LibertyBdub
Member
http://news.outdoortechnology.com/2012/05/22/tearing-with-razors-and-ripping-up-the-roots/
http://benwannamaker.wordpress.com/...tearing-with-razors-and-ripping-up-the-roots/
Tearing with Razors and Ripping Up the Roots
By Ben Wannamaker
Photos by Stewart Medford
I don’t want to isolate the ladies in the crowd, but before both
sexes go any further, it should be noted that this is an article about
being emotionally attached to one’s beard. If there are ways that ladies
a) want to relate to this relatively male-specific experience or b)
want to personalize the subject with their own example of aggregating
hair follicle growth and it’s sadly required destruction, I welcome
anyone in the audience to substitute whatever physical real estate
they’d like in place of the word / concept that I implore through the
use of ‘my beard.’
Spring is an absolute: the one season which seems incapable of laying
bare new births without accompanying them with the timely death of
others. Simply, spring must kill – even to ‘be’ – as it paves the way
for new life, the old must obviously move on or be absorbed; but all
seasons kill really, and while spring also creates, summer also
maintains, fall also considers and winter also sleeps: all seasons kill.
Exposing the throat while the shears come close to it, I tepidly take
down centimeter by centimeter of winter warmth in my bathroom. The last
aspects of what can be known as ‘distinctly definable spring’ are
conducting themselves outside my thick window: spring-time warm-rain,
spring-time brisk winter wind at noon, spring-time smelling like a
pregnancy blooming, spring-time teaspoons of moistened dirt; the scent
of wet mud, wet sun after gray rain on your gray porch… so soon it will
be too hot to wear a beard and so, off it had to come. But the beard
hairs would not go without a fight, they proved to have emotionally
rooted defense mechanisms that made me think twice – three times, four
times – about showing them the blade. Because coaxing the long-reared
soldiers out of the depths of my face, to begin with, was a labour of
real need.
As
a young boy, I felt destined, nay, instructed by God herself – weather I
had the genetic makeup to back it up or not – to move to Whistler and
foster a beard with enough breadth and weight that I could hang icicles
off of it while skiing off pillows and through deep coastal powder, just
like the ski heroes of my youth did. But be careful what you wish for
and keep an eye on your identity, folks.
Like superstitious Superbowl socks, the hard-earned beard had to be
taken off. It’s no longer winter, but spring. Spring the mother, spring
the executioner. I wondered in the mirror – as I watched my once fertile
crop falling like a falling-leaf in the swarm of black flies collecting
in the pit of my white sink: would I have a tan underneath when it all
came off? Would I be left with some sort of shameless ‘Farmer’s
balaclava’ about my cheeks and chin to be ostracized about? It was
coming off and nothing mattered now. I’m far past the point of
conceivable retreat and I promised myself to live with no regrets long
ago. Besides, I’d already been trimming for nearly fifteen minutes,
waxing thoughtfully alone, preparing for the final bris; straining my
neck back and forth and making faces like a monkey, I started to reveal
soon to be wind-affected cheekbones that previously had the plushest of
protection.
How can I explain what it feels like to tear the razor edge across a
full field – across a whole family – you raised for months and months on
end? In the harshest of mountain conditions, no less; every day, each
memory that we shared together indeed gets torn out; ripped with the
root. The memories of finding ‘beard-brother’s’ in the bar, getting
props on your bristly, bustling community from a baby-faced stranger
underneath the bus stop one night, swooshing together – me and my beard,
together – dipping a little deeper whilst tree skiing to accentuate the
intended icicle affect. All the memories plummet toward my
ever-clogged-up plumbing and I choke backed teary condolences while
simultaneously trying to celebrate each strand, each corn stalk and
every adult beard hair, excavated and seemingly executed before their
time.
When is one’s appropriate time to go? No. It can’t be named. The
universe is all chaos, vagueness, striving and human attempts at making
sense. I had to focus on the final swipes of my task and as my eyes
widened in the mirror, I felt the need to regain motive and strength:
anything to continue with my regretfully obligated slaughter.
Summer is too hot to wear a beard; life is a tragedy.
