It's weird for a guy from the sixties to read about my beloved Minnesota on
the verge of legalizing marijuana, allowing possession of a pound and a half for
people twenty one and over, opening an agency to license shops, setting an
eight percent sales tax erasing the convictions of old dopers. When I was in
college, I went to parties where people sat in dim apartments, doors locked
an eye out for the cops. The grateful dead on the turntable and illegality
was a big part of the appeal. We were rebels in the cause of
higher consciousness. Soda lacked the reliable criminal element to supply quality refer and our
stuff was like mulch. And the euphoria was mostly the stupefaction you get from
holding your breath. We would have gotten more euphoria by riding a good roller
coaster. The big thrill was looking around the room and wondering who might be
an undercover cop. I'm not opposed to legalization. I think it's crazy to
lock people up for wanting to be stupid. And if your doctor prescribes marijuana,
goodie gum drops for you. But when I smell marijuana smoke, I
get away from it as quickly as possible before some pothead on a skateboard and
wearing headphones comes crashing into me. Getting high lowers alertness. Go back and
read beat poetry written in dim, smoke filled rooms, and most of it
is less interesting than the average computer manual. Alan Ginsberg was a very sweet
man, and I went to a couple of his readings, and I learned
that it was good to sit near the exit, that fifteen minutes of allan
chanting was sufficient. I preferred beer parties, which often led to hilarity and
camaraderie and guys singing surfer songs and the sloop John B. And I saw
her standing there, whereas marijuana led to pretentious inwardness and contemplation of oneself as
a rainbow or a rubber duck or rhubarb. This is an old man talking,
and my experience tells me that introspection is short sighted, and that the
great thing is to make yourself useful to other people. I saw an ophthalmologist
last week whose waiting room was full of rambunctious kids and who does surgery to
repair crossed eyes, and it was clear how much she loved kids and their
noise, and it was the happiest waiting room I ever was in. I
went to see her about my double vision, which caused me to take a
bad fall and bang up my knee and have to walk around with a cane.
And when I walked into the waiting room of laughing children, I felt
a sort of blessedness. And then she put me through the eye chart drills,
and I looked at a light which I saw as doub on and she
experimented with strips of lenses to make two lights one and pasted a plastic prism
on my right lens that made the world clearer. And now I can walk
down the street and see the world whole. The world is as beautiful as
ever, though we live in a strange time of outrages, political fevers,
a dysfunctional Congress intent on partisan thwacking, while basic governmental obligations go unaddressed because
they don't make life its flash, and Bell's ding House. Republicans seem focused
on paranoid conspiracies, compared to which Richard M. Nixon was an honest and
upright public servant worthy of having a statue of him in a public square if
I thought ahead ten or twenty years. I could easily despair for the country,
But at my age, one lives in the present, and so the
encounter with the ophthalmologist looms large in my experience. She is smart and funny
and kind, and she accomplishes good in this world. And I doubt that
she got there by having out of body experiences. She paid attention in school
and somehow became fascinated by the human eye and attained skills to make a huge
difference in the lives of little kids. Clarity, I am grateful for aunt.
I don't need head trips or expansion of consciousness. The best minds of
my generation were not destroyed by madness, starving, hysterical naked, angel headed
hipsters looking through a fix. Some of them became heart surgeons and ophthalmologists,
and thanks to them, I walk in the park and look at the beautiful
people and love America for the goodness and fascinating varieties of individualism all all around.
Thank you, doctor science. Cheerfulness it's a simple virtue that can turn
the tide in gloomy times. It's also the title of Garrison Keeler's new book,
Funny, thought Provoking, Whimsical It's an uplifting read and a great gift
cheerfulness. Check it out at Garrisonkeeler dot com