Bearded musings
I don’t have any real plans for my beard. I just decided, one day, to let it go and see what happened.
I’ve never done that before.
The first time I let it grow I was 20 and had just started a new job where facial hair wasn’t a problem, so that was one less thing to do in the mornings.
It grew into a thick, dark brown, snarled ball. After a few months when I went for a haircut the lady asked — kindly, gingerly, as if to a wounded animal — “Would you like me to trim that?”
She did, with some effort, and I liked the look of a neatly trimmed beard, and so I kept it that way for the next 30+ years.
Late last year, about the time I was wondering how I’d look without the sparse growth stubbornly hanging on around the back of my head, I decided, without much ado and no planning whatsoever, to let the thing go. Let it loose upon the world. See what I get.
If nothing else, grow it till Bike Week where I can join a legion of my bearded brethren.
It’s nice, seeing hair on my brush again. Or, you know, needing a brush. And I felt a serious rush the first time a heavy wind blew through it. Oh, right, that’s what hair feels like!
I don’t plan to shape it into interesting topiary hipster designs or put beads in it, I’m far too lazy for that sort of thing. (The picture attached is pre-brushing, and not a style I’d wear outside unless I had an appointment to frighten a child later in the day.) I’m committing to keeping it for a year which would make it, according to the amazingly supportive /r/beards subreddit, a “yeard,” but I’ll probably start trimming it into something less wild after a point.
I’ve been enjoying watching it change shape as it lengthens. Will it go full-Santa?
It is soothing to stroke. I pretend I can hear it purring. I think I’m pretending.
At what point does a beard become complicated enough to become sentient?
I’m already pretty sure it’s eating some of my food. I’m sure I’m not eating as much as is clearly disappearing from my plate.
At night, I can feel it moving.
I wonder.. I wonder if it thinks that because it takes up the bulk of my head, that it believes it should be in charge.
I wonder if it already is.
Originally published at cabridges.com on February 18, 2017.
