Our Little Corner

My grandfather was a farmer. “Son, don’t let your head grow higher than a corn stalk.” He knew the difference between hubris and humility. 

 * * *

For a few weeks in the winter before the sun swings westerly in its axis, it plays magic tricks on a certain ornate porcelain vase on the sideboard. The vase is about 14 inches tall, has a small opening at the top and a three-inch gilded base. But its consistency is still clay.

It’s mesmerizing to watch the sun transmute the small vase into an enormous, almost grotesque, caricature of itself by a simple shadow cast upon the wall, lighting a little hour, then disappearing. Nature’s alchemy.  The vase then returns to its proper self. Have fun metaphorizing this legerdemain of nature.

It got me to thinking about the dimensions the average human footprint makes upon the face of this planet. Think about it…standing erect, maybe a two-foot square? And when we were born, how much did we weigh? Many not much more than an economy-sized sack of stone ground grits. Sobering as well as humbling.

We begin tenure here in a miniscule way, but we grow. Like the vase, we have discovered creative ways and means of enlarging our imprints far beyond their normal occupancy upon the dust. Staggering.

Where are these exaggerated footprints found? Examine the Universe some starry night. Caucus with Musk, Bezos, commune with Hawking, Bacon, Galileo, Einstein, Trump. Oops, a typo. We have the capacity to be bigger than we know, despite the humble, tiny beginning. Ask any politician.

Who can remember their first few hours, days or weeks after birth? We don’t even resemble the baby pictures we see. But that’s when we internalize the urge to become the center of the universe, effectively attempting to control all life in our surroundings. In other words, we got big quick.

How? You guessed it…the tongue and vocal cords. We discovered these small members that can command and boast great things. And while we are all created equal, at least in sharing the air we breathe, certainly some tongues are more equal and adept than others to garner an audience.

See it now. The family is gathered around the baby’s crib, listening to gaga gaga babble. Who’s in charge here? Or let this baby get hungry, its tongue filling the room with screams. Attention is guaranteed. The tongue is a powerful builder of enlarged foundations.

The tongue doesn’t stop with baby babble. It discovers how to amply itself as it matures. It’s a universal truism: The older I get, the better I was. It’s not hard to get replaced.   

Life leads us down strange paths where we discover platforms that increase an ever-expanding and widening control of our environment. We learn early the amplified capacities of the impulsive id and the vast landscape available for the unrestrained ego to conquer and possess. Soon our footprint grows and often gets top heavy. The stride may get longer, but the footprint is the same.

But while we stroll life’s paths, picking up sticks and stones for building materials, we fail to notice we also scatter seeds in our passing, seeds that will soon grow and will either support our building progress or produce thorns and briars that will mar our passage.

We find it possible to augment our lowly beginnings with pen and ink, computer keystrokes, and digital twitter-speak. Such blueprints contemplate building our castles on the shifting sands of social media. It’s possible to grow enormously popular or hideously reviled with a YouTube video or a clever tweet. Hyperbole is our sword for warding off all competitors.

But even as we can increase our beginnings, we find out that life is a bell curve. What goes up comes down. Unless you die at the top. Life has its own ways to reduce us to size. Lately the Covid outbreak is doing a pretty good job of keeping us grounded.

Sooner or later, we find ourselves back on our little corner, reduced to our original tendency. We come to realize the magic of shadows, but they’re still just shadows. Our consistency is also just clay.

I leave you with this Middle Eastern benediction: “May your shadow always be a long one.”

 

 Bud Hearn

January 29, 2021  

 

 

       

 

Secrets

Be circumspect when sharing your secrets. The Devil is listening.

 * * * 

Secrets are everywhere. We find them wrapped up like riddles inside of boxes of enigma. We disguise them, bury them, revisit the scenes, exhume the bones. They lie there in state, hidden from prying eyes and itching ears. We’re in love with our secrets. 

