I Miss Abbie

Written During office Hours at the Barleymill and at the end of a fast day a couple of days later.

Went over to Verso today and availed myself of a nice selection of seditious reading. At $2.00 a pop for e-books I took a couple. I figure that they will at least make me look learned and open-minded to anyone who steals my Kindle.

But then I got to thinking, and that led me back to the pathetic little classic with the great title “Steal This Book”. Abbie Hoffman was one of the things, along with the Dead, who genuinely amused me during the 60’s and 70’s. Folks my age try to look back on this period with a self-important and arrogant air of hubris when they “hearken back to the day”. Well folks, let me tell you, there weren’t that many folks who participated. Oh sure, we blew some reefer and whacked off to a copy of the “anarchist cookbook” to further our radical cred, but the truth of the matter is that the “counterculture” was astonishingly small, and the chances are that the geezer that you are listening to, talking his post-hippie shit, is as full of shit as a Christmas turkey. Most of my generation was too busy trying to brown-nose our future bosses to be anything but lame.

I think that it is going to be important that we spend some time examining the sixties in a serious politico-economic sense. There are sufficient similarities to those days in the present. I wonder which way my kids will go? Since they both have deigned to spend the day with me on super bowl Sunday, I will grill them about their political leanings, but I am fairly certain that I already know the answers and I am not at all uncomfortable with either their choices or their reasoning's. I am going to try and get these two going on my thoughts, hoping that their lives and souls will be in better shape than leaving them to the gentle ministrations of Madison avenue and the Deep State.

Maybe what I will try is to take them back ad fontis, to the failed thoughts of Beatnik land and the Yippies and the Hippies and the Diggers. Perhaps they should attempt the grand plans which I failed. To live in a sustainable manner. But, at the end of the day, it will be their choice, because now in my dotage, I know the real truth: In the end, only the soul matters.

But, enough of that kind of nebulous philosophizing. Lets get back to Abbie: because more than anything, Abbie was an icon, but he was as full of shit as the rest of us. But he was three times cooler and a ton more fun. The Yippies were a hoot and by God, Pigasus should have been elected president. Abbie never gave up. I would tend to believe that that maybe if I start thinking for myself again, and I stick to my guns in my current set of plans, maybe when I see Abbie in another life, I won’t have to hang my head in shame.