A Second Wind

There are times when it seems life has run out of steam. The space between Christmas and New Year’s Eve is one of them.

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It’s the week after Christmas, or ‘holiday’ if you’re part of the crowd of alchemists that mix Christmas with Visa and come up with a concoction called Santa. However the season is called, the last week in the year seems to be a peaceful one.

The frenzy is over, the extended family has vanished, the busted budgets take a breather and the returns are yet to hit UPS. The perfect evergreen is casting forth its shriveled needles and is ready for the chipper. You sort of feel the same way; plus, the kitchen is closed.

Fading wreaths and malfunctioning tree lights say it clearly…another Christmas has come and gone; another year has run its course. Yes, the turmoil of cleanup lies ahead. Still, we shrug it off and enjoy the peace that Christmas promises.

The ‘tween week offers opportunity for reflection, even if there is a mild but lingering anxiety about the unfinished details cluttering our desks. The very thought can spoil the intervening reverie. But for the moment, we erase all negative thoughts and wish for everyone tidings of peace and joy. Even for Democrats.

This short lull in life is sort of like half-time in a football game. The scoreboard reveals what has happened, but it yields no clue of what’s to come. Such is the future. So we settle into an easy chair and savor the break from the storm. The next one can wait.

Business is mostly on the back burner. It’s busy trying to figure out its own scoreboard. I sit back in my chair in no rush and pass the time with hot tea while reading Christmas cards. They’re loaded with family biographies and smiling photographs of people I can’t recognize. Then I flip through a book of poetry by T. S. Eliot.

Most people nowadays don’t appreciate poetry. It’s a wonderful career choice if obscurity and poverty are the goals. But it can’t compete with politics and preaching for pure stage effect. Poets for the most part are morose, over-educated and unwashed folks with bad hair and a strange way of speaking. But at least Eliot’s fresh breath goes against convention.

Lines from “The Hollow Men” catch my attention. In a mystical way they give meaning to this week’s intervening space of time. His words stretch to grasp the space between dreams and reality, between now and later.:

“Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow.

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow.”

Strange lines to describe a paralysis of action. But when considered in the context of this waning week of the year, maybe it’s the poet’s way of simply saying, “Take a break and breathe.”

At midnight a few days hence History will add the year 2018 to its scoreboard of what has been. It will offer no clue of what is to be. In the interspace of a millisecond the Shadow will fall, but only temporarily. The old will pass, the new will begin, and everyone will get another chance for a second wind.

A line from one of Wendell Berry’s poems says it plainly:

“I greet you at the beginning; for we are either beginning or we are dead.”

What 2019 holds for us is a mystery. But to the poet in us all, life is a strange, mystical romance if only we’re willing to embrace it.


Happy New Year. Live big.

Bud Hearn
December 28, 2018

Waiting in Line

It’s Tuesday, a week before Christmas. I’m standing in line at the post office, waiting. I’m not alone. Others stand silently in a long queue that snakes its way outside. They wait, too.

It’s an understatement to say Americans enjoy waiting in line anywhere. Or, for that matter, waiting for anything. We’re used to instantaneous fulfillment that technology has blessed us with.

Thank you, microchip, Amazon, Google. We praise you. You’ve rescued us from hours of tedium and wasted time waiting in lines like this. But like any other saving grace, your salvation has come with a cost—in this case the loss of human interaction.

Not that anyone would choose to participate voluntarily in a slow-moving line of impatient people. And at this hour, who’s interested in striking up conversation with strangers? We have things to do, places to go. Our calendars are crammed with do, do, do. We have no time.

Here in the dimly-lit corridor the ‘line-waiters’ lean against walls and windows; some sport white cords that dangle from their ears. Some faces bear looks of boredom and mild impatience. Some even appear to have been lobotomized. Their Christmas expressions are elsewhere. Waiting in lines can do this.

The line-standers divert attention and eye contact by fiddling with iPhones, picking at their nails or examining their shoes or the tiles on the floor. Anything to appear disinterested. It’s like being part of a crowd trapped in an elevator. Nobody talks. Except me.

A lady stands nearby. Not too close, mind you. Americans covet space, their personal space. Proximity promotes a negative energy field that prompts, “Back off, buster, you’re too close.”

I cheerfully offer up this week’s ice-breaker, “Merry Christmas.” I exclaim it with gusto as if I were Santa himself. I omit the ‘ho, ho, ho’ part since it has other connotations these days. Heads turn. The silence is broken. Movement occurs. People shuffle, change positions. One might think I’d woken up a corpse.

She returns the greeting. I ask why she’s focused so intently on the cell. I expect a reply like, “None of your business, creep.” But no, she shows me photos of her grandbaby being held in her arms. A big smile follows. Who can resist smiling at the sight of a tiny, new-born baby that’s wrapped in red ribbon?

Then a strange thing happens. Others waiting in line want to take a peek. A spirit begins to arouse the lethargic line. Exclamations of “How beautiful, a wonderful Christmas gift, so sweet, how blessed” and so on. You’d think this is the first time people had ever seen a baby.