It’s a winter morning.  Cold, but the coffee is hot. The dog lies comatose at my feet. He’s keeping his secrets to himself. The cell dings twice. Incoming text. Who’s this so early? I ask myself. 

The message is terse. “I know your secret. It’s going viral today.” That’s it. Nothing more. I don’t recognize the cell number. 

Crank text, spam, I think. But it gets my attention. I usually delete such, but someone thinks I have a secret. I’m pure as snow, at least in my mind.  Oh, I’ve had a few secrets. Everyone has. Some of my old secrets come to mind.  

As a teenager I bit my nails. Kept it secret because of embarrassment. Would shove my hands in my pockets to disguise the nasty habit. My mother would anoint my nails with a bitter potion extracted from skunk spray. I was vaccinated regularly for tetanus. Nothing worked. I kept biting them. 

Then one day with hands shoved in my pockets, I fall on the playground. Spat. Face first in the dirt. The scar remains. Something has to be done. 

I tried to hold hands with a girl during the Saturday matinee movie, but she was revulsed at the disgusting habit. Heck, if a boy can’t get a girl to hold hands, he’ll never get a kiss. And if no kiss, then for sure he won’t ever be able to…well, you know where kisses lead. I quit biting my nails.  

My curiosity is aroused. I text back, “Who is this?” 

 “Doesn’t matter. Your secret sin will be revealed soon.”    

“What secret sin?” I respond. 

Icons appears. A firecracker, a flame, and a bomb. That’s all. 

“Is this some sort of joke?” I text. 

Silence. Now I’m concerned. Is somebody trying to ruin my reputation, my credit, cause a divorce? Accusations, even if unfounded, lead to windmills of the mind. Scripture comes to mind:

“There’s nothing hidden that won’t be revealed.” 

I reply, “Are you God or the Devil?” 

“Both. I’m your conscious,” the text reads. “Deal with it, dude.” 

I think about secrets. They’re everywhere. Church pews, rosary beads. Moonlight swims, sand dunes. They’re in doctor’s offices, lawyer’s offices, bank safety deposit boxes and hotel rooms. They’re on bathroom scales, in hair salons, on doorknobs. 

They’re found in family trees. I looked up my own lineage recently and found a dog lifting its leg on my tree. The PS said I had significant Neanderthal variant. I thought that to be a badge.

Secrets are found in old photographs, in office files yellowed with age, in the back seats of cars, the tailgates of pickups and buried deep in cemeteries. They’re found in diaries and antiperspirants and in last night’s wine glasses. They hatch on golf courses and hide in drug prescriptions. Secrets can be found everywhere. 

Secrets can be as subtle and deadly as a coiled cobra centerpiece in the middle of a dinner party, or on the trigger of a locked and loaded .38 Special snub-nose, just waiting for a twitchy finger. Secrets are rusty steel traps hidden among the weeds of our memories, waiting to entrap us.     

Secrets are heard in the faint whispers of phone calls that fade when ears appear. Or on the beach where waves wash up secrets on the shores of our slumbering conscious, leaving its lifeless litter of flotsam as reminders of the a past long gone.

The cell dings. “Ready for the revelation?” 

“What’s the deal here? You looking for a bribe?” I text. 

“I’m a friend,” is the reply.

“You’re harassing me.” 

“No, I’m saving you. Listen, just come clean with that dark secret you harbor. It’ll lose its power over you, you’ll sing with Dr. King, ‘Free at last.’” 

“No, you listen. I have no secrets, I’m ‘fessed up, repented, pure, clean, ready for heaven’s gates.” 

“Not quite. Your secret is so dainty, so sweet that you keep it boxed up, hidden from view. It’s deadly. I’m helping you flee from it. Here it comes, your secret revealed.” 

* * *

I wait. Life can sneak up on us in strange ways. The text appears. No words, only this photo:    

Rest assured, your sins will find you out, too. Confess and repent while there’s time. The Devil never sleeps.

