The Interval Between

 

“A mightier hope abolishes despair.”   Emerson

     The queue is long and crowded beneath the red glow of the exit sign. The door to the other side is locked. Auld Lang Syne is seen tuning up the band and chilling the champagne. Everyone wants out of the year 2020. Nobody’s looking back for good reason, reminiscent of L’Amour’s words: 

     “Behind me a noose hung empty, and ahead the country is wild.”     

     It’s the week after Christmas, or ‘holidays’ if you’re part of the alchemist crowd that mixes Jesus with Visa and gets Santa. Hopefully you dodged the dictates of the cancel culture and social injustice police who mandated all celebrations be equal and diverse. 

     The frenzy is over. The guests are easing out and the perfect evergreen’s career had ended.  All that remains are desiccated needles scattered on the floor. A pretty good metaphor for ‘the year that wasn’t.’  

     Years come and go, flourish and fade. Omar Khayyam’s rubyaivat saw it this way: 

     “The moving finger writes, and having writ, moves on: nor all thy piety nor wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line, nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.” 

     2020…it was what it was. We survived. 

     This ‘tween week might bring mild anxiety, especially if the what-ifs of tomorrow cloud the way. But in the waiting it’s possible to experience a measure of peace. 

     Negative thoughts have no place in these remaining days of reverie. I pick up a couple books my children gave me. Books, like socks, are utilitarian. Who couldn’t live without reading “Spy Secrets That Can Save Your Life?” I flip through it, imagining myself a martini-sipping CIA operative, living in intrigue and saving the planet from the curse of fossil fuels. 

     The book is a compendium of tricks and secret weapons designed to prepare one for dangerous situations like political protests. It describes everything from hat pins to a monkey fist key chain, household items to extricate you from deadly encounters and maim any malefactor. Oh, it also comes with a hand cuff key, handy if you’re detained by TSA goons because your eyeballs inadvertently match those of a bearded fellow in the next aisle who keeps winking at you. Everyone is suspect these days. 

     Another book, ‘100 Deadly Skills,’ describes techniques for eluding pursuers, evading capture and surviving random confrontations. It includes directions for converting the words of the NYT’s into renewable green energy and receiving carbon credits in the process. But like most gifts, the novelty soon wears off.

      COVID notwithstanding, on the coast the sun offers promise of better days. I consider another salt-water baptism, just in case. A quick plunge into the icy waters ought to wash off last year’s sins of omission and commission. Unfortunately, only the toes get the baptismal dip today. It’s as close to a cryogenic experience as I want to get. 

     Back in my chair I read poetry by T. S. Eliot while thumbing through the Christmas cards, everything from family biographies, pictures of people you don’t know and Hallmark cards from CVS. 

     Maybe you’re not into poetry. Pity. It’s a poor career choice anyway and can’t compete with Wall Street, a guitar or yard art. Poets are mostly morose, unwashed people with bad hair, I’ve observed. But at least Eliot’s fresh breath goes against convention. 

     Lines from ‘The Hollow Men’ are insightful and intriguing. He stretches to grasp the brief interspace 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” 

     Mystical lines, don’t you agree? If read in the context of the waning hours of the year, they offer us a message. 

     At midnight, this year 2020 will end forever. In the interstices of a millisecond the old will pass, the new will begin. Everyone gets the chance for a second wind. Perhaps it’s in that very instant when the Shadow falls and the choice is ours. 

     Wendell Berry’s poem puts it this way: 

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

     What will 2021 will hold for us? We don’t know. It’s a mystery. But for the poet in us all, life is a strange, mystical romance if only we’re willing to embrace it. 

* * * 

     Happy New Year…it’s a new beginning. Live big!

 

Bud Hearn

December 31, 2020 

Stars…a Light at the Top

 

“Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? For we have seen His star in the east and are come to worship Him.”  Matthew 2: 1-2 

* * *

     The winter solstice, the longest and some say the darkest night of the year, dawned upon us on Monday. Judging from the overcast sky, the description might seem to hold true. 

     Mr.  Bogey, our hound dog, and I walk the beach early every day, rain or shine, independent of any solstice.  We take the day as it comes. What other way is there to take life but deal with what it dishes out. 

     This morning the sky obscured any hint of sunlight, although we knew it was there, hiding behind the cloud cover. There was a chill in the air. Then suddenly the clouds parted, the sun shone brightly, but only for a minute or so, then retreated to its hiding place. 

     Yet this was enough for us, just to know the sun always comes up.  Millennia past, there were pagan festivals to beg the sun to return, since it had been retreating for six months. Bonfires and festivities did little to coax the sun back. Still, it came. 

     Pagan rituals have largely disappeared among us, unless you call frantic Christmas shopping a pagan ritual. Mounds of gifts beneath an evergreen tree will not shoo away the darkness, but the abundance of lights on the tree does good work in reminding us that there is light in the universe. 

     This year a celestial phenomenon occurs. Jupiter and Saturn cross paths high in the southwestern sky. It had not occurred since the days of the Renaissance, back in the 1700’s.  And it won’t recur until 2085. I’m sorry if you missed it. 

     The spectacle was incredible. It was as though the two planets merged, forming a large star. It has been noted that the same phenomena occurred some 2,000 years ago and could have perhaps been the star referred to in the above scripture. Who can say? But it took a real stargazer to follow such a spectacle to a manger in Bethlehem. 

     It’s said the Magi saw the star in the east, which depends on how scripture is read. The Magi were in the east, but the star was in the west as it appeared to us. Whatever, the brightness of it was a sight to behold. Maybe it was simply a heavenly emanation, an angel, so to speak. 

