3 weeks, 7 hotels, 4000 km - Part 3
San Francisco
San Francisco - “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco”, Mark Twain never said
When we visited in August, one of the first thoughts was how is it possible that the Summer of Love, 1967 started here. Or, maybe, that’s how it all began—an act of communal survival, as everyone gathered together to share body heat. It was so cold that I did not even have the vibe to see where it actually started - Haight and Ashbury.
or the Victorian Houses- the painted ladies
call me an island gal already, but I was completely turned off by the low temperature and high parking fees.
Coming back to the Summer of Love, Timothy Leary, a Harvard psychologist decided that his tenure was boring, and LSD was cool. So, he partnered with a colleague, Richard Alpert (imagine my shock when I discovered that he will further evolve to become THE Ram Daas) and they invited the world to expand their consciousness. For some, this meant long trips (wink wink) and for others, it meant a lot of tie-dye. This was the time when Dr. Leary coined the mantra: “Turn on, tune in, drop out.”
As you know by now, I live my life in the footnotes, so I started to further read about this. I read here his entire speech (see some parts of it below):
This record is a message to young people: to people under the age of 25, and certainly to people under the age of 40. If you’re over the age of 40, I’m not sure that you should listen to this record. What I’m going to say might make you mad. I don’t like to get people mad. I particularly don’t like to get people over the age of 40 mad, because these are the people who have guns and handcuffs and prisons—a wide variety of instruments of metal with which they punish people who get them mad. Young people, for the most part, aren’t so concerned with control and power. They’re much more involved in having fun, being curious, exploring their sensual equipment, making adventurous explorations, making love, trying to learn what it’s all about. I have personal experience which has taught me how fierce people over 40 can be with those who challenge their beliefs. Down in Texas there are a group of men over 40 who got so mad at what I’m saying that they sentenced me to prison for 30 years. And up here in New York state there are another group of men over 40 who want to put me in jail for another 16 years for saying the sort of thing that I’m going to say on this record.
I have taken LSD 311 times. Each time I’ve found the experience awesome and awe-ful. And what I’ve learned from these many voyages is the humiliating lesson that there is more to learn within my own body than I could grasp in a thousand lifetimes.
Lesson number one, then, is: turn on until you have made contact with the wisdom within the temple of your body. All your external activities are those of a robot performing stylized but automatic motions. Lesson number two is: tune in. Begin to harness the energies which you are releasing into a harmonious exchange with the external environment. Take LSD and then look at your house. You will see—as someone from another planet would see—that you are living in the home of an insane robot. Slowly and planfully, you begin to change your house so that it becomes an external representation of the beauties you are discovering within yourself.
As you continue to listen to the wisdom of your cells and to the direct energy explosions on your nerve endings, you will find yourself systematically altering where you live, with whom you spend your time, and what you allow to contact your nerve endings. You will find yourself moving out of stereotyped routines, moving out of cities, moving away from repetitious, tribally imposed sequences. You will find yourself slowly dropping out. As you tune in through turning on, you will realize that you belong to a new and mutational species, that you are sharing this planet with a highly energetic, rather destructive, and tragically robot species, namely: the older generation.
My takeaway from all of this: besides the good music and the easy-breezy fashion, people over 40—aka Costco visitors searching for the perfect beige—are clearly the source of all evil. They’re also, apparently, the reason behind Mr. Leary’s 311 LSD trips.
Nevertheless, what we did get to see from San Francisco:
During our time in San Francisco, we made a short visit to Palo Alto as well. There is something poetic about the fact that the center of technological advancement and innovation is one stone trip (sic) away from the LSD fueled awakening.
Is it a coincidence? I don’t think so :)
Would I return?
Absofreakinglutely!!