Author: Fred Blahnik

(Excerpted from the upcoming book “West by Northwest”)

For those of my readers unfamiliar with the culture of northern Minnesota, one prominent statue of Paul Bunyan is situated at the gateway to the uniquely gritty small city of Bemidji, and then there is another equally impressive one located in the fishing mecca of Brainerd not far to the southeast.  Both are appropriately sited, of course, inasmuch as legend holds the North Woods of Minnesota was irrefutably Paul Bunyan’s birthplace and favorite playground.  Not, mind you, Crescent City, California; seeing Paul Bunyan and his sidekick Babe the Blue Ox venerated there seemed woefully out of place and shamefully improper.  Here we were touring in northern California, being inundated with this mellow, laid-back, devil-may-care California mentality, and then the five of us upper midwestern Blahniks were stunned to see hard-working Paul and Babe being celebrated in the midst of all that sloth and succor. 

Shame shame shame on you, thieving Californians!!!  You shouldn’t be appropriating a cultural icon from the North Woods of Minnesota, yes, THAT Minnesota, the blue-collar fantabulous Land of 10,000 Lakes and Bud Grant and Jesse “The Body” Ventura and lefse and lutefisk.  Minnesota isn’t trying to pilfer the Golden Gate Bridge, Baywatch, and the Beach Boys from you now, are they, California?!?!  So stop perpetrating this contemptible ruse on the outside world, you fake, asshole poseurs!!!

No matter how daunting a task looming in front of you may seem—–JUST START IT!!!!!   You won’t know for sure whether or not you can accomplish the damned thing unless you actually dig in and try!  A lot of endeavors appear to be virtually impossible on their surface when viewed from a distance through a long-range lens, but then once you become immersed in the experience a whole new set of possibilities open up that weren’t clearly visible at the outset.  Life is chronically embroiled in a dizzying state of flux, as are the smaller units within it that we more familiarly know as days, hours, and minutes.  Thus don’t ever be intimidated into not starting a scary project out of some irrational fear that you won’t be able to finish it.  Instead, unceasingly strive to remember and embrace this transcendent corollary:  Failing honorably as the direct consequence of a noble effort is nothing to be ashamed of!!!  You did your best—all your body was physically capable of doing—and that’s the only part of the grand equation that genuinely matters!!!!!

A platinum reputation is like a fragile, exquisite clay vase.  Sculpting one takes considerable time, skill, and care, yet either can be permanently and irreparably destroyed in little more than an instant if indiscretion is allowed to rule, however briefly.  Do not allow this to happen.  Tend to your reputation—an innately dainty object—with the utmost care, for if you allow it to get shattered then successfully gluing it back together  as before will be about as easy as attempting to pole vault over the Washington Monument with a baseball bat.

As soon as a moment passes, as good and exhilarating as it may have been, release it and move on to the next.  Clinging to a cherished but extinct moment is little different than embracing but then not releasing your grip on the cold, deceased carcass of a beloved relative, and of course no sane person would ever do that.  You honor the past best by quickly moving on from it.

Love is an emotion so staggeringly powerful and transcendent that mere words have little hope of ever fully describing it.  Keats, Shelley, Joyce…..all the great English poets made a valiant attempt to do so with mixed results, yet their grandiloquent soliloquies fell embarrassingly short of capturing the true essence of love.  Actions are the only arbiter that hold any sway in the matter, and therefore actions are the ONLY barometer to recognize if you are harboring reservations about the depth of another’s feelings toward you.  Don’t be fooled by words, my naïve friend, because words are elusive, deceitful little creatures that are highly adept at the art of disappearing instantaneously into the firmament or, alternatively, they can and will turn on you unexpectedly with guns a’blazin’ in the blink of an eye or the fluttering of an eyelash.  Words simply cannot be trusted.  If her words say one thing and her actions say something altogether different, pitch those  dishonest words in the wastebasket and gird up for seismic disappointment because it most certainly is headed in your direction.  Concrete actions define intimate relationships; too many words pointlessly complicate them.

…..I’ll do it tomorrow, she said.  Yes, yes, I’ll put it off until tomorrow.  And if not tomorrow, then the day after that.  Or maybe even the day after that if my motivation is running low.  And then, through some bilious vagary of fortune, circumstances changed on a dime and tomorrow never came.  Tomorrow was no more.  And with the last dying fibrillation of her heart she thought about tomorrow, and of all the tomorrows that would forever be denied her now and in the future.  And she decided right at that moment with her next to last breath that it might be good to lead life with a certain sense of urgency, and that the future was more a mirage than a reality, and that it probably is not a good idea to procrastinate one’s life away assuming a future that is not guaranteed…..

A HUGE abyss exists between “I had a chance to…..” and “I did…..”.  That’s right, a HUGE abyss which reveals everything you need to know about another’s core character.  About their resolve.  About the strength and substance of their spine.  About their belief in themselves.  About their sense of adventure.  And at the end of the day, isn’t that what life certifiably is:  A behemoth adventure rife with opportunities?  The answer is yes, and the gulf separating wishful thinking from concrete action is even wider than the one separating New Orleans from Venezuela.  Don’t just “talk the talk”.  “Walk the walk” while you’re at it.  Who knows?   You may actually grow to like it…..

…..late in life—some might say too late—she realized that she had been merely surviving when instead she could have been exhilarating all these years.  Did she regret her passive lifestyle?  Might she have been more aggressive in her overall approach to life?  Was there still a lot of gas—more gas than she would ever need—left in her fuel tank to live an ingratiating life?  Sure, of course……but of what consequence now?  It was definitely too late for her to do anything about her boring destiny anymore—her life’s foundation had already been poured in impervious concrete years and decades prior and as such could no longer be altered appreciably in the present—thus regrets ruled the day for her and this exciting epiphany she was facing now was of no more use in the moment than an extra tonsil or free concert tickets to go see a grotesque, sixty-year-old Madonna slinking around up on stage like some sort of fossilized sexpot, all while making a complete ass of herself without even realizing it….

All things must come to an end—which admittedly is oftentimes sad and occasionally jolting—yet by definition, wherever there is an end there must also be a beginning.  Remember that the next time you begin shedding pint-sized tears over some major life-changing event.  Learn to welcome change—To embrace change, to offer it a mammoth bearhug the next time you encounter it!—for the fundamental reason change is the lone constant in our long and oftentimes complicated lives.  Change will perpetually be there whether you choose to welcome it or not.  It ain’t ever gonna go away simply because we long for that to happen and because we want to satisfy our natural desire to live our lives in an antiseptic bubble on eternal rewind. Recognizing the omnipresence of change and learning to acknowledge it as your true and constant master will inarguably make life that much easier to live in the long run.  And if not?  Life will overwhelm you sooner rather than later.

Carefully weigh what you truly want to say BEFORE you open your big mouth, not afterwards.  Because then it is obviously too late to do any good and repair a blown-apart bridge; by then it is obviously too late to undo the atomic fission which triggered the apocalyptic bomb; by then it is too to race down and reclaim the bullet you fired out of that gun in your hand.  You unvaryingly have to exercise your brain BEFORE you exercise your mandibles.  A failure to follow this glaringly simple rule should never earn you even one speck of sympathy. No, your only “solace” should be well-deserved contempt and a sleeping reservation on the cold hardwood floor in your guest bedroom.