Author: Fred Blahnik

…..she thought she knew the right answer, but then again she thought Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy were real entities too back when she was short in the tooth and stood roughly knee-high to a grasshopper.  This just goes to show thoughts—standing alone—are largely meaningless and no more permanent than last night’s thick dew which the morning sun will unmercifully obliterate in less time than it takes to concoct a shitty poem about the miracle of a new dawn.  Thoughts ain’t worth squat if there aren’t deeds riding shotgun in the stagecoach to provide requisite muscle.  Thoughts will never prevail in the bullring, nor can thoughts do any heavy lifting or fight wars……

…..stringing together moments.  A life well spent is all about stringing together a significant number of sweet, discreet moments in a logical sequential arrangement.  And in deference to the maxim “Size matters!”, the more the better too.  One can never get enough sweet, discreet moments in a lifetime, hence never stop searching for them. Sometimes those precious moments may not be easily visible, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there.  You just have to roll up your sleeves and go looking for them.  And here is where I will also rightfully chime in with a bromide utterly exhausted from wanton overuse:  The journey is two thirds of the fun!!!…..

Trust NO ONE…..and trust the immanent unpredictability of the moment even less!  Surprises only befall those who are ill-prepared or completely unprepared, so never put yourself in the position of being an unwitting victim of “unfortunate circumstances” who thereupon rants and raves ad nauseum about the gross unfairness of life while seeking pity for oneself.  There is no such thing as “unfortunate circumstances”; there are only dumb, ill-prepared imbeciles who naively expect a smooth, dreamy tour throughout the entirety of their lives and then scream bloody murder and complain loudly about inequities and “bad luck” when destiny throws them a few curveballs and leads them over a bevy of speedbumps to test their mettle.  Always be prepared and never allow yourself to be caught absolutely off-guard, lest you wind up being rightfully lumped amongst the aforementioned throng of guileless dotards!

AN opportunity comes around fairly often, on many occasions multiple times in a day.  On the other hand, THIS opportunity only comes around once…..and it’s staring you in the face right now, dammittall!  Therefore, do NOT waste it!!!  The adult stage of an opportunity nymph is a fully grown regret, and from that stage no further metamorphosis takes place and this mature, ossified creature eventually withers up and dies a feeble, inconsequential death.  But an opportunity taken full advantage of?  With the gradual passage of time, this cryptic entity transforms into a beautiful six-legged creature boasting sweeping, lustrous wings coupled with a sinewy, nubile body, a creature that must eventually die also—as all mortal things do, of course—yet its death is a cause for celebration and the closure of an imaginary circle, not a reason for consternation and gnashing of teeth over glorious promise unfulfilled.  Oh yes, you asked about the geometrical shape associated with a jilted opportunity?  Well, just some grotesque, multi-sided unicursal hexagram lacking true character and pulchritude. Jilted opportunities are difficult to categorize because not much is known about them.  To wit, who in their right mind would rather spend finite time studying pusillanimous losers as opposed to risk-taking winners?

A perfectly safe life is a perfectly boring life.  These two concepts are mutually exclusive, and you cannot experience both simultaneously.  If safety is your number one priority and living to a very old age your unstated but implicit goal, do not expect your life to be very exciting or inspiring.  Excitement only comes with taking chances, with daring fate and then overcoming the bevy of traps it sets up along the pathway you choose to tread by enlisting your wits and derring-do to lead you in that daily, ongoing struggle.  You can always hide in a dark corner, shut your mouth, and maximize your chances of living to a ripe old age, but how much fun is that and what kind of example would that detestably bashful behavior set for your impressionable offspring?  Answer:  The WRONG example cubed! 

Imitation is ABSOLUTELY the sincerest form of flattery, so try not to be too offended when it happens to you as it almost certainly will. Copycats are jealous of a peculiar capability that you possess and in light of the fact they do not possess this capability and never will, they next do the easiest thing and pilfer from you.  But don’t fret the issue; all is good.  The guilty party may think they are outsmarting you, but the plain truth is they are stealing the golden egg and not the goose that created it.  These varlets can never steal the creative spark that generated an inspired product; that entity belongs only to you and no amount of mendacity will ever alter this fact.

Experiences involving love gone bad or heartbreak or any and all matters related to the heart are not learning experiences per se but rather non-denominational experiences—period.  There is little or nothing to be learned from them; the heart marches to its own peculiar drummer and operates totally independently from one’s brain.  Thus do not overreach for conclusions in any situation where love is the featured player.  Love is very much an emotion—The paramount emotion in mankind’s massive arsenal; everyone should know that by now!—but pure emotions and empirical knowledge are as diametrically disparate as opposing poles on a magnet.  You do not learn any life lessons from love gone bad; love is a disreputable actor as well as a horrible preceptor.  Because of this, you’ll unfalteringly wind up repeating the exact same mistakes as before whenever love conceitedly sashays into any equation, although “mistake” is assuredly not the right word to use in this context and I only offered it in lieu of not being able to think of a suitable surrogate for serial poor judgment when one’s brain is unwittingly being held captive by one’s besotted heart.

…..he, unlike the overwhelming majority of his brethren, instinctively understood there are causes bigger than life itself, and that those causes transcend the importance of valiantly fighting to preserve the existence of just one puny individual on Earth’s forever surface.  And I’m not referring exclusively to blind nationalism here either and irrationally defending some piece of ageless land against perceived invaders at the cost of one’s own life when the transience of life itself is so frighteningly short and therefore disproportionately valuable relative to dubious “national” crusades. No, I’m referring instead to lofty, ethereal causes which have nothing whatsoever to do with material ownership of anything, let alone outlandish claims of “ownership” over something as permanent and preternatural as cosmic dust temporarily masquerading as Earth’s soil.  These causes I speak of are grounded in figurative bedrock considerably more powerful than mere oxygen and topsoil, namely human exceptionalism and nobility and allegiance …..

What she learned from her harrowing brush with mortality was all of the cliched stuff you’re already nauseatingly familiar with, namely that life should not be taken for granted, that one should unfailingly “live in the moment”, that personal relationships are the most important glue informing humankind, that the here and now is all that matters, and so on and so on and so on.  But she knew all this tripe anyway—ad nauseum—which then begs the question: Why does one have to tiptoe along the boundaries of consciousness in order to appreciate life to a greater extent?  Why does one need to creep up to the very lip of the abyss and stare down into the bottomless void just to feel the sense of wonderment attending sentience?  Why challenge mortality prematurely when even the world’s biggest fool knows full well it will prevail in the end anyway?  You shouldn’t have to, and yet almost everyone who does walk that existential tightrope comes back with the same boring story to tell and the same “lesson” purportedly learned.

I never got a shot off; my gun never even left its holster.  It is impossible to be an apex predator if your gun never leaves its holster.  That little bastard got away from me today and I feel like an impotent piece of shit as a result.  “Next time!”, I could blurt out of course as many people (A majority?) are obtusely wont to do, but who really knows if there will be a next time?  Very often—amazingly often, exasperatingly often—there is not.  And then one is left to rue your inadequacies and grind one’s teeth over the single occasion when the opportunity was there—albeit not a very good or likely instance but an opportunity nonetheless—and you were too hesitant and encapsulated by perfectionism to even take a shot.  Shame on you!  Yes yes yes, SHAME ON YOU FOR BEING SUCH A CONCUBINE TO PERFIDIOUSNESS, DUFUS MAN!!!