Beards Suck

Sorry, Santa!

I wasn't noticing any change in baseline comfort, once the itching passed. I was noticing a cheesy smell, despite lining well under my nose, regular washing and even fasting (not that I'm a sloppy eater). It wasn't bad looking, until it started getting a bit ahead of the hair on my head with respect to volume, due to scruffiness. So when my wife reminded me of a party coming up, that was it! Ripped it off with the 41c and a fairly dull Cloud blade, then shaved lightly with the Tech and a fresh Personna. I'm really determined not to overshave, expecting zero support from the skin, but I did graze bottom slightly in the trench around my chin with my first WTG pass. Nothing bleeding, nothing that won't heal well by tomorrow -- just enough to spoil the milky white.

About Fasting


Believe me: I'm no health nut. But ever since discovering the fermented tea beverage, kombucha, strange things have been happening. I do believe I pickled myself! Muscle tone and endurance improved; furthermore, I felt compelled to exercise. But then winter came, and I no longer had a good place to run... well, that, and running is f--ing brutal on someone carrying as much weight and as many years as me. I was starting to turn a corner, from "old man strength" to knotty old tree.

Then I hit upon this documentary,

https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=t1b08X-GvRs

mentioning that after three days' fast (according to the Russians) one's body experiences an "acidosis crisis." Cool -- just the back-tracking I need! Even on the face of it, it makes perfect sense that not eating would be the alternative to exercise. Though kombucha is highly acidic, kind of a tea vinegar beer soda, metabolizing it leaves you alkalized. And I know firsthand, from the epithelial effects of baking soda in water, that this very well accounts for my excessive toughness.

Actually, the resonance goes all the way back to a preceding hobby, the high lime content of my local water making for excellent jelly and pickles. Excess sugar doubtless had a role in my condition -- I'm a fiend when it comes to sweets. Fasting is all about fixing that.

I was pleasantly surprised that I didn't have to wait three days for my muscles to relax, after I stopped eating. That was noticeable on the first day. Turns out, a lot of people just eat one meal a day for this reason, which they call "intermittent fasting." I was somewhere in between that and "water fasting," because I rewarded myself with a pint of kombucha (I'm guessing less than 50 calories) at the end of each day, but didn't eat for 5 days on end. I also allowed myself the traditional salt sustenance and appetite suppression of soup broth and coffee.

By now you should know, I'm always going to let intuition guide me over any advice, good or bad. Well, it is much more comfortable for me, to have nothing in your gut, than to be sending a large meal down the pipe, followed by a day of churning. My first day sucked the worst, by far. I was full of energy on the second day, working on glycogen stores in my liver. On the third day I learned I needed some potassium to balance as the sodium in my broth, and used it to get over some inflammation deep in the center of my head. Fourth day was merely (!) a mental challenge, as I had to take my family through the McDonald's drive-thru without partaking -- and my wife didn't eat hers for an hour, which was pure torture.

By the fifth day, I had it dicked. I've quit smoking and drinking before, after all. It was down to little pangs of temptation, the unguarded moment. But I'm not trying to quit eating altogether! Nor do I have any real problems, like the patients of the Siberian or German clinics on their 3-week program, under medical supervision. Five was plenty. Pancakes and bacon started my sixth day.

I wish I could send my wife to Germany. The medical establishment has its claws into her deep, with diabetes and cancer medicine. I say "metabolic syndrome" to our doctor regarding her and my chubby son, and get no reaction. We went to an endocrinologist for her diabetes, at my insistence. Nope, same shit: take pills, wait for the inevitable decline. We will "monitor."

Don't know why I'm telling you all this. It's one of those things you can only teach by example, and experiential learning does the rest. We used to do this in boarding school, which immunized me against modern medical ignorance. Just a couple of days, with juice. (I was skinny then.)

This time, I was just beginning to get acquainted with my appetite for salt, and from that, moving forward, I'll be benefitting from more soup and salad consumption, and morning coffee on the regular. There was more I could learn, and there's definitely more fat pad to lose from my belly, so it's something I certainly will try again, perhaps in the doldrums of February.

