Barbershop

While eating a snack in the Turkish pastry shop, D- pointed across the street and pointed out the barber's spinning pole. "What's the blue and red?" he asked. I told him it was for cutting hair. "Oh, a barber," he answered. "How do you know that word?" "Oh," he suddenly seemed blase, "from Mexico."

Really?

On the way home he insisted on going across to the barber shop. He wanted a haircut. Now understand, D- gets 'home haircuts', that is I chase him around the house with a pair of scissors, or surreptitiously snip while he drinks milk or watches a video. His haircuts are crooked, awkward but made with love. The reason is that the one time I took him to a hair salon, when he was two or so, he screamed and shook his head like a dog with fleas the whole way through, the stylist grit her teeth and snipped madly, and I cringed and wrung my hands. Not worth the hassle.

But now? Now, he wants a haircut? I am not one to pass up an opportunity when it is offered on a platter. We went into the barber shop, the local Greek place, with two old guys sitting in the back.

"Do you cut children's hair?"
"Is he a boy?"
"Uh, yes."

The barber, who reminded me of my grandfather with smoothly groomed hair and hands that were clean and strong, then set about to seduce D-. He got him up into the chair and kept up the chatter while he put on the smock and got the clippers ready. D- sat very still. He looked very very serious. As the haircut progressed, D- seemed closer and closer to tears. When the barber finished, D- looked at me and burst out crying. He said he had gotten scared and that he wanted his hair back.

Now D- looks like a little boy from the 1950s, his ears suddenly visible, a neat buzz cut framing his large brown eyes. I can't stop running my hand along the spiky edges. His hair smells like aftershave and my Zaide. I will never be able to join the ritual of a barbershop but D- allows me a glimpse. He's beautiful.

She locked me in high heels

After almost two years of having this blog, I recently happened upon the 'stats' section which allows me to get a breakdown of the traffic on my blog. First off, let me to tell you that I was under the impression that the views of my profile (seventy something views) was the actual traffic so it was a bit of a shock to see that there have been close to seven hundred views.

And where are people looking from? Mainly North America (thank you, mum and L) but also Israel, India and Latvia, among others. Hello my foreign friends! Let us sit down for some thali and falafel and (insert appropriate Latvian dish here) and talk politics. I think Harper is a bozo, Netanyahu is dangerous, the Indians seems to be doing alright with their new environmental standards for mining. And Latvia? What's happening there??

And search words that brought people to my site? "Asymmetrical haircut" is a big one. It must be such a letdown to get to my site, with me rambling about books and my kid and random stuff, instead of a well-designed picture bank of awkward haircuts. Another was "she locked me in high heels". How fucking awesome is that? My friend, you can hang out on my blog any old time. I don't know exactly how I will lock you into high heels, but gosh darnit, I'll do my best, because if we stand for anything here at AM, it is to please.

Fun.

Wolf Hall

Just finished Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall (2009). I read it, all 600 plus pages of it because I am a sucker for a prize winner. It won the Booker last year and I am easily impressed by the glitz and glamour of posh writing prizes, especially those out of the UK.

I had been unsure about Wolf Hall because the only people I had seen reading it were men of a certain age on metros and trains. Men, whose reading taste I feared I would have little in common with; men with bellies starting to bulge from grey suits, watches heavy and shiny on hairy wrists; briefcases tucked between knees, maybe reading a hardback copy but definitely not one from the library. "It seems a man's book," I said to a friend but she assured me she had seen women reading it, too. So I got it out of the library.

In case you don't know, Wolf Hall is about Thomas Cromwell and his rise to power under the reign of Henry VIII and all those shenanigans with divorce and marriage and creating a new religion in which the king is top dog and not Rome. Pardon my lack of articulateness, I feel all the good words got used up in the book. It made me curious to read more of Mantel's work. Does she only do historical fiction? What about short fiction, say a novella?

It is, in my humble opinion, a man's book; politics, detailed history, kings, not much romance, power politics, and diplomacy. Interesting nonetheless.

In other reading news, I read Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey which is a reworking of de Tocqueville's journey to the USA somewhere in the time of the French Revolution. It was great and reminded me yet again that I really must read Democracy in America (1835).

And now onto Cosmicomics that has finally come in for me from the library. Viva Calvino!