A real man wants two things:
danger and play.

Therefore he wants woman
as the most dangerous plaything.

–excerpt Thus Spoke Zarathustra, pt. 1, On Little Old and Young Woman, by Friedrich Nietzsche

Nietzsche, a prolific writer throughout his professional life, said many outrageous things, a challenge to life-as-we-know-it.  Reading Nietzsche, I have learned to be wary of precipitous emotions of agreement or of aversion to his words.  Thoughtful attention is easily defeated by a stampede of emotion.  Many of his aphorisms inspire my imagination.  All are revelations of his soul.

Nietzsche as a human being by any account was troubled.  I am sure that’s unremarkable as a majority of us entertain our own roster of demons.  This saying certainly attracted my attention.  Wrestling with temptation to feature the lines in a post and yet, — why offend female readers to no good end?

What is a real man?  Am I real?  (There are days when I am convinced that I belong with the defeated…)  Also shouldn’t one  ask, and a “real” woman is…?  I suppose that Nietzsche is the last person I’d have in mind as a source of advice about male-female relationships.  Yet it is clear that he considered the course of his own life a laboratory, with keen observation of his states of “success” and the “abject failures” rising from his trial and error response to circumstances.  Nietzsche, lived day to day, in the same manner as do we all, — improvisationally.   The difference, — he looked for lessons especially on days of acute mental or physical pain. 

There is little question that the male-female relation is the most exhilarating, and the most hazard fraught of  anything about life.  Nothing additional need be said.

Going To California

By Led Zeppelin

Spent my days with a woman unkind
Smoked my stuff and drank all my wine
Made up my mind to make a new start
Going to California with an aching in my heart
Someone told me there’s a girl out there
With love in her eyes and flowers in her hair

Took my chances on a big jet plane
Never let ’em tell you that they’re all the same
The sea was red and the sky was grey
Wondered how tomorrow could ever follow today
The mountains and the canyons start to tremble and shake
As the children of the sun began to awake (watch out)

Seems that the wrath of the gods
Got a punch on the nose, and it started to flow
I think I might be sinking
Throw me a line, if I reach it in time
I’ll meet you up there where the path runs straight and high

To find a queen without a king
They say she plays guitar and cries and sings
La la la la
Ride a white mare in the footsteps of dawn
Trying to find a woman who’s never, never, never been born
Standing on a hill in my mountain of dreams
Telling myself it’s not as hard, hard, hard as it seems

Composed by Jimmy Page, Robert Plant