real shabby dee

My various hairstyles have been of considerable interest to others for most of my life. In a land where you are supposedly free, people sure seem bothered by nonconformity. Although I’ve been influenced by styles I see, I’m seldom attracted to the norm. Recurringly, the way I look has seemed strange to others, but after a few years what was once an expression of my individuality seeps into the mainstream.  People who would have criticized me years before adopt the very style I once had. For now, that has come to an end as I have slipped back into normality and, therefore, obscurity.

As a child, my father insisted on a burr or a crew cut for my brother and me when just about everyone was growing their hair long. By the time we reached school age, we were wearing the standard boy’s cut or “short back and sides.” Short hair in the Seventies was not something to which most boys aspired. We begged my father for years to let us grow it out, but he was adamant that we not look like “hippies” or “freaks.” We suffered considerable ridicule and alienation for our lack of conformity until late in my high school years. My father finally acceded to our wishes and allowed us to grow it out, but not without considerable deliberation with our mother who liked longer hair and wished for us to fit in with our peers. For a couple of years, we blended in with the crowd and I had shoulder length hair by the time I was a freshman in college.

Just as my father was becoming accustomed to my new longer hair, I shocked him considerably by cutting it off. I was fortunate enough to discover the British punk movement just a couple of years after it broke and, as an avid fan, I wished to emulate my musical heroes, particularly The Clash. So, the long hair came off, replaced with a short, spiky style. Even though I was in a university town, it was still Oklahoma. I, once again, stood out like a sore thumb, but I was happy among the similarly-influenced friends I had developed. The custom at the time on campus was for conservatives and frat boys to wear a boy’s cut and everyone else had long hair. Gelled up, spiky and dyed hair was considered bizarre.

I wore my hair that way for several years, essentially settling on a style of medium length spikes on top and shaved back and sides. I eventually tired of the gelled look, which was beginning to catch on with everyone anyway, so one day I decided to stop cutting the hair on the top of my head while continuing to shave the sides. I had become sympathetic to Native American heritage, indigenous people’s rights and Eastern philosophy, so my hairstyle was an expression of this–sort of a middle ground between a Mohawk and a queue. Eventually, I wore it in a ponytail of waist length, representing about ten or twelve years of growth.

Even this hairstyle began to catch on to a some degree in the populace! Anthony Kiedis of The Red Hot Chili Peppers and Mike Patton of Faith No More wore similar hairstyles for a while in the Eighties. I am sure that had quite a bit to do with it. In the late Eighties I was drawn to reggae music and became interested in Rastafarianism and pan-Africanism, so it seemed a natural progression to dreadlock my hair.

About eight or nine years ago, I decided to go dread and got a hairstylist to help me start it. For years, my wife twisted up my dreads with hemp oil and beeswax twice a week, tying up the new growth about every three to six months to keep them tight and neat. When I first got them started, my waist length hair was suddenly shoulder length due to the matting process, but by early this year, they were back down to a little more than waist length. Needless to say, with the back and sides of my head shaved and three-foot dreadlocks, I was pretty recognizable any place I frequented.

For a person with straight hair, dreadlocks are fairly time-consuming to maintain and fortunately I have been blessed with a wife willing to do the work for many years, but with each passing year the task became more arduous. Additionally, I am now in my mid-forties and although I still have a very full head of hair, it has thinned considerably over the last several years. This resulted in many of the locks becoming thinner at the base. I even had a couple break off. So, I started thinking about cutting them off.

It was a hard decision to make. I really loved them. They meant a lot to me and that was part of the reason I decided to cut them. Dreadlocks are not meant to be a vanity. Traditionally, Rastafarians wear dreadlocks as a sign of humility. They are to set you apart from the world, to lower your status. When you are wearing them to be popular or to garner attention, you are wearing them for the wrong reason. So, although my intentions had been honorable to begin with, the fact that the became so important to me meant that I no longer deserved to wear them.

I’m of an age where I am compelled to examine my life, separating the seed from the chaff, as the saying goes. Love, unity and “oneness” drive much of my philosophy, but I find my execution of these tenets wanting. I have a great number of acquaintances and hold many of them quite dear, but very little of this seems reciprocated. I am close to my wife and my younger brother, but aside from them, I really only have one true friend. I have pursued closer friendships with a number of people throughout my life, but I find in almost every instance, I’m the one doing all the work maintaining the relationship, so I eventually give up. I obviously have character flaws or I am attracted to incompatible people; I haven’t quite figured it all out yet. Regardless of my devotion to “oneness,” I find I spend much of my time in more solitude than I desire.

