Tag: Hippie

A TRIPPY DIP IN THE POOL

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

Sitting down at the edge of the indoor swimming pool the other day, I noticed the blue-and-white banners hanging above the lap lanes were reflected upside down on the water. Since I was the first swimmer to arrive, the surface was relatively calm, swayed only by the slow, repeated ripples my legs produced.

At first the upside-down banner images reminded me of a string of shimmering pine trees reaching more and more for the sky. Pines, of course, are also Christmas trees, so while my mind was drifting off somewhere along the holiday theme the images began squeezing, so that a blob of some kind began floating upward from each of the trees, which were shrinking in response. Almost melting. Or maybe dancing.

I’d definitely fallen into a mesmerizing time warp and hoped it wouldn’t be contagious, should anyone else show up. This was, quite simply, trippy. Very trippy.

Considering that era, I had to admit this was so much better than the lava lamps my recently retired eye doctor had in his exam room. He’s the one who’s beheld almost all of the world’s surviving Vermeer paintings in person – some of them in private collections, at that. So that, too, was stirred up. Hope he’s delighting in his freedom.

Well, it was over in a flash. Or should I say splash? Had to get my laps in and didn’t want the lifeguard coming over to ask if I was OK. How on earth could I answer that one?

“Do you see what I see?”

But that would revive those Christmas trees, and who knows where that would lead? I just might have to explain the whole hippie era to her, and we wouldn’t have that much time or spacey whatever.

WITH GRATITUDE FOR THE INSPIRATION

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

You know the disclaimer, “Any resemblance of the characters to real people living or dead …” Something along the lines of purely unintentional.

But let’s be frank. The fiction is that you can create a character without having someone real in front of you, somewhere in your past or present. No, you need flesh and blood somewhere. Anything else would be a caricature.

It’s a special problem when you’re composing in a semi-autobiographical vein. You’re trying to be true to the dictum, Write about what you know. The details, especially.

(Oh? What, then, makes it fiction? Other than changing a few dates?)

Admittedly, the personalities work best when you take your inspiration and abstract it, so that a real individual would no longer recognize himself or herself – or those who were no way involved will imagine they, themselves, were.

And, by way of further confession, I’ll note that my most recent outings have led me to new characters lacking immediate introductions for me – but I’ll know them when I meet them if I haven’t already come across them here and there in pieces.

But back to the argument at hand.

I have one character, Nita, who runs through four of my five Hippie Trails novels and is a major character in the new one I’m writing, set years later. She was inspired by impressions I had of a friend’s girlfriend – or more accurately, mostly his impressions conveyed to me at the time – as I sat down to draft a half-dozen years or so later. She becomes a catalyst for much that happens around her.

In reality, we all drifted away.

And then, a few years ago, I met her again.

Nothing like I’d remembered. Or the idealized character in my fiction, now infused with another two or three people I’ve met. The lines blur.

I can say this person never did X, Y, or Z, unlike the character. Or that these two worked together on a controversial project or became known for certain accomplishments. In fact, she doesn’t resemble the other one at all, not anymore, if she ever did.

Still, it’s an eerie feeling. Something other than deja vu. Something still spurring gratitude for the inspiration.

For more on the series, click here.

~*~

SHOT OUT OF A CANNON, IN A WAY

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

As I said at the time …

What’s amazing that I was able to somehow go from oh-so-white-middle-and-working-class high school to the hippie realm in a span of just four years. Could it even be the same person? Damn, I’ve been lucky at times!

Here she was, the three-day (or however many) cheerleader from the Biggest City in America, now with me, the Eagle Scout and one-time biochemist hopeful turned flower-child yogi from a place I thought was hilly. Me, the one some had hoped would become a minister, now turned agnostic/logical positivist, with someone who’d grown up at leftist rallies. Sounds like something they’d shoot out of a cannon at the circus while you applauded.

Should we talk about who was greener, in the sense of naïve, when we met?

But she came at the turning point. One where our shared idealism met at a crossing. And we were soon off, our own separate trajectories.

