Around the Corner

“Some things look better, baby, just passing through.” Elton John

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I never thought much about what’s around the corner, although my mother used that phrase often. I think it was on my first visit to France years ago that it began to make sense.

If you’ve been to France you know. In every small village there’s a photo op around most corners. Maybe it’s a garden gate, or an ancient rock wall with white or red bougainvillea in bloom. Or a window box full of scented herbs. Often it’s an old couple, sitting silently together on a bench in a small garden park. Life lives around every corner.

Even in Paris, there are treats of every sort around the corner. Love blooms in sidewalk cafes. Moon-eyed couples sit at tables smaller than a nickel, having wine or espresso, speaking in whispers. Love drips from their lips.

Around every corner were found my favorite surprises…the early morning patisseries. You’re powerless to pass them by. Their succulent scent of warm, buttered croissants and sweet rolls hovers at the door and seduces you.

In Italy around some corners there is music, or perhaps mimes in a park, maybe even someone handing out red roses to your lady friend. Surprises simply unfold as we wander the sidewalks of life and turn the corners.

There’s always Something around every corner. What is it? Adventure, that’s what, waiting for you as you turn the corner. It’s not going to let you in on its secret. It just waits there, expecting you to show up one day.

Our days and years here are spent in the labyrinth of life. There are twists and turns, dead ends, disappointments, exhilarations, fun and even sadness. We have few choices about what’s around our corners.

Life is not a straight line like we imagine time to be. It’s a series of ever-winding circles. We have no choice but to experience what’s there. Forget about your carefully laid plans and prophesy of the ancients. Neither will prepare us for what’s next.

Serendipity is always around the corner. Maybe it is just a silent breeze that cools hot days, or warm sunrays that break the chill of early morning. But it is there, serendipity hidden in the creases of every maze, waiting for us to find it.

Our minds have learned the habit of fear, unfortunately. Premonitions and superstitions can lurk in the shadows around the corner. But they’re not real, simply phantoms of our imaginations, hollow-eyed skeletons at the banquet of our happiness, uninvited interlopers we have allowed the doorman of the soul to let enter.

There are big things around the corners of life, like long, happy marriages, healthy children, success, fine wine and good friends. These big things happen slowly, and if we could anticipate them, we might not appreciate them.

But it’s the small, seemingly insignificant things of life we encounter around the corner that make our hearts bright and our days glad. A surprise note from an old friend, a new puppy; a delicious blueberry pancake breakfast, a quiet beach walk or a good book, a warm fire to pass a rainy night and smiles while looking at old photographs. So many things so small we take them for granted. But they’re around every corner. Slow down and look.

Sometimes in reverie we may mourn our plight as prisoners of the earth. No one asks to be here, and yet here we are. What are we to do in this labyrinth of life? Nothing? Sit down, quit? No. We’re part of history, ever moving. I have always thought two of the finest words in English are ‘Moving on.’

You’re wondering where this is leading, right? Well, you know already. One day we will turn the corner and look square in the eye of what Emerson calls “The Dread Omniscience.” But not to worry. I think Dr. Crane sums it up nicely:

“And around that Last Corner where we turn to travel the unknown, I do not believe there hides some grisly thing of evil, but a smiling-faced One, with welcome in His hand and the Morning Star for me.”

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Keep moving and enjoy the trip.


Bud Hearn
June 29, 2018

The Fixer....a Brief Encounter

His name is Ace. He’s wealthy, secretive and dangerous. He lives in the shadows and makes people’s problems disappear. He’s known as ‘The Fixer.’

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Ace is not his given name. But it fits him. It’s short, memorable and has an air of mystery. His business card is a black domino marked with two white spots. That’s all; no phone, no fax, no address.

I met him about ten years ago. It was Christmas. He had delivered a gift to my door at night. Inside was a note and a small slab of concrete streaked with splashes of colored graffiti. Taped to it was a crisp Ace of hearts playing card. The note simply read: Berlin Wall, 1989. I lit the fuse. We became friends after that.

He was younger, considering retirement. He’d had a long career as a CIA operative, and an explosives expert. Men of such ilk tend to withdraw from overt social interactions, possibly out of concern for reprisal from the dark side of their past. But he’s older now, dapper in a white suit with his signatory hickory cane.

I ran into him recently at a party. He stood alone at the end of a long bar, nursing a glass of scotch.

“Whatcha say, Ace, drinking alone?” His smile telegraphs nothing.

“Safer this way,” he says.

“Being followed?”

“Always.” He adds nothing. Laconic as ever.

“You working these days?”

“You might say that.”

“Doing what, some sordid, top-secret assignment? Or should I ask?”

“Well, you might say I’m an amalgam, a cross between a surgeon, a janitor and a repairman. I fix things.” Only ice cubes remain in his glass. He orders another one.

“Quite a combination. What things?”

“People things. Stalin’s formula. Where there are people, there are problems. I help patch things up, restore equilibrium, so to speak.” He glances over my shoulder into the crowd. His left eye winks, his head twists slightly indicating a ‘No’ response.

“Interesting. Can you elaborate? I’m curious what ‘fixers’ do since I read about the President’s lawyer.”

He laughs. “Yeah, some lawyers are clowns, bumbling fools, flashes in the pan. They give our profession a bad name. First-class fixes require delicacy and finesse.

I’m a surgeon in a world of butchers, thugs, criminals and the general refuse of humanity. Fixing things takes all types. Think of me as a master general contractor. I filter through the appropriate functionaries to perform necessary but unsavory tasks. It’s a savage world.”

“What kind of things do you ‘fix?’”