So, with these things in mind for a while, I decided to cut my hair. For a couple of months now, I have returned to the burr of my early childhood after twenty years of growing it out. It’s been more than a little depressing, but now I’m getting use to it. I’ve heard that there is a phantom limb syndrome among amputees; strangely, I had phantom dreadlock syndrome for the first couple of weeks after I cut them. I would wake up in the middle of the night and feel them on my back. That faded with time and now I’m just another face in the crowd. I guess that has its advantages, too. Conformity, greet your latest adherent.

The US has been on a downhill slide for about thirty years. When I was a teenager, things were gradually improving. As hard fought as it was, women and people of color were gaining their rights and the respect they deserve. In spite of warmongers, the majority of the country stood up against a stupid, unnecessary war. A crooked President had been forced out of office. And lot of people were getting their piece of the American pie. Unions continued to organize in the face of government and corporate resistance, and consequently, there was a large, growing middle class, wages were pretty good and pensions were widely available; insurance and healthcare, affordable. The government had empowered agencies to address the lot of the poor and minorities, and to watchdog corporations and our environment. We had a relatively free, diversified press, generally dedicated to the interests of the people. The rich were asked to pay taxes in line with their privileged status. It wasn’t utopia by any means, but the future looked brighter.

Then we suffered through the idiocy of Ronald Reagan. His legacy was to curse us with conservatism ever since. I know that a lot of our problems stem from Reagan’s appeal as a charismatic, grandfatherly figure, putting the smiling face on elitism, racism, sexism, militarism, corporatism, intolerance, injustice, corruption and ignorance. These things became not only acceptable, but fashionable. Adding to our dilemma, the ultra-rich, the religious right and multinational corporations have always had resources and infrastructure far beyond that of progressives, so the deck is ultimately stacked against common folk. That being said, the true root of our problem is apathy. Too many people have given up, or perhaps, never cared. If we want to reclaim our rights, our government and our country, we have to get up off our asses, fight and win, as our ancestors did. We need a war on apathy.

Your apathy is why we have unjustly invaded yet another country for yet another illegal war. Untold thousands of innocents suffer and die for nothing more than the hollow rhetoric of your leaders and the economic desires of heartless corporations. It’s why no-bid contracts and mercenaries armies are acceptable. Your apathy allows the government to loot the tax coffers and give away our natural resources while repeatedly cutting taxes for the very rich. It’s why we are smothering in debt, essentially fighting a multi-billion dollar war with credit from foreign sources.

Your apathy makes it acceptable to fire rockets and artillery into residential neighborhoods, killing civilians in Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq and elsewhere. It permits your military to target non-military resources, like water systems, schools, hospitals and power stations. Your apathy is why your government continually sides with dictators, as in Pakistan, with royalty, as in Saudi Arabia and with terrorists, like the Nicaraguan contras or Afghani mujahideen. It’s why genocide occurs in Rwanda, Burundi and Sudan. Your apathy permits your government to overthrow democratically-elected leaders in many countries, assassinate union and political organizers, wage proxy wars and finance death squads worldwide. It’s what gives your military, police and intelligence agencies tacit approval to spy on peace groups and religious organizations within this country. Your apathy is why people can be held for years without charges and, in many instances, tortured. It’s why entire families can be imprisoned, small children included. Your apathy has allowed fascists and war criminals to occupy the highest levels of government, openly scorning the very Constitution they claim so vehemently to respect and uphold.

On the streets and in the homes of America, your apathy is responsible for oppression and brutalization based on gender, race and sexual orientation. It’s why women earn less than men and why they shouldn’t walk alone at night. It is at the root of the rape and domestic violence that women suffer. Your apathy contributes to the creation of ghettos and the lack of opportunity for people of color. It’s why blacks suffer disproportionately at the hands of the police and in the prison system. Your apathy allows gay people to be abused on a daily basis. It’s why people are beaten, tortured, and murdered because of their sexual preference.

Your apathy is what fuels runaway corporate power. It’s why corrupt businesses can lie to us, rob us, poison us and kill us with impunity. Your apathy permits corporate prisons, corporate armies and corporate crime. It allows businesses to write laws and put their stooges in charge of regulatory agencies. Your apathy permits homes to be seized through eminent domain and given to greedy developers. Everything is acceptable as long as the stockholders are satisfied.

Your apathy is why the US has one of the worst voting systems in the world and a series of questionable elections. Outright racists, failed businessmen, flamboyant wrestlers, bad actors, corporate tools and political hacks are elected and re-elected because of this. Your apathy is why people who avoided military service in their youth can become hawks in their later years without being taken to task for it.

