The Egg of Columbus

There was a time you were trapped in a box canyon, no way out, escape impossible, UNTIL…

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Life is full of box canyons. How easily we’re lured into their labyrinthine lairs. We stumble in circles, groping like the blind for the exit, any exit.

We bounce from pillar to post, hopelessly hemmed in, staggering deeper into the dead end of despair. Disaster’s ghoulish grin mocks us, waiting silently at the end for the end. We need Houdini.

Like Houdini, we know what it means to have been boxed in by circumstances, buried alive by insolvable situations, packed and put away to marinate like a box of salted mullet.

How many were the times our hands were shackled, our feet in fetters, dragging about the chains and manacles of the past like Dicken’s ghost of Jacob Marley?

Houdini has become a metaphor for escape, an example of how to be constrained by a straitjacket, put in a box and sunk, or buried, and, with no possible means of escape, still get out. Can we appropriate such a metaphor to our own sorry state of affairs?

Remember when you were underwater, drowning in debt, no way out, the end was near? The paycheck evaporated; the bonus wasn’t there. The credit cards maxed; the mortgage overdue, car in the shop, the kid’s college tuition check that bounced.

Oh, those sleepless nights listening to the Greek chorus rehearsing its funeral dirge. You were about to give up, take your last breath, UNTIL…then something happened, a door opened, a relief showed up. You escaped.

Remember the brilliant idea you once had? The idea that generated more laughter than accolades and labeled you as just another hair-brained crackpot. Even your best friends avoided you. UNTIL, against all odds, it worked out.

Often ideas and discoveries seem surprisingly simple and easy after the fact. Columbus experienced this. His detractors diminished his discovery of the Americas as inevitable and no big deal. So, what did he do?

To prove his point, he challenged them to balance an egg on its end. Can’t be done, they said. UNTIL Columbus tapped the egg on its end, and it stood upright, proving that creativity is a sure-fire getaway. There’s a key for everything. Find it.

Sometimes the mind gets bogged down in blind alleys. Remember the Gordian Knot? It’s often used as a metaphor for an intractable problem solved easily by creativity. It remained a problem UNTIL Alexander the Great showed up, sliced the knot in half. No more knot, no more problem. Pretend you’re Alex.

The sociopathic Stalin had his own problem, UNTIL he reduced it into its simplest terms: people were the problem. Therefore, the solution was simply fewer people. History proves his sadistic point.

We also have people problems, situations so bizarre it’s as if an elephant were conducting the circus. Houdini made an elephant disappear once in front of a packed-house audience. What’s our escape plan?

The enormity of dysfunctional familial and social relationships finds us with poor exit strategies. People are constantly at one another’s throats, friends falling out over petty dystopian differences, swearing and calling each other bad names. Such is rampant in homeowner associations, little league sports and all church committees.

Down to the last straw, we plead with ‘Forgiveness’ for help. It shakes its head, says the cacophonous chatter of the me, my and mine generation drowns out all logic. Still, it may be the simplest means of making the elephant disappear.

Mohammed was a pious fellow, if not a little full of himself. He prayed himself into a corner attempting to prove he could move a mountain by prayer. It never budged.

He was publicly ridiculed for his folly. He gave up fasting, dusted off the ashes, shook off the sackcloth of pride and instead went to the mountain. He found it a crowded maze, a mosh pit of people pushing and shoving, all trying to get to the top. Some were Democrats.

He was perplexed UNTIL The Voice said, “Mohammad, mountaintops are for looking at the world, not a place where the world looks at you.”

Houdini had his tricks, and like any magician had an exit strategy. Most of us depend on native intelligence, innate common sense and a dose of good luck which always seems too little, too late. It helps perspective to remember, “The Almighty may never send a fortune when a shilling will do.”

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If Houdini is a metaphor, then so are we. Often trapped, no way out UNTIL…now finish the sentence with details of your own narrow escape.


