I’m sure I’ve written this entry a few times, or ones a lot like it, just not here. Probably. Maybe. I don’t know. I heard a lot of stories when I was on the road, a very long time ago. Some amazing ones with a local flair, some mundane ones that sound like every other story you stopped listening to mid-way, some more just a series of clichés “… A lot more dangerous for you kids out here today. Why, in my day …” There were, however, three things of interest that came up with the frequency of rock and roll bass guitar; Owsley’s last Acid, Pauncho Villa’s gold in the Superstition mountains, and the Rainbow people.
Owsley, that’d be Stanley Owsley you can look him up in Tom Robbins book or on Wikipedia, allegedly before the bust in 69 that cost him two years with the feds, created a super acid. It was purportedly a three dimensional pyramid with a glowing center floating in the middle with several thousand mics of acid, the pyramid enhancing the effect. Depending who told the story the acid had a name; acid always had a name. Outside of stories on the road there is no reference to it anywhere and up until four years ago someone could have just asked the man. I think it was an urban myth or an event that occurred a long time ago and has been exaggerated. Hmmm, brain not quite working, it had happened a long time before my long ago.
The gold in the superstitions is an even older myth though who knows, revolutionaries can be well funded. Nobody who ever told me the story looked like treasure hunters and I’m sure I didn’t give off the treasure hunter vibe. Mostly me and them were raggedy and weeks up past our bedtimes.
This is the part of this entry that usually goes to Alpine Arizona, 9000 foot up in the NE corner of the national forest on an Indian burial ground. It’s not a bad story, it involves a cute friend of mine and the future first ex, eight months pregnant with someone else’s child back in MI, and other things. It’s not the first time I met the rainbow people, it was the first time I met the rainbow people I had heard rumors of.
The first time I met the rainbow people was in Washington DC, they hosted a warehouse where you could throw a bedroll the night before a big march on the capital, a no nukes march. They were just hippies with some agenda so mild it was lost in food and shelter for all god’s children rhetoric. There wasn’t really food, I mean you could stand in line for undercooked brown rice and lawn clippings, if you had your own bowl. Sorry, I don’t mean to sound cynical at all, it’s just, well, I left DC the following evening feeling pretty fucking cynical. Everyone had an agenda and as long as it said no nukes in it somewhere, well, shit, I don’t know. Earlier that year we had almost lost Detroit (Fermi I and Fermi II) Three Mile Island and Chernobyl hadn’t become household words yet, but 100 K people marching on the capital blaming men (lesbians) capitalism (communists) Cops (anarchists) plus a few hundred other splinter groups.
I had imagined a united march of people interested in preserving the planet for kids we hadn’t had yet. Only about 50k even wanted me to have kids. I got called WASP a lot on that trip. Only the W is true in any meaningful or fanciful sense. WASP was a way of politely insulting someone with whom you allegedly shared an ideology with but wouldn’t share a lifeboat with. I knew a lot of WASPS in England, I knew about three here in the States. That’s neither here nor there. Ok, it’s there, but what bugged me was that the rainbow people on that trip acted like servers at a food line at a mission and the protestors were disjointed and angry. Me being called a wasp is more insulting to my idealism at the time than my person. I think I might have asked someone if it was ok to use the same bathroom, if I did the snark went over their head.
The myth of the rainbow people, the stories told after two am back lit by the green dashboard lights, were more like a nomadic tribe living completely off the grid. I found those guys in Alpine, but only because I was mightily discouraged and wandered away from the throng. Me, my friend and the real rainbow might have been the only ones not to get dysentery up there. Ok, dysentery is a medical term, probably what they got, but I didn’t actually examine any of the screaming shitters, I just heard the screaming shits.
I never quite understood what the fuck a rainbow gathering was though I asked, one of the real rainbow people gave me the most satisfactory answer “I don’t fucking know, but I’ll be glad when these assholes leave.” These guys are sort of consulting partners, off the grid enough to know where you can invite weekend hippies to eat peyote and get naked without too many questions. The same guy told me he made up the Indian burial ground shit hoping it’d horrify the organizers. It didn’t. Somehow a “Rainbow Gathering” is respectful of other people’s ancestors’ bones by eating peyote and dancing naked.
Hmmm, I don’t remember the sequence of events but I think my asking who’s dumbass idea was it to have this thing on a burial ground was how I got invited to share a fire and a drink with the real rainbow people, grizzled coots, some vets, with their ID’s permanently filed off. Every now and again I think about doing that myself. I guess I don’t have as much at stake to warrant the amount of work that takes.
The other section of rainbow people were as disappointing as they were in DC; empty and meaningless rhetoric and nothing but pubes and hallucinogenic cacti to back up their convictions, whatever they were. It was also disheartening to see Beemer’s and the like parked on the grass. There are obvious reasons for that, but also, it’d be like finding Owsley’s pyramid acid at a Starbucks watching people trying to decide whether to get the acid or a cheese Danish to go with whatever tall skinny fake ass Italian bistro drink they ordered.
The last rainbow gathering I had heard of was about ten years ago near Yakima. Um, south central Washington, farming community. I didn’t go, obviously, because if I had I’d know exactly how long ago and exactly where it was. I do kind of wonder if they still do those things, whatever they are. Mostly I wonder if there is still an interest in that sort of thing, well, no, in what that sort of thing might mean to someone who hadn’t been to one.
It might just be because I’m old and out of touch, but it seems as though there isn’t really a unified take=it=to=the=streets type of ideology any longer. I guess occupy wall street was sort of like that, but 1) It was pretty complicated and though I’m prone to be sympathetic to that sort of thing, I have no idea what the end game was supposed to be, but I’m pretty sure it didn’t come to fruition and 2) Occupy became a noun and occupy fill in the blank as a protest for the fed bailing out irresponsible and unethical banking practices made even less sense when far removed from banking centers like, say, wall street.
I think the funniest thing I ever heard regarding co-opting a word, in this case a suffix, was on the Simpsons. Someone called homer a rage-aholic and he said “Oh my God! I’m addicted to rage-ahol!” For a long time, even as recent as yesterday, using Gate as a suffix meant political scandal. Um, Watergate was the name of the complex where the illegal wire taps occurred. Why did gate became the “word” and not water? For that matter why not Alk-a-rage? By yesterday I mean I was reading somewhere on line an article that was Hilary bashing, refer to the “…unresolved Whitewatergate …” Ok, I guess WaterWhiteWater would be silly, but, um, everything doesn’t have to be a choice of the lesser or two sillys. Personally if I were trying to dissuade anyone from Hilary in the primaries I might bring up Ben Ghazi. Just saying.
Not to flog a bored horse any more than necessary, but writing an ill worded snarky online article is still a far cry from taking it to the streets, though, um, I’d prefer that the right fringe stay at home where I can see ‘em. Heh. I kid, right? You would think that an opposing party would back a candidate in the primaries that they thought they could beat in a general election though, wouldn’t you? I think the GOP is like the rainbow people; 9/10ths are spewing meaningless rhetoric and the other 10th is pretending they aren’t with the rest. They had two reasonable candidates the last two presidential elections then hobbled them with nutjob tea partyers doing the far right version of dancing naked and tripping on the graves of someone else’s grandfathers.
Ok, next year I’ll write this entry completely different.
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