I need a haircut. Badly. I don't resemble Don King or Lil' Jon yet, but I have an important job interview this week in DC and I'd like to look halfway presentable. My father would say I shouldn't go there looking all 'woolly-bully 'bout the head', and I couldn't agree more. Yet on this observed federal holiday commemorating the birthday of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Ithaca, NY is a ghost town on ice, a college town ice cream dessert following a visit from the larcenous Mr. Freeze. At this writing, local temperatures hover around 16 degrees Fahrenheit (-9 degrees Celsius) and my public transportation towards Mr. J.C. Knight's Barbershop proved a colossal waste of time and money (not as much as the newly terminated military search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but close), as Mr. Knight was nowhere to be found. It's snowing heavily here, and he commutes from Rochester, NY, so I'm not really surprised or mad. I'm just severely inconvenienced and questioning what I should despise more: the weather, or the holiday.

Usually, at least in the past two years, my attempts at self-improvement discombobulate in the final stretch, a weary World War I biplane taking fire while losing fuel, rivets, and overall structural integrity in a final sweep of the Kaiser's palace over Berlin. I've written an entire seven-book epic overview for a comic book series retelling the origins of DC Comics superheroes, kind of a "James Lamb Presents" for the Original Universe. (And yes, my stuff is better than Stan Lee's.) With titles like "Batman: The Minstrel Show" and "Superman: Ubermensch", I know I have some great ideas. I've even completed a working script for the first chapter of the Superman story, thanks to Angel's often maddening but always appreciated encouragement. Still, I can't really see DC Comics paying a unknown twenty-three year old Cornell alumnus United States legal tender for unorthodox Elseworlds origins of classic franchise characters loved the world over that more often than not either debunk traditional comic mythology or engage the characters in situations and conversations not suitable for children, the target audience of too many comic books in the modern age. I want to finish this stuff, but outside of Angel and Frank White, no one else has read my first completed comic script, and the cajoled arm-twisting I'd have to do to get others to partake simply isn't worth the stress.

Or take my essays. All last week, when I should have been writing the other five or six posts on my "Need to Blog About" list, I've been working on a post concerning the Armstrong Williams controversy. Now, many others have spoken on this subject around the blogosphere, but after reading LaShawn Barber and Michelle Malkin, I was incensed enough to write my opinion on some questions the "Pay to Pander" scandal raises for our polarized political discourse. It's really too long for posting here, so when it's done, I'll add the piece to my essay section and link it in. Hopefully it won't be too dated and dusty for any real impact. But then again, I never posted my essay on Rei Ayanami, "Mechanical Animals 2", either. I found the piece useful, but it's more in need of editing than the National Review Online, not to mention absurdly verbose and unduly inflammatory. Angel and Milkshake both cautioned me about ever allowing the work to see the light of day; that protecting the innocent trumps serving my private trust. I know they are right, but their goes another couple of weeks of writing. Like Ashley Simpson at the Orange Bowl, sometimes you realize too late that you don't belong in the arena.

Needless to say, I love my writing. I'm not really doing a pleasant job of it right now (Blogger sacrifices style for speed) but in these past two years of wilderness reflection my only sanity, my only real skill, is my writing. I write because my thoughts on this world we share need to be questioned, attacked, deconstructed. I write because I'm egotistical enough to believe I have something important to say. I write because I have to - it's the only real way a person can make others understand his motivations and ambitions, his virtues and his vices. I write because I have to. Still, sometimes I despair, under the belief that I'm just wasting my time with my essays. The personal essay, in my opinion, is the most overlooked and technically efficient form of exposition available in the English language today. Starting with Michel de Montaigne, the essay allows a person direct connection with a reader, exposing his barest soul and thoughtful complexity towards a naked, mewling, violent, nasty, contentious audience that need neither like not agree with your perceptions, yet knows them all the same. Twentieth Century masters of the medium like George Orwell and James Baldwin prove successful and readable today because of the timeless artistry displayed in their sharing of a kindred intellect's unfiltered thoughts with the multifaceted, multihued, always disparate and diverse mass audience. To read "Marrakech" or "Shooting an Elephant" rockets one back to Imperial Burma, where a youthful officer of the British Empire grapples with the grunt work maintenance of his homeland's wealth, power, and prestige, threatened by the militaristic rise of Nazi Germany and created through the oppression and misuse of millions of African and Asian indigenous peoples who never harmed nor threatened the shores of grey Britannia. Baldwin's "Here Be Dragons" has to be one of the smartest renderings of androgyny, false masculinity, and racism I have ever encountered in print: no one recalls today that identity politics multiplicity existed before both the Stonewall rebellion and Rosa Parks' revolutionary laziness, but they did, and Baldwin's reverberate double vision on his discretely similar double oppressions still educates and appeals.

However, the unimpeachable master of the Twentieth Century essay, the author of the last century's expository masterstroke, was none other than the reason for today's snowy federal holiday. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail" still stands out as the most powerful persuasive piece in the modern era, as his unceasing, unending binary dualism makes plain the urgent need for eliminating racial discrimination without an easy pardon for its perpetrators. No ingratiating forgetfulness weakens King's rhetorical force; unlike the easily recalled and quickly ignored absent holy man recalled in conservative anti-affirmative action political speeches, "Letter from Birmingham Jail" recalls the best of America -- a dedicated, thoughtful social leader who tempers his incessant anger at the accepted shackles impeding his people's progress towards effective, consistent, nonviolent action for social change. Reading his essay makes me wish I possessed such discipline.

Today, CNN reports that the American wealth gap presents the most chilling evidence that American racial parity still exists only in the forgotten sleep of fallen dreamers. I can relate -- driving to Washington, DC in a snowstorm on a shoestring budget sounds like a funny icebreaker until you have to walk the talk. I'll never stop writing essays; neither Orwell, Baldwin, or King, I'm still groping for good sense in a Virginian midnight, breath visible, skin overlooked, sanity questionable. One day, I'll be a writer. I may even be blessed with leadership in some fantastic future. Today, I need a haircut.