Digressions of a Dilettante

Digressions of a Dilettante
Vignettes of Inanity by Bud Hearn

Thursday, November 19, 2009

The Harvest Homecoming

“There’s nothing better for a man, than that he should eat and drink, and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labor…that it was from the hand of God.” Ecclesiastes 2:24

Thanksgiving…the very concept conjures up an evocative nostalgia. A silent bell tolls in our hearts, reviving the infused pilgrim spirit inherited from the Plymouth Plantation. Tradition is removed from the closet and dusted off in anticipation of another year of family togetherness.

Soon the vast dispersion will begin, that obligatory migration for millions of families making a pilgrimage. Expressways and airports will be clogged, folks in a hurry, tempers short, children exhausted, courtesies abandoned. With luck they will arrive, this swarm of family locusts, descending on the old home place with one thought in mind: The Thanksgiving Dinner!

The year’s final harvest is in. Not that most have any sweat equity in it. Why toil? Now it’s too easy to purchase the fruits of another’s labor. In fact, harvests today bear little resemblance to harvests of a bygone era. Few remain who recall the days when mules were tractors, the days of smokehouse hams and sausages, the days of syrup-making and pumpkin gathering---days when the air was crisp, the grass frosty…days before irrigation, genetic seed engineering and perennially imported harvests.

Former harvests were unpredictable, subject to whims of nature, caterpillars and rife with the sweat of hard labor. In those days serious supplications were made for Divine favor, unlike the easy platitudes now uttered. Today the term “harvest” has lost its strength. Our hands, soft without blisters, give us away. Cash is our reaping scythe.

At the Plymouth Plantation, 1621, the harvest was hard-earned from the hardscrabble earth. The community pooled their resources and labor to eke out a living. “Thanksgiving” meant gratitude then! Plus, it was not secular like the multitude of pagan harvest festivals. It was a genuine thanksgiving to the Creator for the land’s bounty. Imagine yourself at this first Puritan Thanksgiving.

Honey, get up, light the fire, get out of the kitchen and do your hunting thing... and don’t come back here without a turkey or smelling like beer,” the woman said. “And on your way out shake the kids…I need more fire wood. Now!” Women ruled the roost then, as now, on Thanksgiving. Men fled the kitchens. Candles flickered in the homes of the small plantation as the day dawned and preparation was made for the harvest celebration. The community was alive with jubilation, and scents of cooking food wafted in the cold November air. Laughter echoed as men passed around jugs of cider by the village fires. Football had yet to be invented.

Even the indigenous savages showed up, bearing an abundance of turnips, corn and fish. By noon the village was assembled, thanks given to the Almighty for the bounty of another year, and the feast began. Somehow feasts are more enjoyable with a crowd.

Yet most are indifferent to the idea of a communal Thanksgiving. Churches and charities do their best to feed the hungry, but it represents only the essence of the communal spirit. We are a nation of individuals, gathering with friends and family in smaller assemblages. We are segregated from the egalitarian life of our communities, and as a consequence we fail to reap their intrinsic strengths.

Notwithstanding, it remains a warm celebration of congeniality and reunion, and a time of remembrance. Yes, to remember the “old days,” to remember the ones who have passed on, those who have moved on and those who remain. And a remembrance of happy times, to laugh, and maybe even cry a little.

Thanksgiving would be incomplete without the often comedic dysfunctional aspects of family homecomings. After a few days of “catching up,” and with everyone sick of turkey and dressing, and often each other, the party breaks up and the crowd heads home.

With packed cars, abundant hugs and a few turkey sandwiches to go, the weary pilgrims depart and join the returning throngs, cursing the traffic and vowing never to do it again…until next year, that is.

Next year has arrived, and the Tradition of Thanksgiving is alive again in our hearts. Yes, another Thanksgiving Harvest in our Land of Freedom…and all that a gift from the Beneficent Hand of God. Remember that…and remember to thank the turkey for giving its last, full measure of devotion !

