Author: Fred Blahnik

Everyone seems to applaud the concept of living life “on the edge”, of doing daring and innately dangerous things purely for the sake of gusto. But what of those who die prematurely as the result of such recklessness?  Was it really worth it for them?  Was gutsy bravado a worthy trade-off for a half or even two thirds of a normal, albeit somewhat mundane, life?  Adrenaline junkies surely draw a lot of predictable envy from boring, stolid watchers living their boring, stolid everyday lives in their boring, stolid, cookie-cutter communities, but that envy comes to a screeching halt when the daredevils die a premature death and unwittingly forfeit a surfeit of good years they might otherwise have savored.  Just remember this:  You don’t get any mulligans on living; one life is all you get.  Adventurism is great and intoxicating and as a whole to be commended, but there is a razor-thin line separating adventurism from recklessness, and reckless people typically wind up meeting their Maker far sooner than everyone else.

…..the alarm clock rang shrilly somewhere off to his left, and he instinctively realized that he was currently in the process of switching gears from a deeper level of consciousness to this shallower one which seemed to altogether characterize his banal days spent on Earth’s crust. And he grunted softly in dissatisfaction, for he knew that he was leaving unfinished business behind, probably never to be finished at any point in the future.  That dream from just seconds before still lingered in his brain because it was so vivid, so lifelike……so crucial to his very existence!  And yet he knew as soon as he hopped out of bed and started getting dressed for the new day now fully arrived, that weird but somehow essential storyline from the night before would hurriedly disappear from his memory banks not unlike the dementia which hangs around to relentlessly plague countless old farts–doubtless never to reappear in the exact same fashion.  So he mourned the inevitable loss of an integral part of himself as he pulled on his trousers and stared in the dresser mirror, inasmuch as that narrative in which he was the featured player just minutes earlier was now destined for consciousness’s trashbin, and–shifting ahead in time twenty four hours–then too he would almost certainly find himself decrying the permanent loss of another different but no less critical plotline ginned up by his subconscious gremlins while the remainder of his body slept…..

Ironically, true knowledge works in reverse. When you first enter adulthood in your early twenties, you are bursting with confidence and there is really nothing that you don’t know or can’t figure out by yourself.  And then over time–as you gradually grow older and see more and more years receding in your life’s rear-view mirror and theoretically acquire greater and greater “wisdom”–you gradually begin to lose some of that transcendent earlier confidence, piece by piece, as you begin to discover how little you really know.  And then by the time you reach late middle age or early old age, you realize gray is the primary color that suffuses almost every solution to a problem and subjectivity unerringly reigns supreme over objectivity in a referendum that isn’t particularly close.  True wisdom, you climactically come to recognize, represents the complete opposite of society’s conventional definition and more closely approximates ignorance.  True wisdom is coming to terms with how little you actually know relative to this big world we live in and, more importantly, humbly accepting the infinite number of things you will be shielded from learning in just one lifetime.

…..the future was a mystery to her.…..clueless……unmapped……an amorphous thing swathed in uncertainty and oftentimes fear. She felt much more comfortable looking back to the past, an entity she knew well and the one place she could easily connect to emotionally.  She didn’t like uncertainty, didn’t like it at all–was terrified of it actually–and she surely didn’t appreciate the feelings of helplessness and despair it engendered deep within her breast.  Therefore she made a habit of hiding from the future, of averting her gaze from anything beyond the moment at hand, and she likened her situation to a tiny vessel navigating through a pitch-black, stormy ocean with nary a compass to offer her guidance, let alone more sophisticated navigational devices…..

…..and although the project turned out satisfactory and overall was okay and everyone seemed generally happy with the end result, he knew in his heart it could have been far better and more innovative than where the needle on life’s imaginary quality gauge climactically stuck. Playing it safe and being cautious is a prudent strategy when you’re standing on the bare edge of a cliff or tiptoeing through a minefield, but life is not a minefield and ergo should be addressed head-on…..with an overbearing sense of creativity……with an overbearing sense of resolve…..with an overbearing sense of urgency…..with an overbearing sense of utilizing those gifts unique to humanity…..or otherwise you may as well have been hatched from an egg and covered with scales or feathers, for all the dull lifestyle options that origin entails…..

In the world of astronomy, there are only primary heavenly bodies and then their accompanying satellites. Same thing with humankind.  You can either set the course for your own life, or choose to be dependent and revolve around someone else’s.  But unlike in the cosmological world, this seminal decision is strictly yours to make.  Do you want to be a star with all of the wondrous independence that goes along with it……or are you going to settle for being a satellite–get permanently sucked into another individual’s seemingly irresistible gravitational field–and serially depend upon someone other than yourself for your happiness and your livelihood.  YOU—and only you—must ultimately make this destiny-determining decision!!!

