Excerpt from my out-of-print book, What There Is To Love About A Man (Sourcebooks), which honors and celebrates masculine qualities of body, mind and spirit. Used and imperfect copies can be found here and there on the Internet, if you feel like digging.

Turbulence, from www.physicscentral.com

How can I show you who I really am, when I don’t even know myself? How can I share with you my vulnerable side, when everybody told me I had to be strong? What if I want to spend the rest of my life with a man? What if I want to spend the rest of my life with a woman? How can it be that I’ve trashed my marriage vows all in the name of love? Who’s going to teach my son how to love, when his father can hardly figure it out for himself? How can I become my own man, when my job and my church and my country always said I belonged to them? How do I stand in my personal power without stepping on other people’s toes? How can I let go and not lose everything I’ve worked my whole life to get? How am I supposed to listen to that still, small voice inside, when the rooftop chatter in my head just gets louder all the time? What if I change — really change — and you don’t like who I become? What if I don’t, either? How do I follow my bliss and still pay the bills? How much longer can I keep doing the same things in the same way — and expect everything to turn out differently?

The ground is shifting under the feet of us all, but perhaps even more so, for men determined to release themselves from old ways of being. Someday, the gender distinction will likely prove itself irrelevant. Until then, this feels like a good time to revisit this post, which originally appeared in April, 2008.

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A pair of Words of Well-Being(tm) from my book, “What There Is To Love About A Man,” which, alas, is currently out of print. Used or imperfect copies are available here and there on the Internet.

Just a heartfelt collection of waxings poetic by a woman honoring and celebrating masculine qualities of body, mind and spirit. Glorioski! Imagine that!

Weeping Man, Vincent VanGogh

Tears

Who first planted the idea that real men don’t cry? They tense and tighten every muscle,  hundred-weight pounds of pressure to prevent the escape of that first tear, while the rest of us wait and root for the get-away water. Men’s tears slip out when they most expect them and never expect them at all. In the office men’s room, pink slip in hand; at the movie where the guy and his Dad reunite after thirty years; on the assembly line for who knows what reason; when his daughter stands up in front of them all and smiles and spells and speaks her mind; when his son does the right thing. Men’s tears are crying to touch the light of day, to spill out onto the telephone when he gets the call that his brother is gone, that his old buddy slipped away in the night. They gather in the corners of his eyes and seep out slowly when he holds his first-born, one and only, in his arms. Salty tears! It’s a wonder they haven’t crystallized after all these years, crashing and breaking instead of slipping, sliding, gently rolling tears.

Vishvarupa, The Cosmic Man

Treasures

He keeps them in cedar-scented boxes or bubble-pak envelopes or displayed where he can enjoy them every day. Sometimes they’re in his car, hanging from the rear-view mirror, or next to the seat where he can touch them anytime. The tiny note that was taped to the bathroom mirror the day he left. The shells he picked up at his favorite lagoon. The stones shaped like hearts that he finds whenever he takes the time to look. The military medal his Dad gave him when he was nine or ten. Dried petals from the one time someone sent him roses. The glass vial of dirt from the family land. Meemaw’s favorite china teacup, with the chip in the rim. The stale half-bar of chocolate they promised to save until next time. Pesos from Mexico, his lucky token from the Reno truck stop, the garnet that someone pressed into his hand moments before the crash. Pictures of everything that was perfect before it soured. Pictures of what’s perfect now. Rings returned and watches wound down. Collections collecting dust and trinkets turned to treasures.

When a man tends not to be tender, chances are he’s pretending. Does he think we don’t notice those quiet moments when he is gentle as a fawn? Does he imagine the nurses were too busy to hear him whisper so softly into his wife’s ear during her thirty-fifth hour of labor? Could he actually believe they all looked the other way when he held the young boy’s hands close in his own, and slowly told the news it was his job to deliver? We know what he does. We know that he pulls over and stops along the highway to bury road-kill animals with a prayer; that he gently stroked the silken ears of his best friend as the last sleep overtook her; that he murmured a Russian lullaby while changing his aged father’s soiled bedclothes. Not wanting to stare, we saw him lift his college roommate out of his wheelchair and lower him into the water with the most exquisite care. What a sweet, quiet joy, when a man stops pretending and allows himself to be powerfully tender.

