Author: Fred Blahnik

…..so you sold that desirable item and made a very tidy profit in doing so.  You’re feeling really good and savvy and all puffed up right now, but how long do you expect that glorious feeling to last?  More to the point…..what now?  Yes, what now?!  You’re currently sitting on a pile of money that you didn’t have just twenty four short hours ago, but how sexy and self-affirming is it to stand in possession of bland, staid, pedestrian money?  If you didn’t read between the lines here, that was a rhetorical question:  The answer is “owning” a shitload of money isn’t very sexy at all and only stirs one’s hormones and emotions to a minimal degree. Quite the opposite from owning a rare original painting, a nearly-impossible-to-secure autograph of an important historical figure, an uber-muscular sports car, a luxe “cabin” on a pristine northern lake three hours from home, a turbocharged speedboat, a champion thoroughbred, etc., etc., etc.  Making money is only intoxicating if it is reinvested in something more sexy.  Because although a polyglot of digits in your multiple banking accounts comes as a monumental relief for conservative folks, so too does dry cereal for breakfast, boxer shorts, and two-hour naps in the afternoon if those are the people you are struggling to emulate……

…..what troubled him the most was the fact that all the other members of his prohibitively large family treated said family as a monolith and refused to acknowledge the obvious fact that even in a pristine barrel of apples a fair number of those apples—certainly a handful, at least—will turn rotten over a period of time, and when you’re talking about this period of time stretching back some sixty plus years, the assumption becomes even more glaringly true.  To believe otherwise is something which goes beyond naiveté; a belief like that tugs credulity beyond all rational limits and is utterly preposterous.  To think that a person—ANY person—could survive on a highly volatile planet for sixty, seventy, or eighty years and that no changes would affect them over that long interval of time, including negative changes in certain instances, is simply not realistic.  And then to deny the existence of such pejorative changes purely for the sake of naked family unity is not just being unrealistic; that type of overly deferential behavior is insulting and downright contemptuous. I strenuously reject such lazy rationalizing and encourage others of sound character to do the same…..

……the touch of her hand…..the feel of her bare skin…..the tingling sensation throughout your body when she innocently smiled at you…..the instant arousal you instinctively felt when her blouse stretched upward just a bit to reveal a sliver of trim stomach…..the friendly teasing which habitually stopped well short of provocative meanness…..the early morning leisurely walks where no topic of conversation was off-limits…..the regular trips to the Dairy Queen to merrily indulge in a giant chocolate ice cream cone…..the way she would automatically blush self-consciously whenever you mentioned how attractive she was…..the dulcet sound of her voice that no one else seemed to take note of other than yourself….the sheer attention she showered upon you when your romance was at its undisputed zenith and sizzling like bacon in a cast iron skillet……   These are the things that turned you on so much to her, and these are the same things that you miss so excruciatingly after she ultimately rejected you and went her own separate way.  The little things in life.  The minutiae.  The seeming trivialities.  The minutes and seconds and moments and shards of moments that will live on forever in your brain.  You could not purge those fragments of time from your memory even if you tried, but a perverse part of your psyche wants to preserve these hitherto treasured moments anyway so they will always remain available to you whenever wistfulness beckons.  Which seems to be happening with increasing frequency lately.  Probably about once a day.  Probably about five times a day.  No, probably about every five minutes throughout each and every day.  That time spent with her more and more looks like the best days of my life—the “good old days” squared and subsequently cubed.  I guess I knew it at the time too, and nothing of beneficial significance has happened since then to change my opinion on the matter.  She was my chosen soulmate out of everyone who inhabits the face of this puny planet, but it’s funny how that cannot be a unilateral decision inasmuch as I evidently wasn’t her chosen soulmate.  She sampled the water for a bit and then decided it didn’t suit her; I got thrown back in the drink with all the other unappealing detritus.  She was definitely created just for me—that I know for a fact and  God above would reluctantly admit the same if He was administered a large bolus of truth serum—but I wasn’t created just for her.  DAMNED!!!!!  How can that be?!  Just how fuckin’ unfair is that, I now ask of you?!  She is mine but I’m not hers.  Love is apparently sometimes a one-way street.  I’ve experienced a panoply of saddening things in my life, but none of those others even come close to the soul-destroying misery attendant to unrequited love. That has to be the worst feeling ever; that is the proverbial wound which never heals. I may get over this pernicious aching in my soul some day way way off in the distant future, yet I highly doubt it.  Those aforementioned shards of tantalizing memories will never allow such a thing to happen……

She was as good as it gets.  Bonnie Blahnik Sawyer was as good as it gets.  And I know you the reader will accuse me of bias knowing that I am her brother and that the two of us were close in age as well, but I will still stand one hundred percent behind my original statement.  Bonnie Blahnik Sawyer was as good as it gets. 

