I had a notion to write about growing up
50s-60s style, post-war baby boomer,
starting with the assassination of John F. Kennedy
and the repetitive broadcast of the Zapruder film;
Vietnam trauma, disruptions swept under
the ticky-tacky sameness of mediocrity,
and I wondered how many thought about what the cost
to heart and soul would be to enter the fray,
exhibited by throwing rocks, screaming, marching for
racial equality, taking over university offices,
flipping off corporate America, anti-war protests,
playing/living the music, seeking a new sentimentality,
sexual liberation, relevance in an upside-down
ripped up social fabric, pulled in opposite directions
by selfish forces, by blurry images of supposed goals,
by stepping stones to a new life that went nowhere
until later and it was too late to change course
having become members of a status quo, as if we
(the generic we) climbed that ladder of success
only to find it leaned against the wrong wall,
compiled all things lived into a palpable fantasy that,
in the end, today, has left us alienated of connections,
lost in the pursuit of...Wait. What were we pursuing?
A post-adolescent understanding of love and peace?
We paid plenty of (too young) lip service to that.
We did the Sixties and it wasn’t all that good
(except the music), certainly not good enough to re-enact.
I dream that one day I will awaken into an understanding
that won’t leave me wrestling with the era, but at least
I might find in its chaotic landscape my lost innocence.
From: A Rambly Search for Innocence, Time, and Love
Unpub. MS p. 2
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