November 16 2023

Maybe the man who gave away his gold at too young an age, the man who lives with more than a modicum of fear, who lost something of his gravitas - maybe that man needs a push down a hill or a strong kick in the ass. Maybe he needs someone to say “show me what you got”.

Maybe that man needs to go dig a face-sized hole in the earth, lay down and scream into the great mother. Maybe he needs permission to say every word he has always been told not to say. Maybe he needs to go and break something beautiful or sacred, to get past that boundary in his mind and destroy what he knows should not be destroyed. Maybe that man needs to distinguish between bullshit machismo, the sort of living that stomps on others in an attempt to build oneself up, or a life that escapes into the brutality of sports where others suffer in play and battle while he sits on the couch safely screaming with potato chip crumbs on his shirt — distinguish between that machismo and what it means for him to be truly masculine, both safe and always in risk, reverent and irreverent, to know when to caress and know when to crush.

If a man cannot bring his intensity and strength in the daily then how will he ever be bloodthirsty against forces like mass incarceration or the killing of people groups or corporations who rape the earth or when his daughter or son is being taken advantage of?

Maybe you’re a man and you’re thinking “that’s not me” then oh boy, watch out. The man who does not think he needs it is the most dangerous one of all because passivity has wrapped itself around his neck and he has no idea that he can’t breathe.

The man who doesn’t need it — he doesn’t need it because he wants it and he finds it; he’s always looking for a little trouble.

But the man who needs it, maybe he gets pushed out or kicked out, he begins to start looking, and maybe that man will come back both softer and stronger, a wildness in his eyes, an energy you’ve never seen before because that man got a little bit of his gold back and he’s not giving it away to just anyone any longer.