Bud Hearn
July 19, 2019

Staying in the Game

Competition is brutal, mano a mano. The stakes are high. Only the strong survive. Think twice if you’re trying to stay in the game.

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Born again, the mantra of America. A rebirth every minute for somebody, a company, a new name, a new game. Something dies, something new is born. There is no void in the pursuit of relevance.

The WSJ music section headline announces a few days ago, “The Boss Heads in a New Direction.” That would be Bruce Springsteen, who else? More about this in a minute.

I’m sitting on my brother’s porch one day, my brother who lives next to the golf course. He got smart and found a way out of the dentistry game several years ago. We watch the duffers come and go and confiscate their errant slices from the yard. Twenty-four yesterday alone.

A threesome approach the tee. Two hit pretty decent drives. The third one swaggers to the tee, stretches, does his best Dangerfield and positions the ball. The swing, a mighty effort for a total miss.

He shrugs it off, laughs. The others ignore him. He sets up, takes another swing, a topper that bounces about twice and comes to rest about five feet from the tee. Undaunted, he takes another swing. Grass and dirt. The ball flies straight up, landing about ten feet away.

He turns around, drops his club and raises his hand to the heavens as if to think, or perhaps say, “I give up.” He’s realizes he’s not in the game, never has been, never will be; needs a new direction. Reality is sometimes sad but always instructive.

It must be hard these days, trying to stay in the game. What can be done? Everyone’s trying to find a gig, some way to keep their face in front of the crowd, to keep the money rolling in.

Some resort to TV. Others to billboards. George Forman now sells home improvements. Former NFL coaches pimp hearing aids. Selleck hawks reverse mortgages. Freeman sells Mellow Yellow. Sajak’s Wheel keeps spinning though Vanna doesn’t do close-ups anymore.

On highway billboards lawyers with big budgets and squirrelly mustaches promise windfalls while gorgeous women Realtors sell dreams. Money is their common denominator.

Wherever you look, people are trying to stay in the game of relevance, some for money, some for prestige, some who just want to find inspiration for keeping on keeping on. Motives may differ, but not need.

But not Bruce. Hitting 70 has given him focus, he has vision, his motive is clear. He has a legacy to protect, to solidify, lest he be blotted out of posterity by hip hop, rap and other sound waves passing for music.

Now I won’t be able to help Bruce, not caring too much about his barroom specialty R & B sounds. Merle and Waylon speak to the soul, and their legacy is intact permanently with me. But you’ve got to give Bruce credit, he’s on a mission.

Not that Bruce needs more money or recognition. He has enough royalties to last more lifetimes than he will ever enjoy. So, what’s his purpose of staying in the game? Same as all former presidents with their Presidential Libraries…hey, I lived, I was somebody. King Tut was like-minded. Where’s his relevance now? Ho hum.

Bruce has a new album, “Western Stars,” mixed with old Glen Campbell sounds as inspiration. The theme is a dreamlike, mythical world, a Western world of faded Levi’s, of open sky, of freedom and possibility, mixed with isolation and loneliness, a John Wayne world that existed before raucous concern of climate change, Confederate iconoclasts and the advent of Rocket Man.

Bruce’s photo in the article is evocative, a throwback to a more innocent time. He stands, leaning casually against a 70’s pickup with a dented front grill, looking off in the distance. He wears his signature neck chains, white tee under a Levi jacket overlaid with a sheepskin leather jacket, collars turned up. He holds a beat-up cowboy hat and shoves one hand in the pocket of his jeans.

His hair is dyed black, except for the graying sides, but his weather-beaten facial expression sends the message that he’s out of context and would rather be back in a dark bar with his screaming guitar. But such photos are for show, and this one sends the message designed.

Bruce and the duffer might have something in common…they’re both in their own way trying to stay in the game, the game of life, a game full of romance and surprises, in spite of it all.

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Reinvention and reincarnation. Only in America, friends, only in America.