The Itching!

Although my Xmas beard seems to be growing fairly well directed away from the skin, rather than curling back into it, I've experienced some terrible scratching sensation this week. Stroking seemed to drive the root into nerve endings like little thorns. Or maybe it's a lever action, splitting that layer of the epidermis. Anyway, it seems that the new wave of epithelium, unaffected by shaving, has surfaced to a depth that interacts with the hair follicles.

In response, rather than dabbing a little lather on my cheeks and neck, I brought out the No. 6 brush, Pre de Provence No. 63, and gave my whole beard a good scrub. As I've previously noted, itching is the result of over-expansion of deep tissue, relative to the surface. Glycerin swells the outer crust to match. I think I'm through the worst of it, now.

Locking in my soap choices


Regardless, PdP No. 63 had to be cut out of the ceramic dish near my sink, and Fine Green Vetiver chopped to take in its place. When I tried the old knuckle maneuver, Fine just flaked apart like fudge (very, very hard fudge), so I figured I'd save my digits the pain. It pressed quite well into its new home, though; even bettter than the PdP went back into its old tin.

A home was conveniently provided for WTP Lime Burst by the manufacturer. I just pressed with thumbs near the edge to widen the puck tight to the wall of the container.

With triple-milled soap especially, it's a lot more satisfactory to have a vessel containing the water that isn't initially thick enough to be drawn into the brush, as you gently stir to dissolve soap. To do it with Williams requires a tiny cup, which may leave you rattling your brush handle. Might as well use your hand. A container filled to the rim is easily spilled, and no good for running the liquid out of the brush for further concentration. Half-filled containers are just right.

What The Puck?! I'm Getting Old

Ah, sweet olfactory relief! Anticipation was killing me. The Black Friday sale at Italian Barber allowed me to get some soaps I've been curious about, and restock the Sensitive Skin varieties I've already grown to love.

I'll be testing them on my cheeckbones and neck, because I've decided to do the opposite of Mo' Shave November, and grow a beard for Xmas. The beard's eventual removal might leave me soft and vulnerable to nicks on my chin, but I want to see if I can thicken the stratum corneum, for better texture, by letting the skin replace its cells under zero stress. Then, I will severely restrict the glycerin from soap, as outlined in the previous post. A moon face will brighten my New Year, as sure as the bald spot reorganizing on my crown. Though it feels almost as velvety as the rest of my head, and I'm not giving up, I can easily see the lack of density.

Fine Green Vetiver


I don't know anything about vetiver -- I read that it's a fragrant grass, but who knows what other fragrances are in this soap. It's an integral accord, with an odor I would describe as archetypal. I can't directly recall any personal contact with this scent, yet it is exactly what I would expect fancy soap to smell like. A decidedly soapy smell. To pair it with a visual form, this is what I would expect the shaving soap from Vermont Country Store to smell like. I don't feel like I have to seek out De Vergulde Hand anymore, either. (Do comment with comparisons, if you happen to own either.)

The lather doesn't invoke the same chemical magic as Tabac, which once again seems accidentally related to that soap's relatively controversial fragrance. But Fine is technically enhanced somehow. This stuff lathers into shaving cream, pure and simple. Man, if this had been my first soap, what a snob I would have become! You really can't see the bubbles, and there is no working up to it, either. Performance overall, I won't really know until I can pull a stroke longer than an inch. But it protected my neck well enough from a dull Cloud blade today, and was significantly gentler to my skin than Art of Shaving Sandalwood.

Which reminds me of my visit to AoS, and my impression of their Vetiver Citron cologne: "too refined for me." This soap is not. It's every bit as subdued, but it doesn't try to distinguish itself in any way. Definitely unisex. A rich man's Williams? There is no need to consider pairing with aftershave, unless you WANT to smell like soap, as this will duck out of the way, whatever you wear. I tried to dilute Eau De Quinine to where it could synergize, and still lost it. Fine Green Vetiver denies the reality of other, more exciting shaving soaps and just expects you to forsake them as false. As if it came from a time when no other shaving soaps existed, or God's own bathroom.

