Why does someone who takes the name Buffalo Vision, for example,
after his weekend ayahuasca workshop

always seem to have an unwarranted confidence
that he is going to end up at the Happy Hunting Ground?

If Seymour Eagle Mountain marries Western River Woman — fine.
But why do they have to name their daughter Blueberry, or Lake?

Then they send her to suffer at a Waldorf School
where she majors in birch bark and folk dance

and years later has to hire a life coach to help her fill out college
                                                             applications,
as she painstakingly writes an autobiographical essay

on the theme of how certain so-called sentient beings
can inflict their embarrassing illusions upon another.

Do you get what I'm talking about?
About the hazards of playing at innocence?

Walt Disney made some good movies,
but would you really get five sayings from The Lion King

tattooed on your forearm for practical reference
as you ship out to Iraq?

Which brings me to my actual subject, a man I will call Connor,
whom I met at a rest stop right after his second vision quest;

who wore a feather in his hat, was fifty-five, well-fed,
and lived with his mom in Carson City; who

plays his guitar at open mikes and plans on a serious musical career
as soon as he gets more experience.


Connor, who prefers to be called by his true name, Iron Bear.
Whenever I encounter the New Age still in its original diapers,

I confess that I blush down to my deepest roots,
for I, too, am its scornful, not entirely grown-up child;

when I was twenty, I learned to play "Blowin' in the Wind" on a
                                                              wooden flute;
I made bracelets out of hemp and polished quartz, and gave them away;

I had a girlfriend who freely expressed her opinion
that people born in Bangladesh had probably incarnated there

to work out their issues with poverty.

Why does the New Age seem so often like a patient in intensive care,
in a delicate condition, requiring giant infusions

of illusion and charity to stay alive,

while the rest of us keep waiting for the day it might get tough enough
to be successfully transplanted into the real world?

Getting back to Connor, still living with his mom, on an allowance,
                                                              in Carson City:

nothing can stop him

from going to the open mike every Thursday night and singing his
                                                               heart out,
or from signing his letters Blessings, from Iron Bear, Poet and Seer,
                                                               aka Connor.

Pretend for a moment that you are a philanthropist whom I am
asking for a donation to a charitable program

to rehabilitate wandering middle-aged children like the ones I am 
                                                              describing.
What funds can you offer? What advice might you have for me?

What chance do you think there is for Connor to ever grow up,
much less to find a happy ending?

On the other hand, isn't it some kind of ultimate foolishness
to scold cheerful people who in their way are the pilgrims of our time

about the folly of their happiness?
I ask you—what kind of folly is that?