 

Bud Hearn

January 18, 2021

 

The Road Ahead…What’s Next?

 

“It (Life) is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights illuminate, but you can make the whole trip that way.”    E. L. Doctorow

It’s a brilliant winter day. I find myself straddling the yellow center line of a blacktop country road for no reason whatsoever except to stand there and experience the silence and solitude it affords. It won’t last. Nothing does.

The road seems to emerge out of nowhere. Its horizon merges back into the pine forest miles ahead. Nothing moves except the shadows of trees the sun casts on the road. It appears alive. All roads are alive. So is the road you’re on today.  

We’ve entered into a new solar year. We crossed that threshold seamlessly and found ourselves staring into a dark alley. We get a queasy feeling all’s not right, that the new year is looking strangely like the old one. Not what we were expecting.

The elections are over, except in the minds of some. The vaccine circulates, promises safety. The nation’s Capital is exploited, and we’re identified by color…red or blue. What’s coming down this road? What’s next?

We hear the Laments of Job as he sits on his ash heap, commiserating with his pals of the things that have befallen him. Hear him now, crying into the silent ether:

“The thing which I greatly feared has come upon me, that which I was afraid of has come upon me.”  We can relate.

Fearful by nature, we distrust the Fates. We’re sick of sackcloth, ashes and masks. What’s happened to the American Garden of Eden? Any rational view of world conditions, not to mention those of the Universe of Self, would put us on the same ash heap with Job. We live with the constant question, “What’s next?”

We were hopeful to have a Jubilee year, right? A special year where everything’s reset, debts forgiven, the scales of justice equalized, the national debt balanced, and brotherly love is not a commodity for sale. Is this happening in your world?

Confused and conflicted, we trudge onward, ever listening, but the Universal Voice is silent. We watch the needle vacillate wildly on the Confidence Index while purchasing lottery tickets. We live in illusion on the shores of the mythical Isle of Serendip, hopeful for our stimulus ship to sail in.

There’s China on the east, Russia on the west. Us in the middle. Do you feel the vice? Marx is resurrected. Congress fiddles. Putin pushes. Covid reminds us of Stalin’s words: “One death is a tragedy; 20 million is a statistic.”

Our President is in hiding, his digital accounts shut down. Word is he’s secretly forming a yogic ashram in Florida where he will sit in a loin cloth in lotus, chanting om’s, munching on a Big Mac while reciting Lao-Tsu poetry and painting his toenails. Alec Baldwin, his doppelganger, is the gatekeeper.

His presidential library bulges with tweets and TV screens flashing live images of himself, night and day, reminding him of his greatness and how America is great again. Entry fees are charged at the door to defray the cost of post-presidential investigations.     

‘What’s next?’ we keep asking as we peer into the darkness of an alley that keeps its secrets to itself. Oh, there’s plenty out there, but why go there? We need another Moses to bring along some miracles, a bush that burns, a sea that parts, an axe that floats and a ladder from heaven. Such phenomena have been pretty scarce lately. We need a restoration of faith.

How would we put into perspective our collective culture?  What adjectives would we use? Let’s paint a national mosaic together, a mosaic made of adjectives.

How? you say. Well, let’s make adjectives into pastel crayons, each its own color. Now be a child again, color up each adjective in your own creative way. Let’s turn the tables on Edvard Munch and give him back our version of ‘The Scream.’

Ok, all done.  Look at what those nasty adjectives did to what could be a pristine year.  Let’s get rid of them.  Take a match, burn that disgusting mosaic, scoop up the ashes and bury them under your rose bush. A miracle will soon bloom. 

* * *

On the blacktop where I stand I hear a sound. It’s a metaphoric car, filled with hopes and dreams. We are that Moses, that burning bush, that living miracle. “What’s next” is what we will make it.

So, hop in, buy the ticket, take the ride.  

 

 Bud Hearn

January 9, 2021