29: Follicle Folly

It has often been said, and oftener been true that: “There is a season for everything.” The constant flux and flow of the universe has always been surrounding the fact that nothing is truly static. As our eye observes, there are immutable laws of change governed by the constant march of time that break down the old and rebuild the new, only to mature the new into old, and break it down yet again. It is true for grass, for deer, for stars in the heavens, and for all things under heaven. So it is no great surprise to anyone that all of these forces that recycle and rebirth nature in such a fashion also affect beards.

Beards. They’ve become such a fashion statement these days. But while I could fill this entire entry with a comprehensive and most likely critical analysis of the beard and it’s place in our society, I’ve decided to take a much more sweeping look at a very simple facet of their existence; namely, their growth cycle. Let us compare the common beard with another similarly common attribute of life: (and more precisely, human life) “Growing Up”.

As a quick disclaimer, this topic was not slowly thought out over a steaming cup of tea in an overstuffed arm chair, surrounded by a mahogany-cradled study of leather bound books; rather, it was stumbled upon sleepily by a flannel swaddled 20-something male who was barely awake in the passenger seat of a Toyota Camry at 1:27 in the morning. I believe the lively discourse between passenger and driver began something like: “Dude….. Beards and babies are, like… the same.” Allow me to detail that thought. 

Basically

The same thing

Babies are born soft and without much protection, smooth and squishy and generally unsuited for any kind of hardship and lacking any sort of defense against the elements. They spend much of their first days adjusting to the relative cold of the outside world, and are provided aid in this endeavor in the way of soft cloths and wrappings, ultimately being cloaked in a similar way to the small chunk of “steak” is by the stifling layers of simulated food products that are used to make a taco bell steak burrito.

Likewise, the unbearded face is akin to the newborn. It has no protection from the elements, retaining a squishy softness heralding back to infancy. It must be given aid when fending off cold, and is therefore encircled by a sometimes soft wrapping of differing materials. Scarf, buff, balaclava, hood, collar, wrap, ascot, and numerous other names are given to clothing items that are intended to shield the unbearded face from the outside world. There is even a recent trend among the young and/or hormonally challenged to wear an artificial rendering of facial hair that is integrated into a hat, which effectively fools those greater than 10 meters from the wearer into thinking that the beard is organic, though any distance closer will bring about questions about the wearers place in society. At any rate, it is one of many options to grant the unbearded face the simulated warmth of facial growth.

98% of the users look like this.

The next phase of life and beard is the child stage. It is a stage of wonder and possibility, exploration and curiosity, a time when a child will begin to venture out into the world, and the beard will begin its cautious journey away from the surface of the face. In the vernacular, this period in a beards life is called “Stubble.” And it is as rough as any schoolboys calloused palms. It aspires to be grown some day, but it is firmly grounded in where and what it is now: a playful, ruddy sprout, strangely serious at times but always ready to play.

Stubble is surprisingly comfortable. It reassures the hand when it is rubbed over the chin. It whispers of future glory and greatness, promises ultimate protection from the coming cold. Looking not at the hardships ahead, but rather the end result much in the same way that a child dreams of becoming an astronaut or curing an incurable disease. The sheer potential of stubble is inspiring, but it has a dark corridor ahead of it if it is to pass through to full beardhood. This corridor is so dark and forbidding that many a man hoping to one day sport a furry face mask becomes discouraged in its shadow and resorts to the razor, the reset button. That dismal tunnel is called…

Puberty.

It's Junior High for your face. Again.

It’s just as daunting in a beard as it is in a boy. It is an ungainly time. Scraggly and uncoordinated, unwholesome to look at and unbearable to be looked at, this is the itchy, patchy, frustrating crucible in which a true beard is forged. Just as in junior high, the pubescent beardholder likely has a strong desire to shamble away from the light of society and huddle in the darkness where he can sit and scratch the wiry birds nest of scruff emanating from an acne covered chin.

