Berkeley Hippie Revival Project

Miami, Florida

1/26/26 Berkeley, CA

I don’t read enough, I think. For some reason, which I know has faulty logic, I see a book and think it vapid. Not to say that a book, or the concept of one, is for the less intelligent, and I’m positioning myself above that; it’s the opposite, actually. I don’t appreciate them enough, and I know that. I’m lazy, and because of this, I’ve learned most from the sentences spoken to me in slightly distracted conversations, and my ruminating on them, I think. I talk, and I ask questions, and sometimes I read, but I use it as material to ask more questions and to speak to more people. Every conversation holds the secrets of life in its hands, but they hold it tight, and they only start letting it peak through if you ask, and listen, and react, and observe, and comply, and pry, and cry, I think.

And that’s all I want to do: think. But I’m lazy, I know, and that means I like to run off on my own. A book, a carefully crafted palace of ideas and narratives, a person’s mind and goals extracted onto print. It takes an eye for fine detail to read, and that’s important to have, as it means one minimizes the chances of being fooled. But maybe I want to be fooled, though, and that means getting my food for thought from another voice, with its own opinions, and childhood, and captivating concerns, in the moment. And there, the work is done for me, that search for a question. It becomes so apparent– what I must ask myself– when someone’s whole spirit is grabbing my body and shifting its perspective. After, I can start staring off until I find an answer in the shifting colors of my blurred vision.

I need something to chew on, and that can be a book, but then I must do the labor of envisioning and creating this author and their opinions, like a computer model, and have it speak to my inner voice. I am lazy and would rather speak to myself in there, so I’ll find other voices on the outside. And hopefully they are well read, or have lived long and aware, those voices, and they can alter my perspective in ways I never thought possible.

Where will my mind go, and will I follow it? Should I let them tell me what to do– perspective-wise? ‘Cause to speak to another, you must listen, and to listen well is to attempt to understand another perspective, and to do that, it must be guided by the one speaking, the dictator, the shepherd, and in that, am I lazy? Maybe, I think.

Then there comes the time when I must get up off my ass and produce, show something for what I’ve done, and here is where every bit of what I do is confirmed for me. I wrote the title of this article without thinking of the words, and I had to make up a beginning, middle, and end that matched without thinking too much, because of the laziness. As I read, however, a photo of myself, a snapshot in this moment, stares back at me. I can see myself figuring things out, and that to me is the best of times, and where I learn the most, and where my laziness feels like a superpower; it is not, though, I know it is only how I’ve come to do things. My way of life, reflective of my heart and passion, I think I only feel like myself when I am that, the laziness within me.

What stories will I find, create, and learn from if I let this world take me?