I am my own

I prefer wood to plastic
Cloth to paper
Glass to rubber
Cast-iron to aluminum
And old to new.
I am a hippy, but not the Trustafarian (make your own clothes, pedigree dog on hemp leash, white, dreadlocks, driving daddy’s SUV hippy); and not free-love and drugs 1960’s hippy, not the Haight street, methadone hippy, not the weed-harvesting migrant labor California hippy, not the skater hippy, the surfer hippy or the vegan-raw-food hippy, not even the urban revolution –dumpster diving anti-government radical hippy.
I am my own hippy.
I am the garden and the woods, living in the city, traveling the world on jet fuel robbed from the Middle East, apocalyptic and then everything will be ok hippy, the breathe deeply, yoga & steak hippy, the home birth- midwife, no TV for kids hippy, the candles and horoscopes and philosophical (without being hokey) hippy. I am my father’s daughter, buyers beware, mothers daughter but different hippy.
I like things handmade. And preferably free-trade, but I am not willing to pay outrageous prices for it or wanting to increase my social capital by doing something that is so trendy hippy. I am not the simplify your life by subscribing to one more magazine that tells you what to buy to organize and ‘simplify’ your life hippy. I am the burn it all in a field or smash it against a wall and walk away with what you can carry hippy. I am the give it all away at a spontaneous dinner party hippy.
I am the hypocrite-hippy, the faux-hippy, the used clothes and pearl earrings hippy, the grandmother’s silver spoons and 5 for 99 cents dishware hippy.
I am my own hippy.
I shave my legs on Fridays… or Sundays, I can’t remember which. I condition my hair bi-annually. I feed my cat canned tuna and let her kill the cockroaches and moths but not the lizards and when I can help it, not the birds either. I drink water from glass jars because it tastes better and I am convinced it won’t leech creepy chemicals into my body, but then I will drink soda and eat movie theater popcorn which might be the worst kind of ‘food’ ever.
I am my own hippy, maybe not even a hippy any more, maybe just a revolutionary, a blue-collar professional, stand-up citizen trapped in the body of an ideological rebel using my job to stir a slow pot of urban upper-class mutiny. Maybe I am just my parents child and the resulting compilation of my experiences, circumstance and opportunities.

What are you?