An Meaningful Song for Men

Last weekend, I accompanied a good friend to a concert that I never would have gone to on my own: to hear/see Keb' Mo', a singer I hadn't known of before, in one of Portland's best musical venues. It was delightful: an earthy, high-energy performance by an uber-cool musician.

Anyway, was particularly struck by one of his songs--one that captures a lot of how I interpret the "divine masculine"...which, at least, expresses my feelings about the women I have/do/will care for...and my wish for us all to be "wild and free":

You don’t need no fancy tricks
Painted eyes or glossy lips

I love you just the way you are
Hope you don’t mind my beat up car

You don’t need to change your dress
You don’t need to change your shoes

Don’t try to hide your natural looks
Forget about the cover -- let me read the book

Don’t get me wrong I like them heels
But the way I feel is the way I feel

You don’t need to change your dress
You don’t need to change your shoes

Go ahead be wild and free
you don’t have to shave yo’ legs for me.

Hunnybabe, don’t starve yourself
You’re lookin good, you’re lookin well

And I’m proud to have you by my side
Glad to have you in my life

You don’t have to clean my house
You don’t have to wash my clothes

Go ahead be wild and free
Cause you don’t have to shave yo’ legs for me

You’re an angel

You don’t have to read them magazines
You already know how to get to me

Just be yourself and I will too
That’s all we really have to do

You don’t have to be ashamed
You don’t have to hide your knees

Go ahead be wild and free
You don’t have to shave yo legs for me.

Now go ahead be wild and free
You don’t have to shave yo legs for me.

[song titled "Shave Yo' Legs"]

Long, Long Ago

Have been writing a fairly autobiographical novel and took one scene straight from my current life. Here's an excerpt:

Underneath that is a potpourri of loose photos from many times and places. He ignores the temptation to browse through them and plunks them in a box on another shelf that already has a cache of photos inside. Turning around, he spots an old identification badge on the floor.

What in the world is this? he wonders. I am so young here. A photo from what feels like another lifetime looks back at him through plastic laminate.

It can't be from General Dynamics in Fort Worth, where he'd lied about his education and intentions and barely managed to get a job driving a fork lift in the heart of the military-industrial complex -- the largest freakin building he was ever inside of, working as a cog in the production of F-111 fighter planes for Vietnam -- for a few months until he saved enough money to fly back to Portland for Christmas, which somehow (miraculously) enabled him to avoid being drafted and sent to that same Vietnam (although he would have slipped across the border into British Colombia; he already had the how-to pamphlet with detailed instructions) as he navigated Peace Corps trainings post-graduate school. No, I was consciously trying to stay beneath the radar then since management was already so suspicious of me and my likely politics.

It has to be after Peace Corps and Brazil because he never wore his hair that long until he was back in the States. Finally he decides: long-term temp job, Bank of America, graveyard shift, when I added 20 pounds from vending machine pastries at 2 AM. Once he's pegged the time, he looks more deeply at the face captured here, a face that stirs a cauldron buried deep within.

Oh my god, was I really the most innocent 33 year old in all of San Francisco at that time?

Deciduous Days

I no longer yearn for an evergreen life
static in its deceptive depiction of ongoing youth

Instead, I crave a full-seasoned run
not wanting to miss the vibrant, rich colors of my own Autumn
as I distill the juices of beloved life experiences into a
penultimate expression

letting myself
be infused with the
blood reds and
butterfly yellows
of my core self

while choosing
at last
to
be
fully
seen

Writing a New Story

Time to write the story of my life anew, with no holding back and no rationalizations. No half-assed scenes or weak dialog.

Not really sure about the plot or even how much it matters

...as long as it's heart felt

...as long as the hearts feel.

Breathing

My attention continues being drawn to my breath…something so fundamental …so automatic…so essential…yet often unnoticed.

It’s the archetypal initial act possible after emerging from the birth canal…the act that releases the need for the umbilical cord and enables each of us to be our own person…to take that first breath and then another…and another…

How many do I take in a lifetime? What other noticeable event in my life totals so many?

I’m increasingly drawn to breathing consciously, leveraging the power of breath to both alter my state of consciousness and revitalize myself. Various spiritual traditions make the most basic acts of our lives sacred and conscious: eating...sex…breathing.

True enlightenment, I suspect, arises not from the extraordinary but from the quite ordinary…from how we relate to the ordinariness of our lives.

But unlike conceptual health practices and spirituality, conscious breathing brings its own reward: it feels good...it feels right.

These markers guide me.

Funny...

Humor is a tricky proposition. Too often I experience some people reflexively using humor to keep out of the underlying realities of their life. Easier to joke and let it be…let a numbness stay…than to truly be with the real feelings.

Having said that, I cannot imagine me, or the rest of humanity, surviving the next decade or so without an ongoing ability to laugh at ourselves loudly and often…to take in human folly unfiltered…our relentless ridiculousness…that has brought us deep into the midst of profound, increasing chaos…a dynamic that will either shake us awake…or else.

I truly believe in the power of humor. My second wife was probably the least humorous person I ever met…it was probably close to 20 years before I ever heard her say something with the intent to be funny. But in her hard-edged, Manhattan-bred, driven demeanor, she could laugh at things I said…and her ability to see the humor being pointed out in something enabled us to make the relationship relatively successful.

I have to find my own arrogance and myopia amusing…in order to find my way through the maze we’ve personally and collectively co-created for ourselves…in order to become able to see with somewhat greater clarity.

Missing Writing

I’ve missed the writing…there’s a rhythm that gets going in me…in my hand, in my feelings and thoughts…my whole body…but more than a “rhythm” it’s more like a muscle…or, better, a channel…from some unknown place…that opens and lets these words flow through…that lets something come forth.

“I” quote unquote am not “creating” what does emerge.

I’m just being relatively still

…and opening.

And feeling grateful.