ESTÁNDARES DE PROGRAMACIÓN

Enter a suited man on the street, and shadows cast in burgundy

I’ve been working like a dog I’ve changed my mind A noticeable silence occurs To wait for something A man in a suit Broken glass

he barbershop. Windows on either side of double doors. Open. Screen doors closed. Three naked light bulbs hanging from the ceiling. View to the outside through fly wire. A street, a tree. Possibly the edge of a park could be made out. The bare footed boy sat high in the barber’s chair as the barber worked away with scissors and comb. Nearby stood a trough for water and a small wood chip water heater. The boy’s cut hair lay in tufts on the floor around the barber’s chair.

The floor was unsurfaced. It was worn, through years of hair. It glowed soft and velvet smooth from all those years of hair oiled strands swept over and over. Every day. A suited man on the street, walked, absorbed in the doing of some errand or other. Something that reminded him of another, person or thing. Some other thing or personal other. He was somewhere else. Not knowing that he stood at the edge of his life. Soon to be once lived. On the verge of rich crimson and burgundy flock. A just opened door. A potted plant, alive or dead or entirely artificial. The French armchair on the crazy nesting floor of dying wasps. From crisp geometry to marbled paper in quick time. The bare footed boy in the barber’s chair had been taken by his mind away to somewhere. Else. He had already left the shop. For somewhere other. Some other thing or personal other. The dullness of the flock wallpaper in the poorly lit salon. The shadows cast in burgundy, of leaves and branches alive or dead or entirely artificial. He walked, self-absorbed along the street, as if through swirling crazy nests of dying wasps still driven to build. Now marble cake. A swirling mess of lemon and

chocolate sponge. Continuing on inside the walls. He wondered if he put his ear to the wall would he hear them busying themselves and dying still, swarming into the cavity. Guarding fiercely the urge, still. To continue building, and getting it wrong.

Enter Jasmine growing on the fence

One cut. 2. 3 snip. Cut. Cut snip. Hmm. Mmm. What to do on a day like this oh. Hello, oh hello. Jasmine growing on the fence. It took me back it took me on. Oh jasmine growing on the fence. You smell so sweet. Oh howdy doody brother yes. Jim started in the business quite early.

As an apprentice at 13 he swept the floor and ran errands. He would save locks of the longer hair and when he had a moment, practice cutting. Love that hair. The smell. The oily feel. The way it floated about across the floor, picked up and tossed about a bit by breezes. By gusts of wind through the fly wire screen. Picked up and moved about. He chased it about the room with his dustpan and broom. How the old boys would laugh and tease him, running around the room ‘like some crazy whirling A-rab dervish’ they said.

Anyway, in time he was cutting real hair. I mean hair still attached to heads and faces, ears even. He didn’t even mind nostrils. I mean it all had to go didn’t it. And for someone to trust a person enough to allow them up their nose with a pair of sharp scissors. Well, that’s something special.

You can’t lose sight of the big picture, he was told. Someone comes in here to get sorted out, well that means everything. It’s not just over the top with a cutthroat. But there’s some that wants just that too. You’ve gotta respect that. But this is more. Shave that neck, trim those ears. Them eyebrows. Sort out those mo-staches. Them noses. Yea, he loved it and before long it was all his. Over the moon he was, on the day he got his own set of keys and could come into work at sparrow fart. He’d open up. Mop the floor. Scald all of the combs and scissors under boiling water from the wood chipper in the corner, and still have time to brew a good strong coffee and settle back in the chair with the newspaper.

He read everything. All of the papers and magazines that came into the shop. He got there first. There was nothing he didn’t know about the news of the day. And from his customers he found out the rest. The best crop to sow. What to grow and how it will fare and under what conditions. He knew when to be sending pigs to market. How to buy and sell shares. What the politicians were up to, or not up to, which was more often the case. He knew about love and life and gods and music. And magic. One fella once talked him through how to build a barn and install the plumbing and electrics. The lot. Thought he might give that a go one-day. Not that he had much use for a barn. But isn’t a house just a glorified barn? He could

certainly do that. He loved that thought, to think that he knew everything that he needed to know, and then some.