What comes after the butterfly…
I mean first you have the quiet caterpillar, happy I guess with his lot but not achieving all that much as he slowly plods along his safe, unremarkable leaf (life) before he eventually slips snugly into his cosy but closeted cocoon. But hey, what’s this! Out soars that butterfly, garishly resplendent, profligate in his affections across a garden he never realised was so… so colourful and so beautiful (and indeed also so plentiful).
However as They will tell you, his day whilst glorious is nonetheless shortlived. Yet does that really have to be the end?
Imagine a third stage for instance, where our capricious butterfly has metamorphosed yet once more, this time into something far more balanced but without necessarily losing his shine. Is such a thing actually possible? I’d like to think so.
Why? Well this is the spot where the Yellowbrick Road has brought me to. So let’s forget about the recent and also not so recent past. It’s time for a new now, and how to go about living it. Having said that though I’m not about to get profoundly existential on you. Let’s confine such enquiry to affairs of the heart and flesh, for elsewhere one has fewer questions to ask.
Note though I have reached this point still a younger man. Indeed I have to add at this juncture how I also know, irrespective of some negative male stereotyping out there, that I will always remain a “young” man at whatever age life finds me. I have my acknowledged maturity yes, but I’m not going to let it suffocate my less observed wider-eyed self. Rather it should only compliment it, even when I eventually reach the age of a pipe, some slippers or a respiratory aid. After all if today’s older woman can celebrate the retention of her youthful vivacity if she chooses, why can’t a man?
So as this eternally “matured” yet eternally “young” man I suppose I’m now looking for more than what I’ve had. Not because what I’ve had hasn’t been good enough. Au contraire. But the new question I have to ask now is what more do I want? I mean I’ve already had what I’ve thought I wanted (and hey most of it’s done me the world of good too). Yet I’m now sure there’s far more than that out there. And in all honesty I must admit I’ve previously backed away from seeking it for the sake of something easier, something where I didn’t have to think as much or put myself, or worse my feelings, on the line; probably because I’d considered this a step back. However, if I’m to take a step, nay a leap forwards then cometh the hour, cometh the… well who, what?
Maybe that answer will cometh with the answer to my ‘what more do I want’ conundrum. Is it something long term, or at least longer term than what’s cometh before? God forbid are we really talking commitment here (I won’t say marriage just yet, let’s stick with commitment at the moment, that’s a step in itself)? And if I do want this, whom do I want it with? Well hey, that one I can’t answer yet, obviously.
Do I, will I, have I now got parameters too? I mean here’s me and whatever lives I’ve previously led, predominantly enamoured by the older woman in whatever guises we both may have encountered each other in, and yet there’s never been anything lasting, even if I’ve appreciated her for far more than the physical superficiality of what such relations are usually portrayed as. Indeed I’ve so far only celebrated this new age of the older woman/younger man dynamic as something where all sides can be adult enough to take it and leave it without the hang-ups or the demands, where maybe the friend with benefits is truly both a respected, trusted friend and always beneficial, but not very much more at all.
Now though it’s different, now I have to ask that question that if I want more, is it with her I truly want more with. And what would that really entail. And how would I fit into her world too, because it’s not just about her fitting into mine is it?
Anyway there it is: a new venture and a slightly different and, in regard to one’s more romantic and carnal affairs, far more accountable existence.
The butterfly has flown but in its place? Well here goes nothing…
By TAFKAB [The Artist Formerly Known As Bastian]
