Found a picture of one of my favorite bars in Fayetteville
http://www.georgesmajesticlounge.com/pages/panoramic.htmit's now run by a friend of mine...someone I hung out with for years. Looking through the pictures on the site, I was struck by
1)how clean cut a lot of people were
2)the ones who weren't were hippies
3) we've grown up...some of us are actually um...old now.
I swear there weren't that many hippies when I lived there. Oh there were a lot, and actually they were some of the coolest folk around--not like the fake hippies or yuppie hippies or strident hippies I came across in SF and Berkeley--but real people who lived by their principles. Hell, my best friend Amy was pretty much one herself. Guess we were all just freaks then. And what the hell am I talking about...I do ren faire (or I will again soon and did for a long time) and that's pretty damn hippy. Heck I'm listening to steeleye span.
I found some of my other old friends online and sent some emails...Folks I haven't talked to in a while, others I'm just curious about.
I'm having bouts of this off and on. I'm happy in Chicago. Heck I was pretty happy in SF, all but that last few years (and still happy with parts and people--just not the city). I'm wanting a smaller quieter life with a yard and Fall Festivals and friends playing guitar in the living room and kids running around. And it's not likely I'll have that--something approximating, but not that, because I'm not sure that exists anymore. And the me that used to be a part of that life doesn't either, or really deep down. I've been tired, so tired for a few years. I'm hoping that will lift and my creativity will return, my drive. Of course I'll have my hands full in the next while and I'm good for that--but I'd like to rediscover the person in me that made things happen, that had a drive to accomplish creative acts.