Daisy Chain

Hey Josh!  What did you do this afternoon?  Well, disembodied voice, let me tell you what I did.  I threw on my Rolling Stones t-shirt, hopped in my time machine, and went back the 1968. How was it, you ask?  It was lovely.

After work, Abby Autin and I leapt vigorously onto the idea of going for a walk in City Park.  So we did.  We wandered the trails, looked at the ducks and the turtles and the squirrels, and we marveled at the wandersome oak trees that stretch their limbs out for miles and miles from their knotty, aged trunks.

We  finally found ourselves at the statue garden.  Upon slipping inside, we prudently chose only to pay heed to the large sign that said "Free Admission."  We ignored the smaller sign directly under it that read "Suggested Donation".  

Anyway,  to the inside.  We saw the Greek goddesses and the Hercules and the abstract art.  We rang the civil rights lynch victim Japanese bell.  We tiptoed across the weird tide pool thing while wondering aloud if we were actually supposed to be standing on this at all.  And then we got the the quad with the wooden horse and the giant spider and the Blue Dog and the LOVE.  And what, dear friends, do you suppose was underneath that giant spider?  Four girls with Sharpee cat noses, sitting on blankets and blowing bubbles.

Yes, these young 21st century hippies were tripping balls.

I could scarcely hide my delight, and before long they spotted me not-so-discretely staring at them and pranced over to us.

"New friends!"  They cried, in a state of precarious acid-induced unbalance.

"Will you be our friends? Please be our friends."

"Would you like a cat nose?"  They thrust the Sharpee towards our face.  We kindly declined out of prudence, not lack of desire.

"Smell our bubbles!  They smell like vanilla ice cream!"  They blew the bubbles in our face and I giggled, and they giggled, and Abby Autin began to freak out a little.  She was uncomfortable, and it was time to go.  If I stayed I was going to join these girls in a state of revelry here under this spider and I was going to loose myself in celebration of a lost time that could never have existed as I picture it in my mind, regardless of what they want you to believe.

Before we left they gave me a daisy chain.  They tried to tie it around my wrist, but they couldn't.  They could hardly function at all.  I guess it's the price we pay.  I tied it for them.  

Oh friends, I felt so much delight due to this encounter with these girls.  Their heedless, joyful, "all you need is love"  attitude lifted my heart and my spirits for one fleeting, bittersweet moment.  Once it was done, I felt the same way I do when I hear the soundtrack to Yellow Submarine, or see photos from Woodstock or read Hunter S. Thompson's musings on the late 60s.  

To much unabashed, unrestrained joy can't survive in the real world.  It's either destroyed by outside forces that sanitize it because it horrifies them, or it implodes upon itself.  Either way, the status quo never changes.

Outside the statue garden, still a little dazed, Abby Autin and I were admiring a magnolia tree and were almost struck by an SUV with Texas plates.  It honked at us.  Back in 2008, we crossed a bridge on the way to the car and I took off the daisy chain and dropped it into the water.  It floated away.

But for a moment, on a beautiful spring day in New Orleans, Louisiana,  underneath a giant spider, entranced in bohemian camaraderie, I truly believed that love is all you need.