• Born A Lion


    I live in California; Santa Monica to be exact. Daily life here is a metronome of mellowness. Ubiquitous indigo incense smoke numbs me and helps me forget and remember at the same time. The audio signature whoosh of rollerblades on the Santa Monica Pier like a jet engine you would hear as a child, search the sky for, but never see. Route 66 winds down and comes to an end at the pier. Maybe the highway thinks, "What, that's it?" Somehow it wants to keep going, but there is nowhere else to go. It's a lovely enough place what with the Ferris wheel and the ocean sunsets. The engineers planned it well, a lovely tribute. But after Easy Riding and freewheeling across the country, maybe old 66 wished someone had asked it if it wanted to end.

    I'm a gray-haired, green-eyed, slightly flabby male hippie living in a modern, New Age microcosm. When the Tune In-Turn On-Drop Out/Free Love/Age of Aquarius bus rolled through my hometown in 1967, I hopped on and never looked back to my father's dairy farm in Wisconsin. The kids in SM think I'm some kind of icon, and love to hear stories of being young in the Sixties. They like my braids with the wooden beads. I can tell they are envious of the era in which I came of age. They feel hemmed in, burdened. But secretly, I am envious of the young people of today. They have more choices than we rebels ever did. And my God, they're young.

    It's been a good life, but sometimes I wonder if it should have been another life. I think I missed something along the way, like my life was a car ride and I forgot to look out the window. Sometimes I feel I should have been born a lion. That's something for a vegetarian to think, isn't it? Once in a while, I dream of a hot, dry savannah with the air all rippling and shimmering. A pride of lions grunts a welcome. My pride. The ultimate commune. They look at me with green eyes; eyes just like mine. I want to belong, to lead. Cubs to protect, mates who provide food, and the vast, dazzling African night sky. A purposeful existence, one ordered by Nature. My roar would strike fear into all who heard it. The leader of the pride. Then the dream fades, and I'm not a brave leonine father, I'm a carnival sideshow, a fortune-telling gypsy. Drop in a coin, folks, and I'll tell you a story.

    I don't have the heart to tell my audience; but all we in the psychedelic Sixties did was run away from what really mattered. By becoming self-obsessed, we lost touch with who we really were. At the Green Coffee Machine off Santa Monica Boulevard, I don't even have the guts to tell the girl she forgot my soy milk in my latte. When I get to Heaven and see the Great Old Geezer in the sky, I'm going to tell him he made a mistake and I should have been born a lion. That will be the only courageous thing I have ever done in my life.