Staring then, at my strangely skin-covered face, the feeling of
emptiness and loss was palpable – perhaps going hand-in-hand with my
disenchanted attempts at ski-bum emulation, youthful utopianism and the
assortment of realizations that one comes to after spending an
inordinate amount of time in front of the mirror. After all, winter was
over and I did end up having a farmer’s balaclava on underneath it all.
http://benwannamaker.wordpress.com/...tearing-with-razors-and-ripping-up-the-roots/
Tearing with Razors and Ripping Up the Roots
By Ben Wannamaker
Photos by Stewart Medford
I don’t want to isolate the ladies in the crowd, but before both
sexes go any further, it should be noted that this is an article about
being emotionally attached to one’s beard. If there are ways that ladies
a) want to relate to this relatively male-specific experience or b)
want to personalize the subject with their own example of aggregating
hair follicle growth and it’s sadly required destruction, I welcome
anyone in the audience to substitute whatever physical real estate
they’d like in place of the word / concept that I implore through the
use of ‘my beard.’
Spring is an absolute: the one season which seems incapable of laying
bare new births without accompanying them with the timely death of
others. Simply, spring must kill – even to ‘be’ – as it paves the way
for new life, the old must obviously move on or be absorbed; but all
seasons kill really, and while spring also creates, summer also
maintains, fall also considers and winter also sleeps: all seasons kill.
Exposing the throat while the shears come close to it, I tepidly take
down centimeter by centimeter of winter warmth in my bathroom. The last
aspects of what can be known as ‘distinctly definable spring’ are
conducting themselves outside my thick window: spring-time warm-rain,
spring-time brisk winter wind at noon, spring-time smelling like a
pregnancy blooming, spring-time teaspoons of moistened dirt; the scent
of wet mud, wet sun after gray rain on your gray porch… so soon it will
be too hot to wear a beard and so, off it had to come. But the beard
hairs would not go without a fight, they proved to have emotionally
rooted defense mechanisms that made me think twice – three times, four
times – about showing them the blade. Because coaxing the long-reared
soldiers out of the depths of my face, to begin with, was a labour of
real need.
Asa young boy, I felt destined, nay, instructed by God herself – weather I
had the genetic makeup to back it up or not – to move to Whistler and
foster a beard with enough breadth and weight that I could hang icicles
off of it while skiing off pillows and through deep coastal powder, just
like the ski heroes of my youth did. But be careful what you wish for
and keep an eye on your identity, folks.
Like superstitious Superbowl socks, the hard-earned beard had to be
taken off. It’s no longer winter, but spring. Spring the mother, spring
the executioner. I wondered in the mirror – as I watched my once fertile
crop falling like a falling-leaf in the swarm of black flies collecting
in the pit of my white sink: would I have a tan underneath when it all
came off? Would I be left with some sort of shameless ‘Farmer’s
balaclava’ about my cheeks and chin to be ostracized about? It was
coming off and nothing mattered now. I’m far past the point of
conceivable retreat and I promised myself to live with no regrets long
ago. Besides, I’d already been trimming for nearly fifteen minutes,
waxing thoughtfully alone, preparing for the final bris; straining my
neck back and forth and making faces like a monkey, I started to reveal
soon to be wind-affected cheekbones that previously had the plushest of
protection.
How can I explain what it feels like to tear the razor edge across a
full field – across a whole family – you raised for months and months on
end? In the harshest of mountain conditions, no less; every day, each
memory that we shared together indeed gets torn out; ripped with the
root. The memories of finding ‘beard-brother’s’ in the bar, getting
props on your bristly, bustling community from a baby-faced stranger
underneath the bus stop one night, swooshing together – me and my beard,
together – dipping a little deeper whilst tree skiing to accentuate the
intended icicle affect. All the memories plummet toward my
ever-clogged-up plumbing and I choke backed teary condolences while
simultaneously trying to celebrate each strand, each corn stalk and
every adult beard hair, excavated and seemingly executed before their
time.
When is one’s appropriate time to go? No. It can’t be named. The
universe is all chaos, vagueness, striving and human attempts at making
sense. I had to focus on the final swipes of my task and as my eyes
widened in the mirror, I felt the need to regain motive and strength:
anything to continue with my regretfully obligated slaughter.
Summer is too hot to wear a beard; life is a tragedy.
Staring then, at my strangely skin-covered face, the feeling of
emptiness and loss was palpable – perhaps going hand-in-hand with my
disenchanted attempts at ski-bum emulation, youthful utopianism and the
assortment of realizations that one comes to after spending an
inordinate amount of time in front of the mirror. After all, winter was
over and I did end up having a farmer’s balaclava on underneath it all.