Repeating Out

I really thought the cotton ball had a chance today. After taking the WTG reduction at an angle, lightly, there was enough hair left to give good traction for repeating with square strokes. I didn't re-lather for this, just mopped around the lather that was on the back of the razor, wherever I found the residues had dried. As usual, I briefly considered leaving it a one-pass shave, because it looked good and even.

Then I repeated the process ATG, and buried the blade as deep as it could reach on the square strokes. It seldom works out this way for me, letting the razor make the decision to stop. I usually need to attack indirectly when shaving by ear. Here, the ideal two passes expanded to something like four, a recursion asymptotically approaching the hair root like the inner, seemingly infinite limit of a rainbow.

Perhaps it is more like a cosmic alignment, a tidal phenomenon, when skewing contributes to cut initiation, tension alignment, AND traction control to balance elements of hair toughness, difficult grain, and skin vulnerability. My animal impulse might be to howl and throw my hands to heaven -- Parker is Great! All praise Personna -- like the ape-men in the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey. (You know I'm already starting a pumpkin cult.)

These are the good times. And that makes it a good day to relinquish my dream of everyday BBS. Its definition excludes my experience, and even if a pontiff of shaving reinterpreted his cotton ball to exonerate me, it would still be wrong. I know firsthand that this is the ultimate shave for me. The innermost rainbow is neither inside-out nor outside-in, but a white band of light, where hair ceases to be cut AND skin ceases to be comfortable.

The limit approaches. I think the gleam may actually be increasing on this edge, but there are beat spots that don't line up with it, despite palm stropping. I wonder if I'll soon be shaving in six passes, or was this the last good one.