Bud Hearn
November 19, 2009

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Choking on a Bone

“I’m diggin’ up bones…exhuming things that’s better left alone…Yeah, tonight I’m sitting alone diggin’ up bones.” Randy Travis

It wasn’t a big bone, but it cost $150 and got hung up in my craw for two weeks. I had hoped to dislodge it somehow, but it just hung there in suspended animation, making life miserable.

It was a very common bone, one called a “bone of contention.” You’ve had ‘em, right? When it happens, we quickly find someone, or something, to blame, whereupon we resurrect that so-called “bone-to-pick” cliché, justifying ourselves but polluting our life.

Since blame for the bone is elsewhere, I found two perpetrators to persecute. (Well, I guess if I were honest, I might admit some fault. At least I was the one who was choking on the bone.) I even began to write my obituary, certain that this bone would finish me off for good. Here’s how it happened.

It was a dark, rainy day in the city. I was ready to head to the coast, to escape the “rap and hip-hop Mecca.” My sleep had been fractured, dream-induced, quite possibly from the garlic overload I’d had the evening before. I packed my bag, spun the cylinder of the pearl-handled S & W Special 38 calibre pistol and shoved it in my belt (Americans are armed to the teeth, you know). An orange sticker was pasted on the car window, “This Car has been Immobilized.” The two yellow boots stared in mocking scorn, “Gotcha, you idiot…park where you should!”

The car had been “booted” in the apartment complex of my Atlanta residence. I called and soon the “technician” showed up, saying, “Sir, that’ll be $150.” No amount of argument would convince this fellow of my rights as a tenant…it seemed I had parked one space from my assigned space. Small mistake. Now, let me say, no one knows the amount of rage or violent behavior possible in a normally humble human such as I. Read on.

I stepped back, advising the man to remain in his vehicle, which was also soon to be immobilized. The 38 held six rounds, one empty chamber, one for each tire, and the last one for the man if he stepped out. With vindictive glee I fired a round into each of the four tires on his vehicle, and with a swoosh it sank onto the concrete. I blew the smoke from the barrel. The man remained silent, in shock, frozen.

Now, pal, get out, remove those boots from my car…I have one round left, a lead-tipped hollow point with your name on it. While my 38 is not a Dirty Harry 40 calibre, it’s heavy-duty enough to make your day special, or, at your option, end it,” I said. He obeyed. When the boots were removed, he fled, along with my $150. That’s when I choked on the bone. “I want my money back, you swine,” I shouted to no avail. Sirens wailed, nearer. I sped away.

Suddenly I woke from that wild dream. What was I thinking? Would I have done this, and for $150? Possibly. But thankfully that part was only a dream. The bone remained lodged in its place.

I pleaded innocence to the apartment manager, who verbally assaulted the owner of the booting company (women managers are expert in this!), who promised to return my money. Days passed, no money came. The bone got larger. I continued to pester the owner and the property manager, reminding them I had rights and the possibility of violence if I didn’t get my money back. “It’s in the mail,” was the repetitious retort. The mail never showed, and my bone grew.

I sought advice from others. “Forget it, move on,” some said. Others, “Forgive.” Some rationalized, “Maybe the owner’s mother was dying and he needed the money.” Advice failed, the bone remained. Finally, with one desperate plea to the manager, I owned up that we all shared blame: the apartment for improperly marking the spaces, the booter for not recognizing my parking permit and me for parking one space from the designated space.

Funny thing about confession…the bone instantly dislodged. She called the booter, he delivered my $150, and I parked in the right space. After this misadventure, we all lived happily ever after.

Is there an epilogue? Possibly. Below the surface of the human psyche lurks extreme violence…be careful with garlic and loaded weapons!

Bud Hearn
November 12, 2009

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Zen and the Art of Dog Washing

The Chinese Buddhists got close…but there’s no faster way of achieving sudden enlightenment than through the washing of dogs.

