Haircut

This is a series of photographs, taken with a Canon AE-1 Program camera, originally compiled into a book. The book was lent to a local art gallery, run by friends from school. Those friends left the city, without warning one day and in a very big rush and we'ren't heard from ever again. They took the book. Or threw it away - kept it there to be thrown away - I'll never know. Sadly, the below images are all I have left of the original prints. The stories were a part of the original book. - 08//14/10

1.i keep waking up an hour after my alarm goes off, wondering how exactly this strange sense of panic from my instantly forgotten dream has made it's way into my room and then just as quickly, feeling relieved that it was just my alarm all along. whatever event i set my alarm for has since passed and been missed, so i go back to sleep or stay up thinking, since unconsciously listening to your alarm for and hour has the ill effect of not...

...allowing yourself to drift back to sleep again. i run through my head all the things i went over last time i allowed myself to be in a quiet room at night - last night when i was struggling to get to sleep after drinking too much coffee. i silently panic about bills that were now late, the money that never was there to pay for the bills, the girl that just left me with limited and weak explaination, how i have no matching white socks, why the world looked more interesting without my contacts on, if people saw...

...colors the same way or not. i think all this would take great lengths of time, but glancing towards the abused alarm enlightens me that all this worldly thinking only took but a few minutes and i should get up. so i do. i make it to the bathroom where i look at myself for a few minutes; i strike super hero poses, i smile, frown, grimace, check my teeth, pop a zit, see if i'm balding, wonder if i should get this or that pierced or get this...

...or that piercing taken out. then i look at my hair again. i tell myself "self, someday you're going to cut your hair" i say this everyday - i'm sick of how it looks, how long it takes to wash, (when i do, in fact, wash it) and how screwed up it's gotten after i've bleached it yellow and dyed it any damn color i've wanted to. i take a cheap brush to it, pull it into a sorry bun - sometimes with an elastic, but most often just sort of knotting it together. i have a damn fine hat anyways. i get at least my face washed and try to make some sort of excuse as why i am now late.

2.i'm walking down pearl street where i work and realize these little walks i do have been the same little walks i've been doing for years. go down the stairs from work, at the bottom, turn my head left, smile and pretend my right hand is a gun and shoot myself in the mirror while at the same time winking and making some sort of `click` sound with my tongue and check. it's some sort of 'i'm hot as hell' dance that...

...teenaged boys do in movies made for teenaged girls. i turn my head right and open the door - i stop and think, why exactly is there a mirror on the bottom of stairs? i get too amused by children playing on the rock park. i walk past them all, thinking all the mothers and unmotherly hot and cross the street towards the flower shoppe. i miss seeing this one guy that worked on the street, he kept all the flower beds in tip top shape, planting tulips...

...and roses and digging up weeds. the thing is, he kind of looked like he'd kill you if you'd ever try to like, spit at him. he's gone now, i think he's in the military. passing the flower shoppe, i marvel at how cheap two dozen roses are and oh i should buy them but to who would i give them to? i walk past the hotdog man, never buying a hotdog. i glance at the hat selling man and the hats he\'s selling, but never buy a hat. i walk amidst...

...the panhandlers and teenagers the make an effort to look like panhandlers. they always ask for change. i either get really mad - having them ask me of all people, someone wearing shoes with holes in them and pants with holes in them and an old shirt with holes in it - i either get mad, or they don't ask me. i cross another street and take a right onto walnut and take a left when i'm on walnut and scamper up the...

...stairs of the post office to check my measly po box. i get the same things every time. one letter, addressed to someone else with a po box number one digit different than mine. one letter, this time with the same po box number as mine, but with a zip code belonging to california. i repeatedly put this letter in the 'missorted' slot, thinking maybe this slot is for getting mail you put in it missorted, instead of relieving this...

...problem. i get a notice from the post office telling me i should buy stamps, as if there's another way to pay for a letter to be sent, or a notice from them stating that my po box needs to be renewed on [some wrong date]. sometimes i get a check for some reason. sometimes i get a bill for at least twice the amount of any check, except for that one time my sister gave me a few hundred bucks to pay for rent one month. lastly, i get a piece of mail from the university, postmarked for "the parents...

...f:" and then my name. i throw it all away, even the checks and bills, until i realize that i just threw away important checks and bills and go rummaging through the trash for them. i smash my pockets with all the envelopes and walk back to pearl to fetch something to eat. wherever i go, i never have to order. the person behind the counter knows. i come wherever it is too often. sometimes i don't have to pay, or i forget and...

...they seem to forget but they say hello to me the next time i come in. i walk a similar way from how i came; past the hat man, the hotdog man, the flower shop and rock playground, i open up the door to work, check myself in the mirror and run up the stairs. after i get my food next time, i should do the second part of the route walking backwards and see if the time i get back is the same time that i left....

3.it was about 6 pm, late, at least the feeling of being late. it's fall and night just sort of happens after five. i was looking at the mountains, which is easy to do when all of the west is mountains. a funny thought popped inside my head. i should climb to the top of the mountain, one of them anyways, and well, climb down. something that if you....

...start at, say, 10:00 am would seem perfectly normal but not at 6:00 pm where it's dark and getting cold and after 6, mountain lions come out, looking for stupid hikers that start hiking in the early evening in the fall. are there even mountain lions around here? i thought about hiking and walking and thinking. maybe also battle a mountain....

...lion. a big one. i bet i'd meet someone up there, i'd ask them, "what are you doing?" and they'd reply, "hiking" and start walking up a different path. after a while, i'd just simply lose the path i was on, since it's really fucking dark and i'm wearing only a black hoody and i'm thinking i'm probably going to die up here, up in the mountains. people are going to find my body weeks later, the police will...

...piece together when and where i was right before i dissapeared, and ask themselves, "why the hell did he start climbing that mountain at night?" it would be in the papers. it would be on the front page. the headline would start out as "wtf?" it would start out like that in respectable papers. no one would understand. parents ...

...wouldn't make a lesson out of me cause they'd be pretty sure their 3 year old knows better than to start hiking up a mountain at night, wearing almost nothing, is just udderly... stupid. i stopped thinking about this all and walked the rest of the way home. i went into the bathroom, took a shit, and cut off two years of hair off my head (that is, all of it) i'd been thinking about doing that as well.