f parable stories for the undefiled  
 
WOODSTOCK
by David Eide .

Ah, generation of innocent idiots! Beautiful boomer-bosoms in soft wind.

I did watch Woodstock last night and loved four or five of the performances. Music was never finer than at that time. Music since that time pales in comparison. Richie Havens, Hendrix, Santana, Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Joe Cocker all come to mind.

After youth you discover that someone was fooling someone.

This was the time the entertainers took over a leadership role. The subsequent years were not a pretty picture.

On deeper inspection one has a better appreciation for what happened, as long as one had goals and ambitions. There was a breakdown of barriers. Women sprang freely up from the fissured earth. African-Americans were unshackled. Youth saw itself as free of everything because the world was absurd. Why not if the world was going to blow itself up? Why not?

So, an opening. That was positive from a thinking point of view. The ambition to spot new horizons. Very positive. New freedoms? Good. That was the generous spirit in 1969 or so.

Later the generation tries to figure out how to survive in a world that they had grown to hate and fear but that is another tale.

I wouldn't want to see those heaving breasts today.

There was addiction, anger, bitterness, disillusionment after that period of time. Cults. Little knowledge and little experience of a sort that could actually get growth and development out of people who thought they were perfect.

There is no coincidence in the production by the boomers of two presidents who were empty suits that had fought addictions.

Neither is the computer/Internet a coincidence. Nor environmental values.

It is very difficult to create authentic culture from sentimental lyrics.

That period was akin to the old Romantic period in Europe of 18th, early 19c with the additions of electricity and drugs. And it's interesting to note that while Europe was going through its romanticism, America was laying the foundations for the next few centuries. And the two movements arose for the basic same reason; repugnance of the "logic" of the world, a refusal to repress emotions on behalf of a rational society, art primary over science and on and on. No one who claimed youth could defy that surge.

It was fresh with apocalyptic visions from the most ordinary minds. When the ordinary mind is overwhelmed it is a sign. It signals an irrepressive direction.

By 1975 it was pretty much burnt out. I got that sense in Berkeley at any rate. Cults were on the rise. People were using the idealism to protect themselves from the next stage of development and it was fairly transparent. The most idealistic moved way, way away and little has been heard from them since.

* * * * * * * *

Wild storm of fire and mud. Wild storm that bends the trees and all the living thing stay indoors.

The saddest fact is that we must live in our own world, our own time. We have many advantages and resources the past did not have but then, the future will certainly have more than our own.

We live in relation to the opportunities and to the constant facts. For instance, life is lived longer and therefore a person can plan and enter/exit the phases of development in ways that make for superb human beings. Of course anything can happen.

The plane crashes. The car hits the body in the city street. The piece of food goes down the wrong pipe. One sleeps and never wakes. So, to say anything is assured is ridiculous. And sometimes life is so pure and wonderful, so beautiful and lively that to die is a painful fact, a scary fact but a fact nonetheless. And sometimes life is so wrong, so terrible, so difficult, so impossible that death is a wish chanted on lonely days when all conspires to make it seem that nothing really happened, nothing got done, it was all a short dream.

Every phase has its lessons. In Berkeley I learned that it is utterly important to take care of your personal self. That it matters who you are with. As long as I was thinking, reading, writing I was ok. I felt a spendid release from the previous phase. I engorged myself on riches tucked away in old libraries and bookstores. In Contra Costa County I learned that it is not good to be dependent on other people. I also learned that there is supreme freedom in life if only for a few moments. But that even the most spendid freedom is fated to draw down at some point. On the Internet I learned that business is a tough nut, that money is extremely hard to come by, that one must have short-term goals rather than cosmic goals, and that the literary imagination entertains from time to time. Through it all I learned the bitter lessons of compromise and isolation.

But I also learned patience and perseverence. I learned that belief is very important. I learned that vanity rules humanity and not to take it seriously unless it is threatening you with a nuke.

I learned that despite all the changes that have taken place in the last 50 years, there is still a place for the writer. A writer can find him or herself!

I learned that one must live, suffer, and then move on and close the door on the past. Cultivate memory but shut the door on the past and those who want to keep you there.

* * * * * * * *

America is the land of impossibilities. It is a necessary break from the drudge of history and the common assumption. It needs to break from itself from time to time without, as has happened, breaking the lovely cord back to the founding principles.

A good American can always switch loyalties among all these fine institutions.

Let the dream be real. Let the real be more than useless words.

I would love to put an end to the last 40 years; years that have produced more noxious gas and piss than wonderful thoughts and visions. It may have been the generational conflict. It may have been a people totally unprepared for what hit them. It may have been a massive sell-off to the gods of greed and avarice. It may have been the sort of contentment that poisons the democratic spirit. Many good things have flowed into these 40 years. The release of women and African-Americans from their shackles; the voyage to moon and adventure into space; the computer/Internet revolution; environmental values; the rising tide of affluence among others.

So, much good has been done in the last 40 years. But it can quickly back up and become a cess pool if it doesn't break the hypnotic hold of all these changes it passes through. At the risk of sounding absurd, I reiterate the thought "I'm moving into a new horizon and that the door is closing on the past."

* * * * * * * *

I'm delighted by the mixture of backgrounds in the family. I look at all in my family and say, "this is America!" If you went to Ireland, Norway, Pakistan, West Africa, China, Normandy, Israel, Germany and other nations where people have come from in this family, you'd have a hard time with these mixtures. But, this is America. It's not that everything works perfectly. America is not a machine. It is a learning curve. The hatreds that seep into youth by all and every means must be outgrown through knowledge and experience.

The integrity in America is different than in old lands. It is tested by hatred and temptations galore. The integrity is proven by self-knowledge. "This is good for me, this is enriching, this is not, this is toxic, for me it is so, perhaps it is your manna. I will let you eat your manna but will not eat it myself."

When people converse, laugh, and help then something good has happened. When they try to change, thwart, obstruct then something bad has happened.

Ah new door opening to the new horizon! You are in front of me.

What needs to be avoided at all costs are dream-killers. Those who believe they have some primitive ability to see exactly what you are after and immediately try to kill it in you.

2008


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