Tuesday, July 17, 2007

black fire fingers or how I learned to stop worrying and shave my beard





Sometimes you see a whale in cloud.

Sometimes your sunday school teacher makes you stare at the snow until you see jesus.

Sometimes you get in the habit of drinking coffee at night, and its sunburned black hand reaches out to you... How.

Err... I mean... How?

Anyways, I shaved my beard. What do you think?

Its sort of funny because I meant to about two months ago in south dakota with my dad on top of a mesa. Like a ritual. But, I never finished the job.

I guess I just wanted to see my face again. Maybe even get a pimple?

okay love friends,
keep on,
frank.

PS: You are invited to pontificate wildly on the topic of beards and what they symbolize in our comments. It would give me such pleasure. Here's a start... HIBERNATION.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have a presidents of the US coffee mug that shows definite ebbs and flows of facial hair-itry. Right now we're in the midst of clean-shaven presidentiousness and you don't need a mug to know this.

Frank! I'm glad you titled this post this very way because a few days ago I was struggling to make a similar joke in Kubrick-ese but I forgot the words and cadence!

nathaniel russell said...

i fear no beard

Max said...

"Because of hot weather, I also have a ready-made excuse for anyone who might ask why I gave up my beard. I know the real reasons are more murky--they go to the heart of my insecurities as a man and my envy of others of my sex. When I meet a man I admire and he wearing a beard, I immediately think about emulating him. The tribe of bearded men have a patriarchal firmness, a rabbinical kindly wisdom in their faces. They strike me as good providers. They resemble trees (their beards are nests) or tree cutters. In any case, mentally I place them in the forest, with flannel shirt and axe.

So I join this fraternity, and start to collect the equivalent of approving winks from other beardies, fellow conspirators in the League of Hirsutes. It feels good to be taken for an ancestor or pioneer. Then the novelty begins to wear off, the beard starts to itch, and I realize that inside I am no more rooted or masculinely capable than before. I start to envy clean-shaven men--their frank, open, attractively "vulnerable" faces. Some women will trust you more if you are clean shaven; they profess to see beards as mephistophelian masks, hiding the emotions. Early in the relationship, this may be a good reason to keep a beard. At a later point shaving it off becomes tantamount to a giddy declaration of love...

...Nevertheless, it is still possible to say that beards often connote freedom, telling the boss off, an attitude of "gone fishing"; men often grow them on vacations, or after being booted from the White House staff, like Ehrlichman. (Even Admiral Poindexter grew a mustache)."

--Phillip Lopate, "On Shaving a Beard"

Anonymous said...

beard be-heard!
yield, feared field!
curled into my skin again,
tiny bridges tiny arches
emerge, slow, and red.
read: Weard.
No more bread
in my beard

-Mosstickles VanVleet