Digressions of a Dilettante

Digressions of a Dilettante
Vignettes of Inanity by Bud Hearn

Friday, August 30, 2019

The Blemish


Blemish: n. A flaw, fault, stain or imperfection. Nothing’s perfect. Not even us.

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I found a blemish last Friday morning. It had desecrated my favorite pink linen shirt.

I’m sitting on the porch having coffee. It’s early. The morning’s quiet. Communion with birds and cicadas is a good beginning. I look down and there it is, a black spot next to a white button. Oops, be careful using black and white as adjectives. The Linguistic Police are lurking.

It’s a little stain, nothing to worry about. So I keep on reading, trying to ignore the blight that has besmirched my favorite shirt. But my eyes won’t let it be. It seems to grow larger, larger with each glance until it consumes my entire attention. It’s a call to action, the scourge must be eradicated.

I get a glass of water, dip my finger in it, dab a little on the blemish. Water washes most things clean, sometimes with a little detergent help. Nothing happens. I apply more water, rub a little harder. Nothing. More water, more rubbing. Can it be? The stain is beginning to disappear.

On a roll now. I keep the process going. Water, rub, water, rub. My shirt is soaked but the stain appears to be on the run. Time will tell. As with a lot of blemishes, time washes clean.

What was it, I wonder? Salad dressing? Newsprint? Blueberry drippings from the yogurt? I’ll never know.

And then ‘they’ come. They, the leaf blowers. They blast in with dual blowers. They assault the morning’s solitude with high-frequency audio blemishes.

Round and around they go, blowing every particle of dust from the neighbor’s pool deck. For twenty minutes they circle his pool, blowers screaming. They seem to be hung up in a circular vortex around the miniature pool. I’ve seen baptismal fonts larger than the neighbor’s chlorine puddle. I consider baptizing them in it. Finally, they leave.

The thing about blemishes is they’re everywhere. Like warts on your nose, they delight in finding ways to call attention to your imperfections.

Now take spaghetti and red sauce. They affirm the Law of Attractions, a metaphysical pseudoscience that avers, ‘like attracts like.’ If so, then red and white were either estranged lovers or twins, both restless until they reunite. On your clothes, that is.

Clothes are prime attractions for blemishes. How many times have our sleeves been saturated while dragging a French-fried potato through the ketchup? Or expensive neckties wasted by brown gravy oozing down the middle. Would naked be an option? We’d save on dry cleaning at least.

Mildew is a green curse of all things outdoors. It’s no respecter of pools decks or patio chaises. With a good baptism of Clorox and water the blight will become invisible. Forget orthodoxy…sprinkling or dipping work equally well.

Blemishes do wonders in besmirching our reputations. We open our mouths and out it comes. Gossip, secrets, lies, fake news and such. Our character is tarnished beyond repair. My mother would say, “Son, if you keep talking like that, I’m going to wash your mouth out with soap.”

I remember telling her it was because of daddy’s family, but it didn’t buy forgiveness. I didn’t have brains enough to tell her that it wasn’t the tongue’s fault. After all, the tongue is only the messenger. Our insides are what need a good washing to correct the problem.

Blemishes can also show up because of stupidity. Apply sunscreen. Do we? Sometimes. And then the day comes when the dermatologist carves us up like a pet pig being prepped for bacon. Stupidity is a tough spot to remove.

While water washes most things clean, blood is a toughie to remove. The rule is to soak with cold water as soon as blood stains appear. But there’s no guarantee of success if it dries. Pilate washed his hands quickly but found out later that some blood is a permanent stain.

What’s left to say? Blemishes are everywhere. Always have been, always will be.

And just when I thought I’d escaped, here ‘they’ come again, the leaf blowers. Either the neighbor’s pool deck is filthy, or they forget they’ve been there before. Ten more minutes before the silence returns.

And now back to my pink linen shirt. The linen is dry, the stain is gone. Water works miracles.

