I've recently received several comments from unrelated sources that I'm never in any of the many photographs I take. There's a reason for that (other than the limited length of my arm). I photograph as much as I do more as a type of journal than anything else. I'm out to record not so much what I might happen to look like here or there but what I've been able to witness, to see. My ten year record of digital photographs recalls the friends I know and the times we've had together. I know I was there. I don't need my face in the photo to prove it. It is enough that the visual review of what I've photographed in the past brings back so much of the reality of the feeling of that moment, much in the same way a short piece of music can for most of us.
In response to those comments, however, I velcroed a small tripod to a tall floor lamp and used my camera's self-timer to take a photo of myself. I'd also wanted to get a picture to show my daughter how short I'd just cut my hair, anyway.
Perhaps my all-time favorite father-daughter story is that once when she was about 12, she told me, "Dad, some of my friends tell me you look like Mel Gibson. I think so, too."
"Why, thank you, " I said.
With an expressionless face, she asked, "Why?"
"Because he's good looking."
"No, he's not," she said, looking puzzled.
She's 24 now and just e-mailed me today saying that "I like the haircut. It’s very Bruce Willis, Die Hard-esk." That would require a shaved head, I would have thought, but I'll take that as a complement (I hope).
The last time my hair was this short was the summer of 2002. I was in Zapata, Texas, south of Laredo, which is about as far south as you can get without being in Mexico. I was there working for and supporting the 3rd Annual World Record Encampment. Twenty or so of the world's best hangglider pilots had pooled their resources and gathered at what has been ascertained by thorough research of meteorological records to be the best place on earth for distance flying in a hangglider. Eight records were set that year (a flight of 438 miles, for example). A few more are added each year as the encampment repeats itself each summer.Looking at that 2002 photo now (above), I realize my hair really wasn't as short as my memory had recalled. I had trimmed my hair that short in Texas
because it was too hot to have anything longer. It was so hot ("How hot was it?") that my dog preferred to spend most of her time floating on a raft in the pool..What a dog. What an amazing dog. I miss her so much.
Here in the south of England in June, it is anything but hot right now. When I moved into this apartment last July, I spent most mornings on the porch, sipping coffee and lazily pondering the boats passing by in the harbor. It hasn't been warm enough yet to do that...at least not while I've been in town now and then this last month.
This time around, the short hair is for simplicity. Maybe it's an age thing; you just don't really care anymore. Is it that we get lazy as we grow older or that we have less patience for things that don't really matter? Low maintenance is far easier than actually giving one's appearance that much thought.
Additionally, I've cut it in anticipation of life on a boat for a year. Showers will be either salt water rinses (if it's warm enough) or only a once a week opportunity (if it's not warm enough). While we have water makers on our boats, both generating it and heating it require electricity, which requires generator use, which depletes the diesel fuel stores, which limits our ability to motor anywhere in an emergency. Fresh water in the open ocean, then, is still such a precious commodity that we'll be allocated roughly one shower per week. And it's more of a hot water sponge bath than a shower.
Carrie (read here if you're new to my blog or don't have much of a memory) has pondered cutting her hair short when confronted with these facts. Gasp! Please, no....it's so beautiful...but then I wouldn't blame her. All other things being equal, I prefer the appearance of long hair over short in women, yet I also admire a woman who favors low maintenance over high, so my desires are at odds with themselves. We should please our own preferences first, I conclude in the end, and let our appeal (or lack thereof) happen as it will (or won't).
For me, then, that preference is a buzz cut and shaving only every few days...or perhaps I won't shave at all.
As for showers, I'd still prefer daily ones but there's not much I can do about that once I begin living on the boat full time at around the beginning of September.
On the other hand, I've never been one to feel the need to avoid cold water. The water temperature in this June 2001 photo (with longish hair and a beard) in a White Oak Canyon water fall in Virginia's Shenandoah National Park was perhaps 15 C (59F).
The water temperature in this 14,000 ft. high glacier-fed lake in the crater of the Volcano El Altar in Ecuador in these February 2005 pictures is significantly lower than that.
I can't even begin to imagine the water temperature in this ice-covered lake outside Chelyabinsk in central Russia, in which some Russian friends treated me to a traditional post-sauna dip in January 2005. Note the frame used to keep the hole from freezing over.
So I'm assuming I'll favor cold salt water cleanliness to accumulated dirt. Then again, there's always wetwipes.
Certainly this will be enough photos of me for a while.
