Author: Fred Blahnik

Tell your story.  After all, it belongs strictly to YOU.  No one else can relate a tale in exactly the same fashion as its creator.  Which is the RIGHT fashion, inasmuch as you gave life to the thing, so it answers to you and you alone.  Don’t let others sidetrack you with serial criticisms and snide comments.  There will always be naysayers in life—these negativity merchants are every bit as ubiquitous as mosquitoes on a muggy summer evening—but they don’t matter one iota in the big scheme of things.  They are no more relevant or consequential than ants at a picnic.  Irritating as hell, yes, but grossly irrelevant.  Tell your story in the exact manner it pops into your head, and then sleep easily at night.  This story is YOUR creation, YOUR baby, YOUR indentured servant…..and anyone who claims otherwise is a shameless usurper.  Forget about those obnoxious people, okay?!  They are nothing more than a pack of bumptious miscreants.  Nothing more than immaterial assholes…..putrid slime at the bottom of an unpumped cesspool.  Be true to yourself and your unique inspirations, and if you abide by this sublime advice rest assured that you will habitually do right by yourself and slumber well in the evenings.  Tell your story to its rightful conclusion, and pursuantly climax this narrative with the requisite appropriate punctuation mark, whether that be a period, an ellipsis, an exclamation mark, or even a question mark if no resolution is possible in context.  You are now done; your job is complete; your finish line has been reached.  You have honored your God-given abilities and done well.  Sleep trouble-free tonight, My Friend, for you have definitely earned that paramount right.

As boatloads of money continued to pour in following the death of his loved one, he stopped to reflect for a moment on the irony and incongruity of being gifted with money as some sort of feeble, hapless surrogate to offset his indescribable loss.  People closest to him were attempting to crudely countermand the priceless gift of life which had just been snatched away from him in an extraordinarily cruel and unexpected fashion, but their gambit wasn’t working; it wasn’t working at all.  But that should come as no surprise.  Obviously cash offerings weren’t working; obviously their well-intentioned gesture wasn’t gaining traction and never would; obviously this stratagem was condemned to fail, and fail badly.  Money is no proxy for life and never will be, and they of all people should know that.  Money is man-made while consciousness is divine; the two reside on opposite ends of the intrinsic value spectrum and are not fungible in any way, shape, or form.  To even suggest otherwise, however unintentionally and with benevolence as the admitted driving factor, was little different than rubbing a tub of  salt into his deeply felt wounds.

…..and it needed to be done, begged to be done, had to be done ultimately…..so she went ahead and did it.  End of story.  Things happen to us adventitiously and we respond to them the best we know how.  No rationalizations, no lame excuses, no pie charts and fancy algorithms showcased in a formidable Power Point presentation—no detailed explanations—are generally necessary.  You step up to the plate and do what you have to do at the time with the arsenal of unique personal skills you have available to you and then let the chips fall where they may.  Sometimes you may hit a home run, sometimes you may double down the left-field line, sometimes you may reach base on a puny bunt single, and other times you may strike out (Hopefully hacking away unapologetically!), but you always want to be swinging the bat and you always want to be involved in the game as an active participant.  And, you know, this baseball metaphor probably serves as the best mantra for life as any that can be conjured or simply expressed…..

The biggest regrets in life are definitely not those things you tried and subsequently failed at doing.  Contrarily, the biggest regrets in life are those things you never had the courage to attempt in the first place.   You simply never bothered to stick your oars in the water.  You simply never bothered to open the door to the next room, let alone the one after that.  You simply never bothered to dance unless the dance floor was already teeming with other couples.  You simply never bothered to draw outside the lines for fear of being scolded.  You simply never bothered to walk the tightrope without a secure safety net in place beneath it.  You simply never bothered to venture into any dark room without the aid of a powerful flashlight.  You simply never bothered to bet on yourself when the stakes were at their all-time highest. You simply never TRIED.   Regrets like these gnaw at your guts as the past recedes into the distance at an ever accelerating rate while the future—Yes, the time left in your life and thus the only time that authentically matters!—shines with markedly less luster than during days gone by.  Trying begets memories.  Not trying leaves behind nothing more than a hollow sensation at the very core of your soul.

In the Belly of the Beast

By Frederick J. Blahnik

So without any explanation I abruptly and unexpectedly found myself entrapped within the belly of the beast

With obviously no place to turn for help in this dark and despicable place…..

And no one could hear my muffled screams either, even when I screamed from the very bottom of my lungs, from the very bottom of my essence, from the very bottom of my soul……

I was all alone in an impossible place facing impossible circumstances

The world as I knew it was over…..

Time stopped then…..

The world stopped turning…..

My life was effectively over.

And yet, just when the end was in sight—Not close, mind you, but plainly IN SIGHT!—and things could not have looked any bleaker, I discovered inner peace…..

That’s right, just when my life was on course to be effectively over, I connected intimately with my inner being…..

And this…..this is what my inner being told me at that harrowing, transcendent instant:

Be strong, Fred, you need to be STRONG now!!!!!

Stronger than tensile steel, stronger than the most massive elephant, stronger than the gravitational field of Jupiter, stronger than the hand of God…..

Stronger than you have ever been in the past!

Way, waaaaaaayyy stronger than you have ever been in the past!!!

Strength comes in many forms and iterations, and you must look deep inside yourself to find the strength you need in any particular moment or circumstance…..starting RIGHT NOW!!!!!

Sometimes there is no one else around to help you and then you must conjure the strength to save yourself…..