Period!!!!!

How do I know this?

How do I dare make such a definitive, all-encompassing statement?

Quite simply, by the manner of life she chose to live.  Bonnie literally dedicated her life to helping and materially endowing other people, often disadvantaged people and sometimes individuals she barely knew.  Bonnie habitually gave away copious amounts of time and money to any cause she deemed worthy, and her criteria for being “worthy” wasn’t necessarily that exclusive.  Bonnie purely and simply liked giving things to people she thought would appreciate and enjoy them, and to her that appreciation was an intoxicating drug that was wildly addictive—one that she never could get enough of despite herculean efforts to sate the desire.  Bonnie really didn’t have any other pastimes other than talking on the telephone a lot and watching television in the evenings and giving.  Those were her three chief pastimes.  She didn’t read regularly, write, cook fancy meals, do craftwork, play golf or bowl, attend movies, bake, travel extensively, work out at a gym, do crossword puzzles, paint, make things with her hands, etc., etc., etc.  No, Bonnie talked on the telephone an awfully lot—principally gossiping with her twin sister Barb out in northern Idaho–watched television as a means to relax in the evenings, and beyond those two basic staples she mastered the art of giving like only a picayune thimbleful of individuals ever did before her. That’s right—GIVING.  Giving to others was Bonnie Blahnik Sawyer’s primary reason for living.

Giving and Bonnie Blahnik Sawyer may as well be synonymous words, so closely are they related.

And now she is gone.  As quickly as it took a humongous semi-tractor pulling a full load of God-knows-what piloted by an incompetent, shitass driver to recklessly kill her while she rode as an oblivious passenger in a vehicle being driven by a good friend, Bonnie—in the blink of an eye–went from a passionate giver to a past tense angel.  Our earthly world is now implausibly worse off for this monumental loss.  Let’s face it, there are so few truly generous, selfless individuals alive on this planet at any given moment in time, and Bonnie Blahnik Sawyer should undisputedly be included among that bonsaied minority.  She was one of a kind; there will never be another earthling of her ilk who prided herself NOT on how much material wealth she could acquire in one lifetime akin to how 99.9% of the population live their lives, but rather on how much material wealth she could give away.

Bottom line, Bonnie Blahnik Sawyer was an indentured servant to humanity, yet this was a conscious decision of hers and not an odious situation foisted upon her by oppressive kings of destiny.  Bonnie lived to serve her fellow Earth mates in whatever manner she could be helpful, and her sudden death leaves behind a vacuum no one can come close to filling even if they are of a heart and mind to do so, which of course no one apart from a handful of saints written about and lionized in the religious literature have ever done before.

You cannot change the past; you can only hope to change the future, and then only a tiny bit.  You can learn from the past, but you cannot change it.  The past becomes immutable the instant a moment transforms into a memory.  If you had hoped to maintain some degree of control over that moment, the instant it passes all hope ceases and you should then look ahead rather than backwards armed with the new knowledge you possess.  I realize all this may sound glaringly obvious, yet that does not address the fact millions and millions and millions of people spend the bulk of their lives staring backwards—ruing what they might have done differently that might have changed the trajectories of their lives in a way that would have ensured more happiness.  And that is probably the most germane point which can be taken away from this mini-discussion.  Namely, there are fundamentally only two types of people who populate Earth’s surface:  Those who look to the past for solace, and those who look to the future for inspiration.

The huge crowd booed the man in the arena, booed him lustily.  Truth is, he was stinking up the place; his performance, if you could even call it that, was pitiful and personally humiliating.  The guy was physically overmatched.  He was weak and emasculated.  He didn’t belong out there, was way out of his league, so far out of his league that he couldn’t have reached it with a cannon shot.  And so the people who were gathered—who had come hoping for and expecting an exciting, closely contested tilt–booed long and loud.

The man in the arena heard the booing, knew the crowd was disappointed in his performance.  But even as he absorbed a brutal blow to the body and subsequently stumbled backwards with blood streaming out of his nose, contentment reigned within his heart.  There was nothing more he could do; he was already doing his best.  The other man was just better than him today.  Quite frankly, the other man would always be better than him in this particular athletic pursuit.  But that didn’t make him a better man.  That didn’t make him superior as a person.  The man in the arena knew this.  The crowd did not.

The man in the arena took yet another ferocious blow, this time to the head, and began tumbling backwards off his feet.  The crowd stood as one and cheered crazily as the contest moved near to its obvious and foregone conclusion.  The man in the arena smiled inscrutably as he hit the deck with a resounding thud, knowing that he had given his all and done his utmost.

He was at peace with himself.

The crowd?

