Author: Fred Blahnik

…..the sky split open, thunder roared, and the Most Almighty God overseeing the length and breadth and depth of our most peculiar cosmos descended to Earth from the heavens astride a lightning bolt that was encased in a blazing cloud of glory, only to be arrested minutes later by vigilant local law enforcement officials, summarily thrown in jail, and booked for disorderly conduct and creating a public spectacle. Next He was appointed a public defender in accordance with established legal protocol, since the eccentric fellow claimed to have no money for staging a viable defense if His weird transgression was ever brought to trial…..

NOTE:  The following poem is borrowed from an anthology of poetry entitled “The Changing Seasons of Life”, authored by Fred Blahnik and published in 2016.

 

A Tiny Piece of Flotsam

By Frederick J. Blahnik

 

I am just a tiny piece of flotsam, trying valiantly to navigate this vast river of life.

The further I float downstream, the nearer I come to the river’s sprawling delta……and the mystical mouth at its end.

In the beginning, the river’s current was swift and carried me along rapidly.

No thought was ever wasted on what lay beyond the horizon.

Now, as I advance further and further downstream, the current is gradually slowing down.

And the possibility of a terminal point and complete cessation of the river seeps ever more aggressively into my evolving consciousness.

 

I can navigate just a wee bit on this languid body of water, yet I certainly cannot turn around and go back wherest I came.

Or even stop to rest my weary bones for a few minutes on a convenient sandbar.

No, the river’s current keeps carrying me downstream–slowly, inevitably, inexorably, determinedly…….

‘Til one day, totally unannounced, I will glide into that unseeable gulf, thoroughly exhausted.

The waterway of life will stop flowing altogether for me then, and eternal rest will be mine to behold and savor.

 

I will finally be home……..

If you believe in something badly enough or want something to happen badly enough, that wish will probably come true! The five senses with which every human body naturally comes endowed subliminally shape themselves to accommodate what we are expecting or longing for.  A strongly held belief is akin to a detailed road map which will religiously lead us to the destination of our choosing.  Ergo, a strongly held belief is equivalent to probably ninety five percent of the so-called “knowledge” we carry around with us in our brains.  When you know precisely what you are looking for–be it a gold keepsake locket in a dresser drawer, the freshest watermelon in a bin overflowing with them at the local supermarket, the proverbial needle in a haystack, or–And here’s the crux of today’s lesson, Children!–“factual” and/or sensory data points to support a powerfully held belief, finding that desired item pursuantly becomes immeasurably easier.  We inveterately see only that which we are looking for, and in the process generally disregard or ignore any observations and information that might obfuscate our Holy Grail of thought.

NOTE:  The following short story is drawn from the as-yet-unpublished anthology of short stories entitled “Third Time Lucky”.

 

The Last Monarch

By Frederick J. Blahnik

 The last monarch perched on a solitary milkweed plant and laid a fresh batch of eggs.  The last monarch was confident this final act of hers would help perpetuate her species for time immemorial.  How naïve of her!

How perfectly stupid indeed!!

Little did the last monarch know the milkweed plant she currently rested upon would be mowed down in less than a week’s time by an obsessive/compulsive county employee, and that none of her eggs would ever hatch.

Not even one….. 

No, the last monarch was just relieved to have performed this instinctive duty in deference to the survival of her species, and had nary a clue that she was the last of her kind…..now and forever.

The last monarch launched herself from the milkweed plant and flew off in a southerly direction with no particular destination in mind.  She had done her part to honor nature’s undeviating call and perpetuate her kind; she could do whatever she pleased now.  There were no others of her species in the air as she aimlessly fluttered along, but she wasn’t especially troubled by this fact.  Truth is, she hadn’t seen any others of her ilk in the past few days….no, it was more like weeks if not months.  But the last monarch had grown somewhat used to this unrelenting solitude.  Didn’t like it, mind you, but she had begrudgingly grown accustomed to it.

The last monarch spied a rural farmstead in the distance and took aim for it.  She knew there always seemed to be more excitement anywhere human beings congregated, and she was a big fan of excitement.  The last monarch settled on an exposed leaf of a lilac bush—one of many planted in a neat, perfidiously straight row–and spread her wings to luxuriate in the warmth of a late afternoon sun.  She had nary a care in the world; her eggs had been laid, and the remainder of the time she had left to live was all hers.  The last monarch allowed herself time to doze for a few seconds, to relax and take a brief break away from her woefully short, predetermined butterfly life.  She switched off her vision momentarily and rested fitfully.

