To kill a mocking beard

I have always had a love hate relationship with shaving. Don’t get me wrong. I believe in wet shaving. It is a right of passage and builds character. If I am provoked enough, I may even agree that dry shaves are for pansies. Much like electric toothbrushes and kindled novels. Anyway, dangerous territory here. So we come back to shaving.

I have always had a love hate relationship with shaving. Every once in a while, I love looking at my chin and toast ‘chin chin’ — fishandchipsian for ‘cheers’. There is nothing wrong with a beard. Or even the foetus of a beard. The prelude to a beard. The first chapter of a beard. The young beard. In fact, some follicular philosophers have opined that the emotions trapped in a beard are better in quality and authenticity than their nakedly unleashed brethren. Contentious, but then, philosophers you see.

I have always been fascinated, to some extent, by the presence of a beard on a man. From Santa Claus to King Leonidas and Gandalf to Christ.

These dudes knew their logic from their magic and had character by the oceanfuls. Not like the clean shaven, cadbury boys that became so very popular somewhere in the god forsaken later centuries.

Personally, I feel the fires that burned below Middle Earth and forged men out of mere possibilities, kind of burned down and went cold. And in that mutant chill, a new breed of ‘what ho’sexual men was hatched — clean of demeanour and smooth of chin. Slick of face and quick with the blade. Just about as interesting as an oil spill in a desert and equally colourful. Not a fraction of traction to be found on them. Women supposedly prefer these convex faced smoothies, choosing safety over being swept out of their sandals. I don’t quite believe it. The Spartan queen Gorgo (Leonidas’ wife and a lady whose spine could have held up a metropolis) would have known her men from her fruits and her king from her vassals.

I have always felt that beards are a bit like sails. The sigil of the men whose arrival (or egress) they announce. They also adorn, but in a substantial way. Like teeth in a mouth or brains in a head. Their presence is taken for granted and their absence is hideously missed. Some men, in fact, have become so deeply associated with their beards that their very existence is unimaginable without their facial heraldry. Abe Lincoln, for example. Or, Zach Galifianakis (don’t know why he doesn’t call himself Zee Gee and train the entire attention on his beard. But then, he is young and the road ahead of him is loooooooooooong).

Every thing they do or have done are entirely linked with their beards. Every policy and practice, every role played beautifully, every fiery speech or stellar performance — they are all inextricably joined with their beards. Imagine listening to Lincoln with the light shining off his cheekbones. Imagine the difficulty of John Wilkes Booth (the guy who forever made Abe famous by killing him) if his quarry had no easily identifiable beard. Imagine Zach doing Hangover with baby smooth cheeks and a clean countenance. Shudder.

So now, maybe, is a good time to examine the title of this autobeardgraphy. Why to kill? Who is to be doing the mocking? And why is the beard so errant? It is a bit of a quest. A journey of sorts. One that may not be perilous but is certainly fraught with introspection and white hot rage. Beardliness is next to godliness. But whited? Surely, that’s blasphemy. How can there be spurious white flecks in a beard so regal? How can a symbol of such supreme sensations fall into so sepulchral a ruin? Bluebeards and Blackbeards are rocking. Whitebeards are nothing but mocking. And that, in essence, is the way of most things.
Most. Not all, though. And like Atticus Finch and Boo Radley believed in Harper Lee’s novel of a very similar sounding name, colour does not decide destiny. The fate of a face does not depend upon the colour of a beard but its strength. Where a story washes up does not depend upon the hue of the sail but its fabric. And, how much of history we make, is in the lines on our face — below our beards but above our will.
The best way to kill a mocking beard is to smile with it.