…..a shard of information adventitiously came my way last evening, and although it definitely wasn’t information I welcomed or could readily embrace, I nonetheless had to acknowledge its veracity and take steps to appropriately address it.  The receipt of information oftentimes works in this fashion, that is, it is frequently malodorous and undesirable in nature, but our sentiments regarding said information does not alter the underlying scaffolding and superstructure on which reality is constructed one iota and we henceforth have to accept any “new” data at face value and do our utmost to be flexible and hastily rearrange our lives to accommodate constantly changing circumstances.  Absolute rigidity in the guise of “principle” is unacceptable; moral victories count for no more than humiliating losses.  Hubristic steadfastness amounts to a death sentence in the arena of sound judgment…..

Your problems are as unique to you as the color of your eyes, the undulating squiggles of your fingerprints, and the curvature of your body.  It serves no worthwhile purpose to trouble other people with them, so consequently just keep your difficulties to yourself and DON’T!!  Trust me, everyone has their own set of problems and issues to deal with on an hourly, daily, and weekly basis.  They don’t need (or want) the additional nuisance of some thoughtless person hosting a pity party and pig-piling on top of them with a teeming litany of irrelevant ones.  A gold-plated word exists in the English language to describe people of this ilk:  Selfish!!!

…..silence was the language he embraced above all others, and he instinctively understood that a dearth of words spoke far more forcefully and elicited much greater attention than loquaciousness and a raft of long-winded soliloquies gushering forth from low-horsepower, half-empty minds.  And hence he never opened his mouth unless he had something authentically important to say, even as he risked being drowned each day in a tumultuous sea of words spewed into the surrounding atmosphere by those around him who were markedly less confident in their abilities and therefore sought to compensate for this deficiency the only way they knew how.  He had been taught from a tender age by canny parents that empty wagons rattle the loudest, and every succeeding day now brought forth further irrefutable evidence of this sage adage…..

Tomorrow is no less than one night’s sleep away.  That’s right, although tomorrow seems so close that you can almost reach out and touch it and possibly even give it a monstrous bearhug, it remains at the bare minimum one departure from regular consciousness away, and those transient nocturnal departures from sentience can lead us down some very peculiar and life-altering pathways that can change our whole manner of thinking.  Sleep takes us deep into a rabbit hole fraught with unexpected surprises and wrinkles and obscure characters from one’s past, and when we awake in the morning from said slumber our prevailing mood and outlook on life may have executed a one hundred and eighty turn in a matter of a measly six to eight hours; one just never knows what to expect from your psyche upon waking in the a.m. hours.  Sleep refreshes our souls as much as it does our physical bodies, and nagging problems you take to bed with you the preceding evening can be subliminally solved or bludgeoned away after being exposed to the raw, incomparable power of our subconsciouses for a goodly tranche of hours.  On the other hand, those same problems can look exponentially worse and unsolvable upon waking too; one just never knows what to expect from a fleeting encounter with your inner gremlins, and that is the “beauty” of a good night’s sleep, I guess.

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 as inhabitants of Planet Earth.  Just remember this:  You don’t get any mulligans on living; one life is all you get; consciousness belongs strictly to those who are alive.  Adventurism is great and intoxicating and as a whole something 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.

Many, if not most, investments will not turn out to be big winners.  That’s just common sense wed to simple arithmetic; if investing was simple, everyone on your block would own a palatial mansion with two Maseratis and a luxury speedboat parked conspicuously in its driveway.  But they don’t, of course.  You have to accept this stark reality straight up front if you decide to run the risk of investing some or all of your money in entities or instruments which run some degree of risk.  Yet never forget the flip side of the coin, which is this:  All it takes is one or two or three big “hits” to offset all the losses you may be forced to absorb on other investments in your financial portfolio.  Said is purely the price you have to pay for being in the game—the “cover charge” to gain entrance into the financial world, in other words.  Because if you don’t want to run any risk whatsoever—if you wanna play everything perfectly safe and be guaranteed that you will never lose one penny of value—go and “invest” all of your earnings in a commercial bank savings account, but then don’t let me hear you complaining one peep as you go about collecting a whopping one percent interest bonus on your “investment” at the end of