“In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex.”
“Take long walks in stormy weather or through deep snows in the fields and woods, if you would keep your spirits up. Deal with brute nature. Be cold and hungry and weary.”
“Misery has company enough.”
A revolution with no enemies … or so it seemed
HIPPIES — free on Amazon this week.
The Vietnam war resistance, psychedelic drugs, sexual openness, the freedom of the commune – it seemed that everything about the 1960s could be incredibly liberating or wildly destructive. Against this backdrop, Jazmine, Ziggy, Ragman and a coterie of hippies discover an LSD-spinoff drug that triggers past life regressions and sweeps them toward a dramatic climax. This epic tale of hippiedom is intimate in the lives of its characters but panoramic in its coverage of the sights, sounds, and ideals of the Age of Aquarius. Hippies is well-suited to readers of historical fiction, literary fiction, and anyone interested in the 1960s or the history of countercultural movements.
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Hippies-Gary-…dp/1535579862/
Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/BooksByGaryGautier/
Web page: http://www.garygautier.com/
Go ahead. Do it. Release your inner hippie.
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I had a good spot in Kelmis, at the end of the #24 bus line from Aachen, just inside the Belgian border. Light rain, but my petrol station was covered nearly to the street. It was secondary road from Aachen to Liege, but it looked good on the map and I’ve gotten a little wary of Autobahn ramps with no shoulder.
My first ride, a college-aged German couple, rerouted me back the Autobahn but left me in a good spot. Then it was a quick series of rides. The Afro-British guy with the fancy car who swerved to pick me up before I could even get set up and dropped me at an official Autobahn rest and petrol station. It’s always a little weird for me at such stations. I scoped out the front door, busy with family people coming in and out while pumping gas. The back door that led from the station to the separate restaurant seemed OK, but accosting people could be awkward there. The huge parking lot itself or the exit from it was an option. Two young hitchhikers walked up and we were comparing notes when someone saw my “Brussels” sign and called me in. I turned mid-sentence and jumped in with the Albanian and his Belgian girlfriend. He left me near central Brussels, as the language barrier was enough that I think he never quite understood that I was not really going into Brussels but trying to bypass it.
I poked through a park, made myself a “Ghent” sign, and found a long busy street back to the highway. I tried to walk it briskly since there was no way to pull out of traffic. Then a horn blew and a tour bus full of Africans from Ghana with an Italian driver beckoned frantically for me to get in, get in before the light changed. Why not? The language barrier was again significant. Who knows what fantastic tour they were on or why they picked up a hitchhiker, but we shared my trail mix and our few moments together on the “long, strange trip” of which Jerry Garcia sang. The ride ended, for reasons unknown to me, miles from the highway, this time in the city of Ghent by a small train station. The Africans fanned out into the city and I stepped into the station. Tickets to Bruges were about $7USD, so I bought one an hour out and walked into town to seek coffee and wifi. Two women suggested I go with them to a coffee shop but it was a far enough walk that I’d miss my train. I should have gone with them. I dawdled in Bruges late, found all hostels booked, the train station locked overnight, and the weather too cold to stand for long periods or roll out my sleeping bag in the wooded track on the way to the highway. Credit card. Hotel. Lovely town, but I’m sure I’d have had cheaper accommodations in Ghent, if accommodations had been called for there.
The next drowsy morning, I figured I’d stop at the bus station along the way before sticking out my “Calais” sign. Sure enough, a bus was leaving for London and I took it. Luckily. The ferry terminal at Calais was a vast, incalculable mess (although it may have been more navigable on the foot passenger side). Also, without the bus, I would not have met the tattooed guy with bubble gum blue dreadlocks who reset my phone for the UK, nor the Colombian fire chief who had done the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela and with whom I could practice Spanish.
I now have free review copies (Kindle or typeset pdf) of Hippies (novel) or Year of the Butterfly (chapbook of poems) for readers willing to post a brief and honest Amazon review.
Click the images for the Amazon links, or email me at the address below for the free copy if you’re willing to get a review up in the next few weeks
Email for review copies: drggautier@gmail.com
The difference (when it comes to issues of cultural identity) may be differing views of human nature. In the Civil Rights and hippies decade, there was much struggle but there was much optimism. The liberal assumption was that people of no race were intrinsically racist, that people brought different views and backstories to the table, some wrongheaded and destructive, and some just different. Our role was not to pass judgment but to help each other to find the lighted path with no preconceptions based on race and gender or where you came from. The progressive goal was to find the human goodness in all and celebrate each other across demographic lines, to work joyfully together, without judgment and without shame. Sure, there were problems, but there was an underlying sense that the goodness of the human heart would win out in the end.
Liberalism today (or a large branch of it) seems to take a much darker view of human nature. The assumption seems to be that all white people are racists, all men are sexists, and those who don’t acknowledge their racism and sexism are the worst and most dangerous sort. Instead of looking for ways to celebrate each other across demographic lines, the modus operandus seems to be to search every alleyway to validate one’s own grim premise in this regard. The old liberalism that eschewed shame and judgment and trusted in the goodness of the heart to come through in the end has yielded to a liberalism dedicated almost entirely to identifying targets for shame and judgment. S/he who finds the most racism wins.
The hippie view of human nature had its risks. It was rooted in a naïve idealism that was not always well equipped for the contingencies of the real world. But the risk of the current variant of liberalism is that you end up fostering self-segregation along demographic lines; you end up with people sharing less openly, thinking less outside the box, for fear of offending, and when they do offend, you end up eating your own; you end up with people living under an imminent threat of shame and judgment instead of celebrating each other openly in a spirit of positive affirmation of self and other.
I prefer to go with the hippie risk of “naïve idealism.” Maybe it’s just selfishness. After all, this preference allows me to greet people on the street, regardless of demographics, backstory, or political affiliation, with a good-faith optimism, and a little bit of joy at our shared humanness, rather than greeting them with suspicion and a sharp eye scanning for their sins. Then again, perhaps my preference is simply a function of my age. But I would like to think that it won’t get me scarlet-lettered out of hand by my younger colleagues. There’s still a lot of work we can do together.
For Part One of 1960s vs today’s liberals, click here.
Hippies is FREE this week on Amazon (Kindle). Get your copy now. Or if you have a copy, gift a copy or two to friends. Just tell them to be polite and write a brief and honest Amazon review in return for the freebie 🙂
Click the cover below to link through.
