Cowlick

   This is a picture that I took at my job some months ago, and it got buried deep beneath other pictures that I have taken since, so I had forgotten how much it moved me till I unearthed it earlier today. In it you see the hair on the back of a a Peruvian guinea pig (if I recall the breed name correctly), and the normally very long hair on this one has been cut to remove numerous knotted-beyond-repair areas, thus revealing this endearing cowlick (I should note that I work in a nursing facility, and this is one of a number of therapeutic service animals that live there). This breed has long hair, but it does at times need to be cut because of the tendency to knot, and although this often forms a cowlick, there was just something about the way this one was cut, stood up, and changed color sat the cowlick that attracted me.

   I recall in the films of Sergei Eisenstein that the director would often show close up camera shots of the tops of workers hats and heads as a way to (in my opinion) have the viewer empathize with them, focusing on their humanness. This picture strikes me along those lines, though it wasn't intended to. I did hastily crop the picture after I took it to better highlight the cowlick, but never intended to talk about it with anyone, let alone ruminate on it here.

   Besides the hair belonging to an incredibly cute guinea pig, the cowlick represents to me an imperfection, a wildness, and a laid-back quality that I wish that I embraced and possessed more of.

Untamable