Charles Greenberg's Hippie Self-Archeology |
by Charles Greenberg |
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working with the forceps of time
The Jewish Girl Who Could and the Green Berets 1971
"Shelter from the storm" Bob Dylan
a natural food co-op/commune at the edge of Albuquerque, Osha(named after a root) had been a junk yard zoned out by residential and middle class neighbors....so to get even the old cowboy who owned it leased it to the hippies
after awhile it had about 2,000 members and bolt by screw by nut by shard the hippies had cleaned it up. there were large gardens, bees, and the store where bulk grains, nuts, and organic produce were sold
natural childbirth occurred there also with a midwife. a guru, or two, passersby of every shade, the psychotic, the religiously possessed, the utopian skeptics as well, "when you live outside the law, you must be honest" Dylan had sung and one, a poet, who had read Hawthorne's Blithedale Romance, had written on a wall due to the thievery, a blight to the progress of the store
quiet refugees from the Vietnam war were there too, Jason and his girl Wave who dressed like an American indian....one of their preoccupations, sage enemas for purification....the hallucinogens too...Jason with long blond hair almost to his waist...an absolute space cadet some of the lesser of the spacey thought....he was there because his buddy Ron was there because Anandi(a made up name...really it was Sasha)was there...she was the human Kibbutz incarnate...healing togetherness,generous love of all kinds, massage, midwifery, share the work, the wealth and each other...Ron said she was a very trusting person....he lived with her....he understood trust from the perspective of the middle of the war in Vietnam...
even the most utopian of the group was tempted to physically shake Jason out of his stupor....until one day some Stomps, cowboys drunk with boots to prove it showed up to decimate the place (they didn't like this peacelovehippydippyshit) it would have been a slaughter but Jason did awake from his psychedelic slumber with attitude and Ron also a quiet one, as well, the Stomps sensed the danger....later Jason said "I knew I could kick their asses...I had the will to do it"...the Green Berets back from the war and hell seeking shelter from the storm in the human kibbutz. Sasha the mover and shaker
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In the movie there were flittering moments of Richie Goldberg, a medic with a white armband going to the aid of an injured.... the supposed gunman stabbed by the Hells Angels acting as body guards for the performers (this arrangement rumored to have been suggested by the Grateful Dead)
the Fat Man at Altamont naked in is morbidly obese birthday suit, his rolls of fat beat with pool cues again by the Angels......he had presumed the "love" generation encompassed him as well......later Ken Kesey said that he "loved" the Fat Man, I wonder if the Fat Man with his bruises in a public beating ever knew it
Richie who swooped to aid the stabbed....15years earlier had been beat up a block away from Beth Israel Synagogue on Yom Kippur by some older Catholic kids.....Sussman who was big and tough refused to come to his aid because it was Yom Kippur
Mick Jaggar on stage......Sympathy for the Devil Goldberg with the bleeding stranger
taking the long view....the forty years of desert.... a nation of teachers and healers....
Yom Kippur at Altamont, a private movie for me
the rabbinical hippy ho didn't know it
the apricot blossoms warmed the brown desert....the morning chill abated, the sun now above Sandia mountain to the east... in Corrales the leaves still not on the cottonwoods
the earth tilled....Joseph was intent on planting the whole field with garlic...it would take a few years to come to fruition.....so this was a distant harvest....he carefully removed each clove from the bulb and planted it with Hasidic intent as to delay a lamentation. it was quite possible to imagine him wrapped in a prayer shawl donning tefillin though he didn't claim his religion he was a picture of the part, dark too.
he had a child who was with its mother in a commune up north....she was blond and apparently had run off, it appeared to be as simple as her new friend could dance a jig
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