Author: Fred Blahnik

…..so you sold that highly desirable item and made a very tidy profit in doing so.  As a result, you’re feeling awfully good and savvy and all puffed up right now. But how long do you expect this glorious feeling to last?  More to the point…..what now?  YES, WHAT NOW?!  You’re currently sitting on a pile of money that you didn’t have just twenty-four short hours ago but, really, how sexy and self-affirming is it to stand in possession of bland, staid, pedestrian money?  If you haven’t read between the lines here, that was a rhetorical question: The answer is “owning” a shitload of money isn’t sexy in the least and only stirs one’s hormones and emotions to a minimal degree. Quite the opposite from owning a rare original painting, a nearly-impossible-to-secure autograph left behind by an apocryphal historical figure, an uber-muscular sports car, a luxe “cabin” on a pristine northern lake three hours from home, a turbocharged speedboat, a champion thoroughbred stallion, etc., etc., etc.  Making money is only intoxicating if it is reinvested in something far sexier and esoteric.  Because although a polyglot of digits in multiple banking accounts comes as a monumental relief for conservative, risk-averse folks, so too does Quaker oatmeal for breakfast, boxer shorts, Velcro sneakers, and two-hour naps in the afternoon if those are truly the people you are struggling to emulate in life……

Considerable time has passed.  Single years, decades, and now scores of years have long since passed under that inscrutable bridge paralleling human mortality.  I have changed much.  She has changed much.   The world around us has changed much.  Our relationship has changed much.   Everything has changed much. And now that once Gibraltar-like closeness we felt when we were unfalteringly together as nestlings no longer exists. That’s right, it no longer exists and no amount of pretension will alter that fact one scintilla.  Our interactions now more closely resemble the coolness and aloofness—properly tempered with the requisite politeness and diplomacy which modern society expects, of course—that one feels when in the presence of a benign stranger.  Tom Wolfe was spot-on when he said you can’t go home again, and no amount of sentimentalizing and treacly re-enacting will ever alter this stark truth with regard to places, times, and, most critically…..the people who pass through our lives as the years pass by and eventually dwindle away.

…..and throughout this and that and this and that and everything in between, time kept moving along slowly, ineluctably, inexorably…..and even though a mortal being could not empirically detect that movement with their five traditional senses, one could tell instinctually that life was moving along with an irresistible momentum all its own and that we were trapped aboard an incomprehensibly large ship from which there was no complicity and no escape.  We were all in it together—that I knew for a fact—yet incongruently we were all in it alone too; we were all strangers haphazardly clumped together through no volition of our own. We had no hand on the ghost ship’s rudder with which to influence the direction we were moving; we just stood by and watched dumbly as things slipped by in the pitch blackness, random amorphous things that we thought we might like to sample yet were seldom afforded an opportunity to do so.  We continued moving forward and onward…..forward and onward…..forward and onward…..not unlike undiscerning hogs being guided into a slaughterhouse, with no clear understanding of where we were going and obviously no inkling of where we would ultimately end up……

……like most obnoxious know-it-alls, he actually knew very little but for some inscrutable reason believed otherwise; in his warped mind he was a canny savant, with his knowledge base extending to nearly every subject imaginable and then others beyond that as well.  And so, akin to most confirmed know-it-alls, the fat, intrinsically detestable poseur was utterly unbearable to be around and one would take egregious, exorbitant steps to merely avoid his presence for any appreciable length of time.  Sometimes that simple strategy worked out fine, but other times it failed miserably and you were then left stranded alone in his orbit, alternately feigning polite listening to his ridiculous sermons and rants but more often ruing the gods of fate for having put Lil Ol’ U in such an odious, repulsive situation even as you desperately sought some halfway plausible excuse to extricate yourself from his shitty presence…..

I cursed at the foul weather raging outside my living room window this morning, but it didn’t seem to do any good or instantly quiet the hideous maelstrom.  If anything, the wind seemed to pick up even more and the rain beating against my windowpanes reverberated even louder and with greater ferocity than before and phalanxes of small hailstones now gleefully rushed in to join the atmospheric party.  And then I thought to myself: You goddamned, GODDAMNED vile natural elements and fuck—Yes, FUCK!!!—the satanic, iniquitous forces that are masterminding your assault on this tiny patchwork of Earth’s surface this capricious morning.  The weather outside could be nice, the air could be still, the sun could be shining brightly, the birds in the treetops could be singing in perfect harmony, the temperature could be comfortable if not frankly balmy, and yet not a single one of those preconditions is true or even remotely close to reflecting reality. NOT ONE!!! So next a question materializes out of nowhere and looms large: Is this shitty, shitty, SHITTY weather directed solely at me for some undetermined reason, or is it rather just an adventitious quirk of nature in this undeniably adventitious universe in which we all reside? I don’t know and never will either.

