THE NEW AGE

They tell me I am loved.

They tell me that all meaning is assigned, that I create reality, my own decoder ring in a universe unfolding, so that I can be more of who I already am. They tell me I am loved.

They tell me to spot the signposts, the tap on the shoulder, the yearnings and dreams, the synchronicities that make me say, Oh, my!

They tell me I am loved.

And what if they are right, the oracles of this not-so New Age, what if they are right? What if all the love I need is wrapped around me like a blanket, the cold I feel comes only when it slips onto the ground?

What if they are right about the love, waiting like a spring deep in the ground, a well without a bottom, a coldness from the depth that chills me right before the flow begins?

What if they have always been right, the Spirit Ones, the ones I sneer at?
Oh, no, not the heartless conditional love machines of the mega church and the homegrown jihads, not the silly robots of marching magazine subscribers, not the ridiculous finger waggers with too many pets to clean up after and children that hate them.

No, I mean the real Spirit Ones, the real woo-woo’s, the Ones who shut up and listen, the Ones who know peace. The Ones who chant in the storefronts and the hilltop meditation dojos, the Ones who speak in the tongues of their enemies, and stab their parents in the heart, the Ones whose filthy and despised secrets flutter into nothingness, who trade their ties in for tie-dies and die tied to shapes other than the cross.

What if they are right when the tell me that I’m perfect, always was?

What if they are right when they whisper like a lover on my pillow and they melt me with their tears?

What if they are right to strip their clothes off in the street and run towards the sunset with a flock of doves in the open blue sky when the end of the world draws near, and all we can do is laugh at the ridiculous joke we just got, a joke that took forever to understand, a joke we cannot tell, because there is no punchline, there is no line that I can use to pull myself in, reeling from the feeling that there is no hope left in this nation of the hopeless.

Get hope. Get hopped up on hope, hoping that someday, I’ll know what they are talking about, and know -- not think, not hope, but really know -- that they are right when they tell I am are loved.