Evolution

I have recently striven to understand man.

I have come to plot out an evolution of the species, over my own personal evolution, as the teenager extinguishes and the seemingly primordial whimper of the infant fades into obscurity and my organism occupies its 20th year in its living and breathing existence. Since I left home, I have progressively come to understand, to accept even my own mortality. The passing away of my grandmother when I was twelve, the ice-cold kiss on the marble-esque forehead before she was returned to earth seemed easy to brush away, as one does falling tears, restoring a respectable brow -  but no, such moments linger, disturb one's sleep, contort the reality thought as sound and understood and definitive.

Accepting the similar fate, it has pushed me to think of love. It is a romantic ideal, one I still don't completely adhere to, that love is a beautiful channel through which to discover oneself. I have always supported the self-sufficiency model that I will direct my own inner voyage and will depend on no one's compass or maps or trade winds.

I still believe this is valid but I ask myself on occasion, whether this belief is sustained more by the possibility of being alone through life and having no other choice or by a truly-founded conviction. The idea of mutual discovery is becoming more and more appealing. I remain skeptical, only because I suspect this could be the beginning of a common mania that, at its apotheosis, sees people marrying or coupling with ANYONE at around 30-35 just so as not to be alone. However, in principle, the idea that, through love, you discover yourself by metaphor, by parable, by proxy, in exploring the inner life of another person and relating that back to yourself and coming to mutually understand yourselves through the inner language of the other strikes me as sublimely beautiful and dynamic.

I am a child throwing a roped bucket into the deep currents of the lazy river. With each return of the bucket, through weeds, water-life and dirt, the murky, foreign under-life, I understand more of what is inside of me.

I guess you could say that I am hungry , that I am ripe, that I am ready to  open my eyes and behold what man is.

Man, from my earliest childhood proto-erotic fantasies, has undergone as evolution of sorts to what I consider now to be the object of my affection.

Man has, therefore, emerged from the mud infantile distinguishing, the love of the masculine principle - the pure, unadulterated essence, like the descending races in the Old Testament, to occupy the a few simple types - the athlete, the androgen, the pervert, the beast, the adulterer, the poet, et al. The splintering and dissonance continues into adolescence. Preferences come with hormones. Fetishes, textures, colours, smells, etc. All become subject to inexplicable discrimination. A pattern emerges that heads toward infinity: to know man. The types will split and disseminate and enlightenment will come when the erotic centre ceases to cling the hallowed generalizations and myths that are whispered out of the grave of infancy.

I continue to love men according to type and prejudice.

Comments

[SparklesMpls]

Good luck on your journey. You seem to have a good start on it alredy. I like the idea of mental growth through physical activity ...

[Ian]

Beautifully written. Not unlike what I'm going through at the moment. I realize that this was posted in 2005 - and it's strange that I've found it now while I'm in the middle of my own journey. I'm not too sure you'll ever read this or care - but thank you for letting me know that there are like minded people somewhere in the world.