Digressions of a Dilettante

Digressions of a Dilettante
Vignettes of Inanity by Bud Hearn

Thursday, April 29, 2010

Second Guessing

Life is a gamble with incredible odds; if it were a bet, you wouldn’t take it.” Wisdom from a Fortune Cookie

There is an evil under the sun common among men. It’s called “second guessing,” a useless exercise. We all do it, but one gender has elevated the trait to an art form, while the other writhes in remorse at the repercussions. Which would pose interesting speculations best suited at high tea or on the sofa of a shrink where blame could always be deflected and ascribed elsewhere.

We wonder, is life a guess, a game of chance? A roll of the dice? Probabilities impossible to calculate? Actuarial statistics dreamed up by madmen attempting to subvert nature with subterfuge? A casino gamble? What’s the use of a second guess, unless the first one failed? Oh, the dilemma!

At Dawg U., Statistical Analysis was a core course, inflicted upon undergrads to overcome in order to graduate. I say “overcome,” because it took two tries for me. It was one of those abstract subjects best grasped by the left side of the brain. Apparently my family’s DNA lacked this brain function.

On my first attempt a D appeared on the roster beside my name. Since it was not an F, I assumed in naiveté the D stood for Done. Wrong. So I second guessed my first choice of day school, deciding night school offered a higher probability of success. A good decision.

Night school is a wonderful invention to overcome the intellectual inadequacies of idiots and for purging the undergrad pipeline. Especially for classes like Statistical Analysis. Attendees were mostly exhausted workers or inept frat boys spending daddy’s money gambling and guzzling inebriants. Most of them are now CEO’s on the Fortune 500 list. Besides a couple of accountant types (one I recognize on the White House staff), I was the only one who stayed awake. So, the curve grading got me an A, supposedly meaning Awake, since I was still, statistically speaking, an imbecile.

But I digress. Why do we second guess? Usually in defense of the failed first guess. Who can deny it’s impossible to make an “educated” guess today, what with the information overload available on the internet. But really, is all that info any better than the simple “luck of the draw,” or “right place, right time?” No. There’s never enough info! The internet is a diversion, devised by the inventor of the leaf blower…a lot of noise and a little bit of work.

Drilling down deep in my right-sided brain, I considered “intuition.” You know, decisions based on feelings. At least if a second guess is necessary it could be blamed on a glitch in the spiritual communication with a higher power speaking through the medium of a carrot. Something or someone to blame must always be our backup plan in second guesses.

Don’t forget “instinct,” that fixed pattern of behavior that responds to certain stimuli. Kinda like your dog…you never have to second guess his hot button--food. As evolutionary creatures, we drag around certain innate motivations, like personal pronouns…I, me, my and such. With such greedy and fearful companions, how can we ever advance beyond the small universe of our self?

Now consider the epitome of all equivocations…“primal motivations.” Here at last may be the clue that leads us to the second-guessing pinnacle of truth. Examine the word “primal” closely. Recognize your lineage? That’s right…humans belong to the same group of primates as monkeys and apes. Only difference is we’ve come down from the trees. Some of us.

So here we are, faced with the ultimate truth that time is going to run out on us. Second guess your decisions all you want, but remember the very hairs of our heads are numbered, which would presuppose that our names have numbers on them as well. So spin the roulette wheel… it’ll get us back to Statistical Analysis.

That abysmal class taught me one peculiar truth---too much cogitation leads to insanity. Its iron rod will beat the joy, mystery, thrill and excitement from life. Buy the ticket, take the ride. Roll the dice and let the chips fall where they may…Just Do It, and leave second guessing to history.

Bud Hearn
April 29, 2010

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Yesterday’s Mirror

“He had tried all forms of escape from life, finally reverting to the final refuge of delusion…” Anonymous

Delusion is irrefutably a refuge from reality. We’ve all resorted to this fortress at one time or another. Many live there permanently. Why? It’s a comfortable place where we’re not assailed by actualities. While it may be a Five Star resort, the price of the stay is steep.

My old running buddy, Mike, is a remnant of an old and venerable Pennsylvania Mafia family whose mirror broke decades ago. He’s known to many of you as “The Nose.” He recently sent me an interesting email. He had apparently spent too much time looking into yesterday’s mirror while drinking cheap Chianti and ruminating about “the old days.” The mirror was a photo album, and he had unearthed some photos from back into 1980’s when things were different with his body.

He commenced to carry on about how buff, toned and bronzed his torso was. The date was not mentioned. The photos he referred me to were shots we’d made of ourselves, narcissistic, I admit, while we were biking all of Cumberland Island. Our House of Refuge was the Greyfield Inn, and it’s easy to get carried away on that front porch after a gourmet meal and fine, aged scotch.

I decided to also join him in that trip into the past, so I pulled out several of my old photo albums and looked into that mirror. Now, it’s really difficult to remember without some aid the events of certain days and years. Photos help jog the memory. I found the very ones he had been viewing. And yes, we were hunks, which, I think, is the vernacular today. (Delusion has no boundaries, be warned!) But that was then, and this is now.

I found many shots of my wife, children, friends and family scattered throughout, and almost without exception each photo brought back memories of the “good old days.” For a couple of hours I rummaged through my own house of refuge, wandering the halls and dusty, unused rooms of that desolate museum. There were some silly ones of the 1970’s when polyester, bell-bottoms and long hair were the style. Oh, if we could have then seen ourselves in the mirror of the future…hilarious!

I especially liked some when I was in my athletic prime, like snippets of my soccer coaching career, when I could actually participate with the children and could compete. That was real delusion! Then there were the inevitable beach shots, where only a small garment separated nudity from decorum, and when nobody was embarrassed at strutting their stuff. In retrospect, who didn’t look great in those days?

I responded to Mike that I found a recent shot of him in a bathing suit, and what had once clung tightly to his massive Italian chest now hung limply around his flaccid belly. When living in the house of delusion there are some rooms that should be locked forever…this was clearly one. His emails suddenly went silent. Either he passed out in the rocker from Chianti anesthetization, or he retired to bed.

Today I received what I’d call a “sober” response to my last communiqué. Mike allowed that he awoke from the bizarre dreams of the house of delusion into the light of today. An epiphany, he called it. More clothes, he said, should be worn at this age at the shore, and large fines imposed on all who violate this rule. We both agreed that the flowing robes of the Arabs had much to offer our population.

The house of delusion has many mirrors. Like Disney World, with its caricatures and make-believe, it is a rather exciting place to visit. But it is not a good place to call home. The Portrait of Dorian Gray was Oscar Wilde’s opium-induced creation into the surreal world of the house of delusion. The picture became old, decrepit, disgusting, while Dorian himself remained young and vital…a freak of nature.

I suppose we should be happy to have a variety of means of looking at life from other angles, and photo albums are a great mirror to keep things in perspective. But I warn you, as I admonish myself, before you go there, BYOB, and leave Chianti for the Italians. You’ll be glad you did.

Bud Hearn
April 22, 2010

Friday, April 16, 2010

There’s Power in Water

I was never a long-term memoirist, or keeper of diaries. I did that once, some 35 years ago, when I was trying to find out who I was. A box of yellow pads later, I was no closer to a discovery than when I had begun, so I abandoned that particular search and moved on with life. Life always reveals more about ourselves than the dredging up of memories and bones out of the past.

As promised, I won’t bore you with memories of my recent hospital experience. As far as I know, everyone has had hospital experiences, which I have discovered are not always pleasant and sometimes comedic. Mostly it’s best to appreciate what hospitals do, and leave it at that. Besides, nobody wants to hear your experiences anyway.

Besides the mind-numbing, second-by-second life that creeps by, broken by constant interruptions for blood, ekg’s, vitals and attempts to gorge you with disgusting vanilla pudding, life in the place has a rhythm all of its own. I think it’s safe to say that one of two things happen there—death or release. But whichever, one never emerges the same as they went in. Neither did I this time.

The nursing staff at Southwest Georgia Medical Center was superb. It takes a special person to do that job. I have a deeper respect for them today. Deborah was a nurse’s assistant, and her job was to take my vital signs. In and out at regular intervals she’d come. Rotund, jolly and near my age, she seemed determined not to let the hospital environment get her or her patients depressed. She did that by exercising her innate, effervescent personality.

Helloooooo, Mr. Hearn,” she’d sing out as she entered the room. “How are you today? Are you feeling better? You look great. You’ll soon be going home.” Most of the time I felt neither good nor that I was ever going home again, but her cheery voice made me want to. She’d always ask if I wanted some water.

What’s with the water business, Deborah?” I asked. “Lordy, Lordy, Mr. Hearn, don’t you know? There’s power in water.” I had to let that sink in. “What do you mean, Deborah?” I asked. As if on a stage, she would strut around, pretending to be in a shower, rubbing her tummy, and singing “Amazing Grace.” She continued, “Now, if you’re thirsty, you can drink anything, but nothing quenches thirst like water. And if a baby cries, you can put it in a tub of warm water, and it goes to sleep. There’s power in water.” Who could argue that?

She would dance out as cheery as she danced in, and I must admit there were a couple of times I wondered what she had been mixing with her water. But with nothing to do but watch the second hand on the massive overhanging clock, and yield some blood from time to time, I gave the idea some consideration.

True, there is power in water. Just think about the fact that most of the world, and the human body, for that matter, is made up of water. Nothing survives without it. Think of the oceans and large rivers that carry commerce, that turn electrical turbines, rains that wash clean the earth, holy waters for baptizing, waters that quench the earth’s burning crust and the everyday uses we make of water. Truly, it has power.

What is the greatest power of water I questioned? Notwithstanding the great powers of water, which are undeniable, the one essential dynamic that supersedes all others is that water has the unique ability to “get small.” That’s right, to get small, to permeate. There’s not a microbe living on this planet that does not require water for its survival. And water has the ability to answer to that essential, universal need.

Thank you, Deborah, for reminding me that there’s power in water. I’m passing it on. Amen!

Bud Hearn
April 15, 2010

Thursday, April 1, 2010

Images of Easter

“…that men may rise on stepping stones of their dead selves to higher things.”
Tennyson, In Memoriam

The Imagery of Easter…in what ways is the pageantry understood, how do we wrap our arms around it, understand its message, its power? Can we, with finite minds and feeble hands, grasp the reality of resurrection? We each have our own instincts, our sixth sense of spiritual esoterica. What’s yours?

Perhaps it’s a child, smiling with a basket filled with Easter eggs, hidden by the Easter Bunny. Or maybe it’s ladies in brightly-colored hats and pastel dresses in church. Perhaps it’s family gatherings, dinners with biscuits and ham and deviled eggs, or sunrise services, or choirs singing Christ the Lord is Risen Today. Perhaps all of these.

My images of Easter changed with age. Easter eggs were replaced by other things. But they remain vivid in my mind. Tuesday, in the Baptist Church service, I sat beneath an Easter lily. It brought to remembrance a dear friend, Paul Rogers, who died at 49, whose expression of Easter was with white lilies. On the steps of our home would always be an Easter lily, or at Christmas a Poinsettia.

The cross, draped with purple linen, is a powerful symbol of Easter. In Atlanta, our Methodist Church erected on the front lawn a 14 foot cross of rough-hewn beams. On Easter Sunday it is transformed by thousands of multi-colored flowers placed by the congregation. It was a stunning symbol of new birth that Easter epitomizes.

Jesus knew our limitations, and on several occasions demonstrated in real-time life the fact of resurrection. The awaking of Lazarus is one such event (John 11). Jesus delayed his arrival. Lazarus died, was entombed for four days. Martha, Lazarus’ sister, couldn’t grasp the meaning of Jesus’ words, “I am the resurrection and the life; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?” She did, but like us, needed something more solid than words.

At the tomb Jesus said, “Take the stone away.” He prayed as a hush fell upon the expectant crowd. Then he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come forth, and he that was dead came forth…” Place yourself among the crowd. What would have been your thoughts? What images would you have taken away from that empty tomb that day?

Recently I walked among the oaks at Epworth, a Methodist religious retreat dating to the days of James Oglethorpe and John and Charles Wesley, founders of Methodism. I found myself in the Joe Harvey Memorial Garden beneath the white marble statue of a resurrected Jesus Christ with outstretched arms. The garden gave testimony to a man, Joe Harvey, who lived a life of faith until his recent death.

Both Joe Harvey and Paul Rogers were infused with the spirit of an inextinguishable life. They realized that resurrection was a possibility every day, and that while God may not grant to us overcoming life, He does grant to us life as we overcome. These two men overcame the worst that this life could do to them--death--and left for us in their own ways images of the resurrected life. In their statements of faith, they joined Abel, of whom it is said “…and by it (his sacrifice in faith), he, being dead, yet speaketh.”

John Donne penned his image of Easter in these words from the poem, "Death Be Not Proud" saying, “Death be not proud, though some have called thee mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so, for those whom thou thinkest thou dost overthrow die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me…” He believed that death was swallowed up in victory.

The scars of Christ are stark, visible images of death. While we all bare the scars of life, Christ has shown us how to transcend their power by faith. That is the reality of the recurring resurrection. Death’s cold sneer, as hard as stone, makes a cruel mockery of the frailty of faith. Many have stood beside the raw, red earth of a new grave, trying to grasp the reality of their faith, and doubting. It’s the human condition.

Lazarus, come forth,” is the clarion call to each of us. It’s a call to leave our dark worlds of doubt and allow the rebirth of life to raise us to higher things. May the empty tomb revitalize your Image of Easter this week, as we move from the gloom of Good Friday to the Sunrise of Easter Resurrection. And may you experience in a profound way the reality of the resurrection.

Happy Easter to each of you. And I don’t think our Lord would hold it against the Easter Bunny for his role in our lives!

Bud Hearn
Easter, April 4, 2010