Hair, Long Beautiful Hair

Gimme a head with hair, long beautiful hair
Shining, gleaming, steaming, flaxen, waxen
Give me down to there, hair!
Shoulder length, longer (hair!)
Here baby, there mama, Everywhere daddy daddy...HAIR

Hair is more than a physical part of the body.  Clearly in the Western world, where we enjoy great freedom of expression, hair is a feature of personality identification.  I don’t know if we can even help it; hair and ego are inevitably braided.  As a brunette child dazzled by hair the color of the sun, I longed aloud to have “yellow hair” – up until the time I discovered the mysteriously powerful effects of the sultry.  Powerful effects.  Hair has power.  Samson knew that.

But hair holds more than ego identification.  There seems to be a soulful element to it, a  spiritual significance I have tangibly felt my whole life.  There was a knowing without knowing that nurtured my fascination with hair before my generation adopted hair as the symbol of rebellion.  When I was a child and Mama would cut my hair and make me get a permanent, I cried.  When I finally cut my long pony-tail, I saved and wrapped it in paper for years, as if a limb had been extracted that I could not bear to discard.  When I played the role of Heidi in a school play, for one day I got to wear my hair down and go barefoot.  I have never been more beautiful, powerful and free than on that day.

I did not know anything about the mystical properties of hair found in the Kabballa then, and I am not Jewish, but something mythical or mystical must have been implanted in the virtual DNA of my soul.  Maybe I was influenced by Numbers 6 outlining the “otherworldly” vow of asceticism: 

All the days of his vow of Naziriteship there shall no razor come upon his head; until the days be fulfilled, in which he consecrateth himself unto the LORD, he shall be holy, he shall let the locks of the hair of his head grow long.

Who knows what influences a kid?  More likely I thought control over my own hair was a symbol of freedom.  Little did I realize then that the Kabballa saw women’s hair and men’s hair differently, requiring a woman’s hair to be completely covered.  No Heidi of the Alps in that culture.

Whatever the influence, I never outgrew my love of hair.  I don’t want to make too much of it, but when my hair is short, I am somewhat a stranger to myself; when it is longer, something eternal suddenly appears.  Is it a crown, symbol, holy or just plain sultry?