Fred Blahnik

Dying

……I was sure he was gonna die last night, but I prayerfully had another whole day with him today. A whole day of companionship. A whole day of sharing the sublimity of consciousness. A whole day of co-existing with a creature I love versus the backdrop of an endless Universe with no true beginning and no true end. That’s worth something, isn’t it? Actually, it’s worth a lot. A helluva lot!!! It means the world to me, just as each successive day that he continues to be alive will mean the world to me as well. Life is lived in bits and pieces–in tantalizingly small fragments akin to slowly savoring your way through a package of M&Ms–and every additional fragment that I can get with him now and over the next handful of days–however small and however short-lived those turn out to be–will warm my soul and feel like an earthshaking moral victory…..

The Ultimate Weapon

ALL KNOWLEDGE IS GOOD KNOWLEDGE!!!!! Ignorance may be bliss, but–Truthfully!!!–would you rather be informed and thus somewhat armed…..or blissful like a chicken striking out to cross a busy interstate highway without a care in the world? Knowledge, even knowledge of the distasteful variety, is a potent weapon in the hands of an intelligent person, and when squared up against a worthy opponent we surely need all the weapons we can muster. So don’t mimic an ostrich and shy away from receiving news, even if you fully expect it to be of the negative variety. You may not be able to avoid immediate pain in concert with whatever hideous detritus may accompany same—granted—but in the long run this new knowledge could very well prove to be invaluable and serve as an informed launching pad for effective ensuing action.

Humility

…..nothing could prepare him for the day when HE—the undisputed Master of the Universe, the King of Kong, the Boss of Bosses, the Great Knower of Everything, yes, he…….THE Superman among Supermen……suddenly grew feet of clay in the presence of his teen-aged children and fell permanently from his lofty pedestal. The demigod who could never do any wrong now could do no right in their newly insolent eyes, and this abrupt transformation and subsequent fall from grace left a gaping hole in his erstwhile teeming self-confidence, a hole that ensuing time could never hope to refill…..

Getting Ahead in Life

Many of the so-called “dark clouds” that supposedly follow us around are of our own making. That’s right—they aren’t real. They are figments of our imaginations, nefarious ghosts hiding out in our cerebral attics, mere fleeting apparitions meant more to scare than to actually inflict injury. They are no more real to a learned eye than the existence of the Tooth Fairy or the probability of a balanced federal government budget in the foreseeable future. Hence, move on with your life and quit inventing feeble excuses for remaining average!

Inner Relief

…..it had now only been five days since he died, yet she no longer felt an affinity for him or the phalanx of shared memories he left behind. That was a different time—a different era almost—and she found that her life since his death had veered off on a whole new trajectory…..an exhilarating trajectory she never even could have anticipated just weeks ago. A part of her still felt gnawing pangs of guilt that she didn’t feel more remorse over his sudden and violent passing, but her stronger inner self reassured her conscience there wasn’t anything more she could have done to dissuade the bullheaded bastard from his serially self-destructive behavior. Death was imminent for him, just as unfettered happiness would be for her now and extending indefinitely into the future……

Rational Expectations

Do not expect more happiness out of life than it is capable of giving. Happiness is without doubt the greatest blessing to be found and nurtured in life but, like anything else worth pursuing, it comes in finite quantities that are inelastic in nature and firmly bounded on all sides. Expecting more from life than it is able to offer and not knowing when to gratefully settle for something less than that is the greatest mistake a surprisingly large number of people make. Do not be overly rapacious and find yourself emotionally drowning amongst this dumb, Panglossian majority!!!

The Moment

…..from a moment to a memory…..that’s all it was…..one second it was out in front of me and highly tangible…..and in the next second it was filed away in the back of my brain, as inanimate and unchangeable as the color of my skin. The bridge between a moment and a memory is teensy indeed—almost infinitesimal—indeed no longer than the attention span of an average human being, but depending upon its import what transpires in that span can easily last a lifetime—or cut short a lifetime—and possesses a transcendent power more mind-boggling than the splitting of an atom…..

A Fool’s Mentality

Whatever looks too good to be true, or seems too good to be true, or feels too good to be true…..IS too good to be true, you guileless fool! Always!!! Every fuckin’ time!!!!! There are no exceptions to this cardinal rule and there never will be, despite the googol of meager attempts at rationalization we inevitably struggle to make to justify our naturally avaricious impulses and to partially sate our raging earthly desires. Nothing is given free in life; you have to go out and earn everything. To think otherwise—to think shortcuts and faux miracles will unfailingly be available to lessen our work burden and assist us in securing benefits and largesse that we have offered no personal sacrifice to deserve—is a fool’s errand and a fool’s mentality.

Arc of the Pendulum

Just as bad times never last, in all honesty…..neither do good times. Everything in life is perpetually in a state of random flux. Change is the only real constant in this universe of ours. Hence, if your life seems too good to be true at the moment, it probably is, and change of the negative variety is in the offing. This is inevitable, no different than the arc of a pendulum. But always remember: The opposite is likewise true, so don’t get too dejected and quickly give up hope when the pendulum swings once more to the left and sinister clouds move in overhead and take up temporary residence, as I guarantee will ineluctably happen. This condition is temporary as well; the pendulum won’t remain stuck in that position permanently; life is structured in such a way for no apparent reason…..

Today and Tomorrow

Let go of the past, for God’s sake!!! Let go of it already!!! It’s nothing more than yesterday’s news—LITERALLY!!! Focus on what’s in front of you, not on what’s behind you! The past is sand in the bottom of the hourglass. It’s a ship that’s sailed. It’s a used condom. Who really gives a shit about those insipid, dated things? The present is unquestionably most important, the future—provided one is granted the divine luxury of entering that uncharted wilderness—is easily next most important on the spectrum of life, and the past? Well, the past is not important at all. Nothing can be changed about the past, hence why should anyone find solace in constantly revisiting that vast wasteland which lies forlorn and irretrievable in one’s rear-view mirror? The answer is there is no reason. The past is the province of professional historians, glory day enthusiasts, and Monday morning quarterbacks, but no one else has any real use for it. Leave it behind where it belongs and set your sights on the present, for sure, but also on the future to a lesser extent. Today matters; yesterday no longer does; tomorrow is purely a promissory note from the gods of destiny with no assurance that it will ever be cashed. The moment. Live for the moment. Yes, live for the moment! That is all you really have, both right now as you read this and then stretching into perpetuity too…..for as long (or short) as that might last…..