     Scripture has many references to angels, which is why we have a tiny one perched always at the pinnacle of our Christmas tree. She smiles upon us when the tree is lit: 

Clothed in light and mystery

Her place atop the tree,

The Angel of the Heavenly Three

Broods in silence The Nativity. 

     Christmas, if nothing else, is a time for imagination and contemplation, of intrigue and the mystery of angelic spirits. Even the secular world has its own Christmas spirits: St.  Nicholas, Santa Claus and the ghost of Jacob Marley. Could angelic hosts be integrally part of the birth of Jesus, and be associated with the nativity of all births? Who is to say? 

     We’re told that God “…maketh His angels spirits, and His ministers a flame of fire…ministering spirits sent to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation.” 

     Scripture further references angels: “Be not doubtful to entertain strangers, for in so doing many have entertained angels unawares.” Now that’s something to ponder. 

     To intrude into the sphere of angels is to leave one awed, confounded and mystified. Late at night while the family sleeps, the dog curled up nearby, I gaze in wonder at the multitude of lights on our tree. I recall the words of Jesus: “I am come a light into the world, that whosoever believeth on me should not abide in darkness.” 

     In Bethlehem a Child was born over 2,000 years ago. “What child is this,” we sing, and wonder.  I ask our angel this question and intuit the reply: 

Who is this Child I hear you say?

Why, He is the answer to a better way.

This Child of Peace in Heaven holds sway

He is the Promise of a much better way. 

* * *

     ‘A much better way?’  I imagine the possibilities. 

     May the joys, hopes and child-like wonder of Christmas fill your homes and your hearts. Merry Christmas. 

 

Bud Hearn

December 23, 2020

 

 

No Online...Now What?

 Has that which was once a luxury now become a necessity?

 * * *

It’s getting down to the wire now. The Christmas list is still long. Options are running out. Nerves on edge, tempers short, an aura of angst encircles the glowing tree lights while silent voices of “hurry, hurry” fill the empty spaces beneath the tree. 

So, what’s new? It’s this way every year about this time.  The recurring question, “What to get who for Christmas?” No wonder it’s impossible to book a psychiatrist this time of year.  Their sofas are occupied. 

No worry, you say. Everybody calm down, back off, take a breath. The stores brim with merchandise, just get online. The internet is the answer to all things now.  Even Santa is in retirement, refers all personal letters to the Amalgamated Mindless Mechanical Workers of America at Amazon. 

Speaking of robots, did you hear? They’re unionized now. They have a Hoffa-type leader funded by Facebook and are planning mass demonstrations to protest the inequality of working conditions, workplace injustices and demanding entitlements and unemployment benefits. 

Some have received the Sanders Scholarship to Yale for free college. They fill the parking lots of Amazon fulfillment centers. Mass hysteria is occurring in the nearby towns since the police have been defunded.     

Robots unionized, you say? Absurd.  Wait, they’re protesting wages.  They’re too low, they’re demanding higher remuneration since they’re required to work 24/7 in these weeks. Prevailing $15 per hour is not enough. Stop Laughing. This is the future.

Congress is quietly drafting an omnibus taxing bill to coincide with the new minimum-wage movement to include robots. But wait…there’s a downside to this nonsense. They’re being categorized as employees, not contract laborers. FedEx drivers are up in arms, threatening to strike. Disaster is looming.

This madness like most other insanity began in California, the petri dish of incubations by incubus. It’s moving across America, driven by the mighty rushing wind of change. Robots are now issued Social Security cards and Employee Identification numbers so they can be taxed. The IRS is no respecter of Christmas.

But back to the dilemma at hand…Christmas gifts. Procrastination is the chief problem in these days and weeks. Especially with men. The terror of filling stockings and putting gaily wrapped packages under the tree is taking hold. They shudder recalling the Christmases past. Each year about Thanksgiving they swear on all things holy not to repeat the mistakes of the past. Empty vows.

They recall the frantic days of last-minute mall shopping, the panic that gripped them on Christmas Eve when most were having eggnog parties and laughing it up. But not them. They wandered the halls of malls, mindlessly looking in the windows of shops whose doors begin to close early. The odor of fear and failure stalked them.  

They recall the last-minute waste of Friday’s paycheck, the vacuum cleaners, the kitchen utensils, the horrid pine-scented candles and the year’s supply of rank bathroom deodorizers (some memories live in infamy!) Not this year, there’s online shopping.

But wait. What’s this? News says deliveries are being delayed due to competition from Covid vaccines. Stratospheric surcharge add-ons, supply-chain breakdown, tracking numbers jumbled, no-exchange policies in place. Have we missed the cut?

Online is failing us, just when we need it most. Demand-supply equilibrium is out of sync, invalidating Adam Smith’s theory of the ‘Invisible Hand’ that balances all self-interest in a free market. 

Now what? We’re down to the short hairs of shopping, grasping for straws in a Covid-quarantined wilderness of local shops where picked-over remnants remain the only choices.

Forget prayer.  Too late for that. Misery and insane laughter are our companions now. Old memories of this situation come to mind. The scene of two men swapping meaningful words and grappling over the last Gucci handbag at Neiman’s. It falls to the floor; another man grabs it.

Then there was the mob of old men fixated on the window of Victoria’s Secret, aroused by the changeout of seductive mannequins. Not hard to know what their letter to Santa said. They will all be disappointed on Christmas morning.    

But that was then, this is now. What to do? Get creative.  Grab a Starbucks latte, sit and think. Ideas come. We survived with Sears mail order and layaway before online shopping. Jewelry, clothes, fine art, wine, gift cards, books, massages, new cars. Still time. Support the locals.

***

American consumerism and Christmas are inseparable. They will survive at all costs. On credit, of course.  Fortunately, our poinsettias have arrived on time. Good luck out there.

 

Bud Hearn

December 14, 2020