Me and the Hippies
I’ve lived in Atlanta for nearly five years. In that time, I’ve gone through about three cycles of meeting friends who then find jobs/schooling elsewhere and move away. Now I’m at another one of those points when it’s up to me, New York, New York, to find more local-style compadres. Here’s the weird thing, though: Every time I try to do this, it seems I end up with a preponderance of interactions with folks a couple generations up from where I want to be, ideally, in my err, friend age-base, let’s say.

That is to say, every outlet I use to try to intentionally make some more freaking friends in this town puts me in contact with, no, not other twenty or thirty-somethings, nor the folks of my parents’ generation, but that generation there in the middle: yuppified Atlantans in their forties and fifties. See following evidence:

#1 I started attending the Unitarian Universalist church in town soon after I moved here. I was born and raised UU and in some ways, the big old UU church here feels like home. Except that while growing up, I had friends my age I ran around with at church. At the Atlanta church, I see maybe three people in their twenties in a full month of attendance. There are a lot of folks in their late thirties with children, and then everyone else is a silver-haired ex-hippie.

#2 I’ve been looking for a new place to live because Hunter’s moving to Wisconsin in January. One idea that seemed sort of “Eureka!”-like was to look at this one intentional community in town. No, not a commune. More like sort of a gated community where all the houses have footpaths between them, where there are community potluck dinners and activities every week. Yes: Madison WI, in miniature.

I really am not a fan of the idea of a gated community in the sense that it shuts out the rest of the world, but I will say I was somewhat seduced by this one, because the whole point seemed to be building community. But then when I went for a visit – I don’t know what I expected, but – the place had a gate with a keypad, just like any other Post Apartment complex in Atlanta.

But then, once inside, it was people gardening! Kids running around wild, playing! People smiling and waving at me! Including the prospective roommate I was visiting who turned out to be, wouldn’t ya know it, a forty-something year-old ex-hippie. As in: Five-million windchimes. As in: black-velvet paintings of Sitting Bull on the walls. As in: drum-circling. (Once a week, in her living room.)

And then, apart from age and personal aesthetics, there was the interesting moment within ten minutes of meeting, when the following interaction took place:

(Let’s just call her) “Stevie”: So, you have a boyfriend. That means you’ll be having…visits, right?
Alice: Visits?
Stevie: Overnight visits.
Alice: Yes. I-
Stevie: -That’s fine. Really, that’s fine. I have a boyfriend, too. But he won’t be spending the night.
Alice:
Stevie: We’ve been seeing each-other for six months. But I won’t sleep with him. Now the power is with me.
Alice: Ah.

So yes: A Rules Girl in a Patchwork Vest.


Another thing though, is that when I asked her casually about the age-range of folks at Intentional Community, she said: Some young parents with babies and kids, and then a whole bunch of forty-and-fifty-somethings like her. (Which I guess means there won’t be any New babies any time soon.)

She thought that maybe there were a couple of people in their twenties, but they were the most transient of residents and she couldn’t remember the names of the current ones.

#3: I just started doing yoga again. The standard in my head when I was looking for a group was my class in college: a diversity of students in a relaxed-yet-challenging atmosphere. I remember our cool-as-ice instructor scowling at the thump-thump-thumping of the step-class next-door and then telling us it was actually the best sort of challenge.
My Internet search gave me a huge range of classes and choices; nothing immediately resembling the group from college. So I called one of the ministers from the UU Church and described what I was looking for. She recommended to me an instructor who leads very small classes in of her house in Stone Mountain – and it was actually in my price range!

So I went and joined a group of - surprise, surprise - five or six 50-and 60-somethings in the instructor’s Klimpt-reproduction and black-velvet-painting (yet again!) -lined living room. There was even dolphin-sounds music. And you know what? It was fine. It really was. For the purposes of yoga, it’s fine.

For the purposes of friend-making though, I still felt at a loss. Yes I know, with five-million yoga classes to choose from in town, I would pick the one with zero young people at all. I’m the one who used the UU Church to find the damn class.

When I told my brother-in-law all this on Saturday, he laughed and said I was a big hippie, anyway. But I’m not! Do you smell patchouli? Do you see a profusion of crystals and/or candles in my house? Do you sense hypochondria, here? A cupboard filled with vitamins and flaxseed oil?

I guess I probably share some of the values of the ol’ aging flower children, but I am also rather opposed to the overwhelming sense of self-centeredness that characterizes that generation. (And yet she writes a blog, ladies and gentlemen. Well, yes.)

I like the odd Allman Brothers tune, but I like punk rock more. I eat tofu, but I also eat steak. I’d like to develop a real community of friends who actually live near my zip code, but I don’t want to have to attend activities like this one.

Damn this transient town.