Digressions of a Dilettante

Digressions of a Dilettante
Vignettes of Inanity by Bud Hearn

Thursday, May 26, 2016

Dusting Erasers....Back to the Future


Walker Percy, once wrote, "(in) spite of the great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing." It doesn’t take much living to figure this out.

It’s that time of year ~ Graduation ~ when our educational systems turn out their inmates to the general public. Beware – everything is in danger!

It was the last day of school, May, 1955. I remember it well. It was the day I escaped the dreaded wooden paddle. You remember that ‘corrective’ device, right? The board, the one with three holes bored into it for effect. Apparently I had no idea of who I was, and a reminder of that fact was about to be administered to a tender part of my anatomy. For ‘good measure,’ you understand.

I remember this because my daddy told the teacher, “Honey, the boy just ain’t right. That’s all I can say.” He always called women ‘Honey.’ Either he couldn’t remember their names, or there was something more going on. We lived in the town that coined the concept of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’ She apparently bought the compliment and didn’t beat me within an inch of my life. Threats were always measured in inches in those days. Such reasoning remains obscure.

Looking back, I don’t think I ever thanked my father for this act of kindness. It must have been hard for him to admit that the imbecile gene ran in our family. But, I digress.

It’s a sultry South Georgia morning, hot and humid. A group of us sit outside on the back steps of the library, beating off boredom. We dust the felt erasers on the brick walls and on each other's heads. Imbeciles do this. Rectangular white remnants on the red bricks are our rebellious graffiti. The chalk marks are what remains of black-board wisdom the teachers had tried to cram into our granite-crusted brains. All dust. Metaphors are alien creatures to youth.

Students today don’t have to endure the chore of dusting erasers. It’s all digital now. The click of a keystroke, instantly, another year deleted, sent hurtling into cyber space. We threw erasers at one another…laptops are more valuable than erasers.

So here we are, waiting for the final bell to ring, signaling that school is over for the year. Summertime. Sweet freedom. I’m 13, graduating from the 8th grade, soon to be in the bottom class of high school. I wonder what the future holds.

Time marches on. On another hot May-day, our high school graduation occurs. It’s tough to figure who’s the happiest, teachers or students. My best friend and I drive the open-air jeep with no seat belts down to the creek to swim. It’s a bitter-sweet day. One thing’s over, another begins. Now we’re about to become college freshmen. The bottom again, the future still a mystery.

College graduation ends in May, too. Somehow I pop out of the Higher Ed pipeline and emerge in the ‘real world.’ I toast with beer, not a swim. The bright lights of the big city beckon. The diploma is my meal ticket to a fabulous future. So I think. Only I’m in the bottom of the next class---the Job Market. I keep wondering why the future is so amorphous.

In time the crisp diploma yellows. It’s relegated to a scrapbook. Nobody cares about it anymore. I move on without it. The realities of life assault me: job, marriage, children and mortgages. Summer vacations become occasional weekend escapes. The barefoot summers of youth vanish. I keep wondering what happened to the future I envisioned.

Years come and go. Age slows some things down, but life gains clarity. The fond memories of the Mays past make me kick back, savor some sweet tea and blow the brown gnats away. Even now the future remains a diffused mirror, uncertain of what’s looking back at you.

It’s funny, now that I think about it, that this one particular day remains fresh in my memory. The dust of those erasers held the essence of a whole school-year. With a few slaps on the wall, it’s gone. Poof. Vanished. Over. The whole year, wiped clean.

A lot of things have changed since that May in 1955. The red-brick school of my 8th grade has disappeared. Only memories remain.

It was a long time ago when we dusted erasers there. We wondered about the future, only to now discover that it ends in dust, just like residue of those erasers, and too soon. Much too soon.

Bud Hearn
May 26, 2016

Friday, May 13, 2016

The Voice of an Island


“But O for the touch of a vanish’d hand, and the sound of a voice that is still.” Tennyson

Stop! Put the magazine down. Walk outside. Stand still. Listen. Hear the sounds? It’s the voice of this island speaking.

Good. Now you can go back in and resume reading.

It’s summer, and the Island Choir is tuning up. It sings. Voices of an island, or any place, are everywhere. Night or day, the voices have a tongue all their own. The island is alive. It sings through a cacophony of sounds.

Life is everywhere. From Epworth to East Beach; Village Pier to Cannon’s Point; Light House to Tree Spirits; and Front lawn to Farmer’s Market. It mixes with morning walkers, cell-phone talkers and sidewalk bikers. The message is the same: “Get out, get out.”

Island voices are diverse. Sounds emanate from the wind, the ocean, the sands, the stars and the oak trees. The Pavarotti of them all is the still, quiet voice of the marshes. Its constant chorus is, “Welcome home.” With such a synthesis of voices, it’s difficult to hear them individually. They simply form the collective unity of a single choir.

Small-town churches know something about choirs. Faces from the choir loft gaze down from their perch above the pulpit. New singers mix with older, more seasoned ones, including the octogenarians who often sing a half-note off key. Their individual voices coalesce, forming a collective chorus even John Wesley would appreciate.

Today’s voices begin early for me. Mr. Coffee is awake and working. Teresa blows the horn, the signal she’s pitched the papers on the lawn. I shamble outside, leaving inside the fog of last night’s sleep.

I pause on the door stoop, observing the bird feeders. They teem with chatter and movement. A couple of squirrels scrounge beneath for left-overs or acorns left buried. Even small creatures need daily bread.

