Maybe I’m a little depressed but it’s more than that. I’m getting kinda tired of all this recent 60s nostalgia. I don’t feel any urge to go see Taking Woodstock, or to see this documentary on History Channel called Woodstock-Then and Now. Christ, it happened 40 years ago. Think about it, those 3 babies who were born at Woodstock just turned 40. Back in the day I joined the movement while Johnson and Nixon were taking us to Hell in a bucket. Later after we left Vietnam and put Watergate behind us I went back to school and tried to get on with something resembling a normal life. In recent years while Bush was prez I felt a resurgence of my hippie ideals. When the culture turns rotten the counterculture grows, and I hopped on board. Now that he’s gone and Obama at least appears to be trying to pick up the pieces the movement is losing steam. And sadly, so am I. The hippie in me isn’t dying, just becoming dormant…..again. Seems this would be a good time to finance a new car. Or maybe I should spend it on a wide screen TV, after all this is football season. As long as I can keep contributing to my 401K! Anybody else getting these feelings? Sigh. And the seasons they go round and round And the painted ponies go up and down We’re captive on the carousel of time We can’t return we can only look behind From where we came And go round and round and round In the circle game
If I ever was a Hippie, it was short lived. I had long hair, dropped out somewhat but always worked for the man enuf to survive. Did my world travels and ashram pilgrimages, a little farm commune and city crash pads but mostly just living in the counter-culture community of free spirits, smokin' dope and gettin' by. Now we're all in our sixties. Like you say the woodstock babies are 40. Life goes on for some of us, many of us have already succumbed. Oh well. I'm going on a cruise tomorrow for four days just to get out to sea. Do hippies take cruises? Actually, I'll only be taking a backpacks worth of luggage and do not dress up and go to formal dinners. I'll be more familiar with the proletariate workers than the ships officers. So, guess the Hippie still lurks in my core even in a bourgeois setting. Shale Walking to the Cruise Ship - Port of Miami
Well Shale, no one was ever 100% hippie. It's a part of you. Some people have tried to leave that part behind and act like it never existed. Sounds to me like the hippie part of you is alive and well but it no longer dominates you, just influences you. When you think about it, that's totally cool. As for me, my hippie part seems to be coming less active as I join the mainstream more and more. It pops up here and there, though. Last week I had a yard sale, a very mainstream thing to do. I gave away some stuff though, telling people, "I don't have a use for it, but if you do I'd rather you have it." That is so hippie.
when we were younger we could take on any battle - 'cause we had the energy. but now as we have grown older I believe that we have become alot more selective about the battles that we choose. As long as we don't forget what we believe is right or wrong and speak our mind what more can the world ask of us? I know that I'll be going to my deathbed saying "at least I tried". PAX
While others may have seen me as a hippy...I really never knew what that meant Soo...back in the days Was never overly into drugs Worked hard when I did but tried to make it less than 1/2 the time. Did a lot of time seeking....trying to find Ways Beyond hahaha more a new ager than hippy....but never bourgeois - yuppy...enjoyed living poor and the freedom it gave me. Now....hmmph working for money still (3 1/2 hr. nightly ramp through the backroads of the fingerlakes delivering the big local paper)...but living poorer than most would know how...in some ways...have land and equipment, and if I cashed that in would probably have over 1/4 mill. .... but land is so precious. So I live a hermits style life up on the hill in an old delapidated gutted out travel trailer, off grid, hauling water from the spring...and call it living the good life. Looked for people to share and grow community but this here's the real snow country and there's a lot of work that overwhelms all that have come looking.... plus I am not desperate and have not a "need" for others to fill and am a firm believer in tanstafle (thereain'tnosuchthingasafreelunch) believing in self empowerment rather than the current paradigm of co-dependency....yeah...not many interested in taking that kind of chance any more....want it already done with the full powers that go along with the doing, but not wanting to actually have to "do". I live full time up on the land and 2 others visit for varying lengths of time and help as they may.....t'is a good life....not much gets done and that in slow mode....overextended buying equipment and now paying the piper for another year or so before the debt burden is released, and should any come, want them to get the pleasure and growth of doing and deciding just what it Be that we "Do". Damn turned into a rant....but seems in like mode as the op....we never give up on what means enough that we are not willing to live without it....- y'know
hi, i'm your younger sybling, your kid sister/brother. i'm in that betwist and between age group, too young for Woodstock but too cool for disco, too cool because we were watching you guys. by the time we were old enough to be free enough to be a hippy the Nam war was over and you all had packed up your peace symbols and ... well ... kinda dissipated. so we, the betwixt and between, went looking for you, hoping to find what you found, a cause, A CAUSE to feel stronge about. i don't know what happened. how it all got lost. why we dropped the torch. i'm not even sure if it was handed off. all i know is that the energy dissipated with your interest. the music became pop banal and the corporate hydra reached into everything and every beautiful thing that you hippies, proclaimed was mass produced, marketed and sold. and in this way the distinction of "hippy" was absorbed into the fabric of general society, changing it. so "hippiness" still lives in the now common verbage and mundane mechanisms of our society ... politically correct, natural food, yoga classes and all that is green. so i don't know what more you can want or expect of a generation. you had your impact, much of it good. all we betwixt and beweens could do was try to emulate it and keep it, whatever it was, pure within our hearts. i can see what happened perhaps a little better than you can because i'm your kid sister/brother and i've always been standing just a little behind you watching it all.
gee, i don't know. just stringing some words together, love beads. and i guess i must assume, as evidenced by your eye rollings, that you don't like my little string of words. sorry. i didn't mean to interrupt your elderly hippy self pity trip. it won't happen again.
Sorry you misconceived my flip comment. I actually liked the way you strung those words together, almost poetic prose. Even my smiley was misconceived. I thought he was just looking up at the previous post. Didn't think it was an actual eye rolling. Thanx for clearing that up. It won't happen again.
No problem, and thanx for telling me that the cute blue smiley I've been using was actually an eye-roll (I'm used to the gif one). :cheers2: Yeah, this is what I should have said.
The days of the typed communication and emoticons seems to leave more room for pessimistic interpretation...i cannot spell
i hear ya dormouse. i will only be 51 on friday this week, and all you said rang true. for myself, I understand dormancy, but for me I don't think it's due to external factors, but I can see how that can happen. we all have our ups and downs though. after all these years i still can't define what hippie is anyway. Labels are so .... irrelevant.
This morning on cable they showed the miniseries, "The 60s". I tried to watch it but couldn't, and not just because it was full of stereotypes. As I said, the 60s ended 40 years ago and I want to put those years behind me. The spirit that was so predominant in the 60s is still alive and well and by all means feel free to seek it out, sometime I do that myself. But don't live in past, let's move on.
