Author: Fred Blahnik

Forget everything that precedes the word “but” in a conversation or written essay. It’s what comes after that pivotal literary bridge which REALLY matters in the eyes of the speaker or writer.  Whatever sugarcoated tripe comes beforehand is merely a literary buffer meant to soothe the feelings of the recipient; just tune that polite-but-pointless bullshit out completely and focus instead on the information delivered after the key word “but”, inasmuch as that corresponds with the honest message the deliverer is clumsily striving to impart.

I heard an investment guru pontificating on the radio the other day about the advantages of blindly saving money for the future–for the LONG RANGE future…..deep into that quagmire otherwise known as old age–and I found myself asking the seminal question:  SAVE FOR WHAT?!?!  So that you have a ton of cash stashed away when you turn ninety years of age and can henceforth hand it over to the federal government or to greedy heirs after you pass away?!  So that you can crow about your net worth even as an ambulance takes you, with its sirens wailing and its engine revving into red R.P.M. numbers, to the hospital for the last time?!  So that you have a shitload of money at your disposal just when you are least able to enjoy it to the maximum?!  Who in their right mind can possibly argue that one’s quality of life is even remotely equal at eighty years of age when you are broken down and senile and impotent to when one is thirty years old and vibrant and virile and drowning in youthful hormones??  Quality of life matters far more than quantity of life, and using this unalterable fact as your mantra, do not be afraid to—in fact, DO!!!!!—spend the sensible majority of your hard-earned money at a relatively young age when passions reign supreme, the world is your plaything, and the quality of your life is at its very pinnacle.

• …..y’know, I wasn’t one bit happy with what happened to me last night but, on the other hand, I can very readily envision a million other worse things which might have transpired but didn’t.  And that thought offers me some much-needed peace of mind and a soothing poultice for my tormented soul.  Yeah, I fucked up royally and made a bad decision, and it undoubtedly won’t be the last time in my life I do that either.  But when I step back to clear my head, rationally assess the situation, and consider perspective—Yes, especially consider perspective!!!—what happened to me last evening was just small potatoes when compared to bigger, more transcendent features of my existence here on this tiny blue planet.  And thus I can take mucho solace in that thought:  What actually happened versus worse things that could have happened, and I’m talking about arrantly realistic possibilities here too, not esoterically unrealistic calamities like a rogue asteroid striking Earth or having my home sucked into a giant, previously unidentified sinkhole or being trampled to death by Sasquatch during a carefree hike in the mountains of central Washington.  I am thoroughly dismayed and not at all happy right now—I can and will frankly admit that much—but I also know I could quite easily be a whole lot more sad for a nearly infinite number of valid reasons…..

People communicate as much and as honestly by what they DON’T say as what they do. A failure to “gush” and to provide more than feeble, rudimentary information is a frank indictment of a specific situation or individual.  If someone is authentically impressed with a person, place, or dynamic, they will quite willingly let you know with a frothing torrent of words; such constitutes basic human nature.  In the stark absence of that type of candidness, however, the impression the individual fails to convey is almost always of the negative variety.  You don’t have to be an astute student of human nature in order to accurately “read between the lines” and rightfully interpret taciturnity as silent disapproval.

…..she was one of those people who think they know everything and that their shit don’t stink. I’m sure you’ve encountered and know the type by now:  Loud, bombastic, conceited, obnoxious, rude–the whole detestable ball of wax squeezed into just one opinionated body.  These individuals never have to be asked to share their opinion on any given topic; they go ahead and share it regardless. These despicable louts cut speakers off in mid-sentence, they talk five decibels louder than everyone else involved in a conversation, they laugh at the wrong times, they blow their noses like a foghorn, they use a condescending tone with people they deem less intelligent, they pick their noses when they think others aren’t watching, they insult and attempt to bully every person around them…..they more or less behave abhorrently throughout and repulse everyone within a stone’s throw distance of their presence.  And so why am I reciting this litany of complaints to you today?  Simple.    The hideous wench I referenced in my first sentence—for whatever reason, real or contrived—chose to feign friendliness with Yours Truly and I was thus forced to make a difficult decision as to how I would respond to her faux civility……

