Fingers

 

Count them.  You have ten.  What are you doing with them?

 * * *

Last Saturday was brutally cold on the beach. Hypothermia stalked walkers. Why, later in the day it was possible to find fingers littering the beach, fingers that had frozen and fallen off like the last vestiges of a once fiery but now frozen romantic fling. 

Well, maybe that’s an over-blown hyperbole about how cold it was, but fingers get the brunt of the extreme cold. Poor things, they’re the last living body part to get blood, competing with toes. But this is about fingers, not toes.

Now fingers are essential appendages. Life would be tough to manage without them. Like washing dishes, for example.

The morning finds me standing over the sink, washing the previously used spatula.

“What are you doing?” she asks.

“About to cook some bacon and eggs, so I’m washing the spatula.”

“With your fingers?”

“What’s wrong with fingers?”

“No soap?”

“Why? It’s just a little greasy.” In retrospect there was probably a better answer, but what the heck. Don’t look back.

“Well, don’t blame me if you die.”

Washing the spatula with my fingers reminds me of the creek-bank camping days of my youth. We cooked a lot of eggs, fish, potatoes and bacon over an open fire. Bacon was a must. Where else could the grease come from?

Fingers did a lot of work. Like toasting Wonder Bread on a forked stick over that same fire. You haven’t lived until you wrap bacon in ‘light bread’ and dip it in grease drippings. Hot grease kills all germs, even Covid. No vaccine mandates were needed in those days.

But that was then, this is now. We’re more regimented and refined, more germ averse, more hygienically woke and aware of scoffers claiming we didn’t wash both the inside and outside of the pan.

Oh, yes, the pan. I forgot. It had to be washed, too, and detergent just didn’t compare to creek water, sand and mud. Spick and Span was developed using this formula, I’m certain.

Fingers can do more than wash dishes. They don’t have tongues, but they can talk just the same. They are very expressive. Each one could tell a story if they could talk. Except the pinkie finger. Now, it’s a hard one to figure out.

The thumb can type faster than the brain thinks. Give it a cell keyboard and stand back. It tells tales, divulges secrets and boasts great things. It’s directional also: ‘thumbing’ a ride, thumbs up, thumbs down, or saying, “Get out of my life.”

The so-called index finger is versatile, expert at pointing out blame, wagging at someone’s mistake and drawing pictures in the air. Plus, it has a wicked ‘come-hither’ suggestive beckoning motion.   

Ah, the middle finger, the intimidating brute of the bunch. It has a swagger and a belligerent presence. It has a low IQ and likes gyms. But in conjunction with the thumb, its ‘OK’ shows heart.  

The fourth finger, or the ‘ring finger,’ is the romantic accessory. Of all the fingers, it has more stories to tell, more tears to shed, more heartbreaks to remember and heartthrobs to recall. It’s born with lust and is also the most expensive finger for a man to accessorize.

Poor pinkie. Why are you here? Just to balance things out? What would a hand look like without your grace, charm and gentle presence? Besides, it takes five fingers to form an octave, and what would piano music be without you?

Collectively, fingers can be either fists or open palms. Fists can’t receive blessings, but open palms can. Which will it be?

* * *

I guess my fingers did an OK job on the spatula. I’m still living. My five fingers and I salute you today.

 

Bud Hearn

January 31, 2022    

An Offhand Comment

 

Hope is needed for the new year, but it begins as a wadded-up mess.

This past week consisted of name-calling, finger pointing and character assassinations over the demise of democracy. Where? Why, in the hallowed halls of higher power where the clown charade performs. Business as usual there. Confusion reigns. Can Hope live again?

The week begins here on the coast as most others, a morning dog walk on the beach. Business must be conducted, temperature notwithstanding. No confusion here. You can either walk north or south. Options are limited. Let the dog choose. Better to follow a dog’s nose than a politician’s odor. Safer choice.

Lynn and Chipper walk by. “Good morning,” she says. “Look at what the wind did to the flag.” She points a frigid finger at the flagpole.

An American flag hangs there, limp, twisted and tangled. The wings of its soaring patriotic spirit have been clipped. It clings powerless to the pole against the vicissitudes of strong winds which blow like the hysterical screams of warped opinions swirling on social media… ”Hear me, hear me, my way.”

“Reminds me of this week’s Congress,” I say.