“You name it. Just sort through the possibilities that a debauched, gutter culture produces: Greed, power, sex, money, ego and such, they all play out in various ways. Things can easily go sideways.”

“What are the tools of this disgusting trade, Ace?” He orders another scotch.

“Everything has its price. Most respond, shall I say, ‘favorably’ with money. With others, its fear. Enlivening the imagination lets loose legions of demons.

It’s easy to do. Mere subtle hints, or ‘suggestions,’ can be more effective than actual threats. A few late-night phone calls, maybe a photo of someone where they should not be with someone they should not be with, some anonymous letters, maybe being tailed in a black van will do it.

Then there’s the sleazy media. They’re prostitutes for salacious innuendo. Advertising money rolls in. The digital world seethes with false news, Twitter feeds, Facebook postings and such stuff as this. And don’t discount the on-line lawyers. These crude shysters come cheap and are ferocious as pit bulls on speed.

I operate on the psychological principle of ‘rewards.’ Intimidations are for rubes. It appeals to the greed in all of us. My ‘people’ cover all bases.”

“I’ve heard you use codes to communicate. True? Tell me a few.”

He laughs. “You read too many LeCarre spy novels. But yes, we have our codes. Take Dr. Lech. His career is about to explode. He’s been messing around, as they say. We call him a ‘Peanut,’ an active ingredient in dynamite.

Then there’s Senator Slapback. He’s an ‘Ostrich.’ Why? Because an ostrich’s eye is bigger than his brain. Don’t forget Judge Slipshod. He will be a ‘Dragonfly’ when we finish with him. They only live 24 hours. We have others.”

A man approaches. It’s Col. Tecumseh. “Excuse me. We’ll talk later. Seems the colonel’s ‘ostrich’ needs some help.”

**********

The Fixer...what an occupation. Where there are people, there are problems. Imagine the opportunities.

The Momentum of Atavism

“The fruit falls not far from the tree.” That’s atavism.

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Recently I bought a DNA testing kit. Who’s not curious about their lineage and the latent atavisms that linger there? Let me tell you about it.

Don’t let anybody fool you…there are some traits and family traditions you’re not responsible for. They’ve been dumped on you by some twisted act of fate. Like chips off the old block, you might say, the luck of the draw.

These aberrant idiosyncrasies are peculiar to birth and genetic malfunctions. They’re passed down through some wild gene pulsing through our ancestral blood. Watch your actions, listen to your vocal inflections. Your proclivities are like ancient arrowheads, fragments of the past that remain.

That settled, we can relax in absolute assurance of self-acquittal, right? Wrong. There’s one small detail: the ‘momentum of atavism’ can erupt at any time. The iniquities of the fathers continue to visit the children well past the 3rd and 4th generation. The mirror lies…we’re more than we see.

These words were written by Martin Amis in his book, Koba the Dread. Whenever you sit around feeling sorry for yourself, enjoying a pity party and lamenting on how life has let you down, then read a few chapters of this book. It details the atrocities of Josef Stalin, a man who displayed a certain sadistic enthusiasm for violence in the maniacal extermination of 20 million countrymen. It offers a perspective on life.

And if that’s not enough to jolt you back to reality, pick up the Bible and read about the apocalyptic consummation of history in John’s book, The Revelation. Volcanic flare-ups, bimbo eruptions and mea culpas extracted by the #MeTooMovement are entertaining, but they are no comparison to the lake of fire and the bowls of wrath.

Who knows where atavism starts, much less where it ends. It’s systemic to the species. I speculate it originated with Cain, Adam’s first son who murdered his brother, Abel. He was, you know, the de facto progenitor of the human race; and, he was a murderer. We live in savage times.

My first experience with an atavistic sideshow was a Sunday excursion to the Angola State Prison rodeo. Yes, the prisoners were the cowboys in a real live rodeo. Obviously the warden utilized his own gulag goading to encourage volunteerism.

We sat among several thousand spectators, many of whom reflected familial resemblances to the inmate cowboys. Their lifeless smiles and wild, glittering eyes gave them away. Maybe it was just too many encounters with mug shot cameras that exposed their atavistic throwbacks. Not their fault…who asks to be born?

Culture has its own current. It drifts along with the memes prevailing at the time. Look anywhere. Like today’s so-called ‘fake news’---lies, wild pontifications and outrageous fabrications, repeated long enough, can sway a collective mindset from covert to overt in a short time.

Now take Big Harvey W, a mogul crazed with hubris at the head of the line of narcissistic display. He has sown a whirlwind by mixing money and power without restraint. His scandal paints a visual exposure of atavism at its low-rent apotheosis.

But he’s not alone. Daily doses of decadent impropriety assail our senses. The gene of lust is a raging fire. It’s shut up in our very bones and flows hot in the circuits of our blood. Men everywhere are running for cover, hiring ‘fixers’ for their follies and proving that atavism is rampart among us.

Now back to my DNA test. It pays to be cautious about these tests. A friend told me he discovered he had two children in California that he didn’t know about. His wife was more than curious. I was hoping for no such surprise.

I finally received the results: 65% English-Irish; 15% French-German; 15% Northern Europe; a little bit Eastern European and the rest Iberian. Harmless enough, except for one small detail.

At the bottom of the report, almost like a post script, these words appear: “Of special note, your DNA indicated 79% more of the Neanderthal variable than all of the other tests we have ever performed.”

**********

After the shock wore off, my family accepted the news. They weren’t all that surprised. It probably answered a lot of heretofore unanswered questions.

But thankfully I had no children in California. Which proves that Neanderthals are atavistically monogamous or, it’s the reason the species is now extinct.


Bud Hearn
June 9, 2018