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I find then a moral to this episode: Given time and a good washing, most blemishes will disappear.

Maybe there’s something to baptism after all.


Bud Hearn
August 30, 2019

Monday, August 19, 2019

Lonesone, On'ry and Mean


Thanks, Waylon, you pretty much nailed how we feel about the state of things in general, and Dog Days in particular.

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Last Wednesday passing through the island guard gate the temperature read 100. The heat index hovered at 109.

The ‘guards’ moved like zombies in a humidity-induced stupor. I don’t know where the day found you, but one thing I’m sure of: there’s not enough freon to go around. Welcome to Dog Days in Dixie

The heat does something to people. Brains liquify and folks find it hard to form sentences. Intelligent dialogue is pretty much summed up like this encounter with the gate guard:

Me: “Hot, huh.”

Guard: “Uh?....” Beginning and end of sentence.

Heat and humidity are no respecter of people or places. Over in Arkansas the index hit 119 degrees. Things haven’t been this hot in Arkansas since Bill got tangled up with Jennifer and Paula while Hillary was shooting the rapids of Whitewater. If Gary Hart had come up the river with his Monkey Business yacht, the state would have erupted in flames.

Down in Clarksdale, Mississippi things were no better. The steam index hit 121 degrees. People got so lonesome they rocked, resurrected and listened to old Jerry Clower videos. The last time things were this hot in Mississippi was when Marcel got tangled up with a she bob cat instead of a coon in the top of a magnolia tree.

When things got heated for Marcel hanging in the top of that tree, he hollered, “Shoot up here amongst us, Jerry, one of us needs relief.”

This lament is still preached as gospel in every rural church in Mississippi. It’s brought salvation to more folks than Jimmy Swaggart, who cried and sweated his way off TV in Louisiana a few years ago. There’s no vacuum in nature or religion. TV ‘love’ offerings are finding their way to the PO Box of a grinning ‘Profit’ in Texas named Joel.

Pockets of long-smoldering ashes are spontaneously flaring up. Some blame climate change. Too many cows, too much methane, they say. People are pledging their first-born for reprieve. Relief only comes with a huge ransom.

Someone’s always to blame. All evidence points to the state utility monopolies. Utility executives luxuriate in air-conditioned comfort in penthouse offices in Atlanta. They lunch scrumptiously off revenue from bloated power bills. They smoke big cigars and watch their customers writhe below like worms on beds of hot asphalt. It’s making folks mighty ornery.

But then, things are heating up everywhere. We’re having nightmares wondering which political party to believe. It’s making folks downright mean. The quaint concept of loving your neighbor is fuel for the incinerator. Vicious innuendo and promises, insane promises without meaning, roar from flaming tongues of 2020 candidates and set on fire the course of nature. Relief in nowhere in sight.

Nationally, a caldron is boiling. We wake up with night sweats. We must choose what sort of ‘supremist’ we are. Diversity, gender and reparations are old news. What are the choices, we ask? The best advice is to avoid the color chart and check the Neanderthal box.

The Global slowdown gets deeper. Fires everywhere. The glory of permanent riches fades. Capitalism smolders, socialism for all-things-free fires up. Stocks and bonds melt like wilted flowers. Recession looms. Farm crops rot in the fields as the last Chinese buyer bolts for the door. Only kudzu, the Southern Cannibal, survives Dog Days unscathed.

But enough bad news. Is there any good news out there? Yes. Donald is going to buy Greenland.

Don’t boil over. Imagine the possibilities. Greenland is melting, America is boiling. We’d do ourselves and them a favor to divert all that ice water back into the Gulf Stream. Imagine, no more hurricanes and having to watch Jim Cantore blowing in the breeze.

Remember Seward? Poor fellow. He bought Alaska from Russia for 2 cents an acre, a bargain. His reward? History hung him with the infamous distinction of ‘Seward’s folly.’ Until gold was discovered. Gold changes things. Maybe Donald knows something we don’t. If so, he’s not tweeting. Gold T’s everywhere.

