parting an invisible curtain for my
third eye to peer out into an equally-invisible audience and begin an
intellectual stand-up routine called writing.
So you might wonder: heavy-lidded
from all this research and writing, will I take it one step further and create
a contraption like Sun Jing’s? For my pigtailed friend Jade, it may be a real
possibility, but for me, the hair just can’t go there.
_____________________________________
Natalie (BA USC)
lives in a seaside town with her family and fur child. When not knitting
fibres, Natalie knits words into short fiction, some of which has been
published by various literary magazines and academic journals, and one of which
is a novella in progress. She is also currently a private English tutor for A1
Tutoring Pty Ltd. She can be reached at neh_@live.com.