Sometimes “YOU” are the only option remaining…..

And thus I resolved to elevate myself to this hitherto impossibly giraffine level of strength.

And just at that instant—just when the end had come for me and my time as a living, earthly creature was set to expire, the beast shuddered involuntarily and regurgitated me out of its belly with a resounding convulsion.

Back into the earthly realm; back where the bizarre episode first started

But wait…..had I ever actually departed this verdant place or was it all some sort of grotesque dream???

Had it all been real?  Had these events even taken place??  Had I been dreaming all along???

Who knows???  Who can tell?  Who knows what the real truth ever is?

I didn’t then and I guess I never will know the correct answer either.

Yet I suddenly found myself not only alive, but divinely enlightened as well.

And I certainly do not plan on squandering this invaluable, newfound information…..

I have miraculously been granted a second chance at life and I surely don’t plan on wasting it…..

This is a bona fide miracle, this rebirth, this rising from the dead, this reenactment of a phoenix, and from this day onward I promise to carry forward a new perspective as my inseparable partner…..

A perspective based on faith…..

A perspective based on optimism…..

A perspective based on rejuvenation…..

A perspective based on enthusiasm and altruism and selflessness and alacrity…..

A perspective based on the most transcendent emotion of all, that being love…..

And finally, a perspective based on…..based on…..based on…..based on…..based on…..based on…..based on…..STRENGTH……….yes, towering, annihilating, all-conquering personal strength just as I was coached by that inscrutable, supernatural entity garbed in invisible clothing during my transitory stay in the belly of the beast!!!!!

…..he didn’t like goodbyes, didn’t like them at all.  And why should he?  Why should anyone??  Goodbyes are intrinsically sad…..mournful…..theatrical…..emotional in a negative way…..overly climactic…..overdone in general.  So why then go through the stupid tradition of honoring and paying homage to formal farewells as though they are requisite to maintaining a valid relationship?  Well, the correct answer is you don’t.  Just walk away next time.   Plain and simple.  No silly questions, no heart-straining hugs, no teary farewells.  Just walk away sans awkward embraces and words of parting.  The body of work—the scaffolding of a stalwart relationship, if you will—should have been constructed long before a departure of ways  becomes imminent.  A solid relationship should be built around the core and not the extremities.  Accordingly, treat that relationship with a confidence level commensurate with same and dispose of the dramatic severances which are hallmarks of inherently unreal classic movies and dripping with a cultural mystique that is arrantly undeserved…..

Today is a new day, unlike any that has come before it.  It is a completely blank slate, and as such I can do whatever I want with it provided I don’t violate the rights of others.  This new day comes unencumbered by past fears, prejudices, and mistakes.  It is an opportunity to reinvent myself if I don’t like what I see in the morning mirror.  That person facing you in said mirror is every bit as much a chameleon as those sneaky little lizards you see crawling around on the walls of Mexican vacation villas; either can change dramatically when confronted by vexing circumstances.  Facing a virgin day is like heading off into an inscrutable and unexplored wilderness, with all of the anticipation and excitement and wonderment such a journey should engender.  Today is a new day to explore—all by myself if I so choose or with others if that is my predilection—and I feel undeservedly blessed to have been handed something this sacrosanct.  I understandably and thusly do not plan on wasting it, if for no other reason when the grandfather clock hanging on the living room wall over there strikes midnight for the day I am currently experiencing—this divine gift from God worthy of genuflection and exclaiming hosannas from the most lofty mountaintops—it will henceforth be extinct and there will never be another one to replace it.

You were guilty of committing the same mistake which afflicts ninety nine percent of humankind:  You were too conservative when the situation called for decisive action!  You froze in the batter’s box while a waist-high fastball whizzed by you uncontested.  You took glee in capturing a pawn when a knight was there for the taking.  You asked the Plain Jane to dance when a wet-dream vixen was seated right next to her at the “it” nightclub.  You settled for a putrid outcome when aggressive maneuvering was still possible.  You preened and postured for too long when immediate action was not only called for, but absolutely necessary.  You fucked up, in other words—Fucked up royally!!!—and no silky words or mealy-mouthed excuse-making will change this inescapable fact one scintilla.  You could have had the world by the tail but you aimed lower and instead wound up gripping that malodorous orifice immediately beneath the tail.

Quitting is never quite as difficult the second time around, and the third, and the fourth……and then it becomes increasingly easier each time thereafter.  You become inured to it, accustomed to it, overcome by it—akin to any other undesirable habit.  Like everything else in daily life that follows a repetitious pattern, you become more and more proficient at the art of quitting the more you practice it.  But unfortunately, you remain so close to the situation that—akin to dry rot in wood left sitting unattended for too long a period of time—you are probably grossly unaware this malignant process is happening to you even as your life is ruined from within.

Too often, the easiest thing to do—as well as the right thing to do and the undisputed advisable course of action—becomes the hardest thing to do and impossible to resist, namely…..doing nothing!!!  That’s right, doing nothing!  Don’t interfere.  Don’t meddle.  Stay in your own lane at all times.  Mind your own business but not others’.  Don’t pretend to be informed, even expert, on a subject you know nothing about.  Sit on your hands and just do NOTHING, for God’s sake.  Above all else, resist the temptation to take some sort of action that will wind up harming someone else or cause them unnecessary complications, tribulation, and misery.  Actioneering seems almost instinctive in a crunch but, trust me, it isn’t.  Do what your best judgment tells you to do, which in not infrequent instances is nothing at all.