Growing old is undeniably a privilege and a sublime blessing and all that other smarmy good stuff, of course, yet it is nonetheless impossible to look back upon one’s youth without a giant tranche of envy and regret.  Envy…..for the bounty of temptations readily available for anybody short-in-the-tooth, yet when one steps back and studies those callow rascals for but a minute, it is soon revealed they are taking everything around them for granted.  Total, unadulterated granted.  Shame on them too!  Yes, shame on the spoiled, presumptuous young bastards!!  They should know better, for sure…..but then again, I never did when I was their age either, did I?  Regret…..for not taking full advantage of that smorgasbord of luscious temptations when they were right there for the plucking.  Never forget this most salient of facts, Reader:  One’s natural lusts and beastly desires never go away or even diminish a single iota, even as one’s physical ability to consummate those same divinities insidiously dissipates as the years heap on top of each other and the Grim Reaper becomes ever more audacious as he continues sharpening his ghastly scythe.  Such is life, and such are the cruel ironies attendant to same.

Anyone who professes to be an open book is also a decidedly boring read.  You see, I—along with most other people, I feel quite safe in opining—don’t want to find an “open book” anywhere in my personal library; I would much prefer a stimulating page-turner that’s guaranteed to hold my attention for more than a handful of minutes.  Openness and transparency are undoubtedly advantageous for every level of government, yet those same qualities hardly inspire interest and pique curiosity in interpersonal relationships.  Getting to know someone too easily is the perfect recipe for premature boredom and subsequently struggling to invent some novel excuse for parting ways without hurting the other’s feelings too badly.

NO ONE, not even big lottery winners and Average Joes dating Playboy centerfolds, can be lucky all the time and in every instance.  There most assuredly is a limit to fortuity.  To expect good fortune to shine on you indefinitely and for every one of your prayers to be answered posthaste is not only unrealistic, it also describes outlandish selfishness and an undeserved sense of entitlement.  Thus while good luck may be a welcome perquisite which pays you unexpected visits on rare occasions and pops up not unlike a guardian angel during some of the infrequent tough scrapes you have and will continue to experience in life, it surely is NOT a strategy by which you should lead life; it is NOT a substitute for hard work, ambition, and reasonable sacrifice and therefore should never be perceived as such.

Each morning when you wake up you are a totally different person from the one who fell asleep the night before…..the week before…..the month before…..the year before…..the decade before…..the partial life before.  Sleep does tricky things with our consciousness while we sleep, and the individual who wakes up the next morning is not precisely the same person who crawled blissfully into bed the night before.  We are constantly changing even if we don’t realize it, and those changes are cumulative and render us markedly different even if the person in the bathroom mirror looks achingly familiar and the clothes we wear fit exactly the same as before. Time changes us; it changes everyone; we exercise zero control over it irrespective of futile attempts to alter its trajectory.  I will be a different person tomorrow than I am today and so will you.  That said, most of these changes are internal as opposed to external, thus they are not readily apparent to eyes that are unvaryingly pointed in an outward direction.

Let ‘em Eat Thoughts and Prayers!

By Frederick J. Blahnik

Those kids are starving to death over there…..

They don’t have decent clothes to speak of for daily wear…..

They don’t have a safe place to stay, and when they do they’re crowded together so tightly they may as well be sardines squished inside a tin can…..

They’re getting bombed nearly every day of the week while being chased around constantly like hogs in a slaughterhouse…..

They’re being forced to live a stunted life of misery on a planet rich in natural resources…..

So what should we do with them?

What’s the best advice you can offer on this controversial subject?

Easy…..

Let ‘em eat thoughts and prayers!

You smugly sit there with a flush savings account to nicely complement the half-million-dollar house you live in…..

Not a material care in the world; not one!

Your mortgage has long since been paid off, your pantry is packed to overflowing with food and staples, the clothes you wear are expensively stylish, your pathway to “Heaven” is assured…..

You seemingly don’t have a care in the world, and surely none that involve a dire shortage of money…..

And yet those disadvantaged kids aren’t similarly blessed through no fault of their own…..

So what should we do with them?

What’s the best advice you can offer on this controversial subject?

Easy…..

Let ‘em eat thoughts and prayers!

Those aggrieved kids aren’t your personal problem, are they?

Damn right!  They don’t live in my neighborhood, hence that makes them someone else’s problem…..

Why the fuck should I care about some emaciated, googly-eyed children starving to death on the other side of the world anyway?

They’re not any of my concern; their parents should never have conceived them if they couldn’t afford to raise ‘em—RIGHT?!

Got enough REAL problems to worry about nowadays right here in this failing country of ours…..

So what should we do with them?