Slowly the line creeps forward, packages are retrieved, some are sent. Christmas stamps are purchased and faces smile again as they leave. Soon I’m burdened with boxes of my own, courtesy of an Amazon Fulfillment Center. A gentleman steps out of line and opens the door for me. Ah, the spirit of Christmas is alive indeed.

Lines are here to stay. So is waiting. Car pool lines, TSA lines, check-out lines, check-in lines, doctor’s lines, lines to greet the preacher, lines at the grocery store and traffic lines. We’re trapped in lines.

Yet, some lines can have positive effects, sort of like adult time-out. No rush, no auto, no danger. Nerves relax. Blood pressure drops. Noise abates, and we regain the serenity of our own souls.

You might find it odd, but some of my most favorite ‘lines’ are found in poetry, music and scripture. Some are long, move slowly. Others are short, move quickly. But my mind never objects to pausing and waiting, and letting the movement of words and notes take me where they will.

This Christmas I am waiting in the music line of “This Christmastide,” a beautifully, haunting tune with lines like this:

“From a simple ox’s stall came the greatest gift of all.
Truth and love and hope abide this Christmastide, this Christmastide.”

I’d be pleased to have you join me for a few moments waiting in these lines authored by the prophet Isaiah:

“For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder; and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The Mighty God, The Everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.”

Some lines are well worth waiting in. Thank you for waiting in mine. Merry Christmas.


Bud Hearn
December 21, 2018

Getting in the Mood

Out of the many moods of Christmas, which one will jump-start us into the spirit of the season? I might have found mine.

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It’s difficult trying to gin up any enthusiasm remotely acceptable for a Christmas mood. It has to happen on its own. The frenetic crush of mosh-pits crowds on Black Friday and Cyber Monday don’t do it. It’s like drumming up excitement for a root canal. It has to happen, just not today.

What’s a ‘mood’ but a subjective state of mind, a predominant emotion that can grab us anywhere, anytime. You feel it when one’s coming on. It’s best when it shows up serendipitously, like the unannounced advent of an old friend, no preface or stimulus, something that just happens. Moods planned in advance are duds.

Ok, so we had a mood yesterday. What good is it for today? It’s nothing now but a memory, whether pleasant or unpleasant. We can take it out, dust it off, laugh or cry, but it’s as cold as a man’s hand when the romance has ended. It’s today’s miracle that sets the mood. We have to wait for it.

When does it start, this ‘getting in the mood’ for Christmas? What sets it in motion? For root canals, the impetus is pain. For Christmas, which can be analogous in some ways, it’s usually ‘The Tree’ that fires it up.

This year a tinge of excitement begins the day after Thanksgiving in our house when someone says, “The trees are here, big ones, Frazier furs; snow still clings to the branches.” The Christmas mood yawns.

Meanwhile, the outside thermometer hovers near 75 degrees. Does this do anything for your Christmas mood? No matter—it was bound to happen, not if but when. Go get the tree.

There’re few things less anticipatory than getting a Christmas tree a month beforehand. But it’s the beginning of ‘getting in the mood.’ Actually, it’s the beginning of getting in a lot of moods, moods that run a vast array of moods, moods that have spawned many bankruptcies and not a few divorces.

The tree should get more credit for mood creation than it’s been given. Sticker-shock can send a shudder down anyone’s spine that even a moribund wallet can feel. We cringe, realizing this is only the beginning of shakedowns. The vault of a meager Christmas budget is about to be pillaged and expose how shallow our ‘mood of generosity’ is and how it strangely mirrors the ‘mood of Scrooge.’

Many good moods are associated with a Christmas tree. But they come later, not earlier. First it’s essential to survive the ordeal of buying and erecting the sacrificial sapling and enduring what might be euphemistically labeled the ‘familial debate mood.’

But this too passes, and soon the tree stands tall and regal, the house scented like potpourri from a fresh forest. Ok, so it happens to be a bit crooked that produces a temporary mood-swing of ‘mild disgust?’ It soon vanishes after a few mugs of highly-spiked egg nog. While exclamations of “Best tree ever” don’t mitigate the flaw, but they do evoke a peaceful mood best known as ‘relief.’

The next order of business is to clothe the naked sacrifice with lights. This toil provokes not a ‘mood of love’ but one akin to forced labor. Soon tiny white lights drip from every branch and radiate like miniature stars. Decorative ornaments complete the process to a ‘mood of smiles and nods.’

When our angel takes her place atop the tree the job concludes. I climb the ladder in a ‘mood of trepidation,’ imagining what can happen to old men climbing ladders. The angel soon sits high in her resplendent glory overlooking our handiwork below.

As I retreat to the safety of a horizontal surface a tune strangely enters my mind. It’s a familiar tune:

“Angels we have heard on high, sweetly singing o’er the plain; and the mountains in reply, echoing their joyous strains.” Something stirs in my soul. Is this the beginning of getting in the Christmas mood?

There’s something magical about the moods of Christmas that can soften the stingiest soul and set smiles on the sourest faces. Maybe this is the miracle of Christmas after all.


Bud Hearn
December 14, 2018