Fortunately, we parted on speaking terms. And still do.

THE INVISIBLE FACTOR

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

In the buildup of national elections, once again a major influence remains the elephant in the room. I’m referring to the legacy – make that plural, legacies – of the hippie outburst, especially in contrast to those on the Vietnam war side of the divide.

The wounds and tensions haven’t gone away. Just look at the continuing proliferation of POW-MIA black flags across the landscape, on one side.

For the other, the lines are much more hazy yet festering. As I’ve been arguing, hippies came – and still come – in all varieties and degrees, and likely nobody ever fit what’s become the media stereotype. With the end of the military draft, the movement lost a crucial motivating force and focusing definition.

Complicating the situation was the distancing many youths on the antiwar side felt when it came to politics. With its support of the military at the time, liberal politics were tainted with outdated Cold War ideologies like those of the conservative side. For hippies, radical was the label of honor. And the Democratic Party base of the left was splintered as its youthful potential allies had nowhere to turn or direct their forces in the political arena.

The horror meant going from a hawkish LBJ administration to one of Richard Nixon.

Fast-forward now to the present American landscape. Gone are the grandparents and parents of many of the now senior baby boomers – the core of the hippie movement versus the older generations. Yet political candidates still tiptoe around many of the reality issues, beginning with marijuana and other illicit substances, as if they’re too hot to touch. Let’s get real. Want to talk about litmus tests?

As we look at candidates, ask where each stands on a scale of continuing issues from the hippie stream. I find it enlightening.

  • Peace and social justice activism.
  • Sexual equality … including abortion rights.
  • Racial equality.
  • Environmental and ecological issues, including the outdoors.
  • Educational alternatives and opportunities.
  • Sustainable economics and fair trade.
  • Spirituality and radical religion.
  • Fitness along the lines of yoga, bicycling, kayaking, hiking.
  • Organic and natural foods.
  • Marijuana reform.
  • Arts and crafts.
  • Community as common wealth, including health care.
  • Labor as a matter of respect and a livable income.

Well, we have Bernie running straight true to the cause. Hillary, more cautiously so. But on the right? Let me suggest being wary of anyone in the pro-war camp who hasn’t served. Period. As for other life experiences?

~*~

All of this returns me to my Hippie Trails series of novels. I’d love for you to come along. Just click here.

 

 

HOW WOULD THE AUTHOR REACT?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

I never know what will show up in our household after a Saturday morning round of yard sales, and Vince Passaro’s novel Violence, Nudity, Adult Content is a perfect example. At least it wasn’t another chair.

OK, it’s a catchy title – one I’m afraid generally oversells the story. While the novel’s excellently written, what really strikes me is the way it’s essentially four related novellas that are woven together. And, yes, it is set in Manhattan.

There’s the big law-office intrigue and infighting. There’s the one rich client’s murder case. There’s another lawsuit resulting from a brutal sexual attack. And there’s the marriage with two young kids that’s coming unraveled. (So far, it’s not that different from the three stories in a single television episode of Love Boat, a formula that quickly spread across programming. Here, though, the braiding feels more integrated into a whole. Well, not everyone was on the boat at the same time, in effect.)

Now, for a little confession. In a more conventionally structured novel, I will often leap ahead somewhere around the middle to the final pages. If what I find there makes perfect sense from what I’ve already learned, I’ll likely drop the book – perhaps picking it up later and skimming for supporting details. Of course, it the plot’s much thicker, I continue on the linear course.

What I found myself doing in this case was jumping from page to page to pick up just one of the threads, all the way to the end, before returning to the point of departure and following another thread the same way. Hey, I was pressed for time! The fact that one of the threads, presented as emails, appeared in a different font made the process that much easier.

So I’m left wondering how the author would feel about readers like me. Or whether an author even cares how a reader moves through a story.

Maybe it just depends on the book. Or an ego.