Friends will mock you. Women will shun you (possibly more so if you are a female stuck in this stage; my heart goes out to you.) The pressure to pick up the razor is immense, weighted down by the comments of “Wow, you gonna actually keep that?” and “You’ll never get a job/girlfriend/house/respectable anything with that on your face.” Your primal pubescent senses will seek to shave the abomination from you, to burn it in the backyard, forget it was ever attempted.

Darkness. A long crawl forward through the black tunnel. Onlookers quietly hold their breath. Close friends and family cross their fingers, some for the shave, some for survival. And out of that tunnel, one of two things emerge: A bare face, beaten by it’s own endeavor. Finally taken down by a war of attrition. Discomfort, peer pressure, despair, job requirements and an HR intervention, all conspire together to tear the beard from its roots before it had the chance to shine.

But another emerges from the cave. His follicles are stronger for the war, and each strand now shines with a luster born out of adversity, a sheen honed by refusing to bow under the boot of social pangs. He stands at the mouth of the cave, full and manly beard flowing from his jaw like a flag of freedom. The stubble has finally become what it always dreamed it would be. And the elements have little hold on that face, and through all things, thick and thin, high and low, he will now stand firm and watch the beard lengthen, his wisdom grow.

Oh look, he grew a pipe.

This is the full fledged man in his prime. He carves his way through life like his comb through his face-locks. He will untangle the mysteries of life like they were unruly strands falling into line under his well-worn hands. He will most likely have lost his job and a few friends in the pursuit of the beard, so he will also probably have to find some replacements for those. Or maybe he has alienated to many friends in this process that he may have to just abandon a social life altogether. It’s also difficult to look professional with this raccoon living under his chin. Wow, the bills keep piling up. Is that a gray hair? Shoot, there’s a lot of them. I bet I could probably get away with living in a tent to save some money. Would Aunt Veronica spot 20 dollars? That guy over there is holding a sign and getting money, where’s a sharpie? When did it all turn white? At least his nephew thinks he has a cool beard.

And so we see the inexorable cycle of life continues in the beard just as it does in every other facet of the universe.

28: Trees and their ways.

I wrote this back in 2011 while watching the wind knock the bare branches of a tree together. I thought it was worth sharing.

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I am a November Tree.

Barren and bleak I stand on the hill above the brittle grey grass

And the ravens perch on my limbs.

I am not a June Tree, whom children might find sport in climbing.

And my leaves are not green, nor make the sound of running water

Which young lovers often times listen to while sprawling by my roots.

I am not the August Tree, who gives fruits to the passerby

And then explodes in a magnificent display of orange and yellow.

I am none of these; my day yields no visitors.

Children are frightened by the shadow cast by my branches

Onto their wall when the moon shines through their window.

But do not misunderstand me. I am not dead.

The day will come when drops of green will form on my fresh boughs.

I am a November Tree.

And my life is far from fruitless.

27: In honor of winter.

A hiss of light as the match head leaves grainy paper, pause, let the flame bob down and then find its foothold on the narrow sliver of wood in her hands. A tiny point of light in a small room, reaching up towards the stars through the window, as if yearning to become one with it's long lost brothers and sisters. 

Before the match is snuffed by it's own sprint down the dwindling supply of minuscule plank to walk, the girl lets it jump off onto the barely protruding wick of a mostly melted candle. It takes a second to understand it's new position, and when it is satisfied with it's station, flames higher to bring the gift of light to it's new master.

The girl, sleep still falling from her hair into her eyes, lets the candle dance a happy little jig for a moment, two, before sitting up fully in her bed and grasping groggily, but firmly, the small dish on which the candle sits and rising to her feet. 

The candle now lights more of the room, an upper part of the house that kept the heat from last nights fire still wafting about the rafters. Just out of reach, unfortunately, and the girl now shivers her way to the roughly carved dresser in the corner. The candle bumps into the dressers pitted and chipped edge a few times before coming to rest on it's uneven surface. 