…..sadly—and the best sign yet of my utter desperation—was the fact the only “real” option left to me now was prayer.  Yes, that’s right, praying the bejesus out of my scared-to-death soul as I target the faint, dying-while-I-type-this hope of scoring a much-desired goal which I otherwise exercise zero control over achieving.  Frightening thought, huh?  And profoundly discouraging too. Now, I don’t purposefully wish to disparage praying and I personally hold no grudge or antipathy against doing so or against those who ceremoniously “rely” on it in their day-to-day lives, but in total honesty, if you have exhausted all of your proactive steps toward reaching a coveted objective and prayer is consequently your last resort for securing a favorable outcome, I would delicately point out that there ain’t a whole lot of reason for optimism at such a belated stage of the game. You may as well be throwing darts in pitch blackness or rushing out to buy a shitload of Powerball lottery tickets when the payout is sitting in excess of one billion dollars. And if by some miracle your prayer is answered…..who’s to say that wouldn’t have been the natural outcome anyway? Credit where due, but that’s impossible to acknowledge when you have no idea who the creditor is.…..

…..who IS that young, buff, dynamic guy in the old, dated photographs I retrieved from a shoebox in the back of my bedroom closet anyway?  Do you recognize him?  Is he someone you remember from the past?  Any clues to his identity? Distinctive features? Should you know the undeniably striking fellow?  Upon further scrutiny, I guess he kind of bears a passing resemblance to the you of today, but that is all it is; the resemblance is scant at best.  And then some heartless apparition materializes from out of the firmament and reminds me that the youthful person in the picture is indeed Yours Truly, and I can’t help but be flabbergasted. Everyone knows passing time is a nefarious thief who steals away the profuse majority of human perquisites and peccadilloes as we grow older, but to witness firsthand that bodily deterioration in a photograph from decades ago is a brutal slap in the face regardless.  We all grow old and pay a punitive price for this drawn-out natural process—True!—but does that cruel, gross degradation have to be preserved so starkly in photographs that last forever?  Couldn’t the stark bastards lie or, at the bare minimum, conceal the harsh truth just a trifle? I somewhat sadly realize the answer to this rhetorical question is an unequivocal “No!” in light of the fact I am holding irrefutable evidence to the contrary in my hands right now, and that evidence is not subtle or feeling-sparing in the least…..

“Hope” has to be the most scurrilous, least understood word in the English language.  Why?  Because if your only recourse is to “hope” for a specific outcome, then by definition that means you have no actual control over the situation facing you.  You are effectively powerless and left to pitifully “hope” for a result that you exercise zero control over.  As a result…..how can a feeble state of affairs like that leave anyone feeling good about their prospects?  And how then can the word “hope” be seen as anything other than an unsold lottery ticket? The correct answer: It cannot.  Hope is toothless; hope is meaningless; hope is a useless blank in a chamber otherwise loaded with live rounds.

Reward passion wherever and whenever you can.  Passion is inarguably the greatest character trait in existence “out there”, thus contribute to its development whenever an opportunity surfaces, wherever an opportunity surfaces, and in whomever you happen to notice its embryonic contours forming.  Rewarding passion is not unlike throwing money into the offertory tray when it is passed around in church on Sunday mornings during worship services; you might harbor reservations regarding precisely how your hard-earned cash will be spent, yet you nonetheless feel good about contributing to an assumed altruistic fund.  Indulging passion wherever it manifests amounts to the same thing; you’ll feel good and never regret doing so.

If he wasn’t good enough for the past, he sure as hell ain’t good enough for the present. The present is more complicated and challenging and multifaceted than the past ever was, ergo if he wasn’t capable of clearing the modest height the bar was set at “back then” then he conclusively isn’t up to the task in today’s faster-paced world.  If ya weren’t good enough when you were younger and more athletic and more robust and more virile and your brain was undeniably more plastic, why in God’s name would you think you are more capable today?  Huh?!  That was a rhetorical question, by the way, and if you didn’t realize something so simple the answer is a resounding “You ain’t better at doing anything once you pass the age threshold of sixty, You Vain Dipshit, other than shitting your pants and misplacing your reading glasses and forgetting when to take your mini-arsenal of medications!”  Thus please (And I’m only feigning politeness here as a tribute to propriety) do NOT pretend otherwise and masquerade as some sort of dynamic leader who is indispensable to humanity’s well-being. Your ship sailed long ago even if you forgot to book passage on it.