Conference quark::mennotes-v1

The following book excerpts accompanied the magazine interview with
Robert Bly.

- Paul


                       STALKING THE WILD MAN

                           by Robert Bly


              Adapted from "Iron John:  A Book About Men"
                   Copyright (C) 1990 by Robert Bly
            To be published in October by Adddison Wesley.
        Used in New Age Journal by arrangement with Robert Bly.
                 Copyright (C) 1990 by New Age Journal
                      Reprinted without permission


	The Iron John story says that deep in the psyche of a
man, under the water of his soul, lying there in an area no one
has visited in a long time, is an ancient hairy man.  Making
contact with this Wild Man is a step taken by few men in our
contemporary culture.
	Welcoming the Wild Man is scary and risky.  It requires a
willingness to descend into the male psyche and accept what's
dark down there, including the NOURISHING dark.  When a man
begins to develop the sensitive, receptive side of himself, he
often feels warmer, more companionable, more alive.  He gets to
write poetry and go out and sit by the ocean, he doesn't have to
be on top all the time in sex anymore, he becomes empathetic --
it's a new, humming, surprising world.  But going down through
water to touch the Wild Man at the bottom of the pond is quite a
different matter.  The being who stands up is frightening.
	The myths associate hair with the instinctive, the
sexual, the primitive.  However, the kind of wildness, or
un-niceness, implied by the Wild Man image is not the same as
macho energy.  Wild Man energy leads to forceful action
undertaken not with cruelty but with resolve.  The Wild Man is
not opposed to civilization, but he's not contained in it or
determined by it.
	The Western man's connection with the Wild Man has been
disturbed or interrupted for centuries now, and a lot of fear has
built up.  Corporations do much work to produce the sanitized,
hairless, shallow man.  "Every angel is dangerous," Rilke says,
so some fear is appropriate.  But knowing nothing is not
appropriate.
	Rather than looking outside for a Wild Man, we could look
at the traces that remain inside us.  One trace of the Wild Man
is the spontaneity we have preserved from childhood.  No matter
how many family reunions we have participated in, or how many
committee meetings we have attended, funny little motions of the
shoulders and weird cries are waiting inside us.  When we are in
a boring conversation, we could, instead of saying something
boring, give a cry.  We can never predict what will come out; and
once it is out we leave it to the others to interpret, no
apologies or explanations.  Little dances are helpful in the
middle of an argument, and completely ununderstandable haikus
spoken loudly while in church or while buying furniture.
Rudeness and sarcasm may be savage; but the unexpected is not
savage.
	When the Wild Man has been preserved inside, a man also
feels a genuine friendliness toward the wildness in nature.  In a
Concord woman's description of Emerson, Hawthorne, and Thoreau
ice skating, Emerson leaned forward as if breasting the wind,
Hawthorne skated like an immensely calm statue, and Thoreau
gave little leaps and pirouettes constantly.  Thoreau said, "In
literature it is only the wild that attracts us."
	Gerard Manley Hopkins, always making unexpected sounds,
said,

	What would the world be, once bereft
	Of wet and of wilderness?  Let them be left,
	O let them be left, wildness and wet;
	Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

	It is the Wild Man who is protecting the Spotted Owl.
The Wild Man is the male protector of the Earth, and men and
women need now, more than ever in history, to protect the Earth,
its creatures, the waters, the air, the mountains, the trees, the
wilderness.  Moreover, when we develop the inner Wild Man, he
keeps track of the wild animals inside us and warns us when they
are liable to become extinct. The wild one in you is that one
which is willing to leave the busy life, and able to be called
away.

	The strong leaves of the box-elder tree,
	Plunging in the wind, cause us to disappear
	Into the wilds of the universe,
	Where we shall sit at the foot of a plant,
	And live forever, like the dust.
		-- "Poem in Three Parts," by Robert Bly

	The Wild Man is the door to the wildness in nature, but
we could also say that Wild Man is nature itself.  The same has
to be said of the Wild Woman.  Hermes, Apollo, the Virgin may be
above nature, but the Wild Man IS nature.
	The Wild Man also represents the positive side of male
sexuality.  The hair that covers his whole body is natural, like
a deer's or a mammoth's; he has not been clean shaven out of
shame, and his instincts have not been suppressed as to produce
the rage that humiliates women.  The Wild Man's sexuality does
not feed on the feminine or pictures of the feminine; it
resonates also to hills, clouds, and ocean.  The Native American
has much Wild Man in him, and it comes out in love of ordinary
things.  Lame Deer mentions over and over in his autobiography
that the Indian experiences the divine in a bit of animal hide,
in mist or steam, and in ordinary events of the day.  A Chippewa
wild woman wrote this little poem:

	Sometimes I go about pitying myself,
	And all the time
	I am being carried on great winds across the sky.