The next recollection the last monarch had was waking to the tumult of a young boy screaming with pleasure as she felt herself being rushed along.  The last monarch found herself painfully entrapped within a cloth mesh net, sans the ability to flap her wings or move about at all.  The aforementioned boy was racing along at breakneck speed and squealing with unrestrained glee, boisterously celebrating his conquest over another strain of animal.  The two of them were moving inexorably toward the entrance to one of those big buildings where human beings gather and make lots of noise.

Once inside, the last monarch found herself being transferred into an empty one-quart mayonnaise jar, and next its metal cover–which the boy took a few seconds to puncture several holes through with a claw hammer and rusty nail–was screwed tightly onto the small glass receptacle.  Finally, the boy hurried upstairs and deposited the jar containing the last monarch on top of a wooden dresser, far away from the lone window in his bedroom which of course was responsible for the preponderance of sunlight filtering in lazily through the rectangular opening at a steep, forty-five-degree angle.

And that is where the last monarch spent the remaining days of her life—trapped forlornly within a glass jar in a dark corner of a long forgotten boy’s bedroom, light years away from the wind and sunlight and roadside patches of milkweed that she so dearly loved.

The last monarch died shortly thereafter as a misbegotten trophy–as stark testimony to mankind’s unique crusade to exercise absolute control over his surrounding environment.  The jar she was imprisoned in was eventually tossed into a glass recycling bin with the body of the last monarch still lying motionless within it.  And that was it.  No one mourned her loss, few bothered to notice, and nobody even seemed to care.

There is never a “perfect” time to do anything. There is never even a “right” time to do anything.  There just comes a time when you should act, and you must thereupon avail yourself of the opportunity lest the situation evolves/devolves into there being no time left at all.  Life has never been about achieving perfection or walking on water or capturing lightning in a bottle.  Rather, it has always been about innately sensing when that gigantic boulder is going to dislodge and come rolling down the mountainside, and parlaying this intuition into life-saving action.  No one told you that boulder was going to break free and assault you; you just sensed it was time to take evasive action and move out of its way.  And so it is with regard to key decisions in life.  The time will never be “perfect” or even “right” if that is what you are impatiently waiting for.  There’ll just come a nondescript moment when you will need to make a decision or–by not taking any action–that crucial “decision” will be made for you by circumstances beyond your control and, throughout this, time will just continue flowing along like Old Man River, same as always and wholly independent of any calculating or long-term planning on your part.

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.  It is like heading off into an inscrutable and unexplored wilderness, with all of the anticipation and excitement such a journey should engender.  Today is a new day to explore–all by myself if I so choose–and I feel undeservedly blessed to have been handed something this sacrosanct.  I understandably and thusly do not plan to waste it.

NOTE:  The following chapter is excerpted from a non-fiction book entitled “The Klondike Chronicles”, which was authored by Fred Blahnik and published in 2015.

 

Enter Senility…..

In his later years subtle changes came over Klondike, and I would be lying to you if I said all of those changes were for the good.  For one thing–in precisely the same manner it happens with older humans–our beloved dog’s frame began to shrink, and a frail, fragile shell gradually emerged from where a sturdy, virile, ultra-proud canine gladiator’s physique once stood.  But this natural transformation did not negatively influence Klondike’s coat of fur, unlike elderly male humans who are decidedly prone to losing cranial hair over time.  No, if anything that thick fur of his grew ever longer, denser, and more matted as the years slid by, giving Klondike the false appearance of girth.  Thus I recall being very surprised at just how light Klondike really was on those infrequent occasions when I would stoop down to pick him up.

This benign act of affection calls to mind separate memories as well, again not all favorable ones.  When Klondike was a puppy–and in fact even when he was a young and middle-aged dog–he used to relish having me pick him up to cuddle and subsequently carry around our yard for a short while.  The hirsute rascal would huddle good-naturedly in my arms with his tail wagging enthusiastically, occasionally even making a cursory attempt to lick my face.  But in those older, senescent years, as the final chapters of Klondike’s life inexorably played out……no such luck!! 

