What is it about hippie children and young hippie families?
Now lets get this straight. I am not a hippie. NOT a hippie. Sure, I have hippie like dietary habits and definitive communal tendencies. But these are mostly born of a desire for community and certain beliefs about economic sustainability. Still, I have never woken up and thought...hmm, this skirt would go great over these pants, or WOW, maybe deodorant is unnecessary and to be frank, the smell of sage makes me violently ill.
In fact I even, very much enjoy urban living with its convenience, accessibility to the arts and public transportation.
But there is something about hippie kids, little hippie children splashing around in hot springs and bundled up hand knit clothing by their attractive and healthy hippie parents that makes me reevaluate my lifestyle and make me want to take to the hills, start a farm with friends, and breed a DIY family into existence.
I mean, normal city bound children do not do this to me. When I see a kid in a stroller on the street corner, sure, I think they are cute. I even make faces at them. But I don’t get these crazy yearning positive associations with peace and happiness that I do when I see naked parents bobbing their kin up and down in a nearby stream.
Maybe it’s nostalgia. My parents were pretty au’natural during my early years and no doubt I remember them feeding ME handmade baby food and taking me on hikes. Hell my first steps were in Yosemite.
Or maybe it’s that I don’t associate these children with the little drones in training I have seen, staring absently at the TV screen, neurotically scared of every bug and stranger.
But what if it’s something more. The prompting of the next stage of my life? The suspicion that if I am going to create a home and permanent family that I really do want it to be under different conditions, on different terms and with a different aesthetic and value system? To be honest, I have never seen myself stuck in a suburban home, paying for childcare and mini-vanning my children to playgroups. The idea of such a segmented and segregated little family sounds unnatural and vaguely akin to hell. And when I have pictures myself with a lil’un I think I have always filled in a big ‘ol blank: one of community and nature and a more cohesive existence with the outside world, even if it’s just an urban community with opportunities for shared support, friends who care and will share in the burden and pleasure, and a big old garden out back.
2 comments:
ooh girlfriend, clothes don't make the hippie! I think you are pretty darn close to being a hippie, if you aren't a total cardcarrying one. This is the new century, those kids buying their skirt/pants combos at Urban Outfitters aren't really hippies - perhaps you are! You're just the OH, old school.
suffice to say, if you and junior want to bind together in holy co-housing with me, dan, baby nordquista and older brother chorken, you just let us know. we'll be here all week.
oh, I know I know I know
I guess my point is that in addition to the trappings, the incense and jam bands and lack of ...respect for design, I also resent and despise other elements that have slowly become associated with hippiedom: flakiness, and an insistence on avoiding confrontation under the guise of making things "cool or mellow"
I think my entire venom for hippies everywhere is contained within the phrase "it's all good"
Namely, it's really not all good. Some things function, some really don't. Some things make you happy, some really don't. Everything that happens in the world might be part of a greater system that makes the world function, but not everythng is positive and acceptable.
So yeah, such unfortunate associations make me hate the notion of being called a hippie.
Nonetheless a productive and happy co-housing situation with you and lil' chorken makes me happy.
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