Bud Hearn
July 12, 2019

Spirit of Rebellion

The War of Independence was an unfair matchup. England, population 6.4 million, a military of 2.4 million and an awesome armada, versus The Colonies, about 2.5 million farmers and colonists. No Las Vegas bookie would have bet on America. But God did.

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There’s a rebellious streak in youth. It’s a natural tendency. It’s born to despise authority, to abhor rules, to kick back at every provocation that seeks to restrict its sense of freedom. If you don’t believe this, adopt a teenager.

The young are revolutionists, sometimes seditionists. Innovation is their magic carpet. They detest traditionalism. Their minds have not yet crossed the threshold of Concession or Impossibility. Things are black or white, not gray. It’s blood and guts, not cookies and tea.

Youth has something to prove, and it’s restless until it does. It’s impervious to danger, eats it like nail soup. It spits in the face of death and dares it to complain. Change is a quick snack. It always wants more.

Old men don’t dig trenches. They don’t wage wars in the dust, the heat, the cold, the mud and the blood. It’s viewed at safe distances with smarmy handlers, catered meals and corporate sponsors. Their empty platitudes are masks of insincerity at the gravesites of patriotism.

Strategy and political maneuvering are their amusements. Their spirit of conflict is overcome by their pacifistic urge to compromise with status quo. They conduct closed-door conferences, initiate schemes of international intrigue. The globe is their chess board. Youth are their pawns. Don’t rock their boats.

Is America becoming soft by compromise, anesthetized by wealth, obese by inaction? Is it content with the noose of choking regulations or acquiesce of personal independence squeezed out by a greedy central government? Is it happy with the constraints imposed by a bloated bureaucracy? Where’s the spirit of rebellion headed today? Who are the protesters?

America was conceived as a nation of rebels. Like youth itself, it was a wild, vast and desolate wilderness, full of promise, privation and possibility. Its future was unknown, untapped and untried.

The bones of its skeleton are nationalistic; its flesh the principle of charity; its breath the soul of freedom. God spoke these words once again unto the chaos of America, “Son of man, can these bones live?” They did, and in 1776 America was born. It remains a mighty nation now for 243 years.

America thrives on a cult of perpetual youth. The quest for the Fountain of Youth ended in 1513 in what’s now St. Augustine, Florida, the oldest city in America. Ponce de Leon had a vision, but it was 263 years early. Today the spirit of that vision is alive and well.

America is not planted in concrete. It’s sleepless, ever inventive, always transformative. It runs, not walks. Enough is never enough. Perfection is just another milestone to something better. The culture of constant rebirth boils in the national spirit. Caste finds no home here.

How is this possible? America’s freedom was not born of a religious fanaticism. Nor by slick, sugar-coated words of doctrine that rolled off the tongues of politicians. Freedom comes at the expense of blood, not vowels. The blood of Colonial Patriots still cries from the earth, "Remember, remember, remember." This is what we celebrate on Independence Day.

America was a dream. Dreams are ephemeral. They vanish easily at daylight. Dreams need nurture. The visions are gifts that need to be stirred up regularly. Like the grit of discontent, it impels us to action.

Tomorrow we will again celebrate Independence Day with parades and egalitarian events nationwide in our land that blossoms like the Garden of Eden. We will for a day reignite the Spirit of Freedom that thrives in our nation. We will eat 150 million hot dogs and the words ‘lily-livered’ and ‘yellow belly’ will not be uttered.

Overhead fireworks will explode everywhere. Like the bursts of muskets and cannons, may each one remind us of the sacrifices that were made by the Patriots and continue to be made by stout-hearted men and women in uniform.

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America’s future of freedom will continue to be earned by the sacrifice of patriots who possess faith in the heart, freedom in the soul and fire in the belly. May our Spirit of Rebellion always remain alive, ready, willing and able, living out the creed of, “One nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all.”


Bud Hearn
July 3, 2019