travelling hippies

I've been reading Michel Houellebecq's Atomised, which is a very entertaining read. I spent a very pleasurable afternoon lounging in the park and reading. It's wonderful not having to study; I can look for jobs in the morning and then read in the park in the afternoon.

On reading the chapter where Bruno goes to a hippie retreat, under the pretence of learning about holistic and new age nonsense, to satiate his sexual desires I was reminded on an incident that happened when I arrived in Prague for the second time. Here is a little excerpt for those who haven't read:

Most of the group were positively oozing with rapture at having made contact with Mother Earth, Father Sun and family. At last, it was Bruno's turn to read. Mournfully, he intoned:

'Taxi drivers are fucking cunts
They never stop, the little runts.'

'You feel like that....' said the yogi, 'you feel like that because you haven't mastered your negative energy. I can feel deep, powerful desires within you. We can help you - here and now. Let's all stand and focus the energies of the group.'
Everyone stood, joined hands and formed a circle. Reluctantly, Bruno took the hands of the old bag on his right and a revolting little bearded man who looked like Cavanna. Her whole being was focused but calm, the yogi utter a long 'Om' and they were off, everyone droning 'Om' as if they had been doing it all their lives.

.....

When I took the plan back to Prague for the second time I got chatting to a guy in the airport. He must have been in his early forties, something of a hippie with shoulder length black hair and dark skin. He was Israeli but had lived in America for much of his life. I like to chat to people in airports, people are usually excited about going somewhere or have stories from their travels which they like to relate. If I'm not chatting I tend to be positioned at the bar looking over the top of my book at the various passers-by. This guy was alright, seemed quite nice and was interested in the fact that I was reading Dostoevsky. We chatted for a while before we got on the plane and I went off to my seat not thinking much about it.

The next day I bumped into him on Wenceslas Square and offered to take him to the castle. I love showing people around Prague, it's such a beautiful city and people are always overwhelmed by it. So off we went to the Castle which is an absolutely spectacular place. I don't usually judge people by what they're wearing but his white t-shirt was a little bit too short and you could see a hairy pot belly sticking out from underneath it and his waist coat must have been about five sizes too small. Perhaps he was thinner in his younger days.

See, I like to meet people, to hear what they have to say. If they're idiots I tend to just listen and not contribute too much to the conversation. If I find them to be wonderful then I chatter away because there's not much better than talking to someone who is wonderful. On the day in question I was pretty damn quiet.

His first mistake was male egoism. I would not have expected it from a hippie since there's usually a lot of female empowerment but when this guy discovered that I could shoot a crossbow with the skill of one of the fey elves of Lord of the Rings whereas he wouldn't have been able to hit an Orc at a distance of three feet he was pretty pissed off. I, on the other hand, was very amused, and quite elated that I was so good at shooting a crossbow.

His second and third mistakes both occurred while we were having something to eat later on. I was listening to him babble about his home in America, half listening to him and half watching the people wandering past when he started telling me about this 'existentialist retreat' that he was off to in Holland. The subversive affects of extreme eroticism a la Bataille are one thing but the idea of sitting naked in a sweat tent with a load of horny old people seeking to reclaim some hint of their hippie backgrounds in another. However, he promptly told me that I would love it while I inwardly vomited. I cannot think of anything worse than being told to embrace my being and take hold of my chakras by someone in a floaty white dress that wishes profoundly that they were a Druid in a past existence. Seeing that I had no interest at all in what he was saying (although I did try to look like I was interested) he went on to give me a very bad interpretation of Nietzsche to which I just nodded and smiled. I don't remember much of it as it was useless but I do remember it being useless and that I was getting more and more jaded with the idea of being nice to people as the evening went on.

His final mistake, which cause me to up and leave is a warning for all you men out there. Like most people in the extreme heat I wasn't wearing very many clothes and as it turns out, while I was happily sipping my cool glass of Spanish white wine he had been staring down my top and decided to come out with the worst chat up line I have ever encountered in my entire life.

'You have beautiful tits.' He said.

Now what is a girl to say to that? Especially a 21 yr old who quite innocently decided that it would be nice to show an old hippie the sights of Prague. Of course all I could do was return with a fairly bemused look, a raised eyebrow and a goodnight. Where do people get these things from? Does anyone actually ever think that that sort of shit can work? I'm not sure... maybe only idiots.

So what's the point?

Well... I'm not sure about these hippie retreats whether they be existentialist, Zen, tantric, new age or whatever. I imagine that the people who go there are of a few different types. The first being the aforementioned hippie whom I decided to do a good deed for. These types are looking for a fuck and think that there's going to be a load of young girls looking for free love who won't be so cynical as me and give in to their terrible chat up lines and lack of charisma. Another type must be those who find themselves spiritually lacking and seek some sort of fulfilment by giving their money to ex-hippies turned capitalist who will stick them on the path to enlightenment. I guess there must be those who it actually does help but I imagine that they're fairly wet with naive dreams of what the world would be like upon a return to nature.

Perhaps I'm just a cynic, maybe the philosophy has got to me. I don't believe in free love, nor that everyone should love each other. Great things come from conflict and struggle, not from two weeks in a retreat smoking 'um peace pipe' with people you've never met. But I do love the world and can find a lot of joy in loads of places. It's just that when I talk to people who think that the world can be made into a better place by 'Om'ing and hugging and sweat tents and free love that I get a little disgusted. I think that Houellebecq's Bruno puts it well when he says;

"Talking to morons like that is like pissing in a urinal full of cigarette butts, like shitting in a box full of Tampax: everything starts to stink."

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