Without our apathy, leaders would be compelled to answer for their deeds. As it is, they only respond to those who finance politics and show up to vote. If the bulk of the population was politically engaged, those in power would have to walk a straight line or suffer real consequences. If most people voted, and truly voted in their own best interest, you would never see another conservative in office. Ever.

If you spent a tenth of the time you spend drinking and clubbing, watching American Idol and NASCAR, looking at porn and playing video games, waxing your car and waxing your pubes, feigning piety in church or whatever it is you do instead of involvement, our situation would improve dramatically. If you don’t side with the human race, you’re siding with the rat race. Even if you think you are on the sidelines, your inaction encourages the basest, cruelest acts to be perpetrated in your name.

Know this: no matter how boring, pointless or insurmountable all this seems, you can make a world of difference by spending a few minutes with the alternative press, getting involved with an organization, sending some emails or calling your representatives. You must do it for yourself and for humanity. Historically, every little morsel of progress had to be wrested from the grasp of those in power. In that respect, it is no different now. Are you doing enough to change things for the better? Are you doing anything at all?

If you don’t feel this applies to you, it might actually be your complicity that is the problem. In that case, congratulations–your destruction of our country is almost complete.

Do you ever contemplate numbers like a million, a billion or a trillion? I’m guessing that most of us don’t. Otherwise, when it’s announced the government is spending billions of dollars on a war or trillions of dollars are missing from the Pentagon, you’d be hounding your representatives for an explanation. Or wondering why the “liberal media” isn’t crowing about it every night on the news.

Part of the problem is the way the words sound to our ears. It’s a nice, incremental progression: million … billion … trillion. Almost soothing, just like one … two … three, or at worst, tens … hundreds … thousands. If we take a moment to put it to practical application, you’ll see the perverse, unforgivable wastefulness we allow daily by not considering the full ramification of these numbers.

Let’s say, you make enough money to save one hundred thousand dollars a year. That doesn’t sound too bad, huh? I could live pretty comfortably on a salary of a hundred thousand dollars, but in this little thought experiment, you are keeping that much, free and clear. Even without interest, in ten years you’ve saved a million dollars! Hurray! Good for you! But don’t light that cigar with a sawbuck just yet.

Next step, save one billion dollars, right? Continuing our abovementioned scenario, how long would it take you to become a billionaire? That’s right–ten thousand years. A billion is a thousand millions, so if it takes you ten years to save a million, it’s going to take you ten thousand years to fatten that nest egg and attain billionaire status. That’s considerably longer than the average Baptist believes the world has been in existence. Bill Gates, with a current estimated worth around 56 billion dollars, must have a real backache, if he keeps that chunk of change under his mattress. And he should thank God every day he didn’t have to wait 560,000 years to accumulate it, as he would if he were playing our little game here.

So, you see where this is going, right? Using this same rate of increase, when will you be a trillionaire? Just a scant ten million years. To give you some perspective, ten million years ago, scientists believe mammoths first started wandering around, thankful for their woolly coats. According to current evolutionary theory, the entirety of hominid evolution (us and our ancestors) could have occurred twice over in that period. Do you think, even if we had evolved twice over, very many of us monkey-boys would have comprehended these large numbers, our economy and our runaway government? Probably not.

Bush just got authorization to drop another 100 billion dollars in Iraq, in a war creeping up on a half a trillion dollars in cost, much of it borrowed. The ignoble Rumsfeld, before his resignation, announced that the Pentagon can’t account for 2 or 3 trillion dollars. Let’s say all this money–3.5 trillion dollars for argument’s sake–was distributed evenly to the US population (300 million). Every American man, woman and child would receive a check pretty close to twelve thousand dollars. Family of four gets about forty-eight thousand dollars. I bet you could use that money about now.

Let alone the illegality of the war in Iraq; forget the immorality and waste of maintaining a military so big that it’s easy to lose trillions of dollars–have you contacted your senators and congressmen, demanding an accounting for these funds? Have you told them you expect extensive investigations and multiple heads to roll because of it? Have you told them to spend that kind of money on our country? Have you demanded a rollback in tax cuts for the wealthy?

Are you mad enough yet to act? Why not?

A beautiful song, written many years ago, perhaps more meaningful today than ever:

So, so you think you can tell Heaven from Hell?
Blue skies from pain?
Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?
Did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?
Did you exchange a walk-on part in the war
for a lead role in a cage?

How I wish, how I wish you were here.
We’re just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl, year after year,
Running over the same old ground.
What have we found?
The same old fears.
Wish you were here.