Negril Notes

Buzz, Buzz - A new look , a new book

January 12, 2006

I just finished up another notebook. I use composition books instead of in my fancy leather bound journal, those pages are reserved for when I’m writing in sunny Jamaica.

A nice journal gives me the sense that I should be writing important things, but since most of the things I write are not, I use a composition book with Sponge Bob on it. It keeps me from taking myself too seriously, and I love the looks I get on the train or in a coffee shop from people watching the crazy guy in the corner scribbling furiously.

I realized as I was writing in the last pages of the now retired Sponge Bob “Kelp” notebook, that I’d been growing my hair the whole time I was writing in it. I wrote “Long Hair Diary ‘05″ across the cover. From June ‘05 till just this Monday I’d only had my hair trimmed once. I haven’t had hair that long since high school.

I buzzed my hair for several reasons, one being I didn’t have a proper hair growth strategy. I didn’t know where I was going with it. I never planned to grow it, I just stopped cutting it one day when a lady friend said I should let it grow. I had no exit strategy!

Everyone seemed to hate it except for Kristine. I guess she thought it was cool to have a long haired hippy freak dad, and on some level I thought so too. It kind of separated me from normal society, it helped me to stand apart, to get a different point of view.

People would ask me, “Why are you growing your hair?” and I’d answer flippantly, “Every time I plan to get it cut, I have a great hair day.” though on several occasions it was actually true.

I kind of like being looked on as a bit eccentric, but if you refer to yourself as eccentric that means your crazy or maybe a poser, so I’m not sure where that leaves me.

But I must admit the main reason for cutting my hair was plain ‘ol vanity. In this year’s Christmas pictures I looked like an outlaw biker minus the leather chaps. Not that I have anything against bikers, but I picture myself with the dark, thick, flowing mane of my youth (see above), but I realized I was headed for grey, thin, scraggly old guy hair; more Willy Nelson than Fabio.

I was going to take a picture of the back of my newly shorn head wearing my Eagles jacket in contrast to the picture above, but the bald spot was too much for me to bear.

- Vinny