Tag Archives: hippie philosophy

Cousin

Cousin: (n) a child of one’s uncle or aunt.

Family setups and things like lineage always confuse the hell out of me.

After mother, father, sister and brother, it all gets a little blurry.

It begins with aunts and uncles. And then, when we start talking about “aunt on your mother’s side” or “uncle on your father’s side,” honest to God, I need to take out paper and pencil and draw a map.

Or should it be a graph? Because then, the children of those aunts and uncles become my cousins.funny wisdom on words that begin with a C

So in a weird way, I am kind of related to them, which makes it very strange that when I was a child, over summer vacation, we often played doctor.

That means I was touching family members—experimenting and discovering my sexuality—with people who would be my brothers and sisters if they weren’t separated by one other person.

I’m not even going to talk about second cousins. I honestly don’t even know what that is. I never admit I don’t know, because there is always someone ready to explain it, and then I must pretend to comprehend so as to get him or her to shut up.

I must stop and think about these family arrangements because they don’t come naturally to me.

Maybe they’re not supposed to.

Perhaps the hippie philosophy is the best one for us as human beings. You know—where we’re all brothers and sisters.

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Bandana

Bandana: (n) a large handkerchief, typically having a colorful pattern, worn tied around the head or neck.Dictionary B

Knowing your limitations is important…and annoying.

Importantly annoying. To a certain degree, that summarizes adult life.

When I was a much younger man, I became quite enamored with the hippie philosophy–but more or less the attire rather than the ideals.

Now, let me make it clear that I am a chubby fellow. (Chubby is the generous word I use today for “fat.”)

But I did love the flowered shirts and the bandanas which were often worn on the head, to look cool and maybe have some practical purpose which certainly escaped my perception.

So since they did not make these flowered shirts in my size, I had a girlfriend make one for me. Unfortunately, the material I chose was literally covered with flowers, and she made it a little too big and irregular around the collar, so it kind of draped me at the chest.

But I slid on a bandana and proudly donned my new shirt and went out into society to establish my uniqueness. Much to my chagrin, the first four people who saw me referred to me as “ma’am.”

You see, when you’re chubby and wear a blousy flowered shirt, it does appear to be a blouse. Add a bandana and you look a little like you’re heading off into the field to pick lettuce.

So I was greatly offended, but rather than abandoning my clothing choice, I decided to grow a mustache to enhance my masculine image. Unfortunately, most people just thought the circus had come to town and they had caught the Bearded Lady on “Shave Day.”

It was embarrassing.

It made me defensive.

So my life as a hippie was very brief, and eventually I found it safer to reject the bandana in favor of a baseball cap.

To my delight, almost immediately … I was once again viewed as a dude.

 

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Affectionate

Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter A

 

Affectionate: (adj.) readily feeling or showing fondness or tenderness: e.g. a happy and affectionate family.

You gotta BE there.

It’s true, you know. There are some things in life that cannot be viewed, read, perused, discussed, debated or downloaded.

Affection is one of them.

In a climate where “lukewarm” has begun to feel “heated,” we lack such closeness and intimacy that it has caused us to become defensive with one another because we privately feel cheated of the tenderness we need to satisfy our souls, yet at the same time we push away personal overtures from those who try to get too close too quickly.

A lady warned me the other day, saying, “Watch out! I’m a hugger.”

I do remember attending a rock concert many years ago where complete strangers–thousands of them–came up to each other, hugging in groups of five and ten without explanation or apology. Yet to promote such an idea in our day and age would be cynically mocked as a “hippie philosophy,” a throw-back to olden times or impractical due to the spread of disease.

This culminated for me when I saw churches offering hand sanitizer to folks after they had the “passing of the peace.” I wish I had a profanity to express how upsetting that is to me. And please, spare me the explanation on why it is needed. I am fed up with the notion of what is needful and anxious for the pursuit of what is helpful.

  • I need affection.
  • I need to be affectionate.

Now, it doesn’t have to always be demonstrative, but it does have to be spontaneous and real. It can be reaching across a table and cutting up the banana of a friend who is making you coffee, or coring an apple for another friend so she doesn’t have to deal with stems and seeds.

When you lose affection in a society, you promote the idea of isolation. Once humans are isolated, there’s only one thing that takes hold–survival.

Is it possible that in the next decade we will begin to treat each other–all the time–like we do when we’re in a traffic jam?

Abolish

by J. R. Practix

dictionary with letter A

Abolish:   v. to formally put an end to a system, practice or institution

That’s a strong word. Matter of fact, as I sat down and thought about it, the only “abolish” I ever heard of was slavery.

  • I personally would like to abolish fat grams.
  • I would like to abolish calories.
  • I would like to abolish ignorance that tries to pass itself off as comedy.
  • I would like to abolish about seventy-eight pounds off my body.
  • I would like to abolish some of the decisions made by my children in the name of free choice.
  • I would like to abolish some of the choices made by me when I was childish, in the pursuit of some hippie philosophy.
  • I would like to abolish the parliamentary procedure which seeps into our grown-up world and makes us feel like we’re really adult but ends up just halting progress.
  • I would like to abolish political parties so that individual candidates could run, and since we didn’t already know the talking points, we would have to listen to what they had to say.

But none of those are as strong as abolishing slavery was.

How about this one?

I would like to abolish all the foolhardy people who are talking about legalizing mind-altering drugs simply based on economic convenience, with no aforethought about what might cause some young person to become involved with these deadly chemicals, lending themselves to other even more deadly chemicals.

I guess there are a lot of things I’d like to abolish. But the problem with “abolish” is that you find out that merely stating your case is not enough, and as in the American Civil War, you end up squaring off and fighting to the death over the issue.

I’m not sure what I’m willing to die for. Certainly not abolishing fat grams (although the little boogers probably have a plan for MY demise).

Abolish is a strong word. I guess instead of abolish, I would just like to hear some intelligent dialogue on many of the issues of our day instead of hearing pundits portray their platform as they pontificate their principle.

Yes, I would like to hear an intelligent conversation about abortion, capital punishment, civil rights, global warming and nuclear proliferation, without being handed a pamphlet listing the ten reasons why the other side is anti-American.

It was a good thing to abolish slavery.

Who knows? Maybe it would be a good thing to abolish calories. But if you stand up to abolish something, you’d better be ready to fight.

That’s scary crap.