	The Wild Man encourages a trust in what is below:  the
lower half of our body, our genitals, our legs and ankles, our
inadequacies, the "soles" of our feet, the animal ancestors, the
Earth itself, the treasures in the Earth, the dead long buried
there, the stubborn richness to which we descend.  "Water prefers
low places," says the Tao Te Ching, which is a true Wild Man
book.
	The attention to what is below encourages us to follow
our own desires, which we know are not restricted to sexual
desire but include desires for the infinite, for the woman at the
edge of the world, for the firebird, for the treasure at the
bottom of the sea -- desires entirely superfluous.
	We need to build a body, not on the parallel bars, but we
need to build an activated, emotional body strong enough to
contain our own superfluous desires.  The Wild Man can come to
full life inside only when the man has gone through the serious
disciplines suggested by the initiation process.  The Wild Man
doesn't come to full life through being "natural," going with the
flow, smoking weed, reading nothing, and being generally groovy.
Ecstasy amounts to living within reach of the high voltage of the
golden gifts.  The ecstasy comes after thought, after discipline
imposed on ourselves, after grief.
	The Wild Man, then, through his disciplines, prepares an
emotional body that can receive grief, ecstasy, and spirit.  He
prepares matter.  Sophia descended from the upper Aeons down into
this planet, the story says, and got caught here in matter; as a
result we can find Sophia in every piece of bark and every stone
or feather.  The Wild Man is a friend of Sophia's.  "Everyone who
is calm and sensible is insane," says Rumi.
	Finally, the Wild Man's energy is that energy which is
conscious of a wound.  His face, which we see in medieval
carvings, and his body, which we see in the small basalt statue
from 4000 B.C. contains grief, knows grief, shares grief with
nature.  The hard survivor in us survived to adulthood.  But the
Wild Man leads the return we eventually have to make as adults
back to the place of childhood abuse and abandonment.  In some
ways the Wild Man is a better guide to that pain than our inner
child is, precisely because he is not a child.  Because the Wild
Man is not a child, he knows stories and can lead us into the
personal suffering and through it.
	The Wild Man's qualities -- among them spontaneity,
association with wilderness, honoring of grief, and respect for
riskiness -- frighten many people.  Some men, as soon as they
receive the first impulses to riskiness and recognize its link
with what we've called the Wild Man, become frightened, stop all
wildness, and recommend timidity and collective behavior to
others.  Some of these men become high school principals, some
sociologists, some businessmen, Protestant ministers,
bureaucrats, therapists; some become poets and artists.
	The aim is not to BE the Wild Man but to be IN TOUCH with
the Wild Man.  No sane man in Greece would say, "I want to be
Zeus," but in American culture, past and present, we find people
who want to be the Wild Man -- writers as intelligent as Jack
Kerouac fail to make the distinction between being and being in
touch with.  Trying to be the Wild Man ends in early death, and
confusion for everyone.

                           *********

Re:  496.33
        
Thanks for your input.  I can relate to much of what
you said about the benefits of participating in gatherings
similar to the type Bly organizes.

See also 505.0 and .1.

    I went to another men's gathering, though.  The speakers were poet
    Robert Bly, Jungian psychologist and author James Hillman, and
    psychologist Michael Meade, also a Jungian who does a lot of work with
    myths and what is often called rhythmic expression -- in this case
    drumming.  I was one of about 700 men in a single room.  It changed my
    life in the sense that I walked away from the workshop knowing some new
    facts, and having learned some new ways of looking at some things I
    have experienced.

Yes, this is usually my experience as well -- learning new,
refreshing ways of looking at things as well as being exposed to
ideas that help explain much of the confusion I have about the
American male condition -- about myself, other men, as well as
father-son relationships -- that I previously did not understand
or could not even figure out (or even muster up enough courage to
talk about).  Once you hear other men talking about some of
the same dilemmas, quagmires, and difficult subjects/situations
that are similar to your own, then there is usually a feeling of
relief and comfort knowing "I am not alone, after all."  Some of
the deep isolation begins to shatter, because, for a lot of men
it is the first time they find out that other men share similar
feelings and/or dififculties -- things that had previously been
considered unspeakable.  If I had a dollar for every time I heard
a man say, "Thank you for sharing that ... now I know I am not
the only one!" I would be wealthy.

    One important thing I learned was the role that an adult male
    friend played in my growing up, which I had never been able to
    verbalize.  I always wanted to thank him, and now I know what
    for.

Right, without any points of reference or without any
understanding in our culture as to why male mentors/nurturers and
male relationships in general are valuable, it is often difficult
to see or understand the dynamics of what is actually going on.  
So many American boys grow up without meaningful male role
models, and since so many of these boys become fathers, who
influence (or don't influence) their own sons and young men, the
inadequacies of father/son relationships continue for
generations.  According to Bly, father/son relationships have
been deteriorating since the end of the industrial revolution. 
And from everything I have seen, I believe he is right.  Many
fathers in our culture, I have discovered, often do not even know
what to do with their boys in terms of how to relate to them.  So
when decent male role models come along, we often do not
recognize the value of such men, since we as a culture do not
value or even understand the grammar of what Bly calls male
initiation -- the process of helping a boy become a man. 

    I'm not much for touchy-feely stuff myself with people I don't
    know, and I didn't find this gathering objectionable on that
    score.