Closer to home, the police report Walmart is still the pilferer’s preference, and arguments over women and alcohol continue unabated on L Street. Pretty normal for Dog Days in Brunswick.

Lonesome, On’ry and Mean…kick back and embrace the feeling. The party’s just started.


Bud Hearn
August 19, 2019


Friday, August 9, 2019

Today I Fell in Love with a Mannequin


Falling in love is easy. Happens all the time. One might conclude we’re born to love. Even flings with mannequins.

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Objects of affection are everywhere. Like lovers, they change depending on whims. They can just pop up out of nowhere, grab us and we’re hooked.

Today I fell in love with the mannequin in the island’s only family-owned drugstore. It’s the last place one could imagine falling in love, unless one is swooned off his feet by pills, palliatives or psychological placebos.

Pharmacies push pills for everything. Some even guarantee to keep love alive and well. Which might be why the mannequin is there in the first place, standing in a sultry tilt as you walk through the door. It’s a touch of marketing genius.

I had barely stepped inside when I saw it. I did a double take. Even at second glance it seemed out of place. Second glances are dangerous. If the first doesn’t get you, the second one will. It’s the conception of lust.

Remember the adage, ‘In battle the eye is first overcome?’ Well, believe me, bubba, lust is a hard battle to win. Mano a mano. Oh, you’ve tried, have you? How did that work out for you?

Now, lust is not an evil word, although it’s a party crasher in polite social discourse. It can conjure up the seamy side of things. Lately it has taken on a nasty connotation, sort of like the super-charged term ‘racist.’ These troublemakers tend to stir up a lot of mischief wherever they go. If accused, defenses go up and denials gush forth. But I digress.

Somebody with salacious psychological insight obviously enjoyed dressing this mannequin. I had to shove a few guys out of the way to just to take a peek. They’d been there too long already. One had started drooling and another was gobbling Tums.

It was one of those faceless mannequins, a slight nose, but no mouth, ears or eyes. It’s best to allow the imagination to take you where it will. One can keep the sordid details stored in their own secret memory album. Time, place and action are personal.

Today’s mannequin modeled a flimsy suggestive cotton beach coverup, one like you see advertised in slick spa magazines depicting the French Riviera along the Cote d’Azure. While East Beach has no resemblance to the Mediterranean coast, imagination and pretense can still do a pretty good job of substitution.

Judging from today’s gawkers, I doubt if they’d ever been to a French coast. If they had, they’d be doing a lot more than just drooling.

We should always be on the lookout for opportunities to help our fellow man. This was a perfect time for a short homily from the Good Book on the perils of an overactive imagination, especially when it’s drawn to scanty beach wear. But the best advice I could give was: “Men, don’t let your eyes take you on a trip your body can’t handle.”

But since my imagination had also fallen under the mannequin’s spell, the warning was blatantly hypocritical. Hypocrites have been stoned for less.

Somehow, I escaped the gravitational allure of the mannequin and patted myself on the shoulder that I’d just conquered today’s battle with lust. I strolled on back to the pharmacy for the pain panaceas. Amazing how a little pain can chill a lot of romance.

While waiting for my ‘fix,’ I noticed the front-page article on the New York Times. It read, “We don’t have to rely on men anymore.” I read a few lines. Seems Japanese women are fed up with marriage, despise men and are marrying themselves. Yes, marrying themselves.

Things always come full circle. In reflecting on my short-term romance with today’s mannequin, I recalled what a pushover Adam was. No questions asked, no goading required. He submissively ate that fruit right from Eve’s hand. And if today’s mannequin had been serving grapes, well, it would have confirmed the eternal truism: ‘love is blind.’

Is it really possible to fall in love with a mannequin? Maybe, with a vivid imagination. But admit it, we love certain psychological personifications: Ronald McDonald, Mickey Mouse, Energizer Bunny and Uga. Some even love the ass, uh, donkey, representing the Democratic Party.

