To be perfectly honest its been quite a long, strange trip this summer. Two months ago I climbed into a car with a gaggle of my closest friends, somehow managed to fit everything into the car with the aid of geometry and keen logicians delegated to do the packing and zipped across the wide chest of our great nation in a whirlwind worthy of any tasmanian devil.
In two weeks i had come from the rolling and very rural hills of conservative Pennsylvania to the liberal hub of the west coast. Where once the common feeling was 'farm, pay taxes and vote red' the feeling is now 'Turn on, tune in and drop out'. I was in Berkeley today and stumbled into the middle of a frenetic street fair. Lining the streets were various tents ranging from those dealing with energy healing to craft tables where you could make and decorate masks. On a fair off stage a band dressed like robots pumped out a quirky sort of rock music to a crowd dressed like psychedelic clown children. On the lawn a woman sat with her pet chicken and a huddle of adolescents smoked a reefer to my left. A street over were a parking lot full of cars all adorned in some special way. The first was a truck covered in every manner of metal decoration one might imagine, all attached somehow by magnets and all a rusty orange color. A VW bug was completely mosaic-ed in bits of colored glass and marble, another painted to look like the ocean with half-rubber fish portruding from its waves. Meanwhile a 50 something with scraggly blond hair in yellow suspenders strolled by with two guys who looked like Chong and a girl painted with purple stripes and multi-colored hair jumped languidly in front of a stage playing average hippie fare. The sun beat down hot and the grungy kids with their dogs begged for beer money on the curb. While its all well and good to feel free, i have been thinking that if what these people truly want is revolution then maybe they should make a somewhat more serious attempt to acquaint themselves with reality.

During my days i am faced with the awful effects of poverty and shortcomings of an underdeveloped social system and spend my weekends often paddling through the endless halls of liberal commercialism. Sometimes i go to Berkeley to watch the neo-hippies and winos mingle and witness the interesting manifestations of art and conversation that emerge. Other times i skip out to the Haight Ashbury and share lunch with a homeless guy just to hear the stories he has to tell. I sit in the most progressive city in America and look out over the bridge wondering why, if there is so much Love and human concern is there so much desperation and abuse going on even here? Why, in the city of Love are there still very distinct 'white' and 'black' areas and what can i as an individual do to bring us together? This as i suck my mangoberry smoothie with soymilk and an energy boost through a multi-colored straw. Peace, man.