Charles Greenberg's Hippie Self-Archeology
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
***
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