WORKING MY UNDERGROUND PATHWAY AFRESH

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 3 Comments

As I’ve reviewed the counterculture history through the lenses of the out-of-the-way places I inhabited, there are those who ask if I was ever really a hippie.

Usually, I finesse an answer – nobody really fit the stereotype, not on all fronts. And I certainly felt more at home in that circle of identity than any other at the time. Yes, I did live pretty much as a monk for a stretch through there, but that was followed by a return to a college campus and all of its action. Maybe I was in that world but not of it. My music, after all, was mostly classical and opera, along with some folk and jazz. Only now am I coming to more fully appreciate the sounds that identify the era. As for sexuality and caring, well, there’s much more to evolve there. Maybe even some radical political and social activism.

My Hippie Trails novels reflect the times, even though I keep wondering how much of the story I could recast as ongoing today – especially when it comes to physical desire and fulfillment or the simple matter of earning a living.

What I am experiencing as I dig through the encounters, though, is a sense of release – these are events that have been entrusted to me, and now that they’re published, I can move on. No matter how mundane and minor they might appear, contrasted to Haight-Asbury, say, or the Black Panther and Weathermen struggles, they were what many of us experienced, pro and con – and much of what we left unfinished. It’s no longer in my hands but rather in the wind.

This release, I’ll admit, is accompanied by an anticipation of a new phase, one adding disciplined faith to the path of renewed personal growth and service. So much of the dream awaits fulfillment.

NOT JUST BETHLEHEM, THEN

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

In early postings about creating a suitable bibliography reflecting the hippie era, your comments suggested some of the best works are in the realm of non-fiction, in contrast to Tom Wolfe’s demand for the big novel. Yes, as we discussed, there are some good novels, the bulk of them proving that small is beautiful, in contrast to Wolfe’s standard.

My reflections the other day on Patti Smith’s memoir, Just Kids (2010), added the underground artistic scene in New York to the list and has me thinking just how different the hippie centers could be. Most of them, as I see it, eventually wound up around college campuses.

Some recent overviews of Joan Didion’s life work have brought her 1968 collection of essays, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, to mind. Without going into criticism that she concentrated on the scandalous rather than the broader scene, what is stirred in my revisiting her essays is how localized and fleeting the hippie outbreak could be as it developed.

Quite simply, what fit one neighborhood or time didn’t necessarily fit others.

Haight-Ashbury, after all, soon morphed into back-to-the-earth networks or even rural communes, along with other situations, leaving its name to linger as a legend.

I mention this simply as a reminder of how far we are from a clear understanding of this remarkable history, much less its continuing – and pervasive – streams of action.

As for the big novel? Maybe it’s still waiting to happen.

WHERE HAVE ALL THE OLD HIPPIE DUDES GONE?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 2 Comments

As I reexamine just what happened to the hippies and conclude that the movement continues in many strands we now take for granted or simply overlook, I am nonetheless struck by a reaction in seeing a number of men who continue the look. Their long hair and threads may fit the style but for the most part they exude an aura of loser. Or, worse yet, a bum.

Sometimes it’s the cane they need for walking or an indirection or their lonely gaze. Missing a projection of derring-do or colorful theater or cool leadership, they instead seem to be more in need of a handout than any extension of underlying comradeship. In the height of the outbreak, back in the ’60s and ’70s, we often found ourselves pooling resources and abilities, perhaps just for a communal dinner or a party or a rally. There was an unstated mutual responsibility. Here, I feel only one-sided need. Never among them do I see someone I’d consider for a roommate, if I were still single.

Let me add this doesn’t fit all of us older guys in beards and long hair. But we have come through quite a lot over the decades, personally and as the carriers of a vision, to make me feel more like a survivor than a victor. For the most part, it’s been rough. Some of us did find ways to pay the bills without abandoning the style. Some have done it in the inner city, while others kept truckin’ on in a back-to-the-earth mode. Some have evolved into something, uh, higher. More mellow, peaceful, even wiser.

My own experience in the past year of growing out my remaining hair into a ponytail has brought its own perspective. It never seemed to tangle like this, for one thing.