A Silent Introspection

 

“Small sorrows speak; great sorrows are silent.” Keillor

***

Yesterday was Memorial Day, a day of remembrance for those who have fallen in military conflicts past, as well as honoring those who serve today.  It was also six days into the week in which an unspeakable tragedy occurred in Uvalde, Texas. It was a more somber occasion than usual.   

As Bukowski writes, “Sometimes life is so hard we just don’t know what to do.” Today seems to be one of these times. How can we synthesize it?

Writers with deadlines, required or self-imposed, face these times when their word-plans don’t seem appropriate for the moment. As Mike Tyson once commented, “Everybody has a plan until they’ve been punched in the mouth.” I believe our nation feels this way now.

There’s joy in writing, particularly if articles are humorous, enlightening, satirical, sometimes serious but always filled with hyperbole. For what is life anyway? We live in memories, and what better way to enjoy them than to freshen them up occasionally with exaggeration.

But life has a deadly serious side, a side we prefer to keep embedded in our subconscious and away from the keyboard. But since so much of life is purely accidental, we’re often at a loss of words or actions when faced with the reality of it. With the events in Uvalde and elsewhere, this seems to be the case. Our feelings are raw.

It seems our entire country is in a sort of silent grieving at the enormity of events here and abroad and is at a loss for words, although as usual, plenty of accusations and blame are finding expression.

On St. Simons Island, a Memorial Day gathering service is held annually. It’s called Taps at Twilight. It is a moving ceremony with a color guard, bagpipers, the community band playing Sousa music and military speakers.  It honors veterans from all branches of military service. It reminds each of us that we’re all part of one nation, even if only for an evening. We all leave changed.

Memorial Day is a good day to reflect on who we are, individually and as a people-nation. Evil and tyranny exist everywhere, even in our very presence, but so does kindness, compassion and good will. Let us choose the kinder part and commit ourselves to this endeavor. 

May yesterday be a reminder to us all that Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of happiness is the beacon of light our nation shines to the world.

 

Bud Hearn

May 31, 2022 

Too Much to Digest

 

Even the moon gets full.

* * *

I’m staring at it with disgust, gorging myself with every byte, trying to choke it down. My brain feels like the man who ate fifty hotdogs in five minutes. At least he was able to time out. ‘Enough is enough’ were his final words.

But still, it keeps coming, volumes of it, unabated, the wait staff gloating with glee at the man chained to the chair, screens everywhere, the digital world assaulting him with a revolting smorgasbord of news. He’s imprisoned in the dungeon of the ‘screen world’ where the word ‘enough’ is seldom heard.

The appetizers of advertising pop up on every screen, tantalizing with its variety of offerings for every taste. So many choices, who can choose?

The tidbits of Twitter’s trough of small plates arrive, irresistible to resist tasting. The entre of emails, thick with the red-meat bulk of misinformation, is followed by the dainty but provocative teasing desserts of texts. Will the deluge ever end?

No. Our eyes are bigger than our brains, we’re hooked. The news food wagon makes house calls, finds us everywhere…in our automobiles, on street corners, in offices, in restaurants, on buildings, streamers trailing airplanes. The news, the news, a feeding frenzy 24/7 for every appetite.

We pop Zantac like uppers, our eyes bug out, our brains are stuffed to explosion, our senses are dulled, we’re like zombies, victims of this onslaught of news. Oh, what wretched creatures we’ve become. There’s no escape. Or is there?

Yes, but it’s a hard cure to walk out of the screen restaurant with its alluring menu of amusements for every sentiment.  Must our eyes become blind, our ears deaf, our taste buds cauterized, our brains enduring shock treatments? Even our fingers twitch uncontrollably, yearning to scroll. They suffer the delirium tremens of keyboard abandonment.

Somehow, we must find our way out of the dark alleys of metaverse back into the real world of the here and now where we make our own news, where we choose our meal, and we have cut our screen time down to zero. But is it possible to return to reality, to leave such an enticing world of diversion from the swirl of events?

Yet, who can tear themselves away from the continuing courtroom saga of Depp and Heard, or from the media melodrama warning of babies lying dead in the streets from lack of Similac baby formula. Then there’s the intriguing Mafia myths that surround blanched bodies found in barrels in the dried lakebed of Lake Mead?

