rants n raves
by tom miller
11/10/98 - 4:06 P.M.
when nothing happens & the smell of hippies
this is when i worry; when nothing happens.
what will i ever say in my rants & raves column when absolutely nothing interesting is going on? sometimes my life is a complete bore, but i don't think it's my fault. i think it's yours.
i tried everything.
i checked the news, but it was all the same. war on the brink between the u.s. and iraq, another murder, something else we've been eating all our lives now gives us cancer, a puppy found its way home, lady sees the face of christ in her elvis painting; it never ends and its always-- always the same.
i thought about the last two days.
i had a public reading of my last entry about dancing, and it went well. whoop de doo. i couldn't get a large glass of whiskey for my usual employee price. oh boy. jim valvis didn't write me again. yipee! patty (the pretty girl that lets me live in her house) is painting the house, but the paint fumes aren't getting me high. hoorah! i went to the downtown arts festival, making sure i wouldn't arrive until the so-called artists were packing up their rinky-dink junk. there is no poetry. my brainstem has shut down. uga bugga.
sometimes though, a writer has to generate words despite the fact that there is nothing. let me sum it up in a couple of recent poems:
calendar days
the calendar
numbers the days
a whole monthon a page
each square empty
with all i did
here's another:
nothing
can you hear it
it is the sound
of all i never did
the life i missed
out on
the love i didn't find
and the sound
is an emptiness
louder than nothing
blacker than darkness
more alone than
loneliness
it is a loud sound
like screaming
but it's heard inside
and each hears his own
terrible silence
always
and then some
yup, nothing is nothing, but from nothing can come everything. a writer can make his own tiny big bang. a writer can be god, at least in print.
which brings me to the topic at hand, and that is the smell of hippies. not all hippies, mind you. this is a particular brand of hippy known as the rainbow hippy. they renounce society and form their own. their means of living is to camp out in the woods and smoke pot. occasionally, they'll come into town to beg, borrow, or trade.
i remember a particular trade between one hippy and another, and it went something like this.
hippy 1: dude, nice hemp necklace.
hippy 2: right on. thanks, man. rastafari!
hippy 1: wanna trade?
hippy 2: whatcha got?
hippy 1: i got a hemp necklace just like yours.
hippy 2: dude!
hippy 1: cool!
then they traded their identical necklaces and asked everyone they could for money. some gave them money and some didn't. the ones who did were blessed with rasta energy and the ones who didn't were assholes.
(funny how these white suburban junkies manage to think they can just let their hair get dirty and suddenly they're real rastas. somebody should spank those little idiots. preferably me.)
but back to the smell.
there's a fragrance some of them wear called, patchouli. i rather enjoy the smell, in appropriate doses (and isn't it all about dose?) but these people slather it on like a baptism.
in that quantity, the stuff is pungent and overpowering, but when you mix it with the already overpowering smell of shit and sweat and fungus, you get a seriously nauseating funk.
"it's natural, man. it's nature," they'll say.
"no," i say. "it's funk, pure and simple."
"it attracts love. it's the hormones."
"honey," i say, "whatever you attract with that funk, i don't wanna stick my dick in it. hell, i don't want to stick your dick in it."
you see, smelling like a decaying skunk corpse is not appropriate in some circles. it may work if everyone smells the same way and they live out in the woods. this part of the rainbow group i think i can appreciate. but when a rainbow comes into the real world, the one they have chosen to abandon because i guess we smell too good, that odor is out of place.
as out of place as a beautiful woman with a snatch of hair growing out of her pits. that's completely appropriate in europe, but not in my america. plumes of skank protruding from the armpits says nothing but crabs to me! (and i oughta know!)
and a lovely young woman letting the hair grow on her legs like a man's legs; well if you think gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered people mix up the pot, just try running your fingers across the soft neck, across the soft flesh of the breasts, down the stomach and gently across the buttocks, and down into a tangle of forest where the chiggers live.
naaaas-ty!
look. i like the rainbow people. they're free, they're fun, they got no teeth, they dance around naked and it's a party i don't want to attend, they got great weed, and best of all, they're multiplying. soon we'll be the outcasts. the collapse of western civilization is at hand.
"is that man wearing cologne? is his hair combed? does he have pride in his appearance?
STONE HIM!!! "
Maybe next entry, i'll have something to talk about.
(tune in next week for the continuing adventures of tom miller and his world of the opulent fish.)
back...