AA SOTD - 8/5/22; The Iceman Cometh
Pre: cold shower
Brush: Stirling 26mm synthetic pro handle
Razor: Merkur Progress
Blade: Astra (5)
Lather: B&M Arctique (omnibus)
Post: B&M Arctique AS
Post: Nivea cooling balm
#UNCHALLENGED
Happy FFF to all. Great shave today. I remain the Iceman.
#SIDETRACKED (u/Teufelskraft)
My senior year of high school I had a class first semester that started at 7:00AM. I lived pretty far outside the city where my school was, far enough that I either had to leave at 5:45AM in order to miss the first dose of rush hour traffic and get to school at approx. 6:20, or leave “late” at 6:15/6:20 and potentially hit so much traffic that I would miss the class. So, 5:45AM it was.
Florida is hot and humid. In the morning it is hot and humid. In the middle of the day it is hot and humid. In the afternoon it is hot and humid. In the evening…you get the point. At 5:45AM it is slightly less so but still hot and humid. It is so humid in some months that you awake to find your car soaking wet, as if a rainstorm just passed over your house. But you know it didn’t rain, in fact it hasn’t rained at all since yesterday afternoon, when you had the usual 15 minute deluge of rain, little Florida “micro storms” so small that it could be raining on one side of the street and dry across the way, and so regular that you could almost set your watch to them. But it does not matter, it is 5:45AM and my car is wet and I have to go, mom, I have to go or else. And it’s dark. Dark like the middle of the night. And quiet. I would drive to school looking through my water speckled windows in the dark, quiet, wet morning and play Re Stacks.
For Emma, Forever Ago is a love album. It is about heartbreak and pain and loss and self-discovery that comes through all of those things. Re Stacks is J. Vernon’s memoir on his own self-excavation, on the archeological study of his soul and past, and whether or not he can live with what he finds. In many ways it is about pushing your stacks into the center of the table, the proverbial shove of life, playing the hand your dealt after picking up the cards and finding out what you’ve got, good or bad. I am what I am.
I took this Bon Iver album to college with me, kept listening to it, kept playing it. First year of college was rough for me - I was in over my head, halfway across the country from everybody I knew and loved, and I was cold. It is so god damn cold in the Midwest and I still do not know how people up there endure it. You get used to it, sorta, I know, but man that cold would get into my bones. And for a couple months there I was fucking miserable. But things got better; I turned things around in the second half, made friends, fit in, worked harder. I can remember one night walking home, looking into the inside of buildings, trying to absorb the warmth of their insides through my eyeballs, anything to make that walk warmer. And it was snowing, lightly, just dusting my shoulders, lightly painting the ground around me and the windows into which I was gazing - my headphones had this song on and I gazed into snow speckled windows in the dark, quiet, wet night and I thought how funny it was to be thousands of miles away from one place and yet still be me, same old me.