Excerpted from my out-of-print book, What There is To Love About A Man (Sourcebooks, 1999). New copies are no longer available, but used and imperfect (remainders) can be had for cheap on www.bn.com and other places as well. Or, just keep visiting this blog and you’ll eventually read most (if not all) of the pages right here!

Musk and moss and a pine forest sunrise. Red-walled canyons and grass freshly mowed and sheets warm from the dryer or never washed at all. Diesel and motors, paper and wood and ink and feathers and bone. New leather, old leather, leather that his great-uncle wore to war. Bread baking and espresso, incense and eucalyptus, cognac and cigars, citrus of any kind, and yes, tobacco. A light breeze coming in from the coast, shaving cream and soap, or no soap at all. High-grade chocolate made in Switzerland and out-of-this-world frybread made at home. His father’s bathroom, his mother’s perfume. Baby powder and spit-up milk and diapers dried on the line. Dog, slightly wet. Cattle and horses and the subway and hard work and the smell of an opening heart. Art paints in tubes and turpentine and fresh-cut flowers, roses and lilac and lilies. Chiles, marinara, kielbasa, chicken soup, and burgers on the grill. Clean clothes, dirty clothes, bleach, a hint of fear, damp wool, and something you could never, ever name.

Excerpted from What There Is To Love About A Man (Sourcebooks, 1999), my out-of-print homage to masculine qualities of body, mind and spirit. Used and blemished copies may be found around the Internet in places like this and this.

Even though my books and writing may be labeled “for men” or “for women,” these distinctions often reflect publishing-world realities more than anything else.

Each one of us resides (and from time to time, slides) along a masculine/feminine continuum. Much of the work we undertake to be whole now, involves integrating our inner masculine and inner feminine in a divine marriage. Liberation from cultural and family oppression and repression is not the province of any particular gender or lineage: It’s Universal (with a capital Y-O-U).

I culled these 7 words from my out-of-print book, What There Is To Love About A Man (Sourcebooks, 1999). My prayer is that women’s anger and the culturally acceptable male-bashing of the late 20th century are behind us: Let us now see our own reflections in the eyes and hearts and spirits of others, variations in body parts notwithstanding.

Fire

Something inside a man sizzles. Red-hot coals lie aglow in his belly, waiting for the breath of inspiration that will set them aflame. This is the fire that lives in a man. These are the roots of his passion, his fervor, his fuel to create a well-tempered existence. Herein lies his tinderbox, awaiting to arouse a man to a luminous life. When his fire is tended and nourished and fed, a man can kindle a revolt of his spirit, and awaken a brilliance as bright as the sun. He need only build the proper hearth to channel this white-hot intensity into the energy of action. To build and to dance; to begin and to be. To radiate a light that shines from within and enlightens all in his orbit — and nobody needs to get burned. A man has the power to be a firebug for his very soul, but first he must find his own matches. And then, he must play with his fire.

Fertility

This is not about sperm counts. This is about the potent fruitfulness that lives in a man. It lives in his fertile imagination, in his prolific mind, in the seeds of innovation and initiation that he gently scatters like milkweed on the wind. A man’s heart is fertile when it gives rise to acts of perfect love and radical forgiveness. When it sows the seeds of peace and justice. When it flowers and drops its petals in receptive soil strengthened by the sun and nourished by the rain. A man walks upon fertile ground when his every thought and his every action favor compassion over contempt and amity over animosity. This is more about productivity than it is about reproduction. This is about begetting a future void of old, obsolete ideas, and bringing forth new ways invigorated by new truths. This is about creating; this is about life.

Work

It doesn’t matter how many jobs a man may have, unless he’s found his work. Not just the work that pays the bills, but the work that feeds his soul. The real work of a man goes on 24/7/365. The work to define his place in the world, and to help create that world. The vocation that fits him like a glove and that no one else can do exactly like him. If he listens, work will call to a man. But until he’s found right livelihood, everything else may feel wrong. He can work for money or love or sheer satisfaction. He may wear a white collar or a blue collar or a pink collar or no collar at all. He can work for wages or work for himself or work for the company store. A man can work with his hands or his head, but to work at what he loves, a man must work from his heart. He must give freely of the gifts that only he can give. Until he steps into his one true calling, a man’s work will never be done.

