by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés: Dr. E’s Forthcoming “A Book For/To Men”: Except from Intro
Excerpt from The Introduction of the book I’m writing for/to men. This intro tells of the conflictual thoughts I had about my adequacy to, as a woman, write a book for men… and how with the help of angels, I came to resolve this by harvesting and cooking from memory, what I hope will be a feast to the best of my ablities within this book for/to men.
I put The Introduction here pre-publication for two reasons. 1) to allow others here a transparency so they can see into how one writer thinks/ weighs matters in creating, and why it often takes some cojones o ovarios and long considerations to coalesce a work, and to determine if we are not only called, but carry the required ‘keys’ to walk through the door and into the land of a new book…. and two, to place here the tone of my work on men for your knowings.
This is a draft, not a first draft, but a tenth (like sausaage making, one really might not want to see the actual outcome of wildly messy first-drafts… although someday too, I’ll probably put up a few of those just so other new/young weriters can see they are not alone) I’ve several titles for the book … For now, it is called “A Book For/To Men,” as opposed to ‘book about men…’ I explain more below…
INTRO to Dr. E’s Book For/To Men:
“Men began asking to have ‘a book of their own written by me, Dr.E.,’ almost the minute Women Who Run With the Wolves was published. The requests continued all these years, and I understood them deeply : a book of one’s own, written directly to a particular group was desired… rather than having to reverse, as women have for years, as racial and cultural groups have had to do for years… assuming that in the written word ‘men,’ women were implied too; that though a writer used the word ‘European,’ this also implicitly included Latinos, Asians, Blacks, working class, et al, even though none were named explicitly, nor their differences noted closely.
“So, I took the requests from men to heart these many years now, literally 18 years, but I trembled and hesitated with my foot just before the threshold of the doorway in… to writing such a work. But then, I found the way in…
“I felt I knew women in depth, in large part because I have listened to so many women in my work, and also because I am a woman, one who has walked way down into my own dregs and zigzagged, breathless and half dead, but exhilarated to the place where one could say one saw what can be seen from Everest: Two worlds not divided, but held together by the mountain.
“Now nearly twenty years have passed since the first soul asked for a book regarding men, and though my eyesight has lessened in one way, another kind of sight has sharpened greatly… and through that second sight, I now see the key to the doorway clearly, a way to write a work for/to men. Here is the pathway…
“I see the way in that I did not see before. It happened this way: I’d been writing tales about men all my writing life, poems and essays and short stories and vignettes, but they have not been ‘about’ men in the usually ‘approved’ way of hard science.
“Please allow me to open a little window for you to see my past thinking through: In one of the beautiful educated worlds I walk in, the idea is often touted, sometimes forced, that we ought write ‘about’ matters and peoples. Study them or it, compile, test, judge, summarize.
“But my taproot for writing and seeing was born and driven into a different world altogether. I have no formal schooling in writing. Am self-taught. Am not a testing psychologist. And my favored research methodology is listening to the tiny as well as to the loud. To listen to the overculture, but to listen underground as well.
“Thus, feeling not educated well enough for this precious task of writing solidly regarding men, I thought/prayed over these years whilst hearing the voices of men asking me for a book: ‘Please, I cannot write ‘about’ men for I am not a man. Nor do I want to put forth men on glass slides for microscopic view. Please, help me to find another way if this book is meant to be.’
“–Now all this time later, having opened failry full the squinty eye of the crone, and now caarrying a heart as full of love as I can fill it most days, my angels suddenly offered me prime surveyor’s instruments to measure capability for writing this work.
“The measurements were to be taken by counting the pages, counting the stories and scrying them all to see what the central motifs really were underlying from the writer herself.
“Thus, in surveying the pages I’ve written about men over these many years now, most of which have not been seen nor published …. I see the measure of my writing/seeings/listenings, at last… and it is this: Whereas I feared I would be offering dust where nourishment and replenishment was most needed, by reading those pages for subtext (meaning the feeling/thought tones that lie under the actual words)…
“I could see foremost how much I have striven to describe the peculiarities, strengths, madnesses, colorations, wingspans, hearts and souls of men, how I have loved men, pitied them, been pleased by them, bowled over by some, heartened by most, learned to be properly wary of some, and also seen closely into their interactions, lacks of action and brave actions inter-generationally and otherwise with other men, with women, with children, with culture, with soul …
“And… in that measurement of subtext, I could suddenly see too the radical that allows me to find my way through to complete this book I’ve been adding and adding to for so many years… for as I peruse this pile of pages now, I see how often I write with love and tears and laughter– with and over the refugee men of my own family, how even as a young girl-child I moved to shelter them, interpret the bewildering world for them, protect them from villany and screed… and leaned close in to understand them, for they were all so deeply wounded and scarred from the mayhem, murder, rape and mutilations of WWII– yet gifted still in ways that were radiant. Even though their demons often enough pursued rolling hot, their generosities were enormous.
“I realized only recently, that these living experiences of walking with men of such heart-broken and yet strong psyches, including my work with veterans recovering from post-trauma, the men who have been in my memoir gatherings, any man I have had contact with who has told me or tried to tell me about his life and soul… including those with happy-calm life experiences and accomplishments with only a few nicks and dents… that this is why/ how I can write a book for/to men.
“As I’ve thought about men, what they have taught me which is so much, what I have contributed to their lives, how deeply I’ve listened to them, I realized then, I’ve have witnessed more than most …the peaks and the hells that men can walk over and through. And these first witness experiences I’ve been granted, some so painful as to want to walk screaming and skinless after, and some so genuflective of a man’s great heart… that these and more, are the keys to the doorway to write this book.
“In measuring the landscape from the aerial view, I think I may have keys enough to pass through and to bring something useful and nourishing to men, and to those who love them in all the perfectly-imperfect ways most all of us attempt to live with one another.
“Thus, here, you’ll find writings of the most basic kind, stories clear and down to earth about the perils, griefs, mis-steps, unconsciousnesses, courages, insights, intuitions, treasures, descents, ascents and battle-passages a man may face… and sometimes more than once in a lifetime…
“here you’ll find as well tales and myths on sons and mothers, sons and fathers and siblings, the lone child, the fatuous marriage, true love, how to understand the non-understandable (women, soul and Creator), how and why men can be so maddening and angelic…
“Most all the stories here carry too, the presences of angelic beings in one way or another… which often both describe the genius of a man’s life… as well as, on some or on many days, the man himself.
“Thank you dear reader for waiting for me to understand how to seed and water, harvest and cook this work up. I hope you might find in this work a feast for you and for those who love you.”
Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés
From The Rocky Mountains, in the year 2010
