#middle-age

Most everything was quietly unrequited—the middle-aged desire to choreograph, to be a proper father, to experience love—but I had, at least, tried. I felt the balance and unbalance of the perpetually falling man.

There is a thing called knowledge of the world, which people do not have until they are middle-aged. It is something which cannot be taught to younger people, because it is not logical and does not obey laws which are constant. It has no rules. Only, in the long years which bring women to the middle of life, a sense of balance develops. You can't teach a baby to walk by explaining the matter to her logically - she has to learn the strange poise of walking by experience.