Four things in my barbershop I have held for twenty years without really looking

"Same as last time, Khuê."

Uncle Hai says that once a month, and has since I was sweeping hair for the old boss. I nod, shake out the cape, pick up the scissors. Twenty years on, I still couldn't tell you which last time he means, because my hands finish the cut before my head remembers.

My shop sits at the mouth of an alley: three swivel chairs, one long mirror, one cupboard for towels. I pick up each of my tools a hundred times a day and have never once looked at them. This is about four of them, and what I saw when I finally looked. You don't have to cut hair. Everyone has their own pair of scissors: a pen, a mouse, a ladle, the handlebar of a motorbike.

This is not about slowing your hands down. No customer would sit through a barber working at half speed, and Uncle Hai would stand up and leave after two hours. Nor is it about staring at the scissors until a feeling arrives. They are scissors. It's only that some things the hands do right on every beat while the eyes have never once stopped by, and these four are the places where I stopped by.

Which end of the scissors is heavier? Twenty years, and I didn't know

Half past seven in the morning, the shutter rolled up halfway, me ducking underneath. The chairs not yet turned, the mirror still fogged cold. The scissors sit in a ceramic cup beside the comb, same as every morning. I pull them out and open and close them three times: snip, snip, snip. My teacher showed me that to check whether the screw was loose. I have done it longer than I can remember, and I have never once heard the snip.

One morning I was cutting a student's hair, the two of us arguing about last night's match. I got so carried away that the blade went in too far above the left ear, nearly a knuckle lower than the right. I only saw it when I looked in the mirror. He said nothing. I evened out the right side, which cost ten more minutes, and he left with shorter hair than he'd wanted.

My hands weren't wrong. They did what they always do. It's just that nobody in the shop was watching that work. My head was at the football pitch, and the only one left to notice the scissors was the customer. I learn the blade has gone dull from the flinch on a customer's face when a hair tugs, not from my own hand, even though my hand has been telling me for a week: the handle gets heavy at the ring finger, the cutting sound goes a little dull. The news comes every day. Nobody picks it up.

What I started doing after that is so small I'm embarrassed to say it:

You've got it right when you can say one thing you didn't say yesterday: "this end is heavier", "the handle is warm from the sun through the door". Silly is fine. For the first few mornings I felt ridiculous, standing alone in the shop at ten to eight talking to a pair of scissors. By the weekend, some mornings I could tell the screw was a little loose before I opened them. Other mornings there was nothing but scissors. Tín, the apprentice, tried it for three days and told me he only saw scissors. I said fine, that works too.

On a rushed day, just pick them up and say one word: heavy, or light.

The first week I went wrong in a very barber-like way. Pick up, notice the loose screw, go hunting for a screwdriver, and ten minutes later the screwdriver is in my hand and the scissors are lying on the table. I had turned picking up to notice into picking up to fix. The second sounds more useful, so it sneaks in fast. Loose screw can wait until evening. In the morning, just say that it's loose.

Every customer goes quiet for a beat when I drop the cape

Eight o'clock, the second customer sits down. I shake out the checkered cape, lay it over his shoulders, fasten the edge at the back of his neck.

"Why's the cape so heavy?"

"Thick canvas. Keeps hair from going down your collar."

"It wasn't this heavy before."

Before, it really wasn't. I bought a new cape two years ago, and that question is what made me see something that had been there all along: everyone goes quiet for a beat the moment the cloth comes down. Even the biggest talker in the shop. I don't know why. Maybe because the neck is touched, maybe because they can no longer see their own arms. That is only a guess, and in twenty years I've never asked anyone.

All I know for sure is this: thirty times a day I put on the cape, and for me it's the thirtieth time, while for the person in the chair it's the only time that morning. Those are not the same thing, and I kept acting as if they were. For years my first sentence was "How do you want it cut?", delivered flat as a ticket machine. Anyone who meets people all day is probably the same: the person counting change at the counter, the one greeting at the door, the one taking your paperwork. I'm on my thirtieth, and the person in front of me is on their first.

The thing to try is simple. Pick exactly one moment in the day when your hand passes something to someone, or touches them: handing over a glass of water, a folder, a jacket for your child. Before the hand moves, look at that person once, only once, and then go ahead. The first day it feels awkward, and the other person feels it too, and some will ask if something is wrong. A few days later I could remember a few faces I used to know only as a head and shoulders. Some people who try this feel no difference, though the person in front of them hurries a little less. And some people feel nothing on either side.

When you're swamped, do it only for the first time of the day and let your hands go on alone after that.

I once practised the smile too, a big one, just as I dropped the cape, and the customer asked if I was all right. That's the one time I knew I had spoiled it, because looking at someone is for looking, not for showing them that you're looking. Now I look, and then I'm done, and my face stays as it was.