The whole idea of being reluctant to do personal-growth work with
"strangers" really confuses me -- at least in the area of men
working with men.  I mean, you're all there for a purpose.  For
me, gatherings like these provide a safe space to open up about
personal male-oriented subjects that many of us men do not normally
breach with our friends, fathers, sons, or brothers, due to
cultural taboos.  Seriously, do men generally find it real easy
to tackle such subjects with non-strangers?  With our friends?  If
so, it is news to me.   You know, the guys we go fishing,
boating, hunting, golfing, and skiing with?   Although I have
more male friends in my life with whom I can discuss these
things, the American mode of male/male contact is still confined
to sports, business, and politics -- and sports, business,
politics are wonderful! -- but it is nevertheless very, very
difficult and awkward for men in daily life to find a space
(beyond SB & P) for sharing things in common of a more personal
nature and support each other on a more personal level.  (Women
have been pretty successful finding such space.)  So .... this is
why such gatherings/workshops/groups are forming all over the
country; they fill a void and facilitate a need that cannot
easily be facilitated "out there" in daily American life, due to
our cultural traditions, customs, expectations, taboos, and so
forth.  Regarding "strangers," in these gatherings, one can
usually get to really know someone rather quickly in such an
environment when the veneers come down quickly;  there isn't much
time for pretenses and posturing.  Where it would normally take
male friends months, even years, to really begin to get to know
each other, often you can get to know someone in a meaningful way
in the course of a weekend.

    On more than one occasion,
    I found myself saying, "Yeah, I never thought about it that way, but I
    know what he means."  It's sort of like brainstorming -- a lot of what
    you hear is dreck, but new ideas or ways of looking at things keep
    popping up.

Right, some patterns and themes start to develop; one begins to
see things more clearly when the dust settles.

    I'll probably go to another one some time, but it probably
    won't be soon -- this one gave me enough to think about for months.

There are plenty of mens support groups around -- some of them
don't cost anything -- that meet weekly and handle roughly some
of the same issues that were bounced around at the workshop.

    I have no issue with people who aren't interested in this kind of
    gathering.  I also have no issue with people who have a solid handle on
    "what it means (to them) to be a man" -- I haven't quite figured out
    the question yet, much less the answer.  I'm still working on it.

Yes, I agree and can relate very much to the way you see things.
One thing I hear often from those who write off such gatherings
is, "Well, why do you have to accept someone else's notion of
what it means to be a man?"  That really isn't it at all. 
Telling men "how to be" is *not* the function/goal of the types
of gatherings/support groups.  You find enough of that crap on
the Oprah Winfrey and Donahue shows -- whole rooms full of
people -- mostly female -- hammering away at men via guilt trips
designed to shame men into "changing" --  to be more sensitive,
more in touch with their feelings, to be this, to be that.  The
work at these gatherings is *not* done to "please" anyone, such
as a wife or girlfriend; it is done to please self.   What Bly
and others are doing is providing a safe, *positive* environment
in which men assist each other in finding themselves as men and to
live their true natures.  This is a healthy way of improving the
male condition in our culture.

Like you, I am surprised and a little confused over how/why so
many men in MENNOTES have such a strong handle on the whole
issue of "what it means to be a man" as well as so much hostility
toward the whole concept of mens gatherings.   If such gatherings are
not for them, then that's fine; I also I have no issue with them
... but would like to learn from them.  I would like to ask them
stuff like:  What is satisfying about:  Your identity as a man,
your relationships with other men, and with your father?   Do you
think boys grow up with decent male role models in our culture? 
Do you think boys grow up in our culture with a sufficient sense
of who they are, who their fathers are, and of "manhood"?   Do
you think, in general, the condition of father/son relationships
is thriving?   Seriously, if those who believe the condition of
the American male is doing just fine, then please tell me why so
that I can learn something from your experiences.

    But,
    to the ones who replied to this note by saying "Hey, pay me the $500
    and call me up and we'll talk about anything you want!" I can only
    reply by saying you'd be the last people I'd want to talk to about
    anything important.  Nothing of interest ever comes from a closed mind.

Ouch.  Negative comments such as these only perpetuate more and
more divisions and conflict between/among men.  Some of the ways
our minds are closed are pretty much etched in our souls; I was
taught at an early age to numb out and shut out feelings,
totally, and I had to re-learn how to cry at the age of 27 --
after going some 10 years without tears because I wanted to
conform to what I understood society's definition of a man to be. 
I never thought of my father as a real human being with real
human desires, feelings, and needs until I went to some of these
gatherings; until then, he was just a machine -- always strong
and always functional -- because he did not show his family his
human side. I think men can stand to listen and learn from each
other, no matter how our outloooks differ, and begin to end the
barricaded isolation that is pervasive in the lives of a lot of
men in our culture.

As for the $500 thing ... even though there are a lot of men's
gatherings/workshops/support groups out there that are dirt cheap
and even free ... I agree it is a damn shame that the only way
men can find a safe space with each other to discuss some of the
topics that Bly addresses and assist each other in these ways is
the workshop forum.  Until there is an atmosphere in our culture
such that men in general feel safe and comfortable enough to
create such a space "out there," in most walks of life, then
there will continue to be a demand for these types of gatherings.
    
    Cheers,
    Paul

>Seriously, do men generally find it real easy
>to tackle such subjects with non-strangers?  With our friends?  If
>so, it is news to me.   You know, the guys we go fishing,
>boating, hunting, golfing, and skiing with?   

The "Outland" comic strip (by Burke Breathed of "Bloom County" fame) 
this past Sunday was an exagerated, funny depiction of exactly what you 
are talking about here.  If you get a chance to look at the strip, do 
it.  It's really funny.

"...Here's Julia Roberts!"   ;-)


						--Ger

.3

Yes, I saw that and had a good laugh.  It is the truth, though a
bit exaggerated.

