The Myth Of The Age Of Aquarius

Normally, I spend all week researching on the Internet to fact-check data I'll include in my weekly column.

Unfortunately, my router/modem died on me and while I'm awaiting delivery of a new one, I've decided to write this week's essay on a subject that needs no research. It's simply an essay I've written in my head over and over and plan to include it in my future memoir, if I ever get around to it. I'm a child of the '60s but more of a critic because I found the Age of Aquarius to be one big lie.

I well remember the hype about the moon being in the seventh sun and how this would result in an Age of Aquarius - peace and love and all that. Since I'm an Aquarian (Feb. 3), considered at the time to be somewhat of a Bohemian artist, one would think that I'd revel in this enchanting movement, but from the first I found the new age era fraught with hypocrisy, naïveté, and drugs.

In 1969, I was working for an airline and enjoyed the perks of free travel whenever I had free time. That summer I spent traveling throughout Spain and I even overnighted in Tangier, Morocco. Upon my return and back at work, my co-worker Rita, the resident hippie, invited me on a special weekend trip to a rock festival in a town called Woodstock. She and a few friends were traveling upstate in a van and were planning to stay on the field in sleeping bags. It was, she promised, going to be the epitome of peace, love, and rock and roll.

The truth is that I had very little in common with my fellow co-workers who, coming from a middle-class background, took many blessings for granted. I never ever forgot while jet-setting around the world how far I'd come from the slums of Spanish Harlem, thanks to a good education in parochial schools. I loved my job, which gave me the opportunity to see the world at little or no cost and to meet fascinating people. For instance, in 1968, I was in a first-class cabin with Jim Morrison and the rest of the Doors on a flight to Toronto. Morrison looked very disheveled and unkempt and the group had arrived late, keeping the plane waiting on the tarmac until they came aboard. My first close-up look at a rock star left a lot to be desired. Still, it was an experience to note in my tender years that one could be rich and famous and still be a slob.

There were two main reasons why I opted not to go to Woodstock. The first was that the idea of sleeping on a cold hard ground in what was predicted to be a rainy weekend was very unappealing. It took years for me to graduate to a real comfortable bed and comfort reigned supreme with me by the time I was 21. I had no romantic illusions that roughing it would make the concert more enjoyable.

The second and probably the most convincing reason for opting out of this historic event was that I anticipated that many of those at Woodstock would be carrying peace signs and raging against the Vietnam War. My brother was then a sergeant in the Marines and I'd recently been to a funeral of a young neighbor who had died in the prime of his life. I doubted that expressing support for our warriors would be allowed even by this peace-loving crowd. Although I thought that their anti-war protests were proof that our country allowed dissent, I also felt that they were aiding and abetting our enemy. The sad truth is that my instinct was correct.

Many years after the war had ended, a Viet Cong colonel, Bui Tin, wrote in his memoir that just as they were ready to admit defeat after the Tet offensive in 1968, it was the protests that made them realize that they could win the war at home. He wrote, "[The American antiwar movement] was essential to our strategy. Support for the war from our rear was completely secure while the American rear was vulnerable. Every day our leadership would listen to world news over the radio at 9 a.m. to follow the growth of the American antiwar movement. Visits to Hanoi by people like Jane Fonda and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and ministers gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses. We were elated when Jane Fonda, wearing a red Vietnamese dress, said at a press conference that she was ashamed of American actions in the war and that she would struggle along with us."

A few years ago, I ran into a former co-worker whom I had always argued with about the Vietnam War when he was a young man of 19. After exchanging a few memories, he admitted that he was scared of being drafted and that his parents helped him flee to Canada. He was now middle-aged and I admired his honesty in admitting his motives for protesting the war. In a way, I could understand the Vietnam War protesters more than I can understand the current antiwar crowd who act as if nothing ever happened on September 11, 2001.

Recently, I caught an old episode of "Hawaii Five-0" that dealt with Vietnam War protesters accusing Jack Lord's character, Steve McGarrett, of being a killer because he carried a gun. I can't quote his exact words but I'll try: "Remember JFK, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Gandhi. There are two legged animals out there and I carry a gun to protect the innocent from being killed. I hate violence. I'm a peace keeper."

So many of the Woodstock crowd thought it cool to call the peacekeepers pigs and in their drug-addled minds thought they were making a statement about peace and love. Whenever I catch the documentary about Woodstock, I have to laugh at how it's viewed as a remarkable event that half a million young people could be gathered together listening to rock music without rioting. Most were too stoned out of their minds to stand up. I look at it as a supreme example of self-serving hedonism and all one has to do to confirm this is look at the filth and waste they left behind. The crowds at Woodstock were the real pigs.

According to one definition of the Age of Aquarius, it's a 2,000-year-long era of enlightenment, joy, accomplishment, intellect, brotherly peace, and closeness to God. Half a million people showed up in D.C. on Aug. 28th to hear Glenn Beck pray for our nation to return to God. They left the mall spotless. Maybe the Age of Aquarius begins now.

Alicia Colon resides in New York City and can be reached at aliciav.colon@gmail.com and at www.aliciacolon.com