When some of my college students asked me how I was voting on Proposition 19 (the legalization of marijuana) – I told them that I had stopped voting right after the First Bush Coup. I certainly didn’t mean to disappoint them (as a non-voting professor) – but I think, perhaps, they might have been a tad proud of me – that perhaps I had tapped into some deep, brooding revolutionary spirit that is forming in each of them (what with the legacy of shit we have left generations of youth in the U.S., and, even – in California). I keep telling my college students that they are going to have to sort out the mess that The Boomers have left them.
Oh yeah. The Boomers – the generation that pioneered the recreational smoking of marijuana…I really don’t blame my generation at all for fucking things up as we have – because we had to endure, and survive: the Viet Nam War; and, the assassinations of some of the greatest Americans ever; in JFK, Malcom X, MLK and Robert Kennedy.
I remember smoking some pretty incredible Columbian Gold one night in Kalamazoo in probably Year 1976, and then, getting the munchies. I also remember (believe it or not) – sitting at a green traffic light – apparently waiting for it to turn red – at which point I pulled out into the intersection. Thank God it was a late, cold Winter’s Night and no one else was on the road at that particular moment…
Dennis and I had not been so lucky a Summer before – when we both should have been killed in a similarly-stupid, driving incident. Again, thank God, no one was injured except for us.
Legalize marijuana?! Are you kidding me?! Marijuana lends itself to mixing with just about anything else you can get your hands on (particularly chocolate chip cookies). But the other stuff, like Dennis and I imbibed that fateful night (the night he wrecked my ’68 convertible, Triumph Spitfire) – we smoked and ingested thanks-to-the-influence of the Evil Weed.
I’ve often maintained that the Evil Weed belongs solely to island cultures – cultures where collecting bananas and coconuts – and spearing a-fish-or-two — are all you need to accomplish in- a-day’s-work. But when you talk about everything we have to be cognizant of in a Western, urbanized society, to wit: working for the man; paying all-sorts-of insurances; owning and operating car(s); paying the mortgage and property taxes; trying to keep children out-harm’s-way; getting the kids to school; getting one’s own education; paying for entertainment; putting gas into the tank; buying clothes (for yourself and the kids) – I mean, the list goes on-and-on. This ain’t no island culture, and, while marijuana can help us deal with the insane life we have created here in the West (I’m sorry Jimbo, I’m not so sure that the West is the best) – MJ really doesn’t help us embrace the experience: She leaves us, comfortably numb, and beholden to others.
So while I enjoyed my MJ years…Damn! I could have been shot the night the cop pulled Juliet (not her real name) and me over, because MJ kept telling me that I should mess wit da man – She’s a dangerous mistress, a mistress who doesn’t know when to say when; in fact, She urges you to try more-and-more. She’s not necessarily the gatekeeper of stronger seductresses – but She really makes it easy to rationalize being a fuck-up. May She stay in-the-shadows in a Western World – cuz yer lookin’ at Amsterdam should she be legalized here…and Amsterdam is a very strange place – and we’re already quite strange here in CALI!