The End of It

The end of the week, at least. Or the beginning, maybe, if you're Christian.
I have just dyed my hair a slight color: a color that is my color, although slightly different. It is still too wet to tell if the subtle slight difference will be at all visible, at all delectable or obstinately absent. Maybe everyone needs to dye their hair their own color, if only for the irony. Dye your own hair, only make it slightly different. It will be a hair meta-revolution.

Right now, "This American Life" (www.thislife.org) has Russell Banks reading one of his stories; this one about a man who becomes enchanted with the ugliest woman he has ever seen. He falls deeply into her hideous face at a bar, as enamored with her ugliness as if she is the most beautiful woman in the world. I can understand this fascination, when the crook of a strange nose becomes beautiful, when a lump becomes too interesting for words. Beauty is unknowable, and variable even within one face, in one evening, in one day. Like changelings, we are only as attractive as our slight differences, maybe. Because from one day to the next, those differences will grow and diminish, depending on how you wear them, how you present them, how you wish them to be seen. It is like writing: you give the words that reveal your crooked bits and slightly different-colored hair, your slightly different-tinged thoughts. And that is how you are perceived, at least for that moment.