It is my firm belief that every writer, every poet, should author in his or her lifetime at least one piece with the words “on the hill” as part or all of the title. This is my effort to comply with that imperative.
Cast of characters: two hippies, Jimi H., Janice, a couple of guys from a local rock band, members from a comedy club plus myself and a couple of close friends (none of us approached the level of artistic and musical talents present there on that hill that evening.)
We had plenty of weed and some had wine and there’s always a chance others were on god-only-knows-what but all in all we were a very quiet mellowed-out group. The cool San Francisco evening keeps your mind in the present no matter how high a hippie might otherwise float . . . .
TWO HIPPIES ON A HILL
Back in the Day (that’s like “once upon a time”) . . . . San Francisco around ’67 or ’68. The hipsters and pundits called it the “summer of love” which is what it really was until the concentration of hippie power in one place grew too big for any city to contain or handle it.
Ah, the memory of a beautiful summer’s day, hippies in Golden Gate Park, drugs flowing around the neighborhood like water, students dropping in and out of college depending on the mood of the moment or some new resolution, campuses alive and over-flowing with protests and sit-ins and be-ins (like “the magic forest” of a fairy tale) . . . .
San Francisco with streets so steep (imagine building them!) that some have been permanently closed to traffic . . . a small group of young men and women pile out of cars or homes like VW buses and follow a guide who knew a secret path to the top of a long tall hill . . . Hard to see in the dark there was open space, a tree or two, and a feeling of being a million miles away from city life . . . we were bound together and apart from the urban madness . . . . .
There was plenty of star-gazing on a clear cloudless night where your normal vision feels magnified a thousand-fold as you try to comprehend the starry firmaments, if only for a second. The Pitchell Players were there, the comedy club guys and there was a little food and some weed and liquor and the like so we could all unwind and mellow out easy . . . .
Star-gazing on top on a mountain in San Francisco in a natural wild place left untouched and undisturbed as though the rest of the city had never been built . . . . as though the city was not there / as it was in the before time . . . . many little jokes, humor, serious thoughts, hugs, huddled for warmth . . . . Janice was there, more silent than usual but her eyes sparkling like diamonds even in the middle of a jet-black night . . . Janice and Jimi and a couple of hard-driving rock musicians from a local band.
In the darkening hours toward midnight a single figure arose and wandered off . . . . no one alarmed, not at first, loaded, all were free to do as the spirit moved them . . . . but he stayed away too long. We could see him standing apart, maybe 20 or 30 yards away, his silhouette hard to make out but still visible against the western sky.
His gestures from afar seemed unknowable and unrelatable to any normal form of movement be it dance or exercise or acrobatics . . . one young woman, not sure who maybe Janice, poked the shoulder of another to raise the alarm. In hippiedom, this is the nervous witnessing of someone going off the deep end and demanded attention.
Should we act or let him be? We held a quick pow-wow and concern won out over laissez-faire hedonism . . . . by consensus we chose one person to represent us and off he went to talk the guy down if he could . . . . We felt good, proud of ourselves, stoned and drunk maybe, but still able to care for one another . . . .
We could see the guy in silhouette, Tai-chi’ing the constellations of the night sky, talking to the stars and then a second silhouette entered the scene, our hero, one rescue man selected by consensus for the task . . . we could not hear what was said but we could see two figures moving about like a silent movie pantomime . . . and then, and then our hero, our rescue man selected by consensus left our reality and joined the other side . . . . gesticulating, dancing, communing with nature at a place and in a way forever hidden to the rest of us . . . .
The two of them together now gesturing and moving and Tai-chi’ing the night sky . . . alive as the stars . . . . the rest of us high, stoned, inebriated exchanging nervous and yet momentous glances with one another . . . our hero didn’t talk the object of our concern but rather was slick-talked into joining him in a place that has no name, no tangible reality, save in that one moment of time that once existed before disappearing without a trace forever and ever . . . .
High stoned buzzed crazy sane on a hilltop in the heart of the city having traveled far to another time and place in the universe . . . beneath a starry sky . . . .
TWO HIPPIES ON A HILL
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