They had done nothing, attempted nothing, nor would they ever attempt anything of substance for the entirety of their lives.  These people lived their lives vicariously.  They were kingmakers, creating heroes as well as villains, but, ironically, not one of them possessed the requisite courage to ever darken the entrance to the arena him/herself.   They loved to watch other people try and oftentimes not succeed, yet an acute fear of failure paralyzed these individuals into a permanent state of lethargy.  They would never take that crucial first step and try anything challenging, because with trying comes the possibility–however miniscule–of failing.  And these lifelong spectators could not deal with failure, couldn’t deal with it at all; to them it was toxic and a thing to be avoided at all costs.  Their psyches were much too fragile and their self-esteem too shallow and fleeting to handle aborted endeavors; a result had to be guaranteed well in advance in order for them to cautiously proceed.

The huge crowd of people assembled for this week’s martial arts event was one big glob of maggots, a conglomeration of blood-sucking parasites, a potpourri of amorphous slime.  They were not to be counted…..they were nothing.

…..she says “I love you!” so often and to so many people that it has completely lost value as the ultimate expression of affection.  You can talk about the Law of Diminishing Returns all you want, but Prime Exhibit #1 will forever remain her ludicrous overuse of what should be a sacred mantra.  In her case what she says and what she means obviously aren’t the same thing; there’s no possible way they can be.  No one—And I mean positively NO ONE!!!!!!!!!—has that much room in their heart for authentic love.  “Like”, maybe, but not an emotion so sacrosanct and seismic as love.  She blurts out “I love you!” to virtually anyone who temporarily occupies more than five minutes of her life, and that’s as crazy as it is sickening.  Get a grip, Girl!  You can’t possibly love someone you only met five minutes ago.  And to insist otherwise is the very apex of disingenuousness…..

Best Friend Ever

By Frederick J. Blahnik

God, how I’m gonna miss him when he’s gone!!!

Miss ‘im, miss ‘im,  MISS ‘IM!!!!!

Impossible to fathom.  Impossible to comprehend.  Impossible to even imagine right now…..

He’s undoubtedly been my best friend  for, like…..for, like…..FOREVER!!!!!

                My gosh, when I stop to think about all the glorious things we’ve done together over the years, just me and him, well…..my heart starts pounding and my eyes begin to tear up!  Jeff has been more dependable and more loyal and more trustworthy than any friend I’ve ever had, and that’s saying quite a lot too.  Yet it’s the truth, absolutely the truth!  Whenever I needed a calming presence to settle my nerves or a shoulder to cry on when I was feeling downcast or a free ear to patiently listen to my litany of complaints at the end of a stressful day, Jeff was unfailingly there for me.  Always my welfare first, never his.  Always faithfully following just to my stern, never pompously leading just to my bow.  Always the allegiant wing-man, never insisting on being bombastic Maverick.  Always me, never him.  Just a gem of a friend, the true embodiment of a dependable companion.  Jeff would literally do anything for me and not stop for even one second to consider its inconvenience or potential dangers involved. 

Let’s face it:  I love him, I love him a lot; I really really do!!

                My oh my oh my, the innumerable great times we’ve spent together over the years!  Those times can never be edited or reconfigured or replaced…..

                Yeah, just the two of us, me and Jeff.

                Connected by an invisible tether for all eternity.

                But why am I telling you this now and spilling my guts out to someone I can only reach coldly and impersonally through an electronic keyboard?

                Because tomorrow it all comes to an end for the two of us…..

                Yes, that aforementioned transcendent, decade-and-a-half-long relationship will be coming to an end in the space of just one grievous, compacted day on the calendar.

                In one tragic, unimaginably sad morning, to be more precise.

                And I just can’t stand to think about it right now; the thought is hideous; the thought is overbearing; the thought is incomprehensible!

                You see, Jeff is going to be euthanized at 9:00 tomorrow morning down at the veterinarian’s office.

                WHY?!?!?! 

I can graphically envision the horrified, quizzical expression on your face as you incredulously read the previous sentence.

                Well, as is generally the case, Jeff’s physical decline didn’t just up and happen overnight.  His health has been slowly failing for several years now, but its rate accelerated greatly over the past few months—one could compare it to a giant boulder gathering more and more momentum as it screams down an alpine mountainside and not be too far off the mark.  I kept hoping for the best, kept my head firmly buried in the sand akin to a frightened ostrich, kept turning a blind eye to what must have been plainly obvious to everyone around me:  The fact my beloved dog was now fifteen years of age and his overall health reflected this unalterable fact; it was failing precipitously.  Old age was not just slowly catching up to Jeff; it finally DID catch up to him and in a big way too, and this next thought probably goes without saying but I’ll go ahead and state the obvious anyway and blame it on the emotionally compromised state in which I currently find myself entrapped:  There is no cure for old age—not now, not in the future, and not in some hidden enclave of my wildest, most wishful dreams either.  If only there was, I would gladly flip open my checkbook right this instant and write out a check in any amount just to gainfully extend Jeff’s life.