I would have been an incorrigible dunce to have my face anywhere near Klondike’s jaws during those tense moments, because as a living, breathing fossil he would grow markedly hostile whenever I reached down and snatched him up from the ground.  Our mangy senior citizen would squirm uncomfortably in my arms and growl in an inordinately menacing manner, and cap off this pugnacious display of behavior by making frequent attempts to bite me in order that I set him down immediately on terra firma where he was convinced he authentically belonged.

Now understand, Reader, I wasn’t picking Klondike up just to antagonize him in those rare instances, but rather it was strictly force of habit in wanting to hold my longtime sidekick close to me for a few minutes and embrace him as though he was still an adorable puppy.  But nevertheless, given Klondike’s new propensity for biting and his obvious disillusionment with being held, I eventually–albeit reluctantly–put a stop to this lifelong habit.

But before leaving this line of thought altogether, I would be remiss if I did not relate a short anecdote from the final winter of Klondike’s life.  In the midst of that coldest of seasons–during a particularly savage blizzard one workday evening–I stepped out into our attached garage to check on our two dogs and to verify that both were managing to survive the swirling tempest okay.  Although the puppy Aleutian was doing fine and he came rushing to greet me wearing an ear-to-ear grin, sadly……his wizened, rumpled companion was nowhere to be seen. 

Dementia had begun to visit the old dastard more and more frequently by this juncture so I wasn’t totally surprised by his absence, yet I was duly worried inasmuch as the maelstrom raging outside was especially abominable, while our graying dog’s natural defenses against a climatic beast of that ilk were by now largely compromised.  Thus I reflexively began fretting worse than a wartime mistress with three equally committed lovers spread across three separate combat zones……

I thereupon donned the whole of my bulky, official Minnesota winter garb and walked outside into the teeth of the howling northwest gale, and it didn’t take me but a thimbleful of seconds to locate my longtime canine friend.  Klondike was cuddled up in a ball on the snow-covered ground–coiled up akin to a snake, his nose tucked safely into his mid-section–just to the east of our attached garage.  My heart melted immediately for him right then, for the simple fact an old grandpa dog should not have to endure such a vicious storm while being asked to absorb the full brunt of its demonic winter elements in stride.  I accordingly shambled up next to Klondike and instinctively scooped him up in my arms, just like I had done countless times in his youth.

A big mistake, maybe, but one inarguably rooted in compassion.

To say that Klondike was surprised when this happened would be a classic understatement……

The grimy old hound had no clue whatsoever with regard to what was transpiring as this took place, and he therefore responded to what he perceived to be a physical attack by striking out in kind–baring his front teeth, growling sinisterly, and making every attempt to bite me so that I would automatically release my grip on him.  Which, given the ongoing ferocity of the surrounding storm, I was equally determined NOT to do!

Next I carried the reluctant and still-battling old fart into our attached garage and shut the door behind us as we entered, thereby spontaneously creating a relatively warm, inviting haven for anyone or anything lucky enough to be inside that protected structure.  I lastly deposited Klondike atop his thick sleeping mat on the floor of the building.

All is now well in Fred Blahnik’s world, right???

Both of our dogs have been taken care of to everyone’s satisfaction, one would assume……???

I ONLY WISH!!!!!

It is fair to say Klondike wasn’t overly grateful for my act of kindness, to understate this case just a little, and he pursuantly startled me with a look of a pure hate–a look I had never seen inscribed in his eyes during any of his earlier years–before sauntering over to the dog door with as much dignity as he was able to muster under the grotesque circumstances attending that surreal evening……and then without so much as a backward glance over his shoulder, Ol’ Klondike subsequently headed back out into the fearsome elements as though it was the middle of summer.  

And I of course felt sad at that moment–dreadfully, inconsolably sad–since I knew I could not be a fulltime babysitter to my most loyal friend and consequently there was nothing I could do–short of locking Klondike up in a confined space, something I would NEVER consider trying–to keep or persuade him to stay inside our toasty-warm garage during a bilious storm.

Yet the preceding story was just a microcosm for the bevy of changes that overcame ancient Klondike by this late juncture, for he no longer resembled the dynamic pugilist of his youth any more than a graceful butterfly resembles a lumbering, intrinsically ugly caterpillar.  The vital juvenile dog who had spent an overwhelming percentage of his younger years frolicking out in our yard and investigating every square inch of our property–and even some territory that didn’t belong to us!–now lounged around disinterestedly each and every day, content to do only those activities that would sustain his physical viability—Nothing more!–and seemingly happy with this existential “decision”.  Said insidious languor seemed to closely correspond with a gradual loss of Klondike’s physical senses as well, which were once so acute he might just as well have been conceived a feral animal for all of his innate canniness.

