The Sixties Redux

Although John Updike called the Sixties a “slum of a decade,” each of us draws from the tree of life, savoring its juices idiosyncratically and  differently. For me 1968 and 1969 were memorable years in terms of pain, angst, high anxiety, acting out, being immature, growing, evolving, fucking up. It is very hard to consciously choose to grow up. One must will it someplace in the nether regions of the mind. It was my second childhood, having been infantilized by immature and undeveloped parents — so be it. I felt at the time that the period itself, those two magical and critical years, served as a lactating cradle for me, and I sucked deeply upon its teats. I am sure we all can remember when we acted as jackasses, and how we cringe when we reminisce about all that. Well, at some point we must give up that judgment and just dwell in a deeper understanding of our behavior at that time, that place. I was a child at 28 seeking, unconsciously, to be re-maternalized.

Metaphorically, my sentimental haze for the Sixties, my nostalgia, is rooted in how the times let me down easily, allowed me to relearn first lessons not provided earlier in my own childhood. I drank deeply at the font. Much like one’s first — and indelible — affair, it is often seen through a haze, always dramatically thrilling, always remembered, always recalled tenderly, especially when it didn’t work out. I felt macerated at the time

Allow me to  share an anecdote about myself that has much to say, I believe, about how I was affected as a child. I lived in Brighton Beach in Brooklyn in an era before the wave of Russian emigres came there and turned it into Little Odessa by the sea. It was a halcyon experience for me, for I knew the streets, lanes and courtyards about our rented basement apartment. I walked the neighborhood and I took in early and deep drafts of the experience of being a young boy, somewhat open to his observations and being. I recall a particularly lovely pussywillow tree in a courtyard which imprinted itself upon my memory forever. I recall crawling under his house with my Irish chum, Farrell, a very exciting adventure at seven or eight.

What is to be made of these “revelations”? I would often go to the local library across the way from the Tuxedo movie house on Oceanview Parkway just before the avenue turned to go into Coney Island. Here I took down from the shelves Harold Lamb’s book on Robin Hood. I plunged into it, deeply, profoundly, as its narrative swirled about and within me. Not one of the movies about Robin Hood contains what I am about to relate. Later in the book Robin Hood is wounded and is bled, which is a terrible mistake. Weakening, sensing his death upon him, he asks Little John to get his bow and give it to him. Lying next to a window, Lamb describes how this once physically powerful man who could string his bow in one move with one hand, with one strong flex of the bow, barely lifted it now and feebly shot an arrow through the window. It landed next to an oak and Robin tells Marian and Little John to bury him there. I believe the book ends with the bow draped across his marker with an epitaph. The death of Robin Hood told affectingly and with no schmaltz moved me deeply. I was very moved by the romantic sensibility of it all  — I associate to Don Quixote and his library of romances. Something seeped into me, at that time, at that age, that shaped a sensibility in me. I did not have that experience until the late Sixties. I allowed myself to be transformed.

Reading that book was like having my feelings kneaded by the powerful arms of a baker. I was touched, moved, wallowed in regret and sadness, sorrowed, very sorry for Robin, hurt deeply by the reading of his death. The power of his epitaph, the bow, his last words gnawed at me in glorious Technicolor. So, as I look back I see the Sixties as touching upon this early imprint at eight or nine, revivifying its capacity to let in, to absorb, to surrender, to give in to, to engage and be. And so I say to Jane who wrote a telling comment about my first blog about the Sixties, it was an amalgam of a childhood revisited, of the conscious and feeling substrates within us all that carry a magical perfume that no manner of disparagement can damage.

“Knowledge is death” — Nietzsche

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