                But no deal; no such luck…..

                That sort of fantastical stuff only happens in cheesy Hollywood movies that are made for kids.

                Anyway, Jeff’s rapid deterioration in health left me with but two stark choices:  Put an end to his awful suffering right now in a humane manner, or allow him to live out his “natural” life to its predestined conclusion while asking my best friend to endure the godawful spate of physical maladies which have made his existence so miserable and unbearable over the past few months.  And, really, faced with these two clear-cut choices, my decision in the matter wasn’t difficult or time-consuming at all.  I love Jeff unconditionally, and in this instance forcing him to put up with excruciating pain on a full-time basis for weeks or even months on end when the means readily exist to swiftly terminate that pain would be cruel, heinous, and serve no useful purpose.  Euthanizing Jeff is the obvious thing to do as well as the only logical route to pursue. 

But just don’t tell that to my heart!

Oh no, don’t try telling that to my aching, grieving heart right now!!!

Because my heart is busting wide open at the ventricles even as I type this.

Yeah.

                Yeah, it really is and that’s no lie……

So the endgame is here now, I suppose, staring me squarely in the face like a coldblooded killer.  Checkmate is inevitable.  It’s all gonna come to an end for Jeff and, by extension, our cherished relationship tomorrow morning—all of the memories, all of the love, all of the fun times we had together, all of the highly treasured comradeship—and, ironically, that in itself will represent yet another unforgettable memory associated with my irreplaceable canine friend.  But this guaranteed indelible “memory” from tomorrow morning will be diametrically different from all the others. Truly, it will be one I would give anything in the world to stifle and forget, although unfortunately the idiosyncrasies of our Homo sapiens’ memory-making process will undoubtedly render my desire mere wishful thinking.

                Thus I guess I might as well begin emotionally preparing myself for life without…..

                Jeff……Jeff……Jeff will be dead and gone in fewer than twenty four hours now, and those memories—both the overwhelmingly good ones together with that final heinous one—will then be all that remains of my best friend ever.

…..it’s actually plain and simple:  We want builder-uppers on our team, not tearer-downers.  We want uniters, not dividers.  We want people who support their teammates, not undermine them.  We want luscious apples, not rotten ones that contaminate and toxify everything around them. We want good teammates, not shitty ones.  So how do you know if someone is a good teammate?  Quite simple, actually.  Does a person make you feel comfortable when they’re around…..or do they put you on edge?  Do they open their arms to you whenever you’re right…..or merely point an accusatory finger in your direction on those occasions when you are wrong?  Do they galvanize…..or do they habitually rip asunder?  Do they build bridges…..or build walls?  Bad teammates are a malignancy on any team; their negativity and unsavory influence spreads insidiously and ultimately rips a group apart at the seams.  Good teammates uplift their colleague’s spirits; bad teammates work capriciously, albeit maybe not always intentionally, to drag them down.  If you can definitively identify a bad teammate on your cohort—And don’t get me wrong here; it isn’t always as easy as it sounds!!—then kick those assfucks off your squad immediately.  IMMEDIATELY…..did you hear me?!?!  Bad teammates are immanently incorrigible.  Despite periodic protestations of innocence alloyed with feeble apologies—some seemingly sincere, others less so—selfish miscreants can never be permanently reformed.  Irrespective of how much talent they may bring to an endeavor, you are much better off without these proverbial rotten apples contaminating your barrel.  Their continued presence is radioactive and will siphon much-needed energy and enthusiasm from teammates in their immediate vicinity who are otherwise struggling to concentrate and perform well and contribute.  Once again, rid yourself of bad, selfish, finger-pointing colleagues at the first opportunity.  They are a cancer that, left unchecked, will ultimately and most assuredly wind up killing the entire organism—Namely, your carefully constructed team!–regardless of how plainly healthy said organism may have been at the outset…..

…..quiet is the night.  Oh, yes, so very very very quiet!  Totally opposite the day, which is loud and grating and bawdy.  Hubristic and overbearing.  And that is what I love so much about the period of time when the sun is absent from the sky and crickets are chirping in synchrony and most apex predators are on the prowl and diving bats take over the troposphere while their chief prey the repulsive mosquitoes desperately seek refuge from their mammalian nemeses.  The night is ingratiating and a soothing poultice for the human soul, unlike the daylight hours which move much too frenetically and sap one’s patience and energy without consciously trying to.  One can easily lose yourself in the nighttime hours, but never in the day; light trails you everywhere, is indefatigable, and is a notorious tattletale to anyone with a sharp eye and an ear for gossip…..