The girl begins to swap nightgown for her daily garb, the fire on the tip of the candle ebbing and flaring as it is buffeted by the small breezes made by the moving fabric, and its rippling light makes the faceless drawing of a stag on the far wall quiver as if alive and ready to bound through the window into the cold morning darkness.

Shoes are on now. Leather straps that badly need replacing. And the heel on the left is shorter than the right, but maybe a few strips of thin birch wood will bring it back to level, she will have to ask Pa about that later. 

The candle is back in hand, and is being dipped towards the opening of the lantern. Quick as the snap of a twig, the flame leaps from wick to oiled wick, growing older and wiser and stronger in a second. The girl slips thin leather gloves over her calloused hands and grips the iron handle of the lantern with a practiced ease, exits the room, and begins to deliberately descend the steps.

The living room is small and smoke from the old fire is cold in the air. The girl steps around rough-hewn chairs of alder and low benches of birch as she approaches the door to the house. Hand cools immediately upon touching the cast iron lever holding winter outside the house. She pauses, makes sure there are no gaps in her bulwark against the dark winds of a winter morning, and then firmly pushes the door open.

The cold is a shock at first, but quickly becomes numbing to the point where she can no longer feel it. She thanks God for the leather gloves that keep her hand from becoming one with the iron handle of the lantern. The cows need feeding and milking, the chickens need the eggs collected, the milk then needs meed the eggs for breakfast for the family, and all of this before the sky sees the sun....

Now how sweet is it that we don't have to do this every morning like they did back in the 18th century? So much nicer. Anyways, hope you have a far better day than that girl is probably going to have. 

26: Waterfowling

Flow and flows around my toes

Soft paddles in early light

Flat-disk of pond

Ringed with reed and frond

I gently churn to life.

Silk strings of wave I have, delicate, made

To my left as to my right

Slowly, prow forth

Just south of north

I stream in watery flight.

Silver glint, I spy with my water-trained eye

And dip my green head beneath wet

Calm as could be

I have killed for me

A scaled breakfast, for hunger has set.

Then flapping strong wings and these paddly things

I push off from a runway of glass

Disturbing the peace

I go join the geese

And quack loudly, serenity’s past.

Some free verse fun

This one goes out to Drew Hatter, who seems more eager to read what I write than I am to actually pen it. Thanks for getting me going again, bud.



A simple prayer
 One not lightly tossed heavenward, a lady's kerchief
Frilled with embroidered words of a flower-laced farce
Perhaps pleasing to the eye and ear of mortal
But infinitely dispensable, its intent.

The flower folds asunder, and finds light and joy in a day
But the frost of the deep night brittles its tender taproot
 mornings wind will blow its frozen ashes before it
And praise its vivacity, we should and must
I find no fault in the fragility and valor of the bloom
The vulnerable courage, I say naught against.

A lesson to be drunk in, aye
And well remembered when winter winds find me
But the prayer I pray is far less beauteous
It does not catch the light, glint of color
Flash of delicate wonder
Scrape heaven with its marvel
Capture the mind of men.

I pray, Lord, to be weighty.
A rock in the hand of the maker
Whose presence is undeniable
Gravity, born of solemnity
Raised in wise council
Aged under feet of trying times.

Soul, be ye weighted.
Not of sorrow of times failed or lost
Nor guilt of crimes left unpunished
No freedom that was robbed.
But weighed down as a breaker of waves
Stands, grey, among the surf crash
Waiting blow after furious blow of the curling clash of oceans rage
Seething tendrils seek to tear it apart.
But steadily and gloriously, it remains.

I grudge not the bird that flies, the man who laughs
I hate not the petal or the frond, the woman who paints and sings
Were world filled only with gravitas men,
I would scarce be able to bear it.
And heaven itself would be too solemn to desire.

So Fly, Dove
Flourish, Rose
Flare and Flash, O Sun above

But Lord, fill my soul with dirt and soil.
So that the bird may find perch,
The flower may find root,
And Sun above may feed them both.
Lord, make me weighty.