I actually like participating in the type of crazy, zany,
outrageous, and nonsensical male/male behavior that is depicted 
in that comic strip.  You know, like most other men, I really
like the three stooges -- most women find them "disgusting" --
as well as other forms of sick-o comedy, and I enjoy getting together
with the guys once in a while to act crazy, silly, and childish.

However, I also sometimes like to indulge in other closer, more
personal types of contact with male friends, stuff that
facilitates discussion of more personal issues/subjects that men
have in common.  It is also important for me to have male friends
who I can support and get support from around some of these
things.   Women are wonderful -- don't get me wrong -- since they
are usually very open and sensitive and expressive and so on.  I
have many wonderful females in my life.  However in recent years
I discovered that I also need the support of and contact with
men, on a personal level, as part of the overall equation, that
women cannot provide ALL of a man's emotional support or
facilitate ALL of a man's contacts with feelings.  Especially
when these things center around issues and experiences that men
intrinsically have in common.  The same would certainly be true
for women, and female friendships accommodate this sort of thing
so much better.   Fortunately, these days, I am finding it easier
and easier in forming friendships with males who not only like to
act crazy but who also are open to mutual support on a more
caring, personal level.  I don't understand why these have to be
mutually exclusive, why it has to be an either-or thing.

A friend of mine once told me a story about how and he his best
friend went out one night to have some beers and play cards and
even watch a burlesque show ... At the end of the evening, when
they parted company, my friend turned to his pal and said, "You
know, I just now realize how great it is to get away from our
wives for an evening once in a while and have a good time with a
really great guy such as you."  The guy replied, in all
seriousness, "Now I don't think it's right to inject homosexuality
into our friendship."   These were two guys who had known each
other for YEARS -- you know, guys who are not those infamous
"strangers" that we're all supposed to be so afraid of.

Just a few weeks ago, I had a *very* interesting experience with
"the guys" during a weekend of boating at our lakefront cabin in
New Hampshire.  The comic strip sort of reminded me of it.  
There were four of us -- my younger brother, his close friend and
football buddy from high school, myself, and another mutual
friend of mine and my brother's.  We get together for a weekend
once a year and do a lot of boating, swimming, fishing,
waterskiing, not to mention some drinking and a lot of
horsing-around.   It has become a big tradition that has 
been going on for more than five years.

During the course of this weekend, I couldn't help notice the
stark closeness between my brother and his pal -- they're in
their late 20s now and both have live-in girlfriends.  They
hadn't seen each other in a long time.  However, given that
closeness, the interaction between them was, well, peculiar.  
During the weekend, their way of showing they cared about each
other was to tell each other to "Fuck you!" or "Fuck off!" and to
criticize/chide each other constantly about every little
thing -- the way they cooked, built fires, navigated the boat,
prepared a drink, or whatever.  One could tell they were only
kidding after they had swallowed a few drinks ... That is, they
still told each other FUCK OFF, except this time they had their
arms around each other!  It was one of the funniest scenes I had
ever witnessed!  Every other word was "FUCK!"  (By the way is
that "F" word allowed in this conference? ;))  My feelings were
mixed about it.  On the one hand, I felt deeply touched at
witnessing their obvious closeness, but on the other hand, I felt
sorry that they had to resort to this mode of communicating said
closeness.  BTW, I know my brother very well, and he, like me,
is a sensitive type, and our values are almost identical; so for
all I know he may have wanted a better way of communicating with
his buddy.  But it was a real great time nevertheless.

Anyway, to sum things up, I think Dr. Buscaglia once said it best
... That 20 years ago, we as a culture used to believe, "Love
means never having to say you're sorry."  Pretty soon, he said,
we're going to adopt the unhealthy attitude in this culture that
"Love means never having to say it at all."

Paul

This is a story from a five-day retreat in the summer of 1988
with Robert Bly, Michael Meade, and James Hillman.  There were
80 men in a camp on a hilltop in upstate New York.  We were
sleeping in a few big cabins and some tents, eating at picnic
tables under a roof with no sides, and meeting in a large tent
on a wooden platform - a tent like a circus tent.

Bly had been talking about "elders," and had asked four or five
men who were over 55 (I think) to sit in the front row during
meetings.  (The man that Bly mentions in his Gathering of Men
interview with Bill Moyers was there; Hines Mathews is his name.
Hines is 78, lost his wife in the spring of 1988, works in a 
hospice program with AIDs patients now.)

At one of the breaks, Bly got a half dozen of the younger, stronger
men aside and told them to go outside the tent and gave them some
instructions.  After the break, he asked us to divide into
two groups, men who were 50 and over, and men who were under 50.
He told the older men to form some semicircles around the tent's
main entrance, so as to block anyone that would come through the
door.  Then he told the younger men to go to the other side of 
the tent, that they were going to be "protected" by the older men.
(I was in the older group.)

He told us that some attackers were going to come through the door
and were going to try to break through the semicircles of older
men who were doing the protecting.  The protectors would have to 
be very strong, would have to link arms and would have to be very
resolute in their defense.  The younger men were not to participate
in the defense, they were to be passive, allow themselves to be
protected by the older men.

Then, on his signal, the attackers came in, yelling, whooping, smashing
into the semi-circular lines of protecting older men.  The pushing and
ramming and shoving and yelling went on for about five minutes, when Bly
called it off.  (No one got through.)  You could smell the energy of
the struggle, when it was over.

