Painted, Pierced, and Past

I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter, my great army, which I sent among you. — Joel 2:25

I don't like getting haircuts, not so much because I'm an old hippie, but because — barber shop or salon, it's just a waste of time.  I have electric clippers.  On occasion I have buzz-cut my hair myself, which seems perfectly satisfactory.  However this results in a conversation about me not caring what I look like, and I really can't argue with that.  In order to maintain peace and harmony, I usually just avoid a haircut as long as possible then allow myself to be dragged along to the current shop of choice — rarely the same one twice, because, of course, a hair-cutter rarely "does it right", and if they do, they seem to move on to another shop before my next shearing. 

Earlier this week I was hauled out to a local "college" of cosmetology.  The prices are lower at these places because the customer is really a crash test dummy for the apprentice head shrinker — lower being a relative term.  I used to get a fresh, sharp flattop every two weeks for a dollar, and no one thought of tipping the barber.

Now you have to remember that I don't get out much.  Every once in a while I have to go down and see the freaks in Austin, but that's been going on since Darrell Royal wondered why Willie wanted an earring.  I get up to the roots of yankee-dom about every seven or eight years or Madison or Columbia, and, again, I expect to see the strangely appalling.  Meanwhile, I go to the grocery store or the discount club to carry the heavy stuff.  I go to church now and then.  I wander around Bass Pro or Cabela's.  Otherwise, I'm mostly sitting in front of my computer or working around the place or out on a bike.

In other words, I don't see large groups of younger people — like under forty — on a regular basis.  I certainly don't see large groups of male hair dressers.  They don't look like Floyd.  They don't even look like Gomer.  I guess this is what they mean by culture shock.  Seriously, when did non-convicts start getting tattoos on their knuckles?  The little guy who cut my hair — and let me hasten to add, he seemed like a really nice kid with a good sense of humor — had his entire left arm covered in ink.  He had metal in his eyebrows.  The slightly taller but equally skinny Asian instructor was the one with the tats on his knuckles.  He had metal in his lips and eyebrows and both arms inked.  He had popped probably $300 or $400 for the marvelous oxfords he was wearing, and these ain't your daddy's Florsheim's.  There were three or four other guys there, all with roughly the same appearance, though one looked a little more butch than the rest. 

These are the people who share a warped worldview with the Europeans and the left in this country.  They are not bad people.  They are out trying to earn a living.  They are the froth thrown up by the waves of history, as insubstantial, ephemeral, and transitory as the financial bubble they presently inhabit.  They will buy a scooter or a Prius, peruse Uncrate, Gear Patrol, and Cool Materials.  They will recycle and worry about climate change.  They will spend their money looking fabulous, their time watching cooking shows, and their souls seeking relief from the emptiness.  They will try to create a family, carefully assembling the parts like a un-savage cargo cult, mimicking the appearance, numb and cut off from the essence. 

I don't hate boys like this.  I pity them.  And they are boys.  Lost boys — their manhood denied them by a demonic swarm of cutters, hoppers and destroyers.  They are barren and unfruitful.  Don't think I'm picking on homosexuals.  Not all these boys are gay, but they are all boys who show very little sign of ever growing up even if they do manage to reproduce.   But when the bubble bursts — and it will, I don't know when — I cannot imagine what will happen to them.  Perhaps they will find themselves.  They may have manhood thrust, as it were, upon them.  Maybe that's how we all get it.  Ink is a lot harder to forget than shoulder-length hair, pink paisley shirts with Flying Nun collars, and purple velour pants, but I'm not sure it's that much different. 

God's promise remains the same in every generation.  He is able to restore all that has been lost and more.  As He did with Joseph, He enables all of us to forget the pain of the past and to bear fruit in the land of our affliction.  When we return to Him with rent and broken hearts, the wind of the Spirit will arise, and the locusts will be swept into the sea of forgetfulness.