A man stands at the edge and looks down into the cold swirling waters.
He’s reached the threshold. To go any further is to submerge bodily in a powerful current that he cannot resist, even if he tried.
Descending into it would mean no turning back. He must swim, and swim hard, for these arctic waters will drain his life-force in moments. He’ll have to give absolutely everything he’s got to survive. If not, it’s down into the depths. He’ll be lost.
He won’t be the last.
Every day across our civilised land, some of the men amongst us meet their match, are overwhelmed, cannot or will not step up, give up instead and stand by watching helplessly while their souls are crushed.
After such desecration, whether what follows is a literal or metaphorical death, it matters not. What has happened is painfully clear.
Another man down.
On the full moon last week men gathered on old farmland in Scotland to hold out a hand to struggling men who feel like they are slipping into the bitter abyss.
It was a cold clear night in the north and she was radiant in the wide open sky when I stopped and looked up to admire her. Many call her the wolf-moon, while some know her by another name: the stay-at-home-moon.
Wouldn’t that be nice, to stay at home in her arms, much more preferable.
It’s easier to stay at home isn’t it, rather than venturing out to do the work that needs to be done.
In the safety and security of the surroundings men know so well, the comfortable familiarity wraps around and takes us in like a young lover.
Of course there comes a point when to be enveloped so sweetly begins to smother and stifle. Eventually you start to suffocate, you can’t breathe, and you begin to expire. Rainer Maria Rilke knew this:
And another man, who remains inside his own house,
dies there, inside the dishes and the glasses,1
Men may be troubled by this sort of unsettling truth, as they should be.
I arrived on the farm, the appointed gathering place, a number of days ahead of time, in the converted van that is home to me, my woman and my children.
During that time, two storms came through like wailing kelpies, worrying the farmyard barns and jostling the vehicle in the night.
To wake from sleep at the mercy of a gale is to feel truly powerless and vulnerable.
There’s nothing to do but hunker down and get through it. The children sleep through of course but the windstorms upset my woman, and they upset me too.
As father, partner, protector, patriarch, I struggle with how deeply the storms shred my insides.
Isha and Jocelyn, two fierce and ferocious women from within the wild heart of nature, come to test and challenge, to claw at me with cold searching fingers and ravage the kingdom I have built and am so proud of, which threatens to fall like straw in the face of their bitter onslaught.
So I get out in the middle of the night in the midst of the chaos, and face headlong into the gale.
It is beautiful of course: the banshees take my breath away, their magnificence stuns.
Clouds race past the bright moon holding steady over the farm while the pines beside me roar in protest as they are bent double by the gusts.
Perhaps all men stand on the precipice in these final days of reckoning, those of us who have made the initiatory journey into adulthood, and those who have not and may never do so.
Many men will stand up during supper, walk outdoors and keep on walking. Others will stay at home, fearing the worst.
Notwithstanding, on Burns Night we gathered at the edge, howling under the wolf moon, with the ghosts of marked Pictish warriors at our backs, and Rabbie’s poetry swirling in our mouths like whiskey, igniting fire in the belly:
The fear o’hell’s a hangman’s whip
To haud the wretch in order;
But where ye feel your honour grip,
Let that aye be your border.2
In this world of men, let there be no wretches, no give-ups, no abandonment, no abdication, no buried feelings, no shame, no blame.
Instead, let our inherent honour and integrity triumph over our fears with strong boundaries, steadfast service, granite heartfelt love, wild joy, tears streaming, eyes open and heads held high.
Garg’n Uair Dhuigear!3
Sometimes A Man Stands Up During Supper by Rainer Maria Rilke (translated by Robert Bly)
Epistle to a Young Friend by Robert Burns
Scottish battle cry meaning ‘fierce when roused’.