Bird feeders speak in their own way. With the exception of the jay birds, the others, seemingly irrespective of size, seem to co-exist on the seed portals. Jays are the feeder bullies, squawking incessantly their displeasure with interlopers.

Shards of sunlight streak through the magnolias. A slight breeze tickles the tops of the palm fronds. Nature is speaking to nature, “Wake up, wake up.” We who observe are only witnesses to this spectacle of life.

Those with screened porches know there’s no better place to sit and contemplate absolutely nothing. A porch rocking chair does wonders in helping to empty yesterday’s mental thoughts and prepare it to deal with today’s details.

Alas, there are other voices, ones that shatter the tenor of the island. Lawn mowers and leaf blowers, curses to endure, but necessary nonetheless. Everything has a voice.

The local farmers’ markets hold a daily symphony. Rows of boxes are filled with fresh produce. Alive and colorful, the fruit and vegetables sing of family dinners past and more to come.

Pat, the owner of one, is a friend. I asked her where the produce comes from. She said mostly small farms in South Georgia. She said under her shed the hands of many people join in a common connection…growers, harvesters, deliverers and purchasers. She affirms we’re all part of a larger community.

It’s easy to hear the multiple voices of an island on the beach. The unforced rhythm of a slow beach walk speaks to all of our physical senses. We can experience it, but we cannot hurry it. Anxiety has no place in nature’s pace.

Yesterday I sat outside at the local bakery savoring a cinnamon donut. Across the street, Fourteenth Street snakes down to Neptune Park. It’s still a short dirt street, one of those that meanders around the oak trees. A couple strolls down it, holding hands and looking at each other. Clearly, love was the subject of their voices.

What exactly is the voice of an island anyway? Is it not each of us who join to sing a part? Perhaps it’s only a small part, and maybe we often sing a half-note off key. Yet in the larger sense we’re members of an enormous choir. Our individual voices echo the voice of an island every moment.

New faces and voices regularly join the Island Choir and mingle with the old, familiar ones. But collectively we all sing the familiar tune of Amazing Grace, which is perhaps the reason we’re all here.


Bud Hearn
May 13, 2016
Copyrights 2016

Friday, May 6, 2016

Out of the Blue


Things happen. Events occur without explanation, often right ‘out of the blue.’

**********

Three of us are having lunch at Sandy Bottoms, the local bagel restaurant. Strange name for a place where cream cheese multiplies itself while sitting on a stool. The subject of life’s inconsistencies comes up. We all have stories to tell.

Scott, our insurance agent, slathers his garlic bagel with cream cheese, takes a bite and begins to talk. (Garlic bagels are nature’s cure for loosening the tongue.)

He reflects on our first introduction. “It was a dark day when you called.”

“How so?” we ask.

Well, I needed desperately to rent my vacant office. The bank was breathing down my neck and I was tight for cash. Foreclosure was on the horizon.”

Go on, brother, unload that burden,” I say.

OK,” he says. “See, I had a business partner for ten years. We were friends, even neighbors. We made a lot of money, borrowed even more. What’s worse, my ‘friend’ knifed me in the back, took our biggest account and started his own business. I was left with only the bills.”

A descriptive expletive forms on his lips, but disappears with a bite of his garlic bagel. Garlic replaces anger with smiles. Especially with wine.

I consider lecturing him on the evils of debt, but why load more baggage to the poor, suffering soul? I zip my lips and bite into the salt bagel.

He continues. “I put an ad in the paper and nobody called. I was about to tell the bank to foreclose. Then you call, right out of the blue, just in the nick of time. I was about to be hung out to dry. You saved me by renting the office.” His nervous breakdown is averted.

I fight back the tears. Well, not really. Men rarely cry, except when George Jones sings, “He Stopped Loving Her Today.” Besides, I can’t recall ever having ‘saved’ anybody. It’s hard enough to salvage myself from wreckage.

Some events have no plausible explanation. It’s difficult to accept the reality of what cannot be rationally explained. The phone rings. A voice speaks. Like a rock dropping in a pond, ripples radiate out. Suddenly, things have inalterably changed. Think about it.

But don’t be surprised. Random rules the universe. Accept it. No algorithm, no formula to figure out. Just buy into the simple notion that if we show up, something’s going to happen. It’s a weird blueprint.

We dismiss the haphazard happenings as fortuitous, like a master lottery system in the blue. We define them as ‘good,’ or ‘bad.’ They’re both, a continuum of the zero-sum game of give and take until the end. And who can say what happens in the end, except that there is an ending, for sure.

Our faith in serendipity is fractured by the scientific-based mindset. We default our intuitive instincts to computer wizardry. No room in the guts of Google for ‘luck,’ or ‘fortune.’

We’re all Joe Friday, the detective in the TV series “Dragnet,” whose mantra was, “Just the facts, ma’am.” So boring, so black and white. It reduces the romance of life into a robotic soap opera displayed in colored pixels.

Life weaves its own way through our years, even if we deny the idea there is some ‘order’ in the universe. ‘Random’ often appears as a clown, or a magician, maybe even The Joker. And the ecclesiastical euphemism of “time and chance happens to all” is a thin disguise…the brutal truth is that sometimes life sucks.

But not today. For our friend, bad things turned out for good. His phone rang again one day. He got a new client and is back in the chips. It’s an inexplicable epilogue to the age-old conundrum.

**********

When the days are bleak, when we’re confused, and nothing seems clear, Longfellow’s words help: “Defeat may be victory in disguise; the lowest ebb is the turn of the tide.”

Outside the sky is blue. The sun shines. I smile and wonder what will happen today.

Bud Hearn
May 6, 2016