As the hour draws late,
all the tribes gather,
The band begins to play, and
in the midst of their serene
Exchange of musical phrases,
I meet a quite peculiar man.
His dreadlocks hang way
down past his shoulders, and
Above his rope sandals and
patchwork pants, he sports
A shirt, emblazoned with
a portrait of Lord Ganesha
Seated serenely in Lotus posture,
overlaid by a wire wrap necklace
With a large piece of opal in the center.
His pupils are the size of
dinner plates, nearly
Eclipsing the irises of his eyes.
his musk is a distinctive mixture of
Body odor, *** smoke, and strong incense.
we exchange our salutary pleasantries, and
As I absorb the spectacle of his appearance,
he begins to discourse, saying:
"I charge my crystals
in the moonlight, and
Keep them close by day,
they clear my chi blockages, and
Realign my chakras,
I burn sage and patchouli
To invoke the goddess
spirit of the forest moon,
We are all just cosmic vibration
expressed as living matter in
The timeless unity of
the flowering astral plane"
He pauses for a moment,
to light his spliff, and
After a few large tokes, continues on,
describing the events of one fateful night,
When he "sat for a long spell, and
experienced an unbridled quiescence of
Meditative stillness, culminating in a
stream of flowing fractal visions, and a
Whirlwind of
Pulsating
Kundalini
Energy
I listen with a sort of
detached amusement, but
My brain is filtering his words out, and
all I can hear are bursts of Charlie Brown's
Parents from the old Peanuts cartoon
Interpolated with sentence fragments
That all seem to say the same thing:
"Look at me, I am so spiritual
I am so profound I am so wise
I know the Truth I am enlightened"
"mwah Mwah mwah Mwah mwah
Mwah mwah Mwah mwah Mwah"
and then, suddenly, this haze of
pseudo profound spirit science is
Interrupted by a phrase that grabs my
attention, with strange immediacy.
"Also, I've got some fire doses. 5 a hit."
"Oh yeah?" I say. "ME, TOO, and
"I know mine are better, best on lot!"
He seems taken aback, as if offended.
He says he'll Pepsi challenge mine, and
That I'll be proven wrong. I accept.
He then pulls out
a shiny vial of
Lucy in the Sky, and
Without hesitation,
squirts a generous
Puddle of it onto my tongue.
"Alright" he says "your turn."
I reach into my pocket,
Produce a small vial, and
Reciprocate his action.
"Now, we'll see!" He says
to me, with an air of smugness.
"That, we will" I retort.
We talk a bit longer, and
I look down at my watch.
"I must be off!" I say
"It's time for the show!"
We exchange our goodbyes, and
I wander off into the night,
Feeling rather odd,
He thinks he's bested me, but
I laugh quietly to myself,
Knowing in my mind,
That my vial was just eye drops, and
He just gave me nearly 10 hits for free, and
All for the sake of inflating the ego
He supposedly didn't have,
and you know...
I never saw him again after that.
This satirical ode is targeted at a very specific type of person. Some of my friends are what you might call "hippies"; and within the various circles associated with that subculture, you almost inevitably encounter the self styled guru, spouting off loads of pseudo-profound hogwash, using buzzwords from cultures and traditions he doesn't really understand, and effectively cheapening and undermining them in a vain attempt to make himself seem enlightened (probably to try and get laid). What's worse is that almost just as certainly will you find someone, perhaps even a group, who hangs on to his every word. These types are especially common at big music festivals.