…..she knew that time was growing short for him, yet she didn’t speak of it. He had so many years under his belt that the end could come at any time–suddenly, unexpectedly, without any hint or advance notice.  Yet how unexpected is it when an eighty-five-year who is in ostensibly good health succumbs to the inevitability of old age?  How genuinely unexpected can that be??  Mortality is a hard and fast law of humankind, and as one tests its outer limits nobody escapes its clutches regardless of how stellar their overall health has been previously…..even minutes or seconds earlier.  She understood that the concepts of “good health” and “unexpected death” among the octogenarian population were intrinsically foolish and the epitome of wishful thinking, and thus she sighed and braced herself for the inevitable phone call she knew–when measured against the spectrum of a full lifetime–would now be coming much sooner as opposed to later …..

NOTE:  The following poem was plucked from an anthology of poetry entitled “The Changing Seasons of Life”, which was authored by Fred Blahnik and published in book form in 2017.

 

Eternal

By Frederick J. Blahnik

 

I gazed into the clear blue eyes of my newborn daughter

And suddenly realized that I will never die

I have shared love and passed along life

And now I live outside my own body.

 

I know one day my heart will stop beating

My soul will escape then and go wherever it is that liberated souls go

And my body will eventually disintegrate into a modest spadeful of rich humus fertilizing those infernal, eternal dandelions.

 

But I will not be dead…….

That epiphany struck me the instant I witnessed the miracle of birth

Innocent eyes, tiny beating heart, rapidly expanding lungs…..

All miraculously evolved from my original seed

Three times over.

 

I cannot die while a part of me lives

Rather, a part of me has passed the transcendent torch on to a different part of myself

And somewhere down the line I will quite honorably drop out of this tiring race we call life

But that race will continue to be run in my physical absence, rest assured

And–barring unforeseen tragedy–I will always remain in it as an active, albeit invisible, participant.

 

I gazed into the clear blue eyes of my newborn daughter

And realized that I was staring into the future

Not just her future, but my future as well

So long as a part of her walks and breathes and ultimately propagates

I can never die…….

 

No, I will never truly die.

NOTE:  The following composition is excerpted from Chapter Two of the book “The Hardest Life I Could Ever Love”, which is a memoir of Mary Blahnik’s life.  That book was published in 2012 and was edited by Fred Blahnik.

 

As a girl I had a pretty doll that Aunt Mary, my godmother, had given me for a present.  This doll had beautiful eyes that would magically open and close, and the damsel even cried out—a lugubrious wailing that touched my heartstrings and made me love her even more.  One afternoon—wholly unbeknownst to me—my younger brother Joe and kid sister Catherine invaded my belongings, kidnapped my irreplaceable princess, and secretly hauled her outside to perform major surgery on my dearest.  The juvenile felons were curious to see exactly what it was that made her cry………

This devious pair unmasked the physiology behind my marvelous doll’s crying and–fearless medical pioneers that they were–discovered the mystery behind the opening and closing of her eyes as well……but my precious doll wound up “dying” from the rigors of all that surgery at the hands of the famous operating room team consisting of “Dr. Joe” and “Nurse Catherine”.   You can only imagine how angry I was with my overly inquisitive younger siblings that opprobrious day; I probably would’ve shot ‘em both between the eyes right then and there with Papa’s gun if I only knew how to use the danged thing!!!  

On Sundays Papa would take us older Snyder kids to Catholic church services, and on the way home we would stop at the Ramsey Ice House and buy a large chunk of ice.  Mama would already have dinner prepared for us when we arrived home.  Her scrumptious fried spring chicken, mashed potatoes, and heavenly chicken gravy–augmented by luscious lemon pie for dessert–still causes my mouth to water uncontrollably whenever I think back to those irresistible meals.

Then, in the afternoon following dinner, Mama would cook up filling for homemade ice cream, to which we then added real cream courtesy of our herd of cows; and with Papa standing by in charge of the ice and rock salt……our family was ready to begin making homemade ice cream!  All of us children had to take our designated turn cranking the cumbersome ice cream maker.  We would impatiently crank on its handle, add more ice and salt around the ice cream container as needed, and after numerous earnest entreaties of “Is it done yet, Papa?!  IS IT DONE?!?!”  Huh?!?!  HUH?!?!?!…….Papa would finally ceremoniously declare the mixture was stiff enough to eat.

The paddles—still dripping with sweet, creamy residue–were removed from the ice cream maker, habitually followed by brief squabbling centered on which lucky child would be given the devices to lick clean.  Oh, but what a great treat that homemade ice cream was to us hillbilly Snyder kids!!  Those Sundays were crammed full of fun and love and family camaraderie and…..and……oh yes, let’s not forget by far the most important facet of this equation:  Nice, uber-full tummies by the end of the afternoon as well!! 

Once in a great while, Papa would decide to drive to Austin to partake in the Catholic sacrament of Confession on a Saturday night.  We Snyder offspring felt very classy being allowed to venture into town on a Saturday evening, even if others were on their way to celebrate a festive, oftentimes liquor-fueled occasion while we were just going to attend a pedestrian church sacrament.  Understand, it didn’t require very much back in those Paleolithic days to make us Snyder children feel important! 