Eros

Cupid pulled back his bow and hit a bull’s eye, and now the man is real, real gone. He’s leaking love all over the place and sucking the deliciousness out of life. He’s stopping to smell the roses and sticking around to taste the dripping flesh of a ripe and juicy mango. He sees lovers cavorting in the clouds and alongside the road and he’s trembling with runaway lust. Suddenly, all is sensational! Birdsong sweeter than he’s ever heard lilts across meadows more lush than he’s ever seen. A light rain sprinkles his face and he rises up into rapture. He trades in flannel for silk, and cotton for satin, and finally chucks it all to run naked ‘neath the moon. Love songs spill out of his lips without the slightest provocation, and he stays home from work on account of desire. He craves deep chocolate ice cream with hot raspberry syrup, passionfruit nectar with a twist, and Pavarotti twenty-four hours a day. He’s washing in rosewater and soaking in ylang-ylang. He’s been struck by an arrow, and he’s taken it to heart.

Voice

Listen to the voice of a man. Hear it cry out for freedom and call out in triumph. Hear it keen and bellow and moan and wail. His is the voice that exploded in battle; his is the howl that ignited the flame. Beneath all the babble, he spoke sotto voce ; his basso profundo enveloped the hall. You can hear the entire world in the voice of a man. The bit of brogue, the touch of twang, the patois of the plain, and the elocution of the noble. The changing voice of a boy becomes the unwavering voice of a man. A full-throated man voices his fears and his deepest yearnings. He voices his anger as he voices his joy. If called upon and ready, he voices the conscience of the people. The strongest men’s voices still strain to be heard, while somehow, the lesser are heard over all. Listen to the sound of a man’s voice in all of its glory. It just might be a god, with the voice of a man.

Truth

There’s a lot more to the truth than just facts. Or consequences. Truth be told, it matters little whether a man tells the truth, unless he also lives it. Unless he lives the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth of his life. The genuine article; the very life he was born to live. It is one thing to stand in a court of law and swear to be truthful; it is something else altogether to stand in front of the mirror and commit to live a life without lies. When a man creates a life in tune with his deepest knowings, he lives in his truth. When a man forsakes the agendas of others and lives according to his highest values, he can truthfully say he is living an authentic life. The truth is sometimes bitter, and often strange. To get to the naked truth of his own existence, a man may have to peel away lifetimes of layers of lies. When he does, he will find his truth, his way, and his life.

Sanctuary

In the woods, beside the creek. High on the mesa, beneath the ruins. Down in the cellar, behind the furnace. At his desk, late on Sunday. Back at the woodpile, chopping, chopping. Out on the range, running the horses and racing the wind. Over at the levee, skipping stones. Hangin’ at the garage, tinkering with tools. Men without women. Men deep within. On the floor of the library, flipping through art books. Up on the roof, watching the sunset. At the tip of the island, building castles in the sand. Down on his knees, surrounded by Spirit. Underwater. Alone in his den, gathered at the lodge. Lost in his music, seeking the silence. Finding his song, quelling the voices. Behind the wheel. At the controls. On the road. Off the grid. Below the surface. Beyond the din. Far away, men go within.

How the Men Want to Fly
by Rachel Snyder

I am holding men’s hearts in my hands these days,
running my fingers over toughened scar tissue, tracing the rutted pathways
of emotion run roughshod, and breathlessly lingering when I
feel myself sinking into soft spots around the edges.
The braille of a man’s heart is not so different from my own.

They come one after another,
dragging their piecemeal armor on the ground behind them, rusting and
clanging and kicking up dirt in the breeze, arms and torsos twisted and pained
from failed attempts to simply fling off these burdensome hunks of plated steel.

How the men want to fly! To put down their overstuffed attaches of the soul
on the dusty ground beside them and rise up in feathery lightness.
They have set small fires alongside the road. They have used up their last matches
in incendiary rage. They do not yet know that armor will not burn,
can never be torn apart with one’s teeth.

The neon sign outside my temple says eternally open, around-the-clock priestess. They
cross the threshold, leaving the scent of their bravado outside the door. So tired
each one of them is, exhausted from running to keep up, to hold his equilibrium
in place and fight the descent into darkness.

They turn as I peel them gently, layers falling to the floor. Unbound, the men shudder.
O Madre! they cry in silence. O Sister! Abuelita! Virgin! Maiden! Whore! Sinking, the
men tremble, then melt under the harsh frailty. There are puddles left behind
and in them, Look! the Moon has tossed slivers of Her smile.

(c) rachel snyder