Really, we should hate our hair,
remnant of our monkey past,
nagging reminder that we’re
not so different from all the other animals.

We would not want to be covered entirely in it—hair is not like gold. You can have too much hair. And you can have too little. We want enough hair so that it can be said of us, “Her hair is so luxuriant.”

It is up to the fingers as well as the eyes to determine if hair is luxuriant or not. But the eyes are in service to the fingers in this case, because luxuriant hair needs fingers to run through it. Hair is luxuriant if we or someone else would like to run our fingers through it. What else feels as luxuriant as luxuriant hair? It is hair’s word. Hair owns “luxuriant.”

But we must also acknowledge the nervous twirlers, too, those separated only marginally from the chronic hair pullers, nail biters, and nose pickers.

Look at the nails of the nervous twirler next time you pass her. Bitten to the quick. Maybe she picks her nose, too. Of course she does—she is trying to erase herself and hold on to herself at the same time.