Under My Dome

I close my eyes, exhale, and let the rushing water separate my thoughts from the chatter around me. 

In this room filled mostly with women in lively conversation, these blessed minutes happily lift me from the surrounding dissonance.  I could be at a yoga studio or a retreat but I find this blissful escape in a more pedestrian place.  I'm not in some deep meditation.  I am having my hair washed at the salon.

 It is a personal top ten moment of relaxation.  It's also guilt free.  Normally, hair is washed before it is cut, so it is a means to an end.  I find it the best step in the entire hair maintenance process.   Good grooming is its own reward, but having someone massage/clean my scalp to reach that reward trumps whatever comes before or follows it.

Unlike much of the time in a hair salon where news, gossip, and stories fill the space, the hair washing portion pushes off dialogue.  The holy trinity of shampoo, conditioner, and water spill over my head blocking all else.  It becomes a temporary, blessed submission.  There's a befitting sensual quality as I surrender to the shampooer's fingertips working my needy dome. 

The ultimate onscreen shampooing occurs when Robert Redford washes Meryl Streep's hair in the film "Out of Africa" as he recites two stanzas from the poem Rime of the Ancient Mariner to her.  It lifts a normally mundane moment to one that transcends connection.  Of course, he could have given a recitation from portions of the phone book in that scene and it would have had the same impact.  The implied intimacy resonates as he says:

Laughed loud and long, and all the while

His eyes went to and fro.

'Ha! ha!' quoth he, 'full plain I see,

The Devil knows how to row.'

~~~

Farewell, farewell! but this I tell 

To thee, thou Wedding Guest!

He prayeth well, who loveth well

Both man and bird and beast

 

Sadly, no poems are shared during the shampoo portion of my hair salon visit, but the basic experience of closing my eyes and surrendering my scalp to another's capable hands creates a brief respite for any weary head.  I wonder if men and women experience the same pleasure in this simplest of services?  

 

One female friend has the opposite feeling when at the salon. She finds the time spent seems wasteful with the many fussy steps to a finished look. She'd prefer a speedier process.   I gasp in disbelief and beg her to just surrender to it.  While we can expedite many daily routines (online shopping and banking, drive-through dry cleaners, grocery delivery services, etc.) hair appointments thankfully keep the same precious pace. 

 

I average seven to eight visits a year to the salon, and from the moment I darken the doorway, I chat indiscriminately.  However, when I get the nod for shampoo time, it dissolves all the socializing into a precious few moments of real pampering - reclining by the salon sink and remembering that Simon and Garfunkel were right - silence is golden.
 

Robert Redford & Meryl Streep in"Out of Africa"

1985