You’re cutting your hair. No - not cutting it - you’re shaving your head. It’s a ritual of renewal, of reincarnation. It is like a farmer who lights his fields on fire so the crops grow. Your hair” – he pointed to my head, then tugged his own short tuft of dark hair – “is literally your history. Why do you think they use it for drug tests? It holds everything. It is built up of years and experiences. It is the shed record of your life, but it stays with you forever - unless you do something to it.
I love your character "Dan" and I'm sure there's a lot to be said about hair - I have hair stories myself -- that I won't go into here. The line that really grabbed me was this: I live inside my memory. I cannot help it.
because I recently came across these lines, apparently from "an anonymous Japanese poem" if there were in the world
no jeweled chariot
drawn by a lovely white ox what would coax us out
of the burning house
(translated by Patrick Donnelly and Stephen Miller) of our mind?