Of course, the Chinese only skinned them to roast on a spit for dinner. But not Americans. We’ve found something strangely soothing in the cleansing of dogs, a superior method of transcending rational thought. There’s no need to sit in painful postures muttering mindless mantras gleaned from fortune cookies in dog Latin to attain the apex of human reasoning.

Perhaps you’ve tried raising your thought process while scrubbing your mutt and watching on TV the nadir of all humanity, Glenn Beck, and his rabid, paroxysmal fascination with a red hotline to nowhere. Alaska Sen. Stevens and once-governor Palin meditated and stoked each other’s fantasies on a bridge to nowhere. Some suggested it was the zenith of illumination possible for these two artic artifacts, relics of the ice age era before common sense had been discovered.

The reigning Prince of paparazzi photo-opts, the POTUS Grin Master, continues to strut in ethereal mid-air over a chasm supported by Marxist enchantments, ginning up an esoteric canticle of “bridge of hope, we can, we can, we can.” Following blindly in his march to nowhere is a mesmerized, chanting mob of witless and weak-minded minions. Anybody with one brain cell wouldn’t Zen into such bunk!

While washing doggies is sometimes comedic, it still exceeds such human idiocy. Dog lovers everywhere recommend it for comic relief. Tonight I washed two Westies, black with dirt from the day’s pursuit of moles and lizards. Tenderly I coaxed them, one by one, into the laundry sink spa, a bubble bath, foaming with bath salts and shampoo. Did they like it? What do you think? We were all in the Zen Zone!

Once in, I transcended the Dog Whisperer, praising them on their transformation from a dog to an angel or a snowflake or a cumulus cloud. Emerson and Thoreau were resurrected right there in the laundry room while my own mental dirt and grime fell off. We entered the world of the Transcendentalists.

Anita Dunn, the President’s communication director, said by some to have been the former chamber maid to Deepak Chopra, was recently overheard quoting some mantra from Mao Zedong. In rhythmic chants of a Vedic hymn, over and over, she uttered something along the lines of, “energy has been too cheap for too long,” all the while seated at the feet of Green Zen Master Gore. The Press can’t be trusted to report accurately these days, so the exact context of this may be suspect.

Seekers of this higher plain of Zen thought include the rich and famous as well. Today it was reported that the Omaha Oracle, Sir Buffett of Berkshire, has purchased another railroad. Supposedly he got this Awakening while sitting in a lotus position upon the rails in the recent full moonlight in Folkston, Georgia, the train-switching Mecca of America. Others speculated he had finally transcended a youthful paranoia caused by his mother who refused to allow him to play choo choo with toy trains after the age of 40, and this was payback. Hoaxes abound.

This opens another can of meditative worms…the recent hoaxes. Balloon Boy, for example. Such enlightenment often comes in strange places, like the attic. While the balloon was sailing helplessly across the mid-western plains, balloon boy was chomping on a Dominos Delivers. On the inside flap of the box was the pizza mantra, a devilish diction devised by the in-house guru of gruyere, “Pepperoni is Portnoy’s Portal to Power.” The net result of this hoax, of course, was the enlightenment of the American citizenry, who have finally reached that state of Nirvana where they realize that they’ve been gamed all along.

Zen and the Art of Dog Washing. You don’t get it? Try this. Zen and Art are creative acts, ways to zone out of the cumulative effects of life’s dirt and grime. Though temporary and transitory, the reconnection to the undefiled inner child produces a cleansing Illumination.

Don’t have a dog? Shame. Then try baseball---a close second. It beats Beck, and that’s Zen of the utmost reformation!

Bud Hearn
November 5, 2009

Monday, November 2, 2009

The Reluctant Turkey

I am a turkey, born, or rather, hatched…a freak of nature. Not of choice, mind you, for who has a choice? These things happen. This is my story of Thanksgiving

I hatched in 28 days like the others. But I suspected something was wrong when I heard my family wailing and gnashing their beaks, “What went wrong, mama…have you been tom-turkeying around the barnyard? Is it a rara avis? Let’s name it R. T.”

