Some posts offer a critique of something, others a question for discussion and others still are more like journal entries or a record of thoughts that occur. This post is, of all my posts so far, the one that most clearly fits into the latter and most self-indulgent category.
I have many memories of being a young boy and being with my dad while he was shaving. I remember finding it fascinating; soap on his face in a specific shape, the razor sharp blade, the concentration and the way he would pull faces to get better access to different parts of his skin. I particularly remember not getting that part. I didn't understand why he couldn't just keep a straight face and shave plainly. I asked a couple of times to explain why, but his answer didn't really clear anything up for me.
Last night i shaved, and it was the first shave of my life where i realised that the faces i pull are not my dad's faces. I'm not offering my parentage up for question here, i'm very much a 'chip off the old block'; hence my surprise, i guess. In that moment i thought 'who's faces are these i'm pulling?'. I have no recollection of seeing either of my grandfathers shave, and suddenly i truly felt like part of a long, long lineage that reaches right back in time. I felt like the shaving faces i pull are someone else's, someone's shaving faces are survived in me, and then so must so much else be.
Obvious, i know, but i've not ever felt like that before. Almost embarrassingly, these feelings actually felt like quite a feat to have achieved, since i'm part of this culture of such individualism, disposability and immediacy. What is this? What's going on? Is it the first early groanings of middle age, is it me beginning to more fully face my mortality?
2 comments:
The first thing i would like to say is that's not you in the photo. I think I should know and I don't remember you looking like that. 2nd My dad must have shaved but i don't remember that either but he was very dark and you had to look close to see the beard -if he ever had one. 3rd you are your own person in the mirror
Yeah, i know that, a couple of people have said (though not through this medium) 'Why aren't they just your own faces?'
2 things: they may well be, but that's not the point; the point is what i was led to feel/realise more fully and it not just being about shaving faces, but all sorts of idiosyncratic parts of me.
Second - To assume they are all my own rather than anyone else's is evidence of the individualistic, immediate and disposable culture aforementioned. Can you dig it?
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