It was perfect. We had a blue VW Vanagon with white daisies, girlfriends with very long, very tangled, very blonde hair, and a dense cloud of marijuana floating above. We would strum the guitar insistently singing Lennon stuff, and, in general, we didn’t care about anything as long as there was something to hug nearby. We had beer and we were so pro-peace that we drank all day long to celebrate. We put right everything that was wrong with the world with a little weed, some rolling tobacco, and some graffiti.
READ MORE from Itxu Díaz: The Cure for Mental Health Is Not More Alone Time
We had concocted an infallible political speech, “Leave me alone,” and we were sure that wars are bad because people die in them, and, as far as we knew, dead people cannot smoke flowers or dance to Bob Marley. I have met some dead people able to dance to Bob Marley, but I don’t remember if it was before or after that party with which we replayed the summer of love in the house of a distant relative of Goa Gil.
Peace. Prosperity. Equality. Freedom. All imperialism seemed horrible to us: We hadn’t read so much about the fall of Rome for nothing. In fact, we knew everything there was to know about that soccer team for which Fabio Capello was a midfielder. And, in general, imperialism sounded too little French and much too American, and that was the opposite of what we wanted; don’t ask me why. That, and that someone would hang the idiot with the dreadlocks who, sitting in a tree, endlessly recited verses by Allen Ginsberg.
We were accused of lacking culture, and that was just not true. No one had taken care of agriculture as we had, at least as far as individual crops illuminated by red light were concerned. As for our frivolity, I remember once we read something, and it wasn’t the Volkswagen owner’s manual. We went to Paris just so we could post a tweet about how we were looking for the beach under the cobblestones. The shock upon arrival was terrible: No one had invented Twitter in 1969. It just goes to show that Dorsey was a damn fascist.
I don’t know what happened. After so many years hypnotized by graffiti and peace-and-love communism, we woke up in a Lincoln Continental Convertible next to a luxury hotel. There can be no alternative. Either our asses are resting on any old park bench, or we’re making bracelets for the rich in Ibiza, Cancun, or wherever being a hippie is chic enough to make the damn shell bracelet business profitable.
We’ve even learned how to use shampoo. It’s unbelievable. Everything has gone down the drain. Now Ché appears in books as a murderer, and our idols dress as military men, hold office, and force people to line up under the sun, preparing their world conquest. Perhaps they have betrayed us. I’ll confirm it later if I have time, because now I’m late for Asley’s party in Beverly Hills, and I have to put on that white robe, the diamond sandals, and that gold pendant in the shape of a marijuana leaf that suits me so well. I haven’t asked the host if the Castros, Maduro, Kim Jong Un, Kirchner, and the whole gang are coming. If they do, I’m sure we’ll end up drunk and expropriating something random like in the old days when we fixed all the world’s problems with an LSD trip. Now that was high politics.
Translated by Joel Dalmau.
Buy Itxu Díaz’s new book,
