Parfois

Memory is a funny thing.

I can recall the minutest details about events or conversations that happened decades ago...not just for me but for someone else who was there with me (and sometimes who was there without me. Make of that what you will.)

People who know me well tend to describe my ability to recall things as 'freakish', sooner or later. It doesn't matter what language they do it in, either--they all use a deviation of the word 'freak'.

I look in the mirror and sometimes I honestly can't remember what I looked like when I had "my" hair.

***

When I cut my waist length hair after leaving college, it was of course as symbolic a gesture as you could dream of, and then some. The long hair was a reminder of everything I had wanted to leave behind, not just willingly but with almost a feverish desire: the limitations forced by the government and rebelled against; the expectation of demureness and maturity foisted by the invisible but still existing caste system of the educated upper middle class, back home, on the daughters of the families in that grouping; the strong, controlling streak festering under the cover of my father's unquestionable limitless love for his family.

After it was finally over, when the last cut was made and the final twist and turn of my now very short hair was done to the satisfaction of the person styling it, I looked in the mirror and tried to think of exactly how I felt. I remember that almost immediately a word jumped into my head, and it felt exactly right.

Capricious.

***

Here is another word that jumps into my head a lot these days: permanent. A straightforward word. Neither a good word or a bad word. It says what it has to and is done.

It's not a word that you hear often, though--or if you do, the veracity of the statement using it is usually anywhere between mildly to highly questionable. You have to be not just completely committed to but completely competent to handle the outcome of anything you're declaring as permanent. Even if you're doing it for someone else.

That's why doctors so rarely like to use it.

They like using it even less when it's an inevitable, irrefutable result but they have no concrete cause. Then again, who would like using it under those circumstances? How frustrating is it to have to explain that you will, without any doubt, go from B to C and remain there, permanently, but there's no explanation for how you got to B in the first place. (Was it A? A'? A''? Or some crazy X that was marking the spot?)

It's not half as frustrating as the person hearing it, though, I can tell you.

Il y a (live) - Vanessa Paradis