Beach Mirror

 Dear reader,

I was about eighteen when I became aware of the hippie movement and joined it. Having been to strict boarding schools for my education I was very attracted to its message of : "Make love, not War", and permission to be less regimented in my behaviour.  

The hippie movement in the United States began as a youth movement.  Composed of mostly white teenagers and young adults between 15 and 25 years old, hippies inherited a tradition of cultural dissent from bohemians and beatniks in the Beat Generation in the late 1950s.  The name derived from 'hip' a term applied to the Beats of the 1950s such as Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kermac who were generally considered to be precursors of hippies.  

Although not as visible as it once was, hippie culture has never died out completely. Hippies and neo-hippies can still be found on college campuses, on communes and at gatherings and festivals.

Hippies advocated nonviolence and love, a popular phrase being :  "Make love, not war", for which they were sometimes called "flower children'.   They promoted openness and tolerance as alternatives to the restrictions and regimentation the saw in middle-class society.

I think, at heart, I am still a hippie and pleased to be so in my eighties. 

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From John Clare  1884 January 30th in Coniston, Lancashire

'A yellow crocus and a bunch of single snowdrops in full flower - the mavis thrush has been singing all day long.  Spring seems begun. The woodbines all over the wood are in full leaf.'

From Samuel Pepys 1661 January 29th in Surrey

'To Southwark, and so over the fields to Lambeth, and there drank, it being the most glorious and warm day, even to amazement, for this time of the year.'

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Beach Mirror

 

I see myself, a young woman,

recognize the long skirt,

the three blonde children,

one on her hip,

two holding her hands,

all laughing, hugging, arguing,

her hair dancing in the wind.

 

Swirling thoughts about time past

consume me.

I kick at pebbles,

pick up oyster shells,

gaze at the everlasting point between sea and sky.

 

I have aged, certainly,

but, feeling the warmth of the sun,

watching the sea and the tides,

it seems these things

are ever the same as they were,

all those years gone by.

 

                                                                       *

With very best wishes, Patricia