Peace Of Mind (standard:non fiction, 2236 words)
Author: Paul Duncan	Added: Nov 01 2001	Views/Reads: 3233/2543	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
On an afternoon in a city a long way from the place of home, Peace Of Mind comes round.

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story


He is hovering with his razor, the men beside me are drinking with their
end-of-the-week, the little girl is nodding with Mr. Floyd as I sit and 
my mind spins turns with every season jumping from thought to thought 
to home to the past present also-rans always-have-been tocomes begones 
and I am off in that place where you think a lot, conclude little and 
do nothing. 

He cuts my hair in the city of Hai-Phong as the streaming light and
living shadows play across the sidewalk over me and onto the old wall, 
I think of her in the city of Newport and wonder the what-ifs that hang 
in the 11 time zones that lie between us.  They raise their glasses 
glistening to either the women of Hai-Phong, the end of another week, 
or the weekend tocome,  my thoughts spin to home and the memories come 
and gone which for some reason appear in vivid living colour against 
the brick-wall-screen as I find myself well aware of the contrasts 
between yesterday and today. 

I am gone, back in places past walking the streets of memory surrounded
by the black-and-white winter of yesterday as my eyes independently 
take in the goings on in front of me reflecting back out of the old 
mirror.  He moves around me now with scissors in hand snipping here and 
there eyes large behind thickblack glasses never leaving my head his 
expression intently serious because he has decided if there is one 
thing in life he will do and do well it is cut hair and that has become 
that object of his energies. 

The little girl has to go and she hands me the CD player carefully with
both hands smiling her thank you and then is gone I-don't-know-where-to 
but I find myself hoping she has a good one because surely she deserves 
to.  He is finished now with back and sides and takes out thinning 
scissors, waving them at me as a formality for my approval before he 
goes back to work knowing better than both of us what is best.  I watch 
through the edge of my vision the afternoon drinkers continuing to lift 
cold beers leaving semi and full circles of water on the wooden table, 
replacing their glasses slightly off centre before lifting again, 
eventually leaving Olympic rings to shine wetly on the dappled wood. 

In front of me I can see that behind the barber, in the street, go by
motorcycles and scooters, passing quickly across the space of mirror 
through which I look but not passing from sound as they motor down the 
road weaving around the places where it has fallen through.  And I 
start to come out of my thoughts, dismount like someone too long in the 
saddle, somewhat stiff and sore but thinking its good to be on both 
feet again . He has finished with the back and sides, finished with the 
top and now makes a circular motion in the late-afternoon air with the 
freshly-changed straight-razor asking if I want my whole face shaved 
and I nod and smile because maybe I can see Friday Afternoon and he is 
a Vietnamese man with a beer, because maybe I have an inkling that 
Peace Of Mind is just getting off a diesel bus with all the windows 
taken out over on the busy road and is making his way over to mine, 
because maybe I realize that I could stay on here and not end up 
anywhere but the now. 

He goes to work with the straight-razor like a grand master at his
easel, eyes never leaving my face, hovering with the razor an inch away 
in one hand with the other stretching my skin to avoid the cuts.  He 
measures, I can see in the mirror his eyes large behind the glasses 
calculating,  and then he strikes, a small quick stroke taking no more 
and no less than he wanted.  He blinks then nods in satisfaction and 
prepares for the next chisel.  In the hole in the wall in front of me I 
look at myself who is looking more like myself and watch a little boy 
on a bike to large for him so that when the pedal goes through the 
downswing his off-foot is left dangling, ride past from my right 
shoulder to my left.  And my thoughts cross to her 

to the message I have just received from her and all the uncertainties
which fill the white space between the black words so thick it is hard 
to read the too-normal sentences and thats all right because I gave up 
awhile back on trying to hedge my bet with her and now I'm going for 
broke but that doesn't mean I'm ready to lose.  Thoughts go with her 
for awhile as Piccaso shapes and shaves and Friday Afternoon shouts out 
this one's on me fellas.  skip 

to the night before swimming through the phosphorous out in front of the
beach where me and Pete were staying under a deep night sky beside the 
three girls who had stayed for dinner and didn't matter in the very 
best way because nice as they were, could be, tomorrow they were gone 
with the boat that left every morning from the pier on the other side 
of the island.  Beside them under nightsky over ocean that glittered 
and glowed like so many fallen stars as we swam through the 
phosphorous.  So much of it was there that when you swam into the 
waist-deep water and stood, it flowed off you in fluorescent streams. 
randomly 

to thoughts coming from somewhere in the hazy grey justbeyond of the
back of my mind where images of yesterday live in vague retirement 
sometimes coming out into the bright light of the moment of now, 
blinking in their somewhat out-of-placeness.  Thoughts go back to days 
pastgone and then contrast it all with the place that I found myself 
in, doing that sitting in a chair worn by countless nameless faces that 
would remain so, by the side of a road in a city whose residents number 
two million but whose name I could not say or spell, I see that I have 
come not just a small ways from the space of home.  I enjoy this there 
as the barber has me lean back to shave my neck so that I am staring up 
at the distant surface of blue-sky reaching me through the clouds 
gonecome, the trees backforth, the shadows fading in the out and around 
across my t-shirted stomach in front of the red brick wall only the top 
of which I can now see.  Over it is an ageing yellow and white building 
that lost its innocence before I even had mine and sits now much like 
my memories, in vague retirement blinking in its out-of-placeness in 
the moment of now. 

He with the eyes largely-intent behind glasses thickblack continues to
shave, chiselling at fine shadows of hair that stretch across my 
jawline, the razor-sharp razor scratching quietly to itself as it 
snicks the hairs so close that after when I rub my hand across my cheek 
it seems that there must never have been anything there.  He works in 
the out and around my field-of-vision, field of blue with scattered 
green and white coming and going as the yellow and red ages without 
grace or excuse. 

The men who I never knew until now, still don't, and very shortly will
even less, talk and drink in their scene so exotically familiar, 
chatter over the honking and the banging rumbles of a port-city as 
Peace Of Mind stops for a rest in a barber's chair whose seat is worn 
in front of it all.  I sense it and the moment is good as he stops 
there with me but without warning fanfare hello or, in the time that 
always comes shortly, goodbye as it gets up with a sigh of release, 
nods to its old friend Friday Afternoon and moves on down the down road 
towards whatever other spot our paths end up crossed again. 


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