Most of the men in the room were in tears, especially the younger men.

We spent a long time talking about it, men telling story after story of
alcoholic fathers, work-aholic fathers, being abandoned by fathers, 
feeling alone, cut off from older men who could guide them, who would 
praise them, who would bless them, who WOULD NOT SHAME THEM, who they 
could call on when needed.

Father-hunger, older-man-hunger, elder-hunger was everywhere.

The older men, the protectors, were just as moved by having done the
protecting, by being able to do what most of them had always wanted 
done for them.  I get back into those feelings and those tears every
    time I think of it, and writing it here is no exception.
    
    Bill

    I've been thinking often what the position of my father has really been
    during my education, because...fathers are seldom around, but when they
    are, oh, a word of praise from my father made me feel so lucky as a
    kid, and when he was isppointed with me, it really hurt.
    Don't get me wrong, if you look at me and my father now, most people
    would say we have quite a good relationship. We go and drink a beer
    together, we can talk about everything that goes on in our lifes, and
    that includes our problems...
    But, somehow I feel something is still missing. You know, he's
    becomming older (65 right now), and he still works too hard. That
    worries me. And it worries me a hell of a lot more that maybe one day I
    lose him, without having taken him in my arms, and telling him..."Dad,
    despite all the bad times, hey, I really love you a lot!". 
    Everytime he visits me, I promise myself this time I'll tell him how
    strongly I feel for him, just to erase the impression he has that I'm tough
    and independent. But when the time comes, yes, we talk, but I get the
    feeling my words come over differently than I planned, I see myself
    talking with different, less emotional words than I intended to use
    initially...
    The feeling of not having opened up is still there. I wonder when I'll
    be able to straighten this out...
    ...Paul 

    
    I can identify with a lot of Bly's work. Although my father was
    never an active alcoholic (as was Bly's), alcoholism was in his 
    family and therefore he was subject to whatever that fact entails. 
    One of the cheif characteristic manefestations of this family disease 
    is denial, or the "hush-hush now" syndrome. There was discrepancy 
    between what I was told and what was. That did not lead to much 
    "openness" in the communication with my father, simply by virtue
    of an inate tendancy to deny or squelch "talking about everything
    that goes on in our lives". My mother would probably turn over
    in her grave if she knew I wrote this in a public domain notesfile...
    
    Over the past 20 years, our relationship has deteriorated to where
    I'd only make that obligatory phone call, hated going home for the
    holidays and I lived my life in near total isolation from him. I've
    vowed to pick things up with him a couple of years ago, also thinking
    "You know, he's becoming older...maybe one day I'll lose him" and I
    find myself being enthusiastically lukewarm about it, both when
    it comes down to setting something up and when we're together. I
    too would love to tell him something to begin to bring us closer 
    emotionally. I too find my feelings shutting down when I'm with him, 
    even though my plans were to open up - this time!

    I too "wonder when I'll be able to straighten this out". It's like
    an inate response with me; *after* he's headed home I begin to remember
    all I wanted to talk about and say. It's like I go very _flat_ when
    I'm with him, conversations become difficult and I even tend to
    "squelch" the chances to converse that *he* starts. I'm beginning
    to wonder if it's this unfinished business stuff of some kind from
    God know's when - or - if this is just a learned character trait
    that I chime into when he's around? A character trait that perhaps
    he's grown out of in the last 10 years while I havent?
    
    Some of the things that Bly says ring true with me; that I was
    basically raised by my mother, with my father being much more distant
    (he worked; my mother was the "housewife") both physically and
    emotionally. Despite this, I can remember my Dad and I had a wonderful
    relationship when I was a very young boy (4-7 years) but by the
    time I was a teenager it definately had deteriorated to a minimalist
    one. Could this have happened purely because of Bly's "non presence"
    effect over that amount of time? I'm so curious about this that
    I ran 12 years of my Dad's *home movies* the last time I was home,
    to see if I could pinpoint "when" this apparent change in our relationship
    happened.
    
    My Dad remarked that seeing the movies reminded him "of the beautiful
    family he had". Gee, I begin to feel some sadness and grief as I
    type that...
    
    Joe Jasniewski

    I have a good friend who I see now and then, and he described the
    same kind of feelings as in .6 and .7.  He has been meaning to
    try to lower the wall between himself (age 48) and his aging
    father for a couple of years, but nver wuite able to "bring it up."
    
    An hour before last season's Super Bowl game, he went off to the
    bedroom, closed the door and poured it all out in a letter to his
    father (both parents live in FLorida).  My friend dsecribes this
    as a real bath of emotions.  it was a letter of a dozen hand-written
    pages.  The good times and the bad times and the times when he felt
    un loved, unappreciated, ignored, etc.
    
    He hung onto this letter for about a month, and then finally in 
    a "what the hell" mood one day he mailed it off, and then started
    holding his breath.
    
    A few days later he got a phone call from his father, and was
    on a plane to Florida a few hours later.  He learned later that
    his father sat there in disbelief, reading his letter, then read
    it to his wife, and asked "Did I really do that?"  And, bless her,
    she said, "Yes, you did."
    
    They now visit, correspond, and talk on the phone, the way they
    both really wanted it to be, but didn't think it could be.
    
