Scientists write about "deep holes" in your personal timeline--moments when you seem to age by ten million years. You were thirty yesterday; today, you are one hundred years old. In my youth, I would have skimmed over this--but, now, I see the brutal reality. In various photos, I have a full head of hair--then, suddenly, I do not.
"A receding hairline can be charming," says my shrink, because, yes, I talk about this in therapy. (Joyce Carol Oates recently complained about inane navel-gazing in fiction. "I'm reading Percival Everett on the history of lynching--then I have to read some white man's thoughts on his latest divorce?" ....I empathize, but maybe not every rough patch in a life has to be tantamount to a history of lynching.)
There is no universe in which I will feel charmed by my own receding hairline--so I just change the subject.
My spouse and I go to see the movie "Tuner," which features a young man named Leo Woodall. And Woodall has great hair--it is beautifully "haywire," in scene after scene. I imagine that it is Polish hair--fine, thin hair. It will disappear soon. Will Woodall get plugs? Will he take the Woody Harrelson route? Somehow, I suspect that the producers of "Tuner" want to redirect my attention....
A Reddit community informs me that, when your hair is thinning, you need to have it cut more often. Paradoxically, as the hair grows, it begins to look *less* full. When it is quite short, it is splayed in all directions, and it can create an *illusion* of youthfulness.
I have no lessons, no answers, no happy twist. This is my new normal.
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