Our idyllic summers would fly by like wispy cirrus clouds propelled by the fast-flowing Jet Stream high overhead, and as much as we kids despised the idea, September and a return to school was quickly upon us.  Mama sewed us girls new print dresses in honor of this dubious benchmark, and all our underwear was sewn from an assortment of bleached feed sacks.  The boys received new bib overalls and shirts to complete their Spartan wardrobes.  And of course, school time also meant encasing our calloused, stretched-out, bare feet—big and roughly conditioned from running barefoot outside all summer long—into stiff new shoes.

Every autumn we faced the same painful ritual—first our heels developed severe blisters, followed soon thereafter by ruptured blisters, and, as the aggrieved skin slowly healed, eventually this epidermal tissue culminated in thick calluses—until our feet gradually adjusted to our rigid new footwear.  Necessary—Yes, I suppose it was–but that fact did nothing to help alleviate the extreme discomfort we newly imprisoned pupils endured for a few days—No, it was actually closer to a few weeks!–thereafter.

On my first day of school in the first grade—my runty little brother Joe also started along with me that year—Mama drove us to school in our family’s horse and buggy.  I can remember being decidedly shy and afraid because there was no one else I knew there.  However, by the time school let out for that afternoon, I had begun to grow a bit wiser about the ways and wiles of the outside world……

In honor of my inaugural year of formal education, Mama had bought me a nice black sailor hat with a couple of decorative ribbons hanging down the back.  She had stitched a length of elastic to go under my chin so the hat would not blow off my head if it became too windy on my way to or from school.  I was predictably proud of my gaudy new top-piece, as you might well expect.  In my fledgling mind, I looked every bit as alluring as big-screen siren Greta Garbo!

Well, at the close of that first school day Luella Hagan–who was seated in the desk immediately behind me—reached up and jerked hard on the ribbons on my hat, leaving my beautiful showpiece hat dangling forlornly on my back.

YIKES!!!!! 

I was so incredibly embarrassed!!!

That unsavory experience represented the beginning of my true education in life; I started learning from that moment forward that you cannot trust everybody you meet during your one-way passage through time. 

Incidentally, the Hagan children traveled barefoot to school until it began to get exceedingly cold in the fall.  Our concerned teacher would inveterately ask them if their feet were not getting too cold without shoes to shield them from the increasingly harsh elements, but their reply was invariably a defiant, pride-filled “No!!!”

In the autumn we Snyder urchins raked the leaves in our yard into a big pile–and then was it ever fun to run and jump into that behemoth mass of foliage!  Unfortunately, on one occasion we were not very careful when we raked and a small piece of board with a rusty nail sticking out of it was accidentally included in the mass of fallen debris.  As the reader has probably already deduced by now, I took a gigantic flying leap into that majestic pile of leaves…….and landed squarely on the board!

My Olympic-caliber jump proved to be an expensive one for our cash-deprived German heritage family, since Mama had to escort me to the doctor several times following the painful incident for treatment of my injured knee.

During the Dust Bowl years, we Snyder descendants frequently had to rake all the fallen leaves and carry them to the stalls in our barn so they could be utilized as bedding for our cattle.  Our family simply could not afford to buy standard straw bedding with the limited funds available to us.

Silo-filling was another loud and exciting time for us rural backwoods rubes.  Neighbor men loaded heavy corn bundles (which had been previously clumped) onto waiting hayracks, hauled them into our frenetic farmyard (Think bees inside a hive!) with teams of hulking draft horses, and then as each bundle hit the conveyer belt with its knives spinning furiously below–there was unerringly that big noisy “Whirrrrrrrrrrrrrrr” as the cornstalks were chewed up and propelled through an extensive piping network up into our wooden silo.

Once again for the perennially overworked Mama, silo-filling meant preparing enormous meals for the Goliathesque work crew.  This labor-intensive task was generally undertaken after school was already in session, thus we Snyder kids were not around home for most of the day to witness the excitement.  Silo-filling was inherently a more dangerous undertaking than threshing.  That said, during both threshing and silo-filling horses that had never been around loud machinery before could suddenly become disoriented and then unruly……or even bolt away unexpectedly, arrantly out of control, with their hijacked loads following precariously in tow.

NOTE:  The following original, copyrighted joke contains X-rated language.  If you are personally offended by same, do not proceed any further!

 

“Doctor!! Doctor!!!” the distraught man screamed into the telephone.  “You have to help me!!  I think I’m going into shock!!!  Shock, I tell ya!!!!!”  “SHOCK?!?!”  The confident young doctor’s ears perked up; he was instantly concerned over the mere mention of this grave, life-threatening condition which is chiefly characterized by severe hypotension.  “SHOCK?!?!  Quickly, Sir, calm down and tell me what symptoms make you believe you are going into shock?!”  There was an awkward, pregnant pause on the other end of the phone line before an angry voice finally broke the uncomfortable silence.  “Symptoms???……..HELL!!!!!!…….I’m already in shock, Doctor, yes, that’s right—shock…..total fuckin’ unadulterated shock!!  I just received your most recent bill in the mail……”