With that in mind…..if one was preparing a scouting report on decrepit old Klondike Blahnik at this point in his life, it would go something like this:  Our once-proud cur’s all-important five physical senses had slowly and largely abandoned him by this juncture, his ambition had followed the same lonely route and all but taken leave of his body……only his will to survive seemed to remain strong, although given his increasingly torpid lifestyle one was left to wonder just how long that basic instinct would continue to stay healthy and remain entrenched as a driving seminal force during his twilight years.

And then, toward the very end, even as spring 2008 could be visualized as a sort of distant mirage when February arrived on the calendar and began to manifest with more days and ever increasing sunlight, Klondike proceeded to lose the few remnants that were left of his good common sense.  This fact was epitomized best by the times when he would venture down to the end of our driveway to relieve his bladder, something he had grown accustomed to doing throughout his by-now-long lifetime.  I witnessed the following condensed story on at least two separate occasions, and it broke my heart and worried me immeasurably both times it occurred.

Specifically:  Klondike would finish lifting his leg on a big snowdrift at the end of the driveway, and it would then of course be time for him to return to our yard and the garage he inhabited.  Yet it became obvious to me that, in the span of only a few puny seconds, our Methuselahesque dog could not remember the direction from wherest he came, and the befuddled creature would pursuantly stand there looking altogether confused–staring off in every conceivable direction before finally making up his mind and setting off steadfastly on a southerly trajectory down the township road on which we Blahniks live.

Fortunately, our young dog Aleutian rescued Klondike from his folly on both occasions–sprinting down to the end of the driveway, fraternizing with his old mentor briefly, and subsequently leading the confused pooch in the proper direction back to our house and garage.  The ever-noble Klondike didn’t see this as any sort of assistance, however, and probably thought–just as in times gone by–that it was HE who was leading the fledgling dog to safety as he unflaggingly had in years past.

Incredibly poignant to witness, that was, and incredibly worrisome too…..to see just how far Klondike had plummeted mentally and just how great a toll dementia had extracted from his once hyper-acute brain.

And I knew in my heart right then and there that something bad was bound to happen to dear old Klondike if things didn’t somehow miraculously change around our property–and change FAST!!!!!

A lot of people–the overwhelming majority, I do believe–just assume they accrue wisdom and become more vulpine as they age. Not true.  Wisdom and years on Earth have nothing in common.  It’s like assuming that if you leave a bottle of cheap, homemade dandelion wine sitting on a shelf for a dozen years, it will automatically transform into a carafe of exquisite, expensive, vintage French champagne.  It won’t, and neither will most dinosaurian people morph into latter day versions of Albert Einstein purely by passing a designated age threshold.  Aging is most decidedly NOT a natural tonic for curing ignorance; instead, it too often masquerades as a nefarious agent for perpetuating it.  Listening and observing carefully is the eternal recipe for wisdom; aging by itself is not.

…..it is NOT about how the story begins; it is about how the story ends!!! Yes, it always boils down to the ending–the ending–THE ENDING!!!   Always has, always will.  The ending is paramount.  Everything in between is basically longwinded and irrelevant and merely serves as a prelude to the climax–a junior varsity game leading up to the main event, a bland tray of hors d’oeuvres preceding the mouthwatering buffet, a junior matador making a complete ass of himself before the illustrious toreador finally enters the bullring…..

…..never in his wildest dreams did he ever imagine he would meet his perfect mate. Those things just never happened in real life.  That was only the stuff of fairy tales and cheap romance novels.  And yet he had, and if one believes in love at first sight (Yes, some people still do!), he knew the second he laid eyes on her that she was the only person on the face of this earth with whom he shared transcendent compatibility.  So….so……..and so the pain he felt was excruciating…..indescribable really……the day she left him, leaving in her wake nothing except a terse, impersonal note indicating that she felt no feelings for him anymore and hence under no conditions should he even think about contacting the woman of his dreams……the life/afterlife partner whom the gods themselves had designated to be his and his alone…..