Wandering in The Post Love Wasteland.

(Originally posted July 19, 2007)

* When I originally posted this, I was in a very dark time of my life. I had begun to think that everything I stood for and believed in, was no longer relevant. I was bitter, lonely, and in great emotional pain. The negativity in the post is no longer a part of my life, but the message from 1967 is still important to me. So, here in its original form, is the first re-post from the old blog.

Welcome to the post-love wasteland...

"1967.... Yeah, I remember.

It was summer and I was sitting outside on the front step, listening to my pocket radio. (Still a pretty hip device for its time) They had just played "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)" by Scott McKenzie when the announcer came on and said "Well folks, it's official. It has just been announced that this is to be known as the summer of love!" At that moment the Wanderer in me was unleashed. I wanted to go immediately to San Francisco and wear flowers in my hair. I wanted to see all the great bands living there: The Grateful Dead, The Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother and The Holding Company with Janis Joplin, even the names seemed exotic. The marches of opposition to the U.S. involvement in Viet Nam. I wanted to go... But I was twelve years old and had to babysit my dumb sister who was two! So I couldn't go. But the ramifications of that announcement reverberated through my soul like a speedball in my brain. Love... The Utopic dream of a whole displaced generation of baby boomers. I looked at my sister and thought, "You're so lucky. You're going to grow up to live in a world that knows no war, no hatred, no racism..." When I told her about that evening many years later, a tear fell from her eye as she said, "It's worse now than it was then."

The troops were pulled out of 'Nam in the early '70s and our music gave way to disco, (shudder) and then punk, rap, metal and all their variations and sub-categories. In the '90s the U.S. went back to war. This time in the Middle East, and the enemy was not communism but oil shortages. Here we are, 40 years later and the U.S. is back in the Middle East, once again to gain dominance over the oil industry. The music has morphed into something dark and sinister, albeit with an occasional hint of the glory days when we all believed peace could really happen and love could steer the stars."

~Still Wandering...