ground hogs for DAYS
TL;DR Spring, Time Loops, and the Constant March of Time (but in a FUN way)
On Friday, Punxsutawney Phil predicted an early spring, so Abby and I celebrated by re-watching THE EDGE OF TOMORROW, which, if you haven’t seen it, is like a GROUNDHOG D-DAY time loop where you watch Tom Cruise become progressively more and more Tom Cruise-y with every reset.
I love this movie.
It tickles the same part of my brain as skate videos1 that show twenty knee-skinning-flops before the immaculate landing or the blooper reels at the end of every Jackie Chan movie. It’s not FAIL content, it’s the repetition before the twist; all these failures viscerally deepening what landing it means. I think, in practice, This is what writing is too — reiterating the same sentence, trying small changes, revisiting, tweaking, trying to say the same thing slightly better or more clearly or with better or fewer words until the accumulation of all of those attempts builds into something that works, something that your readers can imagine you sitting down and pouring directly from your brain out onto the page and into their eyeballs.
We’re all in a time loop when you zoom out; our planet looping around the sun, another year, another Phil predicting another spring since 1887, and then zooming in to all the patterns and routines that give meaning and structure; feeling like either a groove or a rut depending on how your brain is working that day. Time loop movies show what you can accomplish over time2 (and probably feed into my fantasy for only needing a single day to master a challenging new skill…even if the “life hack” to getting better at guitar is folding the space time continuum and living that day a thousand times to get it right).
During the depths of the first COVID lockdown, every day started feeling more like a depressive time loop: doing the same dishes, walking the same walks, zooming the same Zooms, shouting up dumb jokes to the second-story window of the same friends, watching different movies from the same couch. My favorite time-loop movies remind us that even if the world feels like it’s stuck on repeat, we’re still changing inside of that loop.
For example, I am starting to lose my hair. :)
I’ve been wondering if this new thinning (as a 32 year-old-man) is a bit like what nearly every middle school girl goes through. Not the hair specifically, but the flood of messages from the world and yourself about things being not-quite-right. Similar body-image-issues (embarrassed of being embarrassed, MORE LOOPS), mysterious changes beyond my control (OH GOD, FOREHEAD IS GROWING?!), off-handed remarks or a bad photo that sends dysphoric ripples through my sense of self, and a sometimes overwhelming feeling that I must be the only person in the world going through what is actually an incredibly common human experience.
Personally, I’ve had it incredibly easy. Much of the world I move through every day is set up for people who look like me. Also, on top of these mountains of privileges, I am also tall! I am six feet and four inches (un-slouched) which means you won’t even notice my little thinning patch unless I take off my hat or sit down or you get the angle just right.
And those angles! Every photo is a “before” photo if you think about it. Scrolling back in time through my phone’s photo reel I can see a whole series of sneaky, self-checks…what’s the status of the patch? Looping my arms up and over my head and blindly trying to get the blurry dark-side-of-the-moon style pic of the spot.
(It’s easy to get stuck with an outdated version of yourself. For years when auditions would ask for my weight I just put in the number from the last time I weighed myself which was six years prior right before the Arkansas High School State Swim Team competition. It turns out, things have changed since then!)
It’s something I desperately don’t want to feel self-conscious about and can’t seem to stop feeling self-conscious about. I’ve shaved my head multiple times throughout my life (got a great looking skull, so long term? In terms of me and my big, tall, skeleton? I’m not worried) but I think it’s the fear of the unknown in-between, the increasingly sparse shift, that can sometimes get me down and out and anxious.
Oh, and I should also come clean and say that I’m taking the drops. Do you know about the drops? I take the drops. Mine are the generic over the counter brand from CVS and I’m supposed to put them on the spot once or twice a day, which I usually remember to do. There’s a not-so-secret coalition of us thinners who have the same little bottle in our medicine cabinets. We are legion, etc. etc.
I’m working on simultaneously accepting the flux and flow of an ever-changing physical body in a chaotic universe expanding towards entropy with also, tbh, just doing the drops to see how that feels too.
I think, at it’s core, what is interesting to me about this whole process are all the myriad stages and versions of self-wrestling. Clocking the moments our bodies are changing or becoming less elastic (i.e. what do you mean there are no more baby teeth? I was just getting the hang of popping those suckers out!), finding what elements are still malleable and what are fixed, what is still in flux and what has settled, deciding that if some liminal thing is forever maybe it’s not in-between, it just is.
And then, just like that, I’m back in the time loop. The same feelings coming up but this time I’m trying to live through them a little differently, a little more generously, a little more lightly.
This time I’m the ground hog and I’m being very brave. I’m trying to let the waves of feelings about feelings wash through me with minimal judgement (or at least minimal judgement about judgement) so I can live with and love this drippy, droopy, beautifully messy body that is shedding and slipping and slurping through a fun life. Even writing THIS means that my targeted ads for the next three months are essentially SHOT - nothing but 1.) hair loss products and 2.) things that companies think men who are losing their hair will buy for dumb-dumb hair-based-masculinity overcompensation. I’m screwed.
And now, please enjoy this angsty banger about haircuts.
And remember, if you have anyone in your life that you think might be losing their hair, it’s always polite to forward them this newsletter. Time loops be damned, the next
will be different (as usual).xoxo,
will
p.s. shoutout and thank you to
for reading and editing out the most egregious of my self-conscious spiraling. An infinite time loop would be infinitely more fun with you in it.Anyone read THIS IS HOW YOU LOSE THE TIME WAR? Just finished this and loved it. A sick epistolary novel that skips through time and breaks my heart in a cool way. And written by two friends? Who took turns writing each other real letters? Get outta here.