A Sharpened Cut

The space was tiled with large, rectangular white marble. Thin grey and gold veins drew the eye through the narrow, seemingly spacious room. I sat on the first chair. An entire wall was mirrored, and I found myself staring back at my reflection, choosing simple words to guide the dresser's hands.

"Simple. Cleaner at the top, and uniform throughout, please."

The words could just as easily have described the room. The marble reflected the curved arches that divided the mirror wall, creating faint oval illusions. Between each arch sat an elegant wine-stained chair.

I placed my glasses on the dark wooden surface, an excuse to feel the smooth, varnished finish beneath my fingers. The tabletop ran the full length of the wall, wedged between mirror and gypsum arch. I took a deep breath, and sank into the cushioned chair, now quite literally in the dresser's hands. His actions would follow the short phrases I had just spoken.

Without my glasses, the space blurred. I could no longer analyze it with precision, nor my haircut. But I could still follow the dresser's hands; his swift gestures, the tilt of my head under his fingers, the deliberate snip of the scissors. He rarely spoke, except to ask how much to cut. I nodded submissively to his faint reflection in the glass, as he held strands of hair against the silver blade.

The long silver scissors glinted under the strip lights. My eyes traced their movement until memory took me elsewhere. 

The Municipality building in The Hague. 

Another white, pristine space. I recalled the first time I stepped inside, looking for a stamp on my dubious housing contract. Passing under the low glass canopy, the space opened upward. Ten floors of white, slender bridges spanned the atrium, compelling my gaze toward light above.

A colleague had told me a story before my visit, one that shaped the space even before I entered it. A man, presumably a foreigner denied residency, had leapt from one of those bridges. The drop ended in a pool of bright red against the white floor. She described how every drop, every fragment of matter, marked itself in that immaculate void.

The weight of architecture revealed itself to me then, not only in its physical structure, but in the psychological burden it imposed. 

Should the architect have designed the commute from an immigration office differently?

Would that horrible scene have still unfolded? 

The dresser snapped his scissors twice near my ear, dragging me back to the space I was in. He cut carefully around my neck. Only then did I realize the trust, or perhaps recklessness, of sitting here. How easily those thin blades, one swift motion, could make me the red contrast in this white room.

I closed my eyes, calmed my thoughts, and waited for the haircut to end.