    (My father died 12 years ago, before I ever got to do that.
    I've been doing a lot of "inner work" with the father-image
    inside me.  And lately, he has begun to appear in my dreams,
    and more often than not it is as a friend/protector, working
    or sitting by my side, rather than as a stern, shaming parent.
    So, it's never too late for you.  When is it too late for him?)
    
    Bill

	The wall is up between my father and me, and it won't be coming
    down.  He has Pick's Disease, a mentally and physically degenerative
    disorder with symptoms similar to Alzheimer's.  The last time I talked
    to him was two years ago, and he had no idea who I was.  I recognized a
    lot of the separation between us that Bly talks about some years back
    and started making an effort to heal it.  At first, he was hesitant
    about the change in our respective roles, but I console myself that we
    got to be pretty good friends before he started to lose it.  I reproach
    myself sometimes that I don't talk to him any more, but for a long
    time talking on the phone has caused him a lot of anxiety, and he lives
    800 miles away.

	One thing I learned from this:  He recognizes my mother when she
    goes to see him, but he isn't sure who she is.  He was never very
    demonstrative as far back as I can remember, and I know it's been a long
    time since my mother heard him say he loves her.  So I tell my wife
    that I love her every single day, just in case.

						      /////
						      |||||
						      \___/  

    re:"Iron John"
    
    I was in a bookstore last night, saw the new Bly book, glanced through
    it, liked what I saw, and bought it.
    
    The book is much clearer to me than any of the audio tapes, and is
    much more in depth than the interview with Moyers. I'm only about
    40 pages into it, and I think it's terrific. I would recommend it
    based on only what I've read so far.
    
    -roger
    

                                                             
   I had  been  waiting  for  a  while  until  I had time to explain my uneasy
   feelings for what people attribute to Bly.  But I have so many irons in the
   fire that it looks like I'll never have enough time to go indepth on it.  I
   thought  about  Bly  again today as someone just called to tell me that the
   Boston  Globe  today  has  another article on Bly, something called "Making
   Boys Into Men." And I felt uncomfortable again.  I'll have to buy the Globe
   on the way home and read it.  Perhaps someone may even enter it here.                                              
                                                                           
   Since the  discovery of my increasing discomfort as I read more and more of
   Bly's  philosophy  some people (not Bly however) have taken to call the New
   Men's  movement,  I  have  spoken  to  other  activists in the men's issues
   activism  scene  that  had the same reactions I did.  I felt better knowing
   that I was not alone with these reactions.   
                                                                           
   I was  at first very taken by Robert Bly.  "Wonderful," I thought, "finally
   an  elder  statesmen  for men's issues.  Someone men can respect instead of
   the  stereotypical  'male  feminist' which they don't seem to." I loved his
   Moyer's  television  program.   I thought his poems were wonderful (I still
   do).  So what's the problem?

   Bly's poems  are  still  excellent  and  incredibly  insightful.   He truly
   captures  the male experience in such a  beautifully written way as I think
   no  one  else  has.  He sees and expresses the male problems in our current
   society very accurately.  I hold his work in high regard for that.

   But where  it  all  falls  apart for me is in his proposed solutions to the
   problems.  The more I read, the more I realized he was talking about going
   back  to  the  old  days  and ways.  Going back to the days of warriors and
   such.   Beliefs such as women cannot teach boys what it is to be a man, but
   that a male is needed to make him "a man."

   In a  nutshell,  that is exactly what the traditional men's issues movement
   (at  least  my  experience  inside  it)  is  trying to change.  It wants to
   destroy  the  strict  male and female roles in society and all that useless
   baggage  thrown  upon men about "what it takes to be a man." Being a man is
   being a person. Pure and simple. 

   Resorting back to old days is not the answer.  Though I find men opposed to
   the  traditional men's movement are now using Bly works as a way to suggest
   that route.

   That's a  quick and dirty answer...  wish I had more time to go indepth and
   pull examples from his work to help show the point.

   -Erik

   PS- This  is  just one man's opinion.  I still love reading Bly's poems and
   insights. I hope people still enter them.

Thanks for replying to this topic, Eric.  I think that it could be a very 
rich discussion.

For background information, I also feel this huge wave of sentiment 
toward Robert Bly being "the" answer.  I have problems with the man's 
way of thinking.  I am of the opinion that he is sexist and 
heterosexist.  However, I am also of the opinion that he has some 
fantastic ideas about manhood, masculinity, and being a man in today's 
society.

When I attempted to view it as either/or, as black/white, I had a 
problem.  Is Robert Bly the Answer to men's issues?  Or, is he a
sexist/heterosexist pig?  I think that I found a real peace when I
finally understood that he was neither (and both).  I think that, like
anything in life, Robert Bly operates best in my life when I take the
things that make sense to me and to leave what makes no sense. 

I think that the most useful thing that Bly says is that perhaps 
feminists are wrong in attempting to create a New Male, without 
regard to the historical perspective of where males are coming from 
in our cultures.  In other words, he has gone on record as saying that
men's brutality against women indeed must stop, but that we need to
maintain our "ferocity" (defined as a "driving passion" toward a
goal).  He's saying that, if we ignore history, myth, poetry, and 
tribal customs in our attempts at creating some kind of a New Male, 
then we are throwing out the baby with the bathwater, that we are 
tossing out the good things about traditional masculinity with the 
bad.  Also inherent in this is that there were some darn good reasons 
as to why men used to behave a certain way in certain cultures, it 
wasn't all "mindless brutality against women."