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Today’s love affair with the mannequin was short but refreshing. Amazing how little imagination it takes to make the heart smile.


Bud Hearn
August 9, 2019




Friday, August 2, 2019

A Perfect Response


Is there an answer for every Why that’s uttered? Yes, in a word: Because.

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It starts early in life, this obsession with the question of Why. Remember this dialogue?

“Mommy, can I have this?”

“No.”

“Why?”

Because.”

“Because why?”

“Because I said so.” End of discussion. The Voice has spoken.

Frank McCourt, the author, once wrote about his indoctrination into the Catholic church. He said the catechism began something like this:

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth, the creatures and mankind.”

He remembers agreeing with this much, since he knew he had nothing to do with it and didn’t know anybody who could perform such a trick. But what he didn’t understand was ‘Why’ God did it. Because was the only answer he got.

Life is complicated enough without trying to figure out the ‘why’ of everything. When we embark on that holy grail, we find ourselves in a sea of confusion trying to explain our actions or thoughts.

Country music is full of Why’s. Hank Williams, Jr sang, “Hank, why do you drink, why do you roll smoke, why must you live out the songs that you wrote.” He answers these Why’s best he could: “I’m just carrying on a family tradition.” He could have just said Because, only its simplicity wouldn’t have produced many royalties.

Who can say with certainty why they prefer anything: this person over that one, or this career over another one? Or why we prefer some food and not others. And love, now that’s the great conundrum. Who can say why they love this person and not another one? Because is the best and truest response.

I’m often asked, “Why do you write?” Bukowski the poet answered it for me like this: “I write for myself to save what’s left of myself.”

But neither he nor I really grasped what lay inside us. It’s a pretty good explanation, but Because would have summed it up as well. Why do you do what you do?

Who can deny that our reasons are often illogical, sometimes absurd and mostly leave us wondering why we can’t put our finger on the answer? So much is illusion.

On my office desk is a miniature skeleton, sitting on a box and holding a tiny banjo. Punch a button and it begins to strum Dixie. If one didn’t know better, it would appear he’s actually playing the tune, a sort of legerdemain. But inside the box is a tiny machine that plays the banjo, and not the skeleton. How easily we’re tricked.

Then there’s the fable about the bantam rooster, the barnyard blowhard, who convinced the other chickens that the sun comes up only because of his crowing. The ruse worked well, and even he believed it. But one day he overslept, and the sun rose anyway. So much for illusion and delusion.

Currently occupying a big white house in Washington is a very big rooster. He’s the reigning potentate of the chaotic barnyard and crows a lot with twitter, early and often. The sun comes up with his twitters and seismic events occur. His crowing drowns out most of the lesser cackling among the other barnyard chickens. Big Rooster controls the barnyard dialogue. What if he overslept?

I’m taking this opportunity to crow a little myself. There was a time, a time long ago, when I envisioned myself a runner. I ran several fifty-mile events, more endurance marathons than races. Why did I do such a thing? I asked myself, and so did others. My best answer was Because.

Remember when we were children, riding our broomstick horses, our rocking hobby horses or flying on our witch’s broom? We tricked ourselves. We really carried what we thought carried us.

Humanity won’t cease trying to discover what lies behind the Why’s in life. The philosopher Pascal said, “(t)he heart has reasons which the reason does not know. It’s the heart that feels God, not the reason.”

Someone said we beg, borrow or steal a few rags of reason to understand our Why’s. We get paralyzed in the process; and our actions are muted. And we find ourselves going around in endless circles, coming no closer to the truth than when we began.

If there’s a reason and a reward in life, who can understand Why? Because is the oldest reason, the safest one and the strongest one.

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And you can make a safe bet that tomorrow the sun will rise, no matter who’s crowing. Why? Because.


Bud Hearn
August 2, 2019