Navel Maneuvers

Don't Forget to Have Fun! If you don't act like a leader, you won't have any followers. Cultivate the lifestyle. Demonstrate the attainable. Live in a big house, eat well, abuse drugs and alcohol, travel if it suits you, and amass a fleet of cars that you can't drive very well. Father Riker loved Cadillacs, the Rajneesh had his Rolls. Collect and believe your own press. Appropriate a patriarchal name everyone has to call you -- guru, abbot, father, reverend, swami -- something that invites respect and deference. (Erhard was "the Source"; see "Invent a Lingo" above) Remember, it's your bed, you get to sleep in it -- with the followers of your choice.

The Bay Area has never been satisfied with the basic human needs of three hots and a cot, but we're probably never going to be satisfied with cranio-sacral spinal alignment, chanting for a new car, or obtaining a erection from tree bark, either. But given the geographical and psychic curse of the Golden Gate beehive, we've got three choices for peace of mind.

We could subscribe to someone else's feel-good program and convince ourselves that the more money we spend, the more effective the results. We could devise our own brand of vitamins and hang a shingle outside the door, offering instant relief free from FDA confines. Or we could be smart shoppers and heed the advice of Alan Watts: "Once you get the message, you hang up the phone." (And try to forget he died an alcoholic.)

Let's dig up some of that pioneer spirit and remember why we moved here, or we might find ourselves with a bellyful of Kool-Aid, food for worms in a jungle grave far from home.

And that's no way for a bee to end up.