I'm not prepared to go into a lot of detail on this topic, but I also 
feel that Bly is extraordinarily strong in the Father/Son and 
Older/Younger man area.  At least in my personal experience, he has 
been right on the money with his notions of "shaming each other," 
"connecting on a cellular level," and "knowing the father only through 
the viewpoint of our mother."

Before I pass the baton, I'd like to speak to a few sentences in .12:

>   Resorting back to old days is not the answer.  

From what I have seen, Bly would agree with you.  I think that he 
would agree that there are things from the old days that need to be 
changed.  For example, he always tips his hat to the fact that the 
women's movement was positive, because women's role in society was no 
longer working. 

What he is saying in regard to men is that we can learn from the old 
days, and that there are some old ways of doing things that are better 
kept (poetry, bonding with father, ferocity [as opposed to brutality], 
drumming, ritual transition to manhood, and so forth).  He is saying 
that we are making a mistake by stripping men of all ritual, all 
men-only bonding, and all ferocity, all in an attempt to keep men from 
brutalizing women (and each other!).

I spoke to a member of a feminist-based group with which I'd worked 
for years, and I asked her how she felt about this "men should be 
ferocious" thing, and she agreed with Bly.  (She's a pretty strong 
feminist.)  We both agreed that the times that other feminists felt 
uncomfortable around me (I was one of the few men in this group) is 
when I drove passionately toward working hard on a project.  They 
would strive for process, and, after a certain point, I would put 
passion, energy, and work toward completing a project.  She said that 
this quality--which seemed to disrupt the feminist group's process so 
much--is what she admired most in me: a passionate drive to deliver a 
product.  

That passion (or ferocity) can be very scary, because there is created
a fast and powerful movement, and with that comes risk.  I think that
the discussion then becomes, is male passion and ferocity being used
toward a purpose that serves men and women (community), or is it being
used to dominate women and other men.  After all, all the processing
and planning in the world is useless unless you have someone with
drive and passion to put it into the realm of the real, to create
something from the design. 

If it is completely reasonable, from a feminist perspective, to ask
women to express their ferocity along with their nurturing
capabilities, Bly asks why we are asking our men to take up nurturing
and abandon our productive ferocity. 

>   Though I find men opposed to
>   the  traditional men's movement are now using Bly works as a way to suggest
>   that route.

Frankly, I have no idea as to what you mean by "traditional men's 
movement."  I'm assuming that you mean, "Men working on feminist 
issues."

I think that the most refreshing things that Bly has to offer is that 
there is a type of work that men cannot do--work on "what it is to be 
a man"--when they are busy doing feminist work.  Feminist work is 
focused on the female gender role, and male feminists (of which, I am 
one, I think), are focused on men's treatment of women.  Bly is 
suggesting that work still needs to be done by men--without women and 
without feminism--to dig into how men treat themselves and each other.

I think he's right.  There is an area and type of men's work that cannot be 
done with women present, and cannot be done with a feminist focus.  I 
see my working on men's issues and my working as a male feminist as 
being two different yet related areas of personal work.  They aren't 
the same thing, and I think that it is defeatest to ask men to choose 
between men's issues (in a Bly format) or male feminism, when both 
types of work are valuable and need to be done by men.

>   Being a man is being a person. Pure and simple. 

I disagree completely.  And, as a man, I find this statement to be 
completely devaluing.  Here is where I am coming from:

	- A "person" can be a man or woman.

	- Being a man is being a person.  Pure and simple.

	- There are no differences between men and women.

We're different, Eric.  I know that you know this, but you seem to be 
coming at it from a place in which the differences don't matter.  
Sometimes, they don't, but sometimes they do.  I think that the 
Valuing Differences philosophy states that, by thoroughly researching 
and understanding our differences, our similarities come into better 
focus.  

As to which is better to focus on?  That depends on the context.  
Elsewhere in this file, someone came up with an instance when people 
should focus on similarities and shared experience, and put 
differences on a lower priority (in the case of marital problems).  In 
cases in which the differences are so misunderstood and unrecognized 
(such as racial prejudice, for example), it can be a better idea to 
focus on differences, to better understand them.  It depends.

As to what created the differences--environment or genetics--I'm not 
sure.  And I'm not overly interested in what created them.  All I know 
is that even if we correct our environment tomorrow, all us adults 
will still be living with the cultural differences that we learned 
when we were little kids.  And I'm not quite convinced that a useful 
goal is to get all human beings to be bland and without diversity.  

I hope that we never see the day when being a man is being a person, 
pure and simple.  To me, that's like saying that diversity is bad; at 
best, we should ignore it, and, at worst, we should eliminate it.  
My way of thinking is that we get past the differences by examinng and 
understanding them, to create more nurturing communities of diverse 
people.

Also, I think that feminists should pay close attention to what led to 
some great success for the women's movement.  In the late sixties and 
early seventies, women's consciousness groups were formed.  These 
groups were the first "women-only space."  The argument was that women 
needed to be in a space unencumbered by partriarchial influence to 
create and to discover all that women could be, as individuals and as 
a community.  (The argument was that women would be bullied into 
behaving and thinking in the same old ways if men were present in 
these groups, that creativity and freedom from cultural norms could 
not be gained.)  These women-only spaces were integral to the success of 
the women's movement, a place to examine and develop all that women 
could be without men being a dominant factor.

