Digressions of a Dilettante

Digressions of a Dilettante
Vignettes of Inanity by Bud Hearn

Friday, January 13, 2017

We Have a Problem


He fell asleep last night watching Trump on C-Span. “What dreams may come when we have shuffled off this mortal coil…”

The phone rings. Its intrusion fractures the morning’s silence. He looks at his watch, 7:06. Who calls at this hour?

He checks the caller ID for a clue. No luck. ‘Unknown Number’ it reads. The ring continues. Should he answer? He can’t decide. He picks up the phone, and then puts it down. He curses. Why ruin my day? So he doesn’t answer.

He sits there, soaking in his dilemma. Is there a problem? It’s always something. Surely bad news. Just to what degree. Good news never calls early. He knows from experience. Good news waits. Bad news is urgent.

Confusion clouds his mind. He weighs the options. Which is better, answer and be bludgeoned by the news, or wait, hear it on the voice mail? But what if there isn’t a voice mail? He wishes he were fishing.

The early morning solitude returns. Briefly. The phone rings again, 7:11. Annoyance begins. Now the whole house will be awake. There goes my quiet coffee with the dogs. What fool is calling? Probably wrong number he concludes.

He lets it ring. It dies a silent death on the fifth ring. He checks for a message. Nothing. Two calls, no voice mail. What’s going on?

Questions arise. Anxiety festers. The ‘what if’s’ slide into his mind. His coffee gets cold. Why does bad news invade my Saturday morning sanctuary? His mind refutes the notion, counters with the suggestion that it might be good news. He rejects it.

Mentally he disputes the point. “Good news never happens in the morning,” he argues. His mind answers, “There’s a first for everything.” He quotes statistics on early morning heart failures. He wonders who’s had one. He gulps a Zantac just in case.

He walks outside, listens for the sound of sirens. Nothing. All is quiet on his street. Minutes tick by. Birds sing. The newspaper lies on the grass, limp and damp. To hell with it, only bad news anyway. Debt, drugs, bickering, bombs and social media. Who cares, things he can’t do anything about. He wonders why he pays for such printed drivel. He’s convinced the day will be bad.

Suddenly the phone rings again. Curiosity clutches him. He decides the morning’s shot. Just face the situation. He hesitates momentarily, rushes back inside, grabs the phone.

Hello,” his sonorous voice shouts a menace. A dial tone answers back. Damn, missed it, he mutters. He waits. No voice mail. A creeping sense of paranoia seeps into his veins. He checks his watch. 7:14. He slumps into his chair, seethes in silence. For what? He doesn’t know.

He debates with himself, questions without answers. “Why do I avoid things?” His coffee, now cold and congealed, mocks him. He knows why. It’s because he’s fatalistic. Happened in youth. He worried incessantly about things like moles, zits and warts. Nothing good comes from chapped lips, dandruff and girls who avoided him.

He remembers parties. Nobody talks about the good fortune of others, only themselves. No, they thrive on the bad news about people, gloat on their own good news. Somebody’s always clinging to the bottom rung of the ladder. What do they say about him?

He looks at his watch and fidgets. 7:19. Will the phone ring again? Probably not, he concludes. Just forget it, he tells himself. But he can’t.

Suspense consumes him like a canker. Images of train wrecks, market crashes, plagues and famines cloud his judgment. Seconds crawl by like hours. He paces, helpless in his syndrome of avoidance.

He becomes restless. Anguish torments him. He hears voices. He has to know. Not knowing is unacceptable. But fate fiddles with him, teases him with the riddle.

His wife shambles sleepily into the kitchen. “Who called?” she asks. “Don’t know. Didn’t answer,” he says.

Again? Why?” she asks.

Because,” he says. She knows why, shakes her head. He avoids her sneer, takes the dogs outside.

The phone rings again. He checks his watch, 7:28. He bolts inside. Too late. She answers. “Really? What good news. Yes, I’ll tell him. ‘Bye,” she says.

“Who? What
?” His voice trembles. “Fix my coffee please,” she says with a smirk. “I’ll tell you later…maybe.

So much for the paranoia of avoidance. Who’s calling you today? You’ll know if you answer!


Bud Hearn
January 13, 2017

Friday, January 6, 2017

Romancing the Dream


In the beginning Somebody had a dream. It existed in an ethereal world without form and void, waiting for hands to convert it into reality. Advents still occur.

**********

It’s January 1, 2017, the morning after. Nursing a strong cup of coffee, my dog, Mac, and I are trying to synthesize last year’s events into a cohesive whole. Why?

Aside from trying to make sense of living in a weird new world of choreographed reality dreams, I continue to draw a total blank on the mystery of how God got a creation permit with all the bureaucratic regulations.

Today I’ve chosen another man’s dream, a rocking chair, hoping it’ll aid in my quest. This magnificent dream-come-true sits on yet another man’s fantasy dream, the front porch of an enormous but vacant beach home overlooking the ocean. It helps to have friendly, rich neighbors, the essence of which can be defined in one word: absence.

From this vantage point, I see morning-after survivors wander aimlessly along the sands. They stroll across the horizon in slow motion, like actors on the set of a silent movie. Maybe they’re contemplating their own miracle of recovering from last night’s bacchanalian bash, or attempting to clear the cobwebs out of their dreams for the New Year. No one hurries. The Trumpian masquerade will have to wait.

The sun shines in hot shards through the overhead palm tree. Mac sleeps while my sockless feet work on a tan. It’s difficult to stay on the mental task. The only conclusion I’ve come to yet is that I’m still alive.

This rocking chair, however, intrigues me. Somebody dreamed it up. This one’s actually more of a ‘glider’ chair, you know, like those green metal ones of the ‘50’s that sat rusting in backyards of the South. I consult my Blackberry browser for details.

It reports the description comes from the Dutch word, ‘rokken,’ which was used to describe someone who rocked a cradle. It seems an apt application, since no dream ever arrives full-grown, but as a baby. And what good is any new-born baby except to love?

The first known use of the word was by Chaucer, who wrote: “The cradle at hir beddes feet is set to rokken.” Perhaps his description is the genesis of today’s vernacular: “If the cradle is rocking, don’t come knocking.” The rocker has since come a long way since a fellow dreamed up tying a pair of ice skates to the bottom of a wooden chair.

There’s a romantic quality to dreams. The common rocker is a Southern icon, evocative of a past that refuses to die. It’s a nostalgic, albeit an anachronistic vestige of an era of romantic and informal leisure. Front porch rockers are now mostly for show, except perhaps in rural America where time still moves at its original pace of slow.

Dreams and romance are a potent pair. What’s a dream but a diaphanous vision, feelings created in the imagination or sleep that aren’t ‘real’? Similarly, romance is an emotional attachment to something or someone. Like love itself, hot and torrid, the marriage of these two will birth something sooner or later.

Like you, I’ve have had many dreams, mostly unremembered. But looking back, I see that so many have actually come true of their own accord and in their own way and timing. Such is the romance of life if only we will accept it.

Dreamers are also romantics. After all, romance is the collective music of everyone who dreams.

Dreams are vague impulses. But vague and nebulous is the beginning of all things. As the poet has written, life begins in the mist, not the crystal. Dreams are conjured up in the mind, but made real by the hands.

After an hour of contemplating the state of things, Mac and I are no closer to a consensus than when we began. One thing is for sure, however, our dreams are superior to New Year’s resolutions.

**********

As a new year begins for us all, consider the advice of the aphorist, S. J. Lec: “Every bush can burn if you fire it with your imagination.”

In the beginning was a dream. So, dream on, friends, dream on.


Bud Hearn
January 6, 2017