That Year

The state of mind starts with "I don't know" leads to living life as a question, a journey, rather than as some kind of suicide mission.  This is what 1966 was really all about.  

 That Year

It wasn’t in the plans, but the monkey stole the show.  The critters in the zoo were scared.  Dick and Jane happened to be walking in the garden of the grove when the acid kicked in and they were right there, back in the Vietnam days, in the struggle to prove that war itself was nothing you should do. Pipe smokin’ innocents, dreamin of peace with the big bombers comin' into view.  And a president who was willing to keep ‘em killing and dying over there.  And 40 years later he’s doing it again, only this time he doesn’t even care.  Jesus has got him on the pipeline, telling him exactly what to say and what to do.  So certain he seems, you wanna scream you wanna cry out, “Hey, fuck you!

    How you can be so sure?  How you can be so cold?
    How will you ever learn from your heart?
    Without a doubt that’s real, you never learn to feel.
    You’re on thin ice from the start

    Without the ‘I don’t know’ you got no chance at all.
    You’ll never learn to listen to your mind.
    Your lizard brain will trust only internal rust. 
    You’ll start feeling cold inside.”

Jane’s digression was done. Dick said,  â€œDepressing but fun!” But he’d been blown away by fortune and fame. Now the garden itself was crazy, and the critters all wounded and maimed.  The monkeys keep screaming and jumping up and down and the zoo keeper smokes a bong.  He’s telling everyone,  â€œKeep having fun, war’s nature’s way of seeing who’s strong.  And the voodoo it keeps on boo-ing, scaring everyone in the zoo.  But here in the garden of the grove we’re tripping on the big trees and the wide field too, and the flowers growing on the uncut lawn.  In this moment there is nothing to fear.
Laying in the grass in the garden of the grove.  I remembered when we first came here.

    That year in the summer of love,
    the real summer of love.
    That year.

Copyright © 2006, 2014 by David Larstein, all rights reserved.

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