Digressions of a Dilettante

Digressions of a Dilettante
Vignettes of Inanity by Bud Hearn

Friday, October 30, 2020

Whistling

Whistling…you either can or you can’t. There’s no middle ground.

* * *

I was about 10 years old when I first heard the question, “Son, what do you want to do when you grow up?” I knew without even thinking…. all I ever really wanted was to be able to whistle.

It’s a tough question to answer at any age. At 10, I was nowhere close to putting away childish things. I had barely broken the habit of sucking my thumb, a necessary rite of separation which, for some strange reason, led to biting my nails. But that’s another story altogether.

Now I know whistling is a low bar to maturity, and there’s not much future in it unless Lawrence Welk is resurrected. But for some strange reason I felt it necessary to want to stand on the corner and let out a shrill whistle that would turn heads and stop traffic. A perverse need for power begins at an early age. 

But alas, the only instruction I ever got was, “Son, keep trying; it’ll come.”  But it didn’t come, and it was really stupid to walk around constantly blowing air out of my puckered lips. I felt like failure was a perpetual way of life.

Now trying to teach a 10-year old boy anything associated with art is like teaching a stone to talk or training a mule to sing opera. No sir, it’s worse than having to memorize algebraic equations. The art of whistling is a learned trait.

I was still too young to join the after-school marble shooting games, which was a good thing I think.  Basically, shooting marbles is the threshold to a greater problem: gambling. Bets were made, marbles were lost, marbles were won. Winners laughed, losers lamented. So I kept blowing air out of my mouth, hoping and spooking my dog.

Maybe whistling is not high on your list of achievements. But conquering the problem of making sound from blowing air will guarantee fame and financial success in such endeavors as politics, preaching and selling used body parts.

So for months I lay awake at night, twisting my tongue in various contortions and blowing air between my teeth. Finally one night a small sound slipped over my bottom lip. I had just scaled the Everest of whistling. Euphoria erupted, and failure retreated. Things began to look up.

For weeks I coaxed my ephemeral, fledgling sound. It grew like Samson in strength and volume. I was as proud of the accomplishment as I was of the fuzz that was forming on my chin. I’m whistling, and soon to be shaving. Maturation was happening. 

There are no secrets in learning to whistle.  No rules, really, it all just depends on the alignment of tongue, lips and breath. For me, whistling Rock of Ages in D major was my crowning achievement. Ok, so it drove my parents mad, even as rap music does most today. Some things must be endured in silence.

Like the multiple uses of tongues and lips, those mischief-making co-conspirators, one has to be cautious about whistling. I learned this the hard way some years ago. Let this story be a warning to all you whistlers out there.

A friend and I once hosted a very large party complete with a full petting zoo. The prime attraction was this enormous orangutan swinging from the bars of his cage. Harmless, the handlers said. Regrettably, I took their word for it.            

So I walked over whistling a tune, maybe it was Fly Me to the Moon, I don’t recall. The creature obviously mistook my whistling for amorous intentions. Suddenly an enormous hand with eight-inch fingers attached to the end of a five-foot arm reached out, gripped me by the nape of the neck and planted a long, wet kiss on my lips.

Being proud of his conquest, he released me with a wink and a smile. Now take it from me, you haven’t been kissed until you have been smooched by an ape. It broke me from whistling in zoos.

* * *

It was long ago and far away when I was a boy learning to whistle. Life moves on with its simple rites of passage. But whistling remains as long as you can blow air out of your puckered lips.

So if you’re learning to whistle, keep trying; it’ll come. And, friends, that’s not just whistling Dixie.     

 

Bud Hearn

October 30, 2020

Friday, October 23, 2020

Milestones and Tombstones

 

We live and breathe on top of a rock,

A furnace aflame at the core.

The time is passed in carving stones

That we leave just to carve some more.

 

Carving stones and getting stoned,

Milestones every day.

Stones for walls and graffitied pedestals

And Stones to roll away.

 

We don’t give much thought to another Stone,

The one with our name and date,

The one that other hands will carve,

The one that lies in wait.

 

The miles we go, the deeds we do,

The friends along the paths.

And others we have long forgot,

The miles now mute the laughs.

 

We mark these miles as best we can,

In memory and in ink,

And all along the ways we go,

Our Chain, a golden link.

 

The Chain is how we mark our time

In passing to and fro.

The miles we jog, the distance logged,

Blindfolded is how we go.

 

Stones always have a special spot,

A place in every age,

For fires it’s flints, and tools defense,

Trails marked with corners blazed.

  

The time and seasons they come and go,

They leave us with ample space,

To fill our books, to file our pics,

And box it all in place.

 

For all we do, the miles we store,

Between like shadows fall,

The stones we carve, the stones we leave,

And the final Stone of all.

 

The moving finger always writes,

Its message left behind.

Neither wit nor wish can lure it back,

Only milestones do we find.

 

Through miles and tiles a mosaic is laid,

The Legacy leaves what it will.

It was what it was on the journey made,

Some stones are silent and still.

 

Milestones made in my old hometown,

Where years over sixty have been,

Blurred with age till Charlie calls,

And they come back to life again.

 

He tells the news of his orchard lost,

When winds of Michael blew through.

Two stones he has, which one to choose,

The choice was not hard to do.

 

He planted it back, all four hundred trees,

For a harvest he will never receive.

But it was not about the harvest, you see,

It was all about planting the seeds.

 

Eliot writes that between the idea,

And the reality it seeks to achieve,

There’s first the motion, then the response,

And for milestones that’s all we need.

 

The stones still stand with their guard at the gate,

Of the Eden we left years ago.

Looking back is a waste of time,

There are miles with stones left to go.

 

We often think that the end is in sight,

But it keeps starting over again.

Milestones and Tombstones, they’re both in our path,

It’s our choice between beginning and end.

                                                                 ***

Milestones and Tombstones…sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference.  But, oh, the difference.

 

 

Bud Hearn

October 23, 2020

 

 

 

Friday, October 16, 2020

too much talking

 

maybe it’s the age

or the stage

i’m in

but it seems strange

with so many words

our messages remain muddled.

 

much said,

volumes read,

little solved.

consensus cowers,

dangles like limp laundry

suspended on a back-yard clothesline.

 

constant chatter  

signifying nothing.

everything,

talked to death.

 

even Lazarus opts out,

been here,

heard enough

prefers the silence

of a quiet space.

 

today I had a thought,

a fresh inspiration,

a flash of pure insight.

it needed a body.

 

words show up for the job,

laboring to define

the Nova,

my twinkling

streak of revelation.

 

sadly, the vision becomes indentured,

a slave to words

necessary for clarity.

 

soon, having been seduced

by too much talking,

the inspiration is shorn

of its power and

sliced into shreds

by the scissors of words.

 

one night last week

a mute lightening show

lit up the universe

over the Atlantic.

 

nature’s pure light

spoke

without sound.

  

can we tame our tongues,

rest our thumbs,

suppress the superfluous?

 

after all, how many words

are needed

for the Spirit to say,

“I love you anyway?”

 

Satis verborum—enough said.

 

 

Bud Hearn

October 16, 2020