Nothing Is Permanent But Change
Gentlemen,
"Nothing is Permanent but change," said the philosopher Heraclitus. I remembered those words weeks ago when I passed on my Onsgar Schwarzweisskeramik scuttle. I was fond of that odd-looking but highly effective scuttle. It was the last in a line of scuttles I had owned through the years, including Georgetown, Becker and Dirty Bird, all scuttles with their own pluses and minuses.
I let my last scuttle go, because I no longer made lather in a bowl. I was back to lathering directly onto my face, a method I had used years ago in what now seems almost a lifetime. I remember feeling invigorated as each circle of the brush swelled the silky blanket of lather on my face. Then the razor wiped it off, but there was more where that from.
Yet change somehow tiptoes into our lives, sometimes even catching us by surprise. Why I have returned to face-lathering I don't know. Not that I had stopped enjoying making lather in a bowl. No, it was not that. I think it probably had more to do with a look back on my life. There is a lot of such reflection on life when we reach a certain age — and I have been there for a while.
Then one morning I looked back on the years and saw a simple boar brush in my hand and some low grade soap, oh, I don't know, Williams, Van der Hagen, Old Spice, or something else. By now I was long beyond that simple boar brush and the forgettable soaps. I had two Rooney brushes, two Thaters, two Simpsons, and a Shavemac, plus an assortment of lower grade badger and boar brushes. My soaps were anything but forgettable. I had bowl-lathered for years, but now it was time to move on, not to the future, but to the past.
I ordered a Moss Scuttle from Sara Bonnyman. It was a battle between the Straight Razor Designs scuttle and the Moss. The Moss won, not because it is better — I have used neither, so how would I know? It was because I had promised the Moss to myself years ago.
I don't know whether face-lathering is better than bowl-lathering. There is no way to know, for each method has its own pluses and minuses. The philosopher Pindar said: "Time, in the turning-over of days, works change for better or worse." I suppose that's how I must look at it.
Gentlemen, have you found yourselves looking back?