“Yes, pity. It’s a wadded-up mess, too. Can anyone untangle the flag and the mess in DC? But don’t get me started on that.” I didn’t, but I wanted to.

Women have strong opinions. They can give you an earful in short order. I wanted to hear some scintilla of hope in the seething internecine conflicts, the color-coded turf wars, the impossibility of consensus or compromise.

But politics is contaminating. Why pollute the beach with discussions that lead nowhere, change nothing and often set on fire cordial relationships in small communities? I let it lay.

But her offhand comment of, ‘a waded-up mess,’ sticks with me. Funny, how a comment can lead you off in strange directions. She leaves me gazing at the flag, thinking about democracy.

I feel a twinge of pity for the flaccid, wadded-up cloth hugging the flagpole. It looks tired, worn out. Enduring the winds and rain, it must have said to itself, “Been here before. It’ll soon pass.” And it did.

We’ve heard more offhand comments than we can recall. Some we followed closely, some at a distance.  Some led to action, others to contemplation. Some led somewhere, others, like good intentions, died on the vine. Like a dog’s nose, they do the leading.

Offhand comments are like fine wine. The longer they distill, the better the essence. Fermentation eliminates a lot of impurities.

The next day we pass the flagpole. The flag has come back to life. Somehow, though battered and contorted by the storm’s fury, it remains steadfast and resolute. There may be Hope for democracy yet.

Today it’s sunny and 37 degrees. On our walk we encounter Gennie, an intrepid woman who takes life by the neck and plunges into the glacial Atlantic.

“Are you crazy?” I yell.

Dripping icicles, she shouts, “No, just re-baptized, energized and born again. Bring on the new year.”   

Now there you go. Is Hope still alive? You bet it is. The cortege has not yet formed.  

 

Bud Hearn

January 24, 2022

 

     

 

So Much Sand

 

Let come what comes, let go what goes. See what remains.

* * *

Here we go again, a new year, a new beginning.  Whoopee. Give this baby a good spank, get it breathing, screaming, wild for life. Then hug it, kiss it, embrace it. It’s ours now. What will we do with it?

Say it’s not true, but the first thing we do is to introduce it to our tired routines, those stale, leftover crumbs of yesterday. Routine’s death grip will strangle the life of anything new before it can even crawl.    

Do the first few days of the ‘new year’ feel like more of the same old same old? Status quo is the way of Routine. We slide like pigs back into the habit-filled wallow of what was. Muck migrates.

I know these things. Routine is a ball and chain, a way of life. It’s easier to skin an alligator’s hide with your bare teeth than to attempt to strip-search Routine for hidden motives. Our new baby needs fresh air. Let’s begin here.

Now I agree with Routine that some pursuits are beneficial. One of mine is walking our hound Bogey on the beach every morning. He is a rescue baby, supposedly a Beagle. But the baby grew and ended up being a big hound. You never know what you get with babies.

January 1^st finds us walking the beach in the fresh air of a new year. He has his own temperament, I have mine. I give him his nose. He’s a sniffer, keen on all dog and deer tracks recently implanted in the sands. Born tracker, that boy, always on the hunt. No instructions necessary.

I, on the other hand, am a talker and a thinker. We walk, he sniffs. I talk or think. Or both. Takes talent to walk, talk and think at the same time. But not much.

Bogey finds something exciting in the tangled sea oats while I’m thinking of how to put some new wine into my old wineskin. Last year’s juice was of poor vintage. The skin split. I need a new one.

Such efforts are mostly mental foreplay, generally producing nothing more orgasmic than Bogey’s discovery of some blanched bones that resemble a rabbit. The ideas simply spin around endlessly in an ethereal vortex and ultimately fly off harmlessly into the ether from whence they came.

Suddenly Bogey emerges with a treasure gripped between his teeth. It resembles a dead crab. He wants to bring it home for a souvenir. Dogs and humans share some proclivities. Certain treasures are better left where found. I persuade him to leave it.

It was a good morning for Routine. We both left something on the beach, Bogey a dead crab and me some cycled-out relationships. We’re both the better for it.       

Back home unleased, Bogey checks on the backyard squirrel. I kick off my shoes, shake out the sand thinking, surely there’s a metaphor in here somewhere.

 Happy New Year. Let the baby have its nose.

 

Bud Hearn

January 7, 2022