What’s the best advice you can offer on this controversial subject?

Easy…..

Let ‘em eat thoughts and prayers!

That’s right, just let ‘em eat thoughts and prayers!

…..and the years continued melting away akin to a glacier retreating under a blistering summer sun, and where he was once a recognized, undisputed expert in his chosen field of expertise such was no longer close to being the truth; he hadn’t been for some time. He had digressed into being a nobody, a cultural vagrant, an unwanted societal barnacle, a useless appendix jutting forth from humanity’s large intestine with no real job to do and no fundamental purpose in life.  The times had passed him by long ago—it was hard to put a finger on when that day or month or year actually was—and his base of knowledge currently was no more relevant than the messianic study of coprolites or unearthing and henceforth indexing stuffy relics from volcano-ravaged Pompei.  Instead of being a vital, contributing component of modern society, he was now just a boring, unnecessary vestige from the distant past who, if in a court of law was charged with taking up precious space and contaminating a finite oxygen supply by passing it through his parasitical lungs, would have had no choice but to plead guilty on both counts…..

…..that moment you’re still obsessing over is history now; move on from it! There is nothing to gain from gazing backwards in time and wondering how things might have turned out had this happened or that happened or he spoke up or she spoke up or if the atmospheric conditions had only been slightly different at the time or you were somehow created differently from what you actually embody today or if Jesus Christ had never been born in Bethlehem during the Time of Caesar in the first place.  Life happens, and after that it automatically morphs into history before quickly fading into irrelevance.  Move on with it lest you be left behind like all the pitiful septuagenarians and octogenarians who truly believe the future is a hot mess and that all the answers we need to solve today’s pressing problems somehow lie in the distant, very imperfect past…..

Let’s Lie Here Forever

By Frederick J. Blahnik

Let’s lie here forever

Wrapped up in each other’s arms tighter even than Saran

The feeling of making love still vivid in our minds

And the outside world no closer than tomorrow’s advent of dawn.

Let’s lie here forever

And celebrate the love we just made

Realizing that united we can accomplish anything

But separated we are no more powerful than two pitifully flailing bodies.

Let’s lie here forever

And talk about good times past, present, and future

Holding each other snugger than ticks to a hound dog’s ear

And savoring a bond that in this surreal moment could not be any stronger.

Let’s lie here forever

And listen to the wind singing to us through dirty glass windowpanes

Thinking that life couldn’t be more idyllic than it is in this instant

But knowing sorrowfully that good times never last.

Let’s lie here forever

And just wish the outside world and its litany of thorny problems away

Here, embraced in this two-person cocoon, nothing could possibly be sweeter

If only time would stop for us right now and then never restart.

Let’s lie here forever…..

And never return to that imperfect world we left behind

The love we feel right now transcends all of that a millionfold

Let’s never go back to it, okay?

OKAY???

…..and inherently well-intentioned people kept advising her to “Slow down some…..you‘ve gotta take it easier on our body…..slow down some, for God’s sake…..you’ve gotta take it a little bit easier…..slow down some, okay?!…..you’re foolishly putting your life at risk by trying to do too much at one time!”  And I would say to that:  Slow down for what?!  People grow older, not younger, and their bodies deteriorate over time; they never magically regenerate and get better and more healthful as time elapses.  From a strictly logical standpoint, slowing down is the WORST advice you could ever offer anyone as they grow older simply because that is tantamount to wasting some of your remaining relative youth merely to elongate that period of time when you are physically less able and less vital.  Slow down some?  HELL NO!!!  Speed up if anything, because life is short and getting shorter with each succeeding day, and inarguably the best time you have available to you is that time immediately in front of you now, not some nebulous time off in the unguaranteed future that will inarguably be worse from a wellness perspective and offer far fewer possibilities for genuine happiness than those that are currently available.  Therefore don’t slow down today, okay?  Rather, punch down on that accelerator pedal harder than ever and speed up in your later years to the extent your body will physically allow.  As a general rule, one should invariably strive to maximize the present at the expense of the future, especially given the fact the future is a wholly amorphous, uncertain entity that can suddenly and catastrophically disappear when one least expects it to happen…..

…..and the gossip hounds were back boiling hot on a new scent, struggling to think of ever more innovative means for how they could procure additional information on unsuspecting individuals that honestly was of no intrinsic value to them and for which their motives could only be described as self-serving and prurient.  This fact didn’t bother them one bit though; their only concern was digging ever deeper into other people’s lives so they would have that irrelevant information available to freely share with others in the future.  After all, what good is gossip if you can’t exchange it with other similarly gossipy people?  The answer:  None whatsoever!  Everyone knows, or should know at least, that gossip not shared indiscriminately is gossip wasted…..