The clippers went rough and I still cut two more heads

I cut two more heads before I heard it. Half past nine, the clippers dry of oil, a rasp like sand rolling in a bamboo tube, and I just kept going through two heads, two capes, two rounds of "all done."

By the third customer, an old man sitting quietly, said: "That machine sounds odd." Only then did I stop and listen. A whiff of sewing-machine oil reached my nose; I opened the drawer, took out the little bottle, put two drops on the blade, and the rasp was gone. But I remember clearly that my hand had felt the machine get heavier since the first customer. The hand knew first, the ear hadn't caught up. Same as the scissors. It is also the story of why you keep forgetting where you put your keys, told from another side: something so familiar it stops reporting, though the body is still reporting.

I used to think getting used to a sound meant you stopped hearing it to save effort, and I thought that was clever. In truth, if I only hear a sound when it has changed, it changed long ago, during all the time I stood there not being there. Clippers have several voices: a low one through the thick hair at the back of the neck, a high one skimming close to the skin by the ear. I could only pick that out after this incident. As for why the voice changes, I don't know; every older barber just says "that's how the machine is."

The thing to try: pick one sound running while you do something familiar, say a tap filling a bucket. From the moment it starts to the moment it stops, listen to only that sound. How it begins, whether it changes in the middle, how it ends. Everyone can hear a bucket: as the water nears the top the sound climbs a little, and why, I don't know either. Do it once, for a few dozen seconds. Keep your eyes where your hands are, especially with anything sharp or anything on the stove. Don't close your eyes to hear better.

The first time you'll probably hear just the general noise. After a few tries, some people find they can pull one sound out from among many, and that sound stops melting into the background. Some people only ever hear an irritating racket, and if so, stop, don't force it.

On a busy day, listen to just the first three seconds of a machine starting up.

At one point I turned this into the trade itself: listening to guess where the machine was broken, very much a barber's habit. Listening like that leaves only a sound to diagnose, not a sound to hear, and it all disappears. Some sounds are so familiar we never hear them, and some, once heard, can't be shaken off, like a colleague's clicking pen. The two seem to be opposites, yet both show that our ears are working without our knowing.

The floor is swept, so is the day over?

Half past six in the evening, the last customer gone. I take the soft broom and sweep up the hair, nudging the chair aside with my foot. The heap under the chair has every colour: black, brown, a few grey strands, a tuft of bleached blond from the girl at noon. The smell of hairspray still lingers in the shop.

What I noticed thanks to the broom is silly: looking at the heap, I know how many customers came today, without opening the book. A big heap, a busy day. And looking at the hair I remember the student, the old man, Uncle Hai last week. Twenty years of sweeping, and I had never once read it like a notebook.

Sweeping is the last job of the day, and the only one nobody pays for or watches. So I do it fastest. Skip a corner and no one says anything; hair sits by the cupboard for a week. But I noticed one more thing, and I'm not sure whether it's the broom or me getting older: on the evenings I sweep in a hurry, I get home with my head still in the shop, still wondering who comes first tomorrow, which chair hasn't been wiped. On the evenings I sweep long enough to see the last corner, the day seems to close. It sounds small, and I can't promise it holds for anyone else.

The thing to try: pick one small end-of-day tidying job. Brush crumbs off the dining table, fold a towel, push a chair under the table. Do it from start to finish, about three minutes, no phone in hand. When it's done, look once at the spot you just tidied and name the last thing you put down: the chair, the towel, the broom. Seeing that last one is all it takes to have done it right.

Some people find the day closes a little lighter, some don't, and some tidy up to a fourth time before they realise they were avoiding something else. I'm in that last group. Some evenings I sweep three rounds in a row, each one clean, because I don't want to sit down and think about this month's shop rent. By then the broom is an excuse. By the second round, if I still don't want to put it down, I know I stopped sweeping a while ago.

On a worn-out day, just set one thing in its place and look at it once.

If you pick it up and your hands stay the same

Tín did all four for two weeks and then asked me: "Brother Khuê, I hold the scissors all the time and I don't see anything." I said I was the same back then, and nothing more. That wasn't an answer. It was just true.

If you're like him, I'd guess two things are common. One is that you're waiting for some feeling to rise up, staring at the scissors as if they will open, and the longer you wait the more annoyed you get. A tool has nothing to open. The job is smaller: say one thing, then go back to work, waiting for nothing. The other is that the thing you picked has no sound and no weight to notice. Typing and moving a mouse are like that. Pick something else: a cup, a key, a broom handle, anything with a shape you can hold.

And if neither fixes it, or standing still with a tool in your hand just makes you uneasy, some people are simply built for another way. The piece on mindfulness not being about sitting still speaks to exactly that annoyance, and there are other ways to do it that don't need you to stand still.

Half past six, the sweeping done. I put the scissors back in the ceramic cup and hear steel touch porcelain. I could hear that sound. Yesterday I couldn't.

Uncle Hai will be in tomorrow.

This article was created with AI assistance.