• …..one instant she was alive—laughing, smiling, joking, talking, loving.…living, yes, living life to the fullest!!!…..and then in the next instant she was not. Just like that.  No advance warning whatsoever.  No premonitions or anything stereotypical like you always read about in the literature.  No NOTHING, I tell you!  She was here one second and then in the next instant she was gone.  And life, yes, life–that mysterious thing (???) that somehow differentiates us from rocks and houses and fences and swing-sets–disappeared at that moment as well, never to return.  Just went away with no warning and no fanfare.  Like…..Presto!!!  And the slippery little entity we worship and know as life was thereafter gone in a heartbeat and the blink of an eye.  So now I ask of you:  How on Earth can one realistically deal with the gut-wrenching suddenness of something happening like that?  Yes, tell me, how can you possibly be expected to rationally cope with a separation that earthshaking and abrupt?  How can you realistically digest it?  How can you intelligently explain it?  I sure as fuck don’t have any answers for you, I’ll freely admit that.  Because if I did know how–If I accidentally and blindly stumbled onto even a whiff of an explanation for the Mephistophelian turmoil I am presently experiencing–I sure as hell wouldn’t be falling apart at the seams as I sit and write this now……agonizingly wondering why I was put here on Earth in the first place if only to be forced to stand by powerless and slack-jawed just to witness an event so viscerally heart-rending and dream-shattering and…..and…..utterly nonsensical…..

…..while he wrung his hands and sweated profusely and worried about the logistics of the challenging situation, someone more enlightened and neurotically unencumbered swooped down and exalted in taking full advantage of the amazing opportunity that presented itself.  He obsessed over the complicating details attending the transaction; the interloper looked easily beyond those pesky minutiae and recognized a sublime twist of fate just sitting and waiting to be gobbled up by a person with the intuition and courage to act swiftly…..

• …..she thought fame would be the answer to her litany of ailments, but she soon learned otherwise. She discovered fame was a prison every bit as constraining as the poverty and anonymity she had serially grown to loath in her youth.  Return to that pitiful station in life?  No, she didn’t want to turn around and go backwards in time either, even if she had been able to, which of course she wasn’t.  And then a bolt of wisdom struck her–a bolt that had been hiding inside her body all these years, lying low while skulking about in some previously unexplored dark chasms–and she realized that people aren’t meant to live blissful, happy lives.  They just aren’t!  Happiness is at its very core a grand hallucination.  Such is merely the winsome, unrealistic stuff centerpiecing political campaigns, bridal showers, and fairy tales……

 

Embrace your eccentricities!!! There is something wholly ennobling and liberating about being different from the rest of humankind.  Who wants to be the same as everyone else, “the same” in this instance defined as boring and predictable and blindly conforming?  Sure, that’s the safe route in life if your only objective is to pass unnoticed and avoid ridicule, but there is nothing wrong with aspiring to standards loftier and more cryptic than mass acceptance.  Safe isn’t always best; in fact, it rarely is.  Charting a different course and striking out in a markedly different direction may not win you praise and popular acclaim, but then again you only have your own life to navigate and account for, not everyone else’s.

One day at a time, and one day only, not to be rushed or minimized or subjected to any form of degradation. All days are created equal at their outset, although upon their conclusion obviously the same claim cannot be veraciously made.  Yet you don’t have access to this critical information in the beginning; the future is an amorphous, inscrutable vacuum.  Each and every day presents in exactly the same fashion, and only when finished are you able to rationally assess them and assign these rascally temporal capsules a grade.  Thus don’t rue any particular day at its genesis or shackle yourself with preconceived notions with regard to what path it might follow; at such an early juncture all days are the same–identical twins, clones, cut from the same cloth…..virgins in time…..