LOVE LIFE HISTORY OF THE BABY BOOMER

For a successful love life you need to make the decision all English majors make:

Do you throw yourself into the fire, or coast along for the ride?

Do the required reading? Or go to Cliff Notes?

Checking in on an old Baby Boomer favorite from Facebook.

“I learned through my body and soul that it was necessary to sin, that I needed lust, that I had to strive for property and experience nausea and the depths of despair in order to learn not to resist them, in order to learn to love the world, and no longer compare it with some kind of desired imaginary vision of perfection, but to leave it as it is, to love it and be glad to belong to it.”

—Hermann Hesse

William Faulkner thinks this should be a much longer sentence.

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Also Hermann Hesse:

It is very important to admit, that Hesse was the first writer to be psychoanalyzed. Hesse’s creativity is a journey to his rich inner world, which illustrates the acute contradictions in the role of the modern artist.

His correspondence, diaries and poems help him not to be lost in the labyrinth of his own soul. It reflects not only the artistic temperament, but also the process of artistic creativity itself.

Hesse gave an era of searchers a place to go and they didn’t have to move a muscle.

He inspired a new generation’s fear of getting lost in the labyrinth of their soul sunk in a bean bag chair.

They still got lost, got old, wondering what happened, and now fill wellness centers, yoga studios, mindfulness classes, and complaint center call rooms.

It’s taken JoJo a long time to get back to where they once belonged.

Hippies Loved Hermann Hesse?

Why did hippies love Hermann?

Hesse had a grim adolescence. His mother deemed his early poems ‘poison’ because, she felt, they displayed an interest in the sinful world of man, rather than God.

His teachers, judging him to be ‘full of febrile thoughts and excessive emotions’, were severe.

Early Baby Boomers could relate to the grimness of life.

Their PTSD dads and puritanical mothers lived through World War Two and kept them in line.

Tension filled the air.

Father’s love life dating French, English, and Italian girls in rear echelon supply-chain towns didn’t pass muster back home.

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So he bought that wedding ring.

The honeymoon was neither adequate nor satisfactory. Dad was disappointed, Mom didn’t know the difference.

Their children grew up between the poles of reality and fantasy, memory and nostalgia.

Junior had to figure out what was what.

Some found Hermann Hess through this guy:

In 1963, Timothy Leary, the high priest of LSD, anointed a German author, Hermann Hesse, the ‘poet of the interior journey’.

Hesse had died a year earlier, at the age of 85. But the novels he left behind, Leary declared in The Psychedelic Review, were a ‘priceless manual’ for navigating the acid trip.

The Beatles helped on the soundtrack.

Jojo was a man who thought he was a loner
But he knew it couldn’t last
Jojo left his home in Tucson, Arizona
For some California grass

Everyone roots for Jojo.

Get back, Jojo, get back. Come on.

The Beatles Love Life Assist

Hermann Hesse and The Beatles?

The lyrics speak for themself, and Johnny breaks it down.

You think you lost your love,

Well, I saw her yesterday.

It’s you she’s thinking of –

And she told me what to say.

She says she loves you

“It was Paul’s idea,” John said in 1980.

“Instead of singing ‘I love you’ again, we’d have a third party. That kind of little detail is still in his work. He will write a story about someone.

I’m more inclined to write about myself.”

The big reveal for me on my inner blogger journey? Hermann and John would have fit right in on boomerpdx.

The even bigger reveal? I’ve never read Hermann Hesse, but I’ve listened to John Lennon.

I think they both agree to love the world, and no longer compare it with some kind of desired imaginary vision of perfection, but to leave it as it is, to love it and be glad to belong to it.

In the meantime, think about it sitting in your bean bag chair covered in batik tapestry with incense and patchouli in the air.

Be sure you have a plan to get up.

It could be the time on your spiritual journey to start doing squats?