If You’re Going….

A friend of mine is planning to spend the summer in San Francisco, and I think she's looking forward to it. She's a much better writer than I, so I am hoping she'll write a sort of travelogue describing her experience. It's all for purely selfish reasons, as I am planning to spend a week there in October and would like someone to screen it for me so I only see the best parts—we don't have all summer, you know. For now, the best way I know of to share the experience is to pretend it was really me heading there. For reasons I do not understand, music is often the first thing that pops into my mind when I picture myself traveling somewhere. I am not a musician, and, while I enjoy listening to music, I don't take the time to work it into my life with ear buds or stereos. I'll listen in my car, but, living on an island, I am blessed with a life of only brief car trips in my leisure time—twenty minutes is a long car ride.

Anyway, back to the task at hand, it is not "I Left My Heart In San Francisco" that comes to my mind first (old fogeys come in degrees, and that one is just a few degrees older than I am). Instead, I remember this is the 45^th anniversary of "the Summer of Love" and the tune that comes to mind goes like this—

If you're going to San Francisco
Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair
If you're going to San Francisco
You're gonna meet some gentle people there

For those who come to San Francisco
Summertime will be a love-in there
In the streets of San Francisco
Gentle people with flowers in their hair

Yes, it's Haight-Ashbury in the 60's. Newly formed hippies (perhaps as many as 100,000) flocked to this old bohemian neighborhood in SF, seeking an ideal some never found, some found and lost, and some found and still retain. There were skyrocketing ideals, and lowlife experiences. As Bob Weir, guitarist for the Grateful Dead, puts it: "Haight Ashbury was a ghetto of bohemians who wanted to do anything - and we did, but I don't think it has happened since. Yes there was LSD. But Haight Ashbury was not about drugs. It was about exploration, finding new ways of expression, being aware of one's existence."

The musical artists they flocked to hear still reverberate in my head, among them the The Doors, Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Otis Redding, The Byrds, and Big Brother and the Holding Company with Janis Joplin.

But, with all that said, I wouldn't seek the hippie experience. I loved the music, but…. Even by October after that summer, homelessness, drug abuse, poverty and more set in.

Yet today, we still spend more time asleep to the present moment, reliving the past, and pre-living the future, and missing out on the real present. Still, it's the mindfulness and the awareness I seek. Being in the present moment was a part of all that and probably the only part worth keeping. It's still worth seeking for as long as we still breathe. So, if you're going to San Francisco, you can wear some flowers in your hair (some of us look better than others that way), but better yet, be mindful of the precious moments you have and aware of where you are.