There’s some American novel about bison herding through the winter.
In an elevated valley, where the snow closes off its entrance and exit – the only slot in a ring of forested mountain that’d let them take the bison back to town. So they stayed the through a bitter cold.
The whole story was written, as most stories are, to capture a metamorphosis of man. Yet not just any metamorphosis, but The Departure.
If you’d imagine the rungs of a ladder so man continues to climb until he becomes unintelligible to his young self prior, younger peers, children or women too.
There’s a hidden courtyard another rung above, however darker the cast to be. Or lighter – intense in either case. The entry fee is a full view and understanding of depravity. Gripping ideals as a stronghold. Virtue as the only comfort – and if forgotten, nothing left.
In our American story, amongst a team of three, so a young man was dragged along. The other two thought to visit a brothel before departure, with the young man too timid but dragged in for a first. It could be vulgar, it could be clever – but in the book’s end so they visit the brothel again. And the driving contrast comes from the afterthoughts of the same prostitute, observing the young man no longer.
That his hands are all calloused now, his body is all hardened now. The timid touch prior had some love or empathy in it – but now there’s nothing. There’s nothing left.
That’s the departure: and if you don’t find your virtue, ideals, whatever else – well the depravity swallows you.
Whether we accept these vulgar parts of ourselves or not doesn’t change the scenery. Our entry fee persists.
Sometimes we can dress it up all sophisticated. So a velvet lining holds a more pure pouch of opium for house guests this night.
But it’s precisely in that vulgarity, however one chases it away. In that vulgarity one becomes entranced. A common vehicle for any story I suppose.
Even if we want to turn away from it, and instead toward our Heroes of this day – it’s precisely in that molten core the Hero persists. It’s precisely that molten core that allows him to dress it up all admirable, dutiful. But molten nevertheless, same as blood dripping.