If the women's movement was virtuous and creative in it's insistence 
that valuable work needed to be done by women, in women-only space, 
without regard to the needs and realities of men ("a woman without a 
man is like a fish without a bicycle"), then why are men's groups 
backward-thinking by trying to examine men's issues without the 
inclusion of women, and without a feminist focus?  

The way I see it, feminists who are being true to their history and to 
their principles would be encouraging men to meet in all-male space, 
for the purpose of examining all that men are and all that they can 
re-create themselves to be in the future.


							--Gerry

    I just bought "Iron John" last night and am halfway thru it.  My first
    exposure to Bly was his poetry and I saw him read at Worcester State
    College as well as Assumption in Worcester.  He is good.  This book is
    very good.  I am shaken by it, excited and hopeful.  He may not have
    all the answers, but then no one does.  I think he's on the right
    track.  He's also extremely funny.  Humor is a saving grace in any
    paradigm shift.
    
    Linda (who suffered from "father hunger" and thinks the world could use
    more "ferocious" men)

    If you like what Robert Bly has to say, or you have
    found helpful stuff in his book, would you do him a
    favor?  
    
         ********************************
         * Thank him and wish him well. *
         ********************************
    
    I have been watching the guy for a few years, and I 
    wonder and worry about what is happening to him.  He
    spent most of his life as a poet, writing and translating
    poetry, a fairly quiet, private activity.  Now he stands
    in front of halls filled with many hundreds of men, says
    provoking things on a wide range of subjects and takes
    the psychological projections of all those men.   I have
    seen men argue vehemently with him because he doesn't
    have his historical facts correct, or he doesn't have 
    his scientific facts correct, etc.  They don't want to
    be told that he is talking in mythological terms when he
    speaks of Hitler or Desert Storm... And I have seen men 
    project all their father stuff onto him and make him into
    a monster of one kind or another.  And then send arrows
    in his direction.  (I've done some of this myself, and
    regret it now.)
    
    Send him a card, or if you're into prayer-like activities,
    send him a prayer, or your equivalent. 
    
    Wil

I didn't think this was worthy of a separate topic, but thought that
MENNOTES readers would appreciate the humor...

Over the past couple of weeks, the syndicated comic strip "Kudzu", drawn by
Doug Marlette, has been featuring a character who is obviously a parody
of Robert Bly.  "Dr. Nathan Goodvibes" has written a book called "Iron Nathan",
and he is being consulted by the Rev. Will B. Dunn in order to help
substantiate the strange goings-on in Dunn's church (an appearance by
"one of Madonna's former looks").  Yesterday's strip was particularly
amusing.

The first panel starts out with "Time out from our saga for a quick update
on the Guy Thing:".  There is an outline of a head (Dunn's) with a diagram
of a brain inside, divided into segments.  The caption reads "Typical male
psyche", and the segments are labelled: beer, baseball stats, cars, sex,
golf, insensitivity, competitiveness, and mama.

The second panel says "As everyone knows by now, men are left-brain
dominant usually which accounts for their general insensitivity and boorish
behavior."  There is a diagram of a brain split into two parts, the one
for "Right brain" contains the labels: feelings, intuition, doilies; the
one for "Left brain" says: logic, linear thinking, insensitivity, belching.

Third panel: "Only recently has the best-seller "Iron Nathan" put them in
touch with their sensitive sides."  Goodvibes is pictured standing at a 
podium labelled "Men's Support Group and Bowling".  A questioner asks
"Is it manly to collect butterflies?"  Goodvibes responds "Certainly..."

Fourth panel: "... while restoring their testosterone levels to acceptable
post-Persian Gulf war levels...".  Goodvibes finishes with, "on your
car windshield!"

				Steve

Actually, Nathan Goodvibes has been around for awhile. He used to be a sensitive
new-age guy (S.N.A.G.). In this series, they've pulled in drumming, inner-child
work, "Iron Nathan", and testosterone poisoning. Personally, I love it, and
have been collecting the whole series. The more men's work you've done, the
more hilarious it gets.

    That IS hilarious stuff...  Almost makes me wish I got the Glob! ;-)
    
>of a brain inside, divided into segments.  The caption reads "Typical male
>psyche", and the segments are labelled: beer, baseball stats, cars, sex,
>golf, insensitivity, competitiveness, and mama.
    
    Gee, I guess for me, the baseball stats and sex portions must've wiped
    out the car segment...  (Fantasy sports-a-holic who doesn't care about
    cars as long as they take me to my next date! ;-)
    
>for "Right brain" contains the labels: feelings, intuition, doilies; the
>one for "Left brain" says: logic, linear thinking, insensitivity, belching.
    
    I guess I'm left-brained, fer sher...
    
    Dave

| (Fantasy sports-a-holic 

	Stat-O-Matic or Rotissery?

 >	Stat-O-Matic or Rotissery?
    
    Strat-O-Matic junkie for years (played games by myself every summer
    morning before anybody else woke up - Red Sox always won ;-), played in
    a few Strat-O leagues, and then in the last two years, caught the
    Rotissery/Fantasy bug big time - I even started my own company :-)
    
    If you're interested, we could talk more offline...
    
    Dave