What the Puck?! It's Shaving Soap!


But other soaps do exist, and three very new, fresh ones were included in this order. From Fine Green Vetiver, up in God's bathroom, I came down to Earth with Razorock Lime Burst, a scent that can only be described as the best lime candy you never had.

This is just sniffing the puck, mind you. I'm actually afraid of this soap, unsure of what glycerin's position in the ingredient list, and the strong fragrance, means for my skin. "Triple milled"? A well-homogenized soap it is, but suspiciously, slightly translucent. Like candles I might not want to light. I'm really putting my faith in Italy, because it looks like Italian Barber turned around and exported something this time: everything they learned from How To Grow A Moustache. Smells like late adolescent spirit!

Lime is the one for me: my first favorite flavor as a kid, my first deodorant, my first shaving cream. The blue smells like hairspray to my nose, and not a man's -- but I do get the "barbershop." Orange is the smell of the Glade air freshener people once used to cover pot smoke in dorm bathrooms. Actually much better than that (strictly fruity, completely lacking the cinnamon), and a close contender for my trial, but after sniffing everything for like, 20 joy-filled minutes, it came down to associations.

I pushed this soap by making wet lather, wetter than the marketer meant it to be (judging by isntructions in the online product desciption, which I never had any intention of following). It performed a lot like Williams, that way; which is a good thing, to me. It's as flexible as Kiss My Face moisture shave, in this regard, but not as moisturizing; and with the strong scents, that's probably the best comparison I can make. I had a new Cloud, and my Slim set one notch too high, and nicked my neck in a previously bumped spot on my Adam's apple. I then turned it down, and got some skip on pick-ups. On the other hand, I appreciated how the low, yet undrying lather showed the cheek line of my beard.

This ought to be everyone's first hard puck. It takes a step back to the over-enthusiastic days of glycerin base, but doesn't go all the way. Coconut oil as balm, bay rum Witch Hazel splash, English Leather for dressing up: these are what I would send back through time, to my high-school dopp kit.

Hair For Xmas

Yes, I think I've finally decided to let the growing commence once again, my scalp having received the full benefit of purification through prolonged shaving. It's not easy to let that stubble back out, in the evening! I eased into it with a mostly WTG shave from "Chaoying," yesterday, so today it isn't too itchy or scratchy.

Doing the Dry


There are certain physical elements of health, which shaving has helped me know better, the main one being how moisturizing relates to inflammation. But there's so much more to it, involving the proper flow of natural moisture from within to the skin surface, through soluble fiber in the diet. For the best shave, I need:

Beans at dinner
Exfoliating soap or other treatment at bedtime
Dry (i.e., not moisturizing, only wet) shaving soap

Probably some extra steep oil and salt gradients drive that flow, also, for the really miraculous shaves, but those are not quite under my command -- yet. This week, however, I cleared up my crusty follicles most strikingly by the means listed. After gorging on an unusually successful pot-sticker with canned pintos, I woke up with incredibly soft skin.

The thing is, I have these amazingly well-scented soaps with a lot of fragrance oil and glycerin, that make shaving-porn lather, and bait me into getting "aggressive" just by prep. Not that they're objectively poorly formulated. They even feel right during the shave, in the way the edge reaches easily to the root, because my skin is effectively being chemically decomposed. But they are definitely excessive for me.  In the post-shave, or indeed the next shave, I find consistently that I have once again prevented nature from working with me.

Year-round Luxury Plan


With this in mind, I'm determined to restrict PdP No. 63 to occasional spring and fall use, like Stirling is restricted to summertime. It's too bad, because that cedar scent could probably rock all winter long. I have three of the new hard soaps from Italian Barber coming, hopefully to take the coveted "triple milled" spot in the ceramic dish on my countertop. XXX formula duro is already on the job as far as luxurious scent, but I can tell even that's pushing it for glycerin now. Special occasions, winter.