Forget if you can the cult of Putin, or the fecklessness of politicians with their crock pots crammed with crocks of lies posing as promises. Monkeypox is on the way for stimulus payments.

But we can’t. Inflation has us on hyper alert and we’re glued to the sideshows of continuing drama as the circus caravan moves along, day by day, always a new menu of options for every taste and habit.

Maybe it’s all just a bad dream, a parallel universe we’re living in that will soon vanish and we’ll wake up. 

What, wake up? That’s novel. Wake up to what? Wake up to reality, that’s what, to the reality we’re out of control.  

* * *

Sadly, if we want out, we’re on our own. Read the exit sign: Turn off, tune out and kick back. Enough is enough. Even the moon gets full occasionally.     

Meanwhile, don’t let your eyes take your brain on a trip it can’t handle.  Good luck.

 

Bud Hearn

May 24, 2022     

The Voice of Verity

“What is truth?” we ask. Get ready, we’re about to find out. The Government is on it.

* * *

Look, give us the straight skinny, tell it like it is. We’re Americans, we can handle the truth. No misinformation, disinformation and other manipulative distortions that mask the truth. Oops. Did I just type ‘mask’?

OMG, can we just forget COVID for a day? Apparently not. It’s ingrained into our psyche, our every waking moment, what is real, what is fake.

It’s a lurking menace, a viral alien that mutates, regroups and returns with another name. It comes with its hands out, begging for more subsidies. It’s almost as ubiquitous as serial politicians who transform themselves into angels of largesse, creatures whose narratives become flesh and verity with every verbal soundbite uttered.

Today, Truth is on the rocks. But Homeland Security is interceding with ‘truth experts’ digging through the rubbish of falsehood, fake news and other misinformation permeating the airwaves. It’s called the Disinformation Governance Board, or DGB for short. It is closely aligned with another acronym, KGB. Is there a connection?

Its purpose is to root out fiction in all forms and replace it with the truth. There’s nothing wrong with getting the straight skinny. Especially when it speaks with the authoritative Voice of Verity. Who is this, you ask? Why, our government’s experts. Have you stopped laughing yet? 

Experts? Is there really such a thing? Dr. Fauci exploded that theory, though to his credit the ‘absolutes’ kept moving. So, who are these experts, and from what genie bottle have they emerged?

Not to be cynical, but with the ‘existential threats’ our world is subject to (Joe’s favorite expression), who doesn’t want to know who’s in charge of the sieve that sorts reality from fabrication?

When I want an expert, I call my friend Peter, an escapee from the corporate world of greed and duplicity. He currently raises and trains hunting dogs and is acquainted with the realities of life at its ‘existential’ core. Poop happens.

Today we shoot the breeze about reality, things like the weather, dogs and hunting. I ask his thoughts on the misinformation turmoil.

“I read about it, but down here we deal with the absolutes of life, not speculative claptrap that doesn’t edify. The truth Is, and that’s a fact.”   

As we talk his dog drops something at his boot. A rattlesnake, dead but its muscles still quivering. He picks up the snake, holds it out. “You want the truth? Here it is.”

“This is a strange metaphor,” I say.

“Look, this creature has only one interest, that’s to exist. It’s not necessarily an existential threat by nature, just an existentialist like us, live and let live. This snake is the ultimate arbiter. It represents life and death. These are facts, not fake news.”

He takes a small stick, peels back the curled lips of the viper. Two large fangs protrude, both dripping a yellowish venom. 

“See that venom? That’s death. But if you leave him be, he won’t bother you. That’s the tradeoff…life or death. You choose.  It’s called Freedom…freedom to think, to choose, to act. This is truth in its purist form.”

“There’s antivenom, right?”

“Yes, but expensive. Comes from the blood of sheep.”

“I sense Biblical overtones.”

“Maybe. Certain parallels might exist.”

Simple lifestyles and common sense often clear up a lot of conflicting mish mash about misinformation.

The next time you get hung up and anxious about things you can’t understand, here’s a suggestion: Put your palms around a set of solid steel dumb bells and the Voice of Verity will speak amazingly loud and clear. 

DGB experts? Dismiss the thought. We have brains, and The Truth is just not that hard to find if we know where to look. Good Luck.

 

Bud Hearn

May 9, 2022