November 23 2023
Mythologically, historically, things fall apart for men at around 40. Could be 33 or 37 or 45. I don’t know when it is or if it is for women. Could it be that because women know what it means to bleed and to lose something of themselves from the time of puberty that they intrinsically know what death means in their bodies, over and over, rhythmically (the word -flow- here holds a poetic sense), and because of this knowing they don’t fall apart, a big death, like men do sometime near middle life?
This is a thinking that goes back to forever. Nothing is new except the shaping and molding of forms.
This falling apart for men needs a name. It needs to be named. It doesn't have a single name. I don't like "mid-life crisis"; it is a tame, domesticated. That won't do at all.
You have to listen for its name or name it yourself or give it a name others have given it before you. Let it go unnamed and it becomes far more dangerous. You can spot when a man has gone through a big death and not found its name. That man goes out and buys a car. That man dates someone and you think, “Dude. Come on.” That man gets a gym membership and tries to get his body to go back in time, become a boy again. He doesn't know he's still a boy. He could have saved so much money! (As I type the thought came to me "maybe I should get a gym membership".) Watch out for that man. Wish him well, hope for him, but stay out of his path. There is a trail of blood behind him and a trail of blood in front of him.
When you do not listen for the name of a big death then you are never able to sit in it and submit to it and let go of the control you thought you had. You will try to overpower it and you'll lose, but not by your own submission; it will slowly destroy you until your final breath.
Listen for the name and be crushed by it. Find out its name and discover that, while it is more powerful than you, it does not define you. It will not hold you down forever if you allow yourself to be held down now. The more you let go, the more it lets go, almost as if you are partnering with it, dancing with it, maybe even thankful for it.
The man who has submitted to that death – behind that man are footprints of ashes instead of blood. He accepted the poverty. Keep an eye on him and watch him fly. Nothing will stop him because he no longer needs to go anywhere. How can you be stopped if you do not need to move? He has everything he needs, wherever he is. When he does move it is in complete freedom. The ashes in his footprints nurture and rejuvenate the soil with every single step, depositing minerals back into the earth that would have otherwise taken decades to decay and decompose.
I know some of those men. They are amazing.
