I'm *really* starting to like your dad here! (:
Submitted by Babel-17 on February 14 2002 23:34:43
In reply to Cool submitted by A.I. Watcher on February 14 2002 23:16:25
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I hate to admit it, but I was a little too young to actually be a part of the hippie movement... Oh, how I wanted to be, though! When I was 10, all in the world I wanted was to run away from home and go to Haight-Ashbury... I had no fonder dream... When people asked me "What do you want to be when you grow up?", my smiling response was invariably "A hippie...." (: (Much to my mom's mortification...heheh) Little did I know that at the time I was wishing that, Haight-Ashbury had already become a junkie-ridden slum and the hippie movement was all but over with... No, I'm afraid I'm more of a 70's hippie... To me, the real hippies of the 60's were my greatest heroes... I remember seeing Timothy Leary on TV when I was a kid, in his white robes with flowers in his hair, surrounded by beautiful, singing, dancing adult children... I identified him right away as a holy man (: Many years later, I got to meet him in person and was thrilled beyond words when he hugged me and kissed my forehead... For me, it was the equivalent of being kissed by the Pope... A part of me has regretted all my life that I wasn't born soon enough to have been a part of it all... Now, there're kids out at Berkeley protesting again... I've thought about going out there and joining them... I wonder what they'd think of my 40-something-year-old ass, out there with 'em trying to recapture something that passed me by in childhood... Not that it's merely sentiment that moves me to wanna join 'em... It's ironic, really, but the same patriotism that moves many to call them "traitors" moves me to want to join them in their protest... That's America...so many different voices speaking out in disagreement and yet somehow acheiving a harmony... eventually.... heh (; Thank you, A.I... Wriitng this post has made me a bit pleasantly tearful... I believe the word is "poignancy" much love! John |
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