Rushing to be the last in line
I usually spend the first five minutes in the chair thinking through stressful events before I fully give in to the moment. My mind starts to wander and I realize that I go through this same mental process when I’m laying flat on the table waiting for a massage.
There is an art to using a single blade against the stubble on your chin. I could use the five-blade cartridge at home, but the monotony only serves as a reminder of the plainness in life. It reminds me of the cookie-cutter homes laid out across certain neighborhoods. Those products designed by another strategic planning clone in some distant office, serving some perceived market need.
The jazz music playing in the barbershop eases my situational awareness and locks me into the moment. The heat from the towel on my face begins to ease the tension. That tightness on my face was a complete stranger in my twenties. It is a perpetual visitor now in my thirties. That is how I know I’m stressed.
He hovers over me with the blade and steadily begins to smoothen out my face. The fingers on his left hand continue the work of the hot towel, parting the lines around my jaw line. The process is a reminder that these new harsh lines exist on my face - constantly requiring assistance to be freed. His right hand flows with the notes, erasing the marks from the recent past.
I had never been a fan of jazz. I do not dislike it. I just never had the same emotional and mental response as I did with blues, rock, and metal. The barber has made me pay more attention. It puts me in the zone, much like new age music during a massage. The weekends alone could not help me escape. These connections with people and steel are what reveal the gaps in my day-to-day.
The other connections are what trouble me. Moving in open traffic is somewhat liberating. Traffic has a real forceful way of interrupting the joys of mechanically induced adrenaline. Locked in a cage with a rubber layer between concrete and steel. The daily passage feels routine until flashing red lights cause a drastic pause.
The daily ritual to work takes its toll. I ask for a day at home and my employer makes it seem like I am trying to take something away. I am really just trying to gain a little back. Plastic covered metal wires and fiber optics have been laid across the land. Those wires could easily take me away from the road just for a day. I swear I will continue to punch away. Work has its excuses. They seek collaboration, but worry that 4 out of 5 days would not be enough, so 5 out of 5 days is treated as a must. You go along with this until it is revealed that the favorite employees on the floor have gotten the deal.
The absurdity of traffic makes all that performance useless. If high performance and productivity is the standard, why does my employer insist on letting it leak on the roadway? I am flattered that you want to see my face every weekday - but don’t be jealous, four out of seven days out of the week still gives you the majority of time over my family.
The concrete treadmill doesn’t consume any calories. The concrete treadmill just wears you out over time. It pounds through rubber to get at the flesh, the subtle vibrations go unnoticed until you flex. The tightness builds over time, causing your upper back muscles to ache. A full body massage will always be the cure, but sometimes you just need the chair, the foam, and the blade. All brought together by hot towels.
Traffic is an organism the regenerates itself twice a day, and more often on really bad days. I visualize a network trying to process an excess amount of information faster and faster. The network works against itself as it begins to overload. The great infrastructures built to support the machines of power - we are suppose to fly over the roads. Top performance stuck at a perpetual loop at five miles per hour. Mostly empty metal boxes, pulsing through the road, just slow enough so we can stare at the mirror. Are those lines really there? – I ask myself. I then realize that my right foot is currently the only part of me getting any exercise.