NEEDLING

PROCRASTINATION OR COWARDNESS ?

Couldn’t get out of bed this morning. I was finally able to step out of my sheets around the very late hour of ten thirty (I’m usually out and running – metaphorically speaking, I hate running physically – by six or latest seven !) Rough morning though, broke a glass last night while falling asleep watching a movie on my new computer, the one I can’t pay for, the one for which I should call my banker but haven’t done so though today was the day I should have called him. You must know the saying : If you can’t take it, don’t dish it. Well, in the same logic : If you can’t face your banker, don’t overdraft. I’m at work now, so I’ll call him a little later this afternoon after the maid has gone home, and if my boss doesn’t stick around all afternoon as he sometime does. The movie was a very good one, and matter fact I finished watching it this morning instead of calling my banker. And for your information, I’d drank the content of the glass BEFORE breaking it.

SHAVING

One of the multiple reasons I’d like to quit this particular job – though it’s a good job in the sense that I get along with my employer and my colleagues and I’ll certainly carry my bargain of the contract to it’s final date, June 8th of this year, no problem – but if I were to elucidate some of the reasons that I might have of WHY I’d like to quit this job, shaving would be one of them.

Shaving is one of those necessary evils I do not look forward to every morning. I’m one of those people who has to shave at least once a day if I’m to sport a non-prickly face. And my face being very white while my beard being very dark, it’s the least amount of body aesthetics I have to go into daily to be presentable within the service industry of which the hotel business is part of. I keep my hair short enough I don’t have to do anything with it except shampoo it two or three times a week. I hate wax, creams, colouring, deodorants, aftershaves, perfumes, greases… ANYTHING which smells any kind of non-natural odour or which has a icky feel to it anywhere close to my body, face definitely included. When I don’t hold a job, an important part of the last three or five years, I don’t shave on a regular basis. And that’s just fine by me.

Though not everything about shaving is negative.

Up until the end of the summer 95, I sported a full beard. One that I was quite proud of. It was thick, dark and, at least I thought so back then, manly. An important part of the very essence of masculinity, I believed strongly rightly or not (it doesn’t matter.) Towards the end of the summer, I shaved most of it off, keeping only a goatee and sideburns, that I still wear to this day. The reasons that I didn’t shave all of it off was: 1) It was already hard enough to shave off what I did shave off; 2) Shaving the whole face would mean twice the work of keeping it shaved off daily; 3) As I’ve said before, I’m lazy (laziness is not necessarily a negative trait, I want to make that clear, through laziness, if one is intelligent enough, one can learn efficiency, but this has nothing to do with what I want to talk about at this time.)

There was this elderly lady, we’ll call her Rose, I had met that summer, who, along with her husband whom we’ll call Boom, left a lasting impression on me.

Every once in a while we’re lucky enough to meet folks of their kind with such large hearts and so full of goodness, when you meet them you just want to be in the same room as them all the time. Those kind of people are often older, funny, full of life, young at heart, forgiving, non-judgemental, and did I say it already, funny. I’ve had the chance of meeting several of these older folks in my short life, but right now we’ll stick to Rose and Boom.

“Francois,” Rose said to me, holding the few sheets of poetry & stories & dialogue I had given her so as to get her opinion, while looking at me like only an elderly woman can look at a silly young man, a silly young man should I ad who hadn’t understood diddly squat about life, and she said to me, while I was expecting some sort of criticism on my work et cetera… “Francois, why do you hide behind that beard of yours? What do you have to hide from?” I started to stroke my three inch beard nervously as she continued, “Why do you hide underneath that hat of yours? What’s that hat going to protect you from?” At the time I wore a black felt hat with large rims, a hat I put on as soon as I got out of bed, a hat I sometimes slept with. “Francois, why do you hide inside that grey coat of yours? What’s there to hide from?” At the time, I wore a long grey raincoat whether it rained or not. “And those sunglasses, why do you always wear those sunglasses, hiding like that behind those sunglasses, don’t you think we don’t want to see your eyes or something?” She said all this to me with a calm voice, with her Brooklyn accent, kindly. She said those words to me with kindness. “You have lots of reasons not to hide, Francois, your writing isn’t always so good, but who cares? It could be much better if you didn’t hide so much. What? You think by hiding from the world behind that beard and those sunglasses, underneath that hat and inside that coat, what? You think you’re going to observe the world any better? No. If you didn’t hide so much, maybe you’d be happier, and if you were happier, maybe your writing, if your writing needs to be there at all, then it might become better, more natural… and maybe there’s no need to write at all. Who knows & who cares. That’s not the point.” And she handed my poems back to me.

Those weren’t her exact words, it’s been a while, but they were something along those lines.

A few days later I shaved off my beard and stopped wearing my hat, though it would be a little while before I got rid of the grey raincoat, and I stopped wearing my sunglasses when there was no need to wear sunglasses.

Often when I shave, I think about Rose and her husband Boom. That’s the reason why shaving isn’t necessarily a bad thing. BUT EVERY SINGLE DAY!