Ain’t got no friends — maybe one or two.

Got a family. Don’t gimme no comfort to think of them.

Don’t feel part of any community, ’less it’s the longhair tribe.

Friends are great — can’t say enough about them. When ya have one, cultivate him, appreciate him. A friend can make bad times a lot more bearable.

What’s a family? Is family inherited or chosen?

Home is where you can always go and they’ll take ya in.

Ideally, there would be no distinction between family and friends.

There’s a big difference between feeling friendly and feeling like you have a friend.

Feelings of community are very rare. I rarely get them in Chapel Hill, and never strongly, but that’s more than I can say about anywhere else I’ve ever lived.

The world will probably have to die and be reborn before “community” has any real meaning again.

Friendship is an accident.

Friends, family, community: words I can hardly fathom. They are like vague whispers on a forgotten wind. What do they mean? I struggle to grasp at their significance. They elude me, slipping away as concepts too archaic, or too ideal, to hold on to. For all the long hair, the rhetoric of peace and love, I am still put in mind of the Temptation’s lyrics: “It’s a dog-eat-dog world and that ain’t no lie.”

The more I have to give, the better I feel about myself, and the better I feel about myself the better material I am for friendship. There is no better justification for cultivating my talents and aptitudes. I need to have something to share.

I have just put down Karl Marx, and he is a stirring inspiration, what with his five-year-old’s idealism and optimism. This world holds a bias against pessimism. Are you so afraid to hear the seamy side, to admit to the possibility of the impossibility of hippie heaven?

It’s basically a one-man show
Don’t ya know?
So all this talk of friends
Won’t bring ya to your ends,
Will just mesmerize and foggerize
The truth before your eyes.
Which is that it’s a one-man show
Don’t you know — a one-man show.