I'm driving down by the harbor in Santa Cruz, California. I park in a government lot, worried I'll get ticketed--it's reserved for the staff of a National Park Service headquarters. But I've come here to consult someone. Quiet pleasant place, atop low cliffs looking down at a kelp-rippling cove. But I feel shy and confused. What'd I come for? I wander around the parking lot feeling nervous; won't go in.

A middle-aged woman comes out, muttering about a Revolutionary War figure--Ben Franklin I think. Mainly because... suddenly I find myself singing "Franklin's Tower" by the Grateful Dead!

"How this dates me! I was raised in unquestioning admiration for classic liberalism. That admiration got nuanced and qualified as I grew up, but it's still my core faith. And the Dead shared that faith. The hippie movement really revived classic Jeffersonian liberalism. They saw individual freedom and social justice not as rivals but in harmony.

"The song describes liberty in terms Ben Franklin would've understood--Deism, really. The psychedelic STYLE might puzzle him, but not the content of the song. The liberty bell, Paul Revere's beacons, the vigilance of the four winds, the dew that rolls away at sunrise; they all call us to awake and resume the hard work of guarding freedom after a long complacent sleep. We must become the four lean hounds...

"And that faith is not bad. Way better than no moral or political compass at all, and that's what middle America offers: delusional fundamentalism or corporate amorality! Alternatives are censored--hippie Deism, the Goddess of feminism, Gaian ecology and animal rights, Gandhi's ahimsa and satyagraha, Buddhist compassion, and scientific ethicism. In the heartland your only choices are: right-wing churches or the mall."

So I follow this ranger muttering about Franklin... hoping she can guide me.

She walks up the driveway to a bar. The sign says

Oops. Did I mishear her? Maybe she was never thinking of Ben Franklin OR the Grateful Dead--just of getting a drink. If she's a spirit guide, it's to the wrong kind of spirits!

My own rant, and the Dead playing in my heart, will have to lead me on.

NOTES IN THE MORNING

• feel out of place: our house's microwave fried yesterday. So today I ventured out of San Francisco into the suburbs, to a struggling, empty mall. Felt like I was in a zombie film. Capitalist limbo! Wage-slaves forced themselves to smile at me, that exotic rarity: a customer. They oppressed themselves. Hell is more relaxed--devils may jab you, but at least you don't have to pretend to like it!
• Political/musical meditation: all literal. I do think all that. It just wasn't explicit until the dream forced me into focus. So it's not just my hippie attitude that makes me hate corporations. It's a real clash of values. Their hierarchies crush people. Today I saw them failing under the load.

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