＃５２

There will always be a Frontier.

The Frontier has many forms (geographical, cultural, theological…), shifting with the age. It matters not. Men cannot live except in self-reference to a realm where they may fight and die. A man who leaves for the Frontier subsequently lives for all he left behind — not the substance of it, but the memory. The man who stays merely dreams of the Frontier, constructs analogues of it, fantasizes himself a future hero just waiting (somehow nobly) to be driven to the Frontier by fate.

Neither man is free. Neither man is bound. All men may exercise volition, yet it floats atop an undercurrent of yearning for Nature’s maternal embrace. All men secretly desire a surrender to the whims of a Frontier — to have their soul shaken in a cup of dice, raised as stakes in life’s great game. A woman begs her husband not to join the war, knowing a cruel death awaits her man. She does not understand: the cruelty is the point. It assures him, comforts him, dying red in shrapneled snow…

… that his fate was chosen for him. That he did not run away from life, he did not die alone. That he did not duck his callings, sitting comfortably at home. He did not rig the dice, and did not stack the odds… but gave himself fully to them, a cross carried for the gods.

I am here now, Mother, dreams the man at the Frontier. Take me home.