These Foolish Things

 

In Spring, a compact disk and a baseball can set a heart spinning

By Harry Cummins

     Sure signs of April are everywhere, but their traditional powers of renewal seem suppressed in many of us.  Starring down the second year of a lingering pandemic can do that.

     Real life, as we all know, is a succession of bad news and hard knocks thru which we learn to patch up our troubles and trudge on. Soldiers in the Great War.  In this fight, however, we can easily forget so much worth remembering. Coating our vulnerabilities in a veneer of toughness is, of course, useful, but at a risk of transformation over time that hardens our heart along with our arteries.

     Foolish glances across crowded rooms and lazy fly balls against spacious skies are the forgotten games we have been forced to put down in the name of social distancing. Once a confirmed romantic given to poetic outburst, I have since earned a grown man's cynicism. Then I became reacquainted this Spring with Andrea Marcovicci, courtesy of an old CD that has been gathering dust for the past few years.

     Tendering a collection of extraordinary literate love songs from the 20's, 30's, and 40's, Marcovicci's mezzo-soprano voice brought me back to my own  lyrical, long-lost feelings.

     Her sermonettes in song simply confirmed my own suspicion that there is scarcely little else to trust..little else to live out than our own heart's calling.  Is not love for another person a way to resist the vortex, a way back to ourselves, to our origins?  Perhaps God's clearest calling, some would say, but I shall leave that to the theologians.

     I do know if we linger too long in self-absorption, too long in the grip of contagion, we may be at risk.  How much one needs to know of shielding one's self in order to be happy is not always clear.  Happiness, however, seldom has much to do with one's age or secure station in life.  More, I'd say, with the resiliency of one's spirit or sentiment in the face of life's on-slaught.

     The kid in left field, yelling "I got it" and the torch singer crying out "I've lost it" have always understood these things. They are the kindest reminders we have....April's profound fools.

hcummins@aol.com