and I Feel Fine

"Where have I been?"
Hmmn pussycat, if I hear that one more time I'm gonna stop answering, that's what I'll do. I've returned to the snake bitten small town where I used to run Mane Street hair salon and barber; I ran it for 7 years. I needed a break, I sold the building and moved on to loftier pursuits. It was a mental hiatus;it lasted for four years. I had alot of mistakes to live down, I had to find the space to fall in love with Tate. I had to recover from the abuse I caused myself. I had to journey to the inter worlds and work with all of those amazing and beautiful children at the sensory institute.
"I missed you," that's what I say.
I missed the conversations, the drama, the laughter. I feared it, the return, it's true. The truth is there is something humbling about the return to the Brier patch as if I couldn't survive without it. There is a sense of service too. It's humbling like a Guru washing dishes for the Salvation Army dinners, or Morgan Freeman as God sweeping floors, the janitor in "Bruce Almighty". No, not for a second am I claiming some type of grandiose ego perception, as if I was anyone other than myself, it's just kind of nice to have a balance between working in the realm of the subconscious and spiritual with a more concrete and predictable or dare I say it, "normal" occupation.
The entire drama reminds me of the old Jewish folktale about the man who lived in a tiny little house with his six children, his in-laws, his parents and his four grandchildren. He went to the Rabbi complaining of the crowdedness and the noise and the mess and how his family was driving him nutz. To make an entertaining story short, the Rabbi suggests the man take the chickens, the sheep, the goats , the dogs, the cats, the ducks and the donkey into the house too on consecutive visits. Then, the man is truly about to snap, he goes back to the Rabbi in his near insane condition. The Rabbi then tells him to go home and kick all of the animals out of the house. He did. The house felt much better. He never complained again.
I smile at the thought of how many people whom I really love and missed "visiting" with as I did their hair have been in to see me in the past two weeks. On the down time(and there is quite a bit of that now)I sit in my beautiful turquoise antique styling chair. I take in the town through the window on main street. I take in the colors of the newly renovated building; its' walnut stained open beamed ceilings, the track lights which gracefully curve overhead. I am happy with my re-incarnation, my new shop, "Run-In with Sheer's". I would pay money just to sit in this pretty place, I teasingly say to myself.
It's the end of the year as we know it, and I feel fine.