I soon figured out the problem. Turkey poults grow rapidly. I didn’t. All that grew was my neck and my snool, a sporty red beard. While my peers grew large in girth and chest, I grew long in neck, big in head.

I was an anorexic hatchling. Since someone is always to blame for everything, I accused my ancestry, a cross-breed of the Bourbon breed of New Orleans and the Royal Palm sophisticates of South Florida. I’m a living example of a gene gone wild.

Life deals the cards—our role is to play the hand dealt. I drew a bad hand and was a constant embarrassment. I was a nerd from the get-go with a keen sense for survival. Let’s just say nature shorted me on one hand but made up for it on the other.

Being scrawny and bow-legged, I was the playground piñata for every bully and insecure jerk tom who called me names, like “runt, pencil-neck and skinny.” I got no respect. Even the hens fled when I approached, giggling as they ran. My mama escorted me to turkey school, a daily embarrassment.

I wasn’t invited to play the barnyard turkey games. Those were reserved for the NFL wannabe’s. They were the big eaters who hung out in the jock dorm, bragging of their pumped-up pecs and heavy bench presses. The rest of us roosted on a fence.

Being a loner, I observed turkey nature and realized quickly that something was not right in this barnyard. I was always a picky eater, an herb and salad guy, despising the turkey chow. I grew little while the others swelled to prodigious proportions overnight.

Twice a day the feed wagon arrived. Hormone-infused turkey chow was emptied into feeding troughs by burly men with long beards. It put a South Georgia thanksgiving buffet to shame. The men would say, “Now, you birds eat up, ya hear? Thanksgiving’s getting close,” patting their bellies and laughing. I once tasted the cuisine, but it had the aroma of poison.

I was as skinny as a starving monk, but smart. I knew there’s no such thing as a “free lunch,” or free anything. I kept warning this ignorant and gluttonous brood, “Boys and girls, this food isn’t free…there’s a catch.” No one listened.

One fall day a white truck with wire cages entered the barnyard. The bib-overall boys bounded out and opened the gate. Me? I slinked to the back corner of the yard, knowing something evil was about to go down. A beautiful White-breed turkey emerged from a cage, and the jock-toms went stark raving mad. I knew what they had in mind. But it was a trick. This was not an ordinary turkey…this hen had experience, you could tell.

She pranced around the yard, enraging the hens and arousing the toms. Fights ensued, feathers flew in the frenzy as the toms assaulted one another for her attention. The hens bristled. The toms had only one hen in mind now. I crouched further into the shadows of the barn, watching this turmoil and thinking, “This ain’t natural.”

Soon one of the men began to cluck and yelp on a turkey call. The White hen sashayed seductively towards the truck, followed mindlessly in a collective swoon by the food-anesthetized toms. The hens could not tolerate losing their toms to this hussy, so they marched proudly behind them onto the truck with its open, waiting prisons.

I kept quiet, stayed low. I knew all along what she was…a Judas turkey, herding these ignorant birds off to where nothing good would happen. The free feed bag was over…the bill had come due. I felt sorrow for them.

Here I was, abandoned and alone in this big, deserted barnyard. I longed for companionship. There was none. I slept in the empty jock dorm, still smelling of turkey musk, wondering about tomorrow.

Tomorrow came. Feeling safe, I strutted, scratching up what few herbs remained. The white truck pulled up again. The burley men opened the door. Down the shoot came a fresh crop of young Narragansett hens. What’s this, I wondered, sitting on the fence post. They looked around the yard, then at me. What, were they were attracted to R. T.?

Observing the approaching tableau, Roy Orbison began to sing to me, “Pretty women, don’t you on walk on by, pretty women, don’t you make me cry, pretty women, you look lovely as can be, are you lonely just like me?”

Thanksgivings come in many ways. “Here I am, girls, R. T., the barnyard stud.” Now that’s my idea of Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to you, and strut proudly in your own barnyard…gobble, gobble. R. T.

November 2,2009