Turn on, tune in, drop out.

I Wikied "Timothy Leary" after noticing his name pop up in a number of places--most recently in a graphic novel I just checked out. It's a massive page, and I didn't read it thoroughly--just enough to learn that the man was a writer, and went through a lot of schooling, and was verily into drugs, and coined the phrase that serves as the title of this post, which I'd first heard mentioned in my postmodern lit class.

Anyway, I saw the photo of him laughing uproariously as he was arrested and figured him to be youngish at the time: mid to late twenties, maybe, with traces of teenage rebellion lingering in his veins, mixed with and amplified by fresh-in-the-world joie de vivre. But no--52. He was 52 years old and his face could still light up like that as he was getting dragged off to face incarceration.

A girl could fall for a laugh like his.

Leary's explanation of his catchphrase, from Wiki: "'Turn on' meant go within to activate your neural and genetic equipment. Become sensitive to the many and various levels of consciousness and the specific triggers that engage them. Drugs were one way to accomplish this end. 'Tune in' meant interact harmoniously with the world around you - externalize, materialize, express your new internal perspectives. Drop out suggested an elective, selective, graceful process of detachment from involuntary or unconscious commitments. 'Drop Out' meant self-reliance, a discovery of one's singularity, a commitment to mobility, choice, and change. Unhappily my explanations of this sequence of personal development were often misinterpreted to mean 'Get stoned and abandon all constructive activity.'"