He had decided before he started filming. That much was already settled by the time the camera came on — rswfire outside at the site, clippers in hand, the decision behind him and only the execution left. So, I've decided to do it. He named the plan plainly: shave it all off, take the top to an inch, go underneath with the smaller guard. The one-inch attachment went on first, and he held it up to the lens with something close to genuine curiosity — he had never understood how the guards did what they did, how a fixed piece of plastic translated into a length. It fascinates me to no end. He said it as an aside, mid-task, the way a person notes a small persistent wonder they've never bothered to resolve.
Then the smaller one, 3/16 of an inch, for the sides and underneath, and here he named the target directly: the gray. He called it ugly and moved on without lingering, no argument attached. The work happened outside, in open air, self-filmed and unattended — no second person to hold the camera, no one to check the angles, nothing between the decision and the doing. Five or six months of growth came off in a single session. He noted the timeline himself and named the intent behind it: he had grown it out on purpose. He linked the length to conditions, stating that his life stabilizes, and that he intended to keep it at a certain length once it did. But not now. Now it all came off.
Can't show you. Don't know why you'd want to watch anyways, but you'll get to see the end result. He addressed the viewers directly, aware of them, mildly skeptical of their interest, and then cut to the aftermath anyway. The ground held the evidence. This is done. There's all my hair. A pile of it on the dirt outside the RV, five or six months rendered into a single visible quantity, and rswfire standing over it with the camera pointed down.
The assessment came in fragments, the way assessments do when the mirror is small and the person is still adjusting. I don't hate it. It needed styling. He couldn't see the back — a structural limit of self-documentation, a person filming himself with no one behind him — so he handed the problem outward and asked the viewers to report what they could see and he couldn't. Then the camera check later, and a shorter verdict: Not bad. Short again. He said he looked so different. He said it needed to happen. He said it felt clean.
The frame arrived last, and he arrived at it out loud. He recalled a woman telling him decades ago that the Chinese have a thing about hair, that cutting it starts new beginnings — a memory retrieved in the middle of the act it described. He stated the resistance plainly: he hadn't wanted to cut it, because he was growing it out on purpose, and because he didn't want to feel like he was starting over. And then, having already done the thing, he accepted the description of it. But I guess I am. No revision, no defense, no elaboration. The frame he'd declined was the frame that fit, and he let it stand.
Then he closed the way a person closes an ordinary day's transmission. Sometimes you just got to cut your hair. Good day, by the way. Hope you all are well. Outside, hair on the ground, the sides down to 3/16, and a length already named for whenever the conditions permit it.