"A woman on the radio talks about revolution
When it's already passed her by."
I often daydream about what it would be like to buy a gigantic ancient house in Italy or Spain. You would be surprised how many of these there are available.
I would bring over my family and their partners or friends, and hopefully grandchildren and we would all live together. There would be plenty of space for everyone to wander, to be and do as they please.
Everyone would bring their own talents to the mix. There would be a garden, and large feasts set outside on a long wooden table. No dishes or chairs matching, tapestries hanging in the trees. The grandchildren would run naked, not afraid to pick up the errant lizard or paint themselves with mud.
A midwife would come for each new birth and we would light candles and all silently wait, or cook, or wrap our hands around beads to give them something to do until we heard the new cry of life echo through the walls of the tired house.
A tired house brought back to life stone by stone. Laundry would hang on a line and let the Mediterranean air dry it with a smell of adventure.
My mother could let the dogs out the front door all she wanted because the grounds are safely protected by more stone rocks, once put in place to keep out intruders from wars, or famine, or plagues. Now the old walls sit and relax into themselves not having to stand at attention. They relax and witness an odd family that takes naps in the afternoon sunlight. On the grass, in hammocks, in beds nursing their babies.
We have among our many chickens one named Lasagna, a nod to the fact that the chicken will never become its name.
"I was alive and I waited, waited
I was alive and I waited for this."
I was born too late. These completely run down yet venerable and dignified estates sell now for millions. Many are up for auction. I cringe to think of the buyer who will tear them down all to have marble countertops.
I was born too late. I want to wear flowers in my hair, and often do, but still I was born beyond the revolution of peace.
I can not even say this was some past life of mine, since I was alive, born just after the Summer of Love.
We lived in Los Angeles, during the time of the Manson era. We lived just over the hill from the Manson house. A few doors down was the Source Family house.
I can not say I blame my mother for packing up what she could after a particularly large earthquake and driving us across country where my father would eventually meet us.
I am aware that people aggrandize that certain time. I know that if asked more people claim to have been at Woodstock than were actually there. I know there was a war and it seemed to be a country divided. It was not an idyllic time.
But it could have been. For the hermits, like myself, that in their twenties dove into books by Ram Dass, Krishnamurti, Timothy Leary. I read about Buddhism, Mysticism, Hinduism.
I thought "YES!"
I raised my children with art and music and mud puddles. But they were raised with the soundtrack to RENT. They were raised in an era of the fading of AIDS being the biggest threat. They took comfort from the Japanese and Pikachu, Charmander, Squirtle, Meowth.
"Bob Dylan didn't have to sing about
you know it feels good to be alive"
I am on a quest to find a feeling. An elusive emotion that lives in an abandoned mansion in some distant country.
When I find it, when I feel it, when I live it, I will feel in place. Was I born too late?
"I was alive and I waited, waited
I was alive and I waited for this"
♥
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