Strings

Botanical gurus think oranges are the fruit that fall from the Tree of Life. There may be credence to this thought. But often they come with too many strings attached.

**********

This morning I’m having an orange for breakfast to test the merit of this fact. It takes an eternity to pull its strings off. Everything comes with strings attached.

Age teaches that the Tree of Life produces its own share of strings. Its garden is a phantom of mythic proportions. It grows tares along with wheat. Like the proverbial box of chocolates, one knows only when they take a bite.

It takes on the same aura of Ponce de Leon’s Fountain of Youth, said to be located in the vicinity of Tallahassee, FL. Having grown up nearby, I can assure you that Tallahassee is noted for producing short-lived, pontificating politicians who do Botox and who occasionally run for President.

The Tree of Life is dangerous. In fact, most trees are dangerous. Some have found themselves hanging by the neck from one. Quick adjudication avoids stringing justice along. Of course, these unfortunates would have observed it from a safe but ethereal distance. Be careful what you eat from this tree.

Based on the consequences of its fruit, one might suspect the gardener had ulterior motives in planting it in the center of the orchard. I’ll bet it was of the genus of Kardashian, a seductive Venus robed in leaf’s clothing that sheds regularly.

It probably produced beautiful but provocative blossoms in the spring, like the cherry trees in Washington. Beauty often disguises the dangers inherent in the allure of perfume and glamour, not to mention the perilous but captivating political prigs who wear baggy pant suits.

There’s a perpetuating myth about the first person who set foot in this particular garden. Rumor has it that a female was the culprit who ill-advisably set into motion this current world’s mess. Just rumor. Had there been emails in this era, she would probably have kept hers on a secret server. Red lipstick and illicit cash keep a lot of strings hidden.

Poetic license can expose a lot of strings. But like the string of consequences from most lusty appetites, there’s always a willing co-conspirator. In balancing the debacle and casting blame equitably, remember that the dumb farmer gobbled up his share of the enchanting orange, strings and all.

‘Dumb farmer’ is a condescending term. It’s best applied in rare instances where innuendos suggest culpability. There’re many kinds of farmers. Fish farmers, worm farmers, peanut farmers and Colorado seed farmers. A few farmers even sow words. The ‘word farmers’ are not agronomists of this genre. Colorado crops notwithstanding, they know that speaking fees produce lucrative cash crops with less work than anything else.

All oranges, of course, are covered with a thick, but pliable skin. Ostensibly this is for protection from enemy. Everything has enemies. Just today, for example, the paper carrier entered this category. Not only is the news in the shrubs again, but it was bathed by an irrigation sprinkler. This should be the fate of most news these days.

Some orange skins are relatively easy to peel. Such is the thick-skinned but malleable Mandarin orange I’m currently enjoying. Unlike its cousins, the thin-skinned navels, the Mandarin sheds its clothing almost as fast as a nudist peels off for the pool.

The thin-skinned variety reminds me of certain people---usually small and full of seeds. Not all seeds are bad. The medicinal Colorado seeds, for example. Like pharmaceuticals, they come with long strings attached.

But orange seeds, well, they’re only good for one thing—spitting. Like melons, eating these oranges requires a lot of it. Young boys love to spit. Girls have not perfected the technique. It’s a necessary male rite of passage from puberty.

As boys age they ape adult men and tote pocket knives. Carving a hole in an orange allows one to suck out the juice. It’s the shortcut to avoid the seeds inside. Reminds one of the great sucking sounds of government entitlement programs. The public treasury is good compost. Just saying.

It’s tempting to peel away the layers of things and expose the strings attached. Money, prestige, power, beauty, lust…but why? Knowing too much is often a curse.

**********

Strings are attached to everything. We have no choice in the matter. Life comes packaged this way.

And come to think about it, so does Love. For better or worse, take it or leave it.

Bud Hearn
June 26, 2015

Cutting Corners

When does it begin, this business of cutting corners? My first recollection was in 4th grade. I had scribbled the math answers in the textbook before the oral exam. Things got ugly afterwards. So much for shortcuts.

**********

Along the way, cutting corners becomes habitual. It has a way of searing the conscience, which finally capitulates and rolls over like a dying roach.

The habit is harmless enough in youth. Shortcut paths across a neighbor’s grass are fine, kept at that. But open windows invite youthful curiosity. Voyeurism is a light sleeper. Some learning curves mature best over time.

There’s a bias in human nature that wants to round the corners of life. It lends credence that the earth is round, not square, though possibly triangular. This epiphany dawned on me several years ago while strolling across the commons of an Ivy League campus.

This august university is the progenitor of Progressivism, a mosh pit of Socialist thought. The place literally reeks of money. It boasts the largest number of billionaires in this country. The annual endowment of $36 billion rivals the speaking fees of the Clinton machine. It gives new meaning to their motto, Veritas. Sorry, got off track.

College Commons are typically square plots of grass. They’re designed for a nature experience, but mostly used for smoking and hooking up. What’s peculiar is that they are crisscrossed with triangles. One can only surmise that this particular institution wished to eliminate foot traffic from cutting corners and rutting the greenery. Enough rutting goes on there as it is.

Cutting corners is a sign of something—lazy comes to mind. Sometimes it’s expedient, like poking a thumb-in-the-eye of protocol. Taking shortcuts is not a bad thing necessarily, like slipping out the side door after church to avoid shaking the preacher’s germ-ridden hand.

Politicians, like most lawyers, have perfected the proliferation of shortcuts. No ink on paper avoids jail time and forestalls years of future litigation. Simple pointing, winks and nods are a superior form of writing between the lines. Legal legerdemain, so to speak.

But watch yourself when taking shortcuts with your government. It has sharp elbows and is a vicious machine with a long memory. It consists of tiny square boxes, each with a number and one for everybody. Its intent is to cram us in ours, tighten the screws and watch us squirm.

Its arcane statues are whips. They lash us. Its laws are nooses. They constrain our creative passions. Culture is its diversion, its circus clown. Its dance, its incessant drip, drip, drip of secular values, hypnotizes us. Our very souls swoon, mesmerized by its music of more money.

Conventionality is a death trap, disguised as a king in royal apparel. It’s the don’t-step-out-of-line cultural rebuke to iconoclasts who relish ripping the robes and revealing the Emperor’s nakedness. Individuality threatens vested interests.

Entrenched ideas and bureaucracy are enemies of shortcuts. Grid off the world into harsh corners…but the human spirit will continue to take the hypotenuse route of triangles. Try as any may, the human spirit cannot be defeated. It ever seeks the better way. Cutting corners finds them.

A couple of years ago, at age 72, I decided to take up the violin. My instructions to the teacher were, “Show me the fundamentals. I’ll take it from there.” Rebellious natures die hard.

To her credit, she’s a disciple of ‘the right way’—structured note-reading music. Her method didn’t suit me. Too much effort, not enough time. So I take the shortcut, using my ear for musical creativity. It seems to have worked, although it forever tortures Beethoven’s masterpiece, Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.

Last Sunday the New York Times printed excerpts from a few college commencement speakers. To a person their message to graduates warned against becoming stereotypical, and to follow their innate passions. Maybe there’s hope yet for more triangles.

**********

In the end, we each decide which corners to cut, which shortcuts to take, which rounding of the square that suits us.

But no matter how you slice the pie, it’s always a Triangle. Live dangerously, cut corners. But remember, in spite of all our efforts, a shortcut way to heaven has yet to be found. Stay with ‘the right Way.’

Bud Hearn
June 19, 2015

Something from Nothing

“….the earth was without form, and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep.”
Genesis 1:2

Some days are like being inside a cloud of thick fog—all white nothingness. Attempts to mentally find anything of substance are impossible.

It must have been on one of those days the poet wrote, “(V)ague and nebulous is the beginning of all things, but not its end.” Or something similar. Poets play with vague concepts. Yet, in that white chaos, it’s helpful to realize that haze is full of promise, just waiting to be discovered.

Deadlines for writers hover like death. They sit looking at an empty computer screen or a blank sheet of paper, searching for something to write. In those days ideas are harder to find than hen’s teeth.

For about nine years my Thursdays have begun by staring at an empty sheet of paper, or a set of white computer pixels that make the screen appear blank. This is the genesis of this Absurdity.

Empty is always the beginning. There’s just something about a blank slate that craves input. It calls, “Put something on me ~ words, numbers, drawings ~ or fold me into the shape of an airplane and sail me. Do something with me, now!”

Imagine being a blank sheet of paper. How would it feel if your life went unused, just wadded up and pitched at trash cans? Or run through a shredder to make parade confetti or other such ephemera posing as momentous events. Please! A blank sheet has infinite possibilities.

Everything starts out blank. We did, too ~ some may still be! So did this planet. Think of the untold number of possibilities that existed at the Big Bang of Creation. Imagine what could come from a totally blank universe page. Now look at it. Think of each person’s beginning as a blank sheet of paper. Impossible to comprehend with a finite mind.

All pages begin equal, but some more equal than others. Some become important, like The Bible, The Constitution, or The Gettysburg Address. Some amount to absolutely nothing. Some would be downright frightening ~ like fodder crammed into The New York Times.

I prefer blank computer screens. It eliminates the eraser and wipes the slate clean with no consequence. And ink on paper is better than pencil lead. Imagine a fancy invitation scribbled in pencil. Pencils, like flip phones, are relics of another era. Its devolution is rendered thusly: “Let’s pencil in the appointment instead of ‘ink it in.’”

Blank pages have other possibilities. Suppose someone has trashed you with some malicious gossip ~ why, you can write you several scathing replies, take out your anger and frustrations on paper and then trash them in the nearest shredder. There, don’t you feel better?

Blank bank deposit tickets provide wonderful possibilities. Sometimes when I’m bored I take a blank one and write insanely huge amounts on it. Pretending to be wealthy is better than caffeine. I envision myself presenting it to a bank teller, especially one showing a deposit of $10 billion dollars to my account. Imagine their shock. Sadly, this dream has yet to materialize.

That brings up another subject. Bank accounts. They can begin small with very little written on the deposit ticket, like $10.00. Yet, a bank account has the capacity to enlarge itself to infinity. It can’t be filled to capacity.

All of which may lead one to the ultimate use of paper ~ to print cash currency. This paper is highly decorative and has the effect of creating more emotional fervor than all the paper in the world. Yet, the irony is that while it starts out as a blank page, its value is based on nothing but a fiat faith ~ a huge blank page.

Many of us may be writing more checks than deposit tickets these days. But may I suggest a superior endeavor? Grab your blank page of faith and write something on it. Perhaps it is nothing more than a short note to a friend, a card to a child or a check to a charity. Your words will make your paper very happy, as well as the recipient.

A blank sheet of paper is a terrible thing to waste.


Bud Hearn
June 12, 2015