Time, gents and ladies, can be our friend. I am fond of saying “Time has the final say—always has, always will.” It took time for me to learn to ride a bike, took time to mature (clearly still a work-in-progress), took time to learn proper technique so I didn’t irritate my neck so bad I could cook an egg on it. Time has apparently decided I’m allowed to pop my head in to the Big Boy’s room and take a deep whiff. I’m starting to ‘get it’.
The ‘it’ I speak of? Well, stick with me a moment.
The mornings here in the desert Southwest are, like everywhere in the North Hemisphere, beginning to cool considerably. I am well aware that as I write this there are warnings along the Plains and Northeast of record breaking lows . . . we here in AZ are not experiencing those (not that I’m gloating . . . well, not entirely
). But hopping out of a toasty shower in the autumn isn’t necessarily a pleasant experience; makes one feel alive, certainly, but we humans are better suited to a narrow temperature range.
I designated this morning and tomorrow morning as Proraso shaves: red today, green tomorrow. But I haven’t tried warming Proraso yet as I only acquired it during my trip to Italy back in Sept. So I took some water to just under boiling in the electric kettle and poured a little in my ceramic brush mug (nothing special, just a regular coffee mug), dropped in my Proraso/Omega boar, and filled my scuttle with the not-quite-steaming water, then poured some into the scuttle bowl itself — being mindful of simple physics ups the success potential.
I applied a quick bit of Proraso goodness to my face upon initial brush load then loaded a bit more and went to the scuttle bowl (after pouring out the hot water, of course). Man, that scent was something nice! If one can associate temperature with smell it was a wonderful, autumnal, warm yet earthy scent. I’m not huge on sandalwood, but this was on a slightly different level of good stuff, like when you get pizza crust just the way you like it or hear your lady laugh and see her eyes twinkle. Just an in-the-moment, pause-and-enjoy-life kind of thing.
I won’t bore you with the shave details, suffice to say the lather was beautifully warm, especially on the third pass, and the shave itself was the sort that confirms your day is off to a great start.
So, about the ‘it’. When I started this journey—a mere 10.5 months ago—I couldn’t understand how guys made such a big deal about ‘fall’ scents. I had taken up DE shaving on the embarrassingly false pretense that it was cheaper than the other way—if you don’t know what I’m stating then clearly you’re a newbie, and that’s okay, you’ll understand soon enough.
But now that I have close to a full year of experience, now I am finally beginning to appreciate the correlation between the change of seasons and the scent of the lather under my nose. It’s not a fully developed sense yet, I’ll cop to that, but like all good things it will mature. I have a tub of Soap Commander Refinement I need to revisit, TOBS Cedarwood, and Moon Soap’s Amaretto Speciale as well.
I finished college up north in Flagstaff, so I’ve had the opportunity to experience the change of seasons in northern Arizona, to feel the sharp crisp of fall, breathe in its quiet message of change, and listen to multi-colored leaves crunch underfoot. Now those warm, fall scents are beginning to make sense to me. Maybe this is one of the benefits of aging.
Cicero once wrote “Reason, when it is full grown and perfected, is rightly called Wisdom.” I look forward to that.
The ‘it’ I speak of? Well, stick with me a moment.
The mornings here in the desert Southwest are, like everywhere in the North Hemisphere, beginning to cool considerably. I am well aware that as I write this there are warnings along the Plains and Northeast of record breaking lows . . . we here in AZ are not experiencing those (not that I’m gloating . . . well, not entirely
). But hopping out of a toasty shower in the autumn isn’t necessarily a pleasant experience; makes one feel alive, certainly, but we humans are better suited to a narrow temperature range.I designated this morning and tomorrow morning as Proraso shaves: red today, green tomorrow. But I haven’t tried warming Proraso yet as I only acquired it during my trip to Italy back in Sept. So I took some water to just under boiling in the electric kettle and poured a little in my ceramic brush mug (nothing special, just a regular coffee mug), dropped in my Proraso/Omega boar, and filled my scuttle with the not-quite-steaming water, then poured some into the scuttle bowl itself — being mindful of simple physics ups the success potential.
I applied a quick bit of Proraso goodness to my face upon initial brush load then loaded a bit more and went to the scuttle bowl (after pouring out the hot water, of course). Man, that scent was something nice! If one can associate temperature with smell it was a wonderful, autumnal, warm yet earthy scent. I’m not huge on sandalwood, but this was on a slightly different level of good stuff, like when you get pizza crust just the way you like it or hear your lady laugh and see her eyes twinkle. Just an in-the-moment, pause-and-enjoy-life kind of thing.
I won’t bore you with the shave details, suffice to say the lather was beautifully warm, especially on the third pass, and the shave itself was the sort that confirms your day is off to a great start.
So, about the ‘it’. When I started this journey—a mere 10.5 months ago—I couldn’t understand how guys made such a big deal about ‘fall’ scents. I had taken up DE shaving on the embarrassingly false pretense that it was cheaper than the other way—if you don’t know what I’m stating then clearly you’re a newbie, and that’s okay, you’ll understand soon enough.
But now that I have close to a full year of experience, now I am finally beginning to appreciate the correlation between the change of seasons and the scent of the lather under my nose. It’s not a fully developed sense yet, I’ll cop to that, but like all good things it will mature. I have a tub of Soap Commander Refinement I need to revisit, TOBS Cedarwood, and Moon Soap’s Amaretto Speciale as well.
I finished college up north in Flagstaff, so I’ve had the opportunity to experience the change of seasons in northern Arizona, to feel the sharp crisp of fall, breathe in its quiet message of change, and listen to multi-colored leaves crunch underfoot. Now those warm, fall scents are beginning to make sense to me. Maybe this is one of the benefits of aging.
Cicero once wrote “Reason, when it is full grown and perfected, is rightly called Wisdom.” I look forward to that.
