glow with the gold of sunshine

I want to write more about the experience of Paul’s memorial.

It’s hard, because I am writing too infrequently, and so many things have been happening. It’s already hard to go back to this one, but I am being insistent that I get it down. Because it was important, and it is at risk of getting covered with more current urgencies.

And, I mean, these past few weeks have been rich. There was a very different reunion, and my mom being given an extraordinary honor where I made a speech and everything, and big revelations at my job, and a new guy I am seeing, but I need to first write about this other thing.

I grew up in Ridgewood, NJ, a gorgeous town of affluence–one of the most expensive towns in one of the most expensive counties in the state, top whatever school systems probably in the country.

I couldn’t have fit in less.

With all that money, there was a lot of indifference and indulgence. I graduated high school in 1983. Breakfast Club? I mean, to a degree, but frankly, the different sanctions were a lot more integrated than in that film. Sure, there were jocks and heads but they intermingled.

The heads. Short for potheads, right? Ah-hah, but also deadheads. And Paul was very much at the center of that world.

And I was not. My best friend was friends with all those guys, and I was friendly with everyone as well, but for many reasons I will not cite here and now I did not spend a lot of time with that scene. Two of the reasons were that I wasn’t into the Grateful Dead concerts, (though I did love me some American Beauty), and I wasn’t into tripping–I was terrified of it. Long story.

So I’m gonna leave that all there, and fast-forward to the day of Paul’s memorial.

I’m seeing families dancing to a jam band, little kids running around, and a lot of hugging and tears. I’m seeing people with their hippie on, but mostly, it feels like soccer moms who’ve retained a little of their high school hippie, or were resurrecting it.

I’m struggling, right now as I’m thinking this through. There is something from back then that I can’t put my finger on. Because I distinctly remember thinking I was the only hippie in my high school. I remember dressing as one for halloween and doing it up so authentically that it got attention–I had a hippie dad living in a hippie world (western Mass) and I’d been exposed to dealers and reggae and super-gorp way back in grammar school. Maybe that was it. Maybe that’s part of this story. I was trying to be a 60s hippie, and maybe that’s what kept me from seeing the authenticity of what was happening around me. That, and the self-centered fear that had me believe I was a freak; a real freak, like a freakshow freak, like no one in the world is like me freak. Lacking in the self-love, was I, while growing up.

What I’m trying to get to though, is there was something authentic going on. And I didn’t know it. Years later I went out and discovered paganism and the community and festivals and dancing around bonfires. And I thought we owned that.

So now it’s the after-party. And I’m talking to the guy, the one I was digging. Now he feels a little like the real deal, hippiewise, but I hadn’t quite processed that yet. Full beard, not clean on the sides. Shoulda been a clue. All I know is I feel so comfortable with him. Shoulda been a clue.

Anyway I see him interacting with the kids that are running around, so I ask him whose are they all. And that’s when he starts explaining how he and two other families (I think? was it three total, or four? see how I should have written this a few weeks ago?) live communally–not in a commune, but all within five minutes of each other, and they all participate with each other’s children, and have dinner together a few nights a week. And this is up in Massachusetts, but the group is made up of New Jersey locals, at least partly. I think. Sometimes my brain…

And I am floored. Really. Floored. Seriously? I’m asking him. I had no idea this was going on. This all evolved out of what was going on back then? Yup, he assures me. I told him I was amazed. That I had gone far from my starting point to find what I found. I had no idea that tribes were being formed right under my nose. That Paul’s world had this much substance.

Now, to be fair, this is not where everyone landed. Most of them are soccer moms, are two in a box, are no longer smoking that stuff and if they are, they are certainly shielding their kids from that fact. But something beautiful came out of that scene.

And believe me, this escalated my little crush. And so, a bit about that. He is so exactly the kind of guy I could only hope to find, living the kind of life I could only hope to live. (And fine, I’ll say it–he is kind of like Joe only cooler. And easier to talk to–just, not so much work. More comfortable in his own skin. This on the heels of my final Joe weekend. Literally, one week earlier. Yes, I digress.) It was interesting–the potency of it, of the big ‘want’ faded very quickly, in maybe two days. It kinda felt in my moment like I fell very hard, but it really passed right through me. Like, I’m comfortable being his friend. It feels very natural. And so I was trying to diagnose why that is, why it is that it got right-sized so quickly and not in any way painful. And what I’ve come up with is that somehow it wasn’t very personal. I mean, he was lovely and beautiful and warm and familiar, and the attraction was very real, (and that shit don’t fade so quickly) but it didn’t in any way feel like he was mine. or that we had any intimacy. It was more like, ooh, I’d like one of them please.

(Though as a post-script to that, it is a friendship that may in fact be becoming an intimate one. But I didn’t even feel that on that day–we had a nice connection, but it didn’t feel important. Only my stuff felt larger than life.)

And that’s where the two revelations swirl together. Because, as silly as this sounds, I didn’t know people like this really existed beyond the pagan community. It literally was, I’d like one of them please. And the excitement that one of them even existed. And all of them.

Later I went downstairs where the band was playing in the basement, and the people who were into it were so. beautifully. into it. And that’s when I saw how it wasn’t just fear that had kept me apart, but judgment. I looked at these people getting their freak on and saw how that would have looked to me when I was younger–somehow I think I’d written them off as a bunch of poseurs, except for the most hardcore. Maybe no one else had the Breakfast Club segregation, but I think in my mind I did. Maybe if a freak was grooving, I’d buy it, but if a jock was? He was full of shit. But now, this night, I saw everyone just letting themselves feel it, and get ecstatic. And I also saw how connecting that is–how when you’re side by side, ecstasy to ecstasy, you’re gonna feel more loving toward each other. I can’t believe I missed all that.

Now the truth is my ADD self still doesn’t love the jam band thing–this was actually the perfect setting for me. I’ll lose myself in it and then I’ll come back out and need to walk around, and here in this house I could do that; talk to people, do a little singing myself. (I’m the same in fire circles–I’m in, but then I’m out talking to people.) But holy crap I am so glad I experienced what I did, saw what I saw and met who I met.

And so there was this whole jam band scene in the 80s, and its influence seems to have been far-reaching. I feel like it would make a great book. It could even be around Paul, who was instrumental in so much. I am not the one to write such a book. I am not research girl, and these stories need digging. But also need telling.

So far I know of two things that I walked away with. One is, I am starting to consider not qualifying myself as Wiccan. Truth is, I’m not very religious, and I never have been. I love participating, but on my own, it’s all a lot more nebulous. I am drawn to tribal living, I am drawn to people who acknowledge the magic that is in and around us, and well, I’m drawn to full beards. Beyond that I don’t know. But I’m not stressing.

And last night I was out hearing a band, and I was almost entirely straight and sober, but they were quite jammy. And there was this streamer/ribbon hanging from the ceiling, and I took hold of it and danced with it all swirly–like fire-spinner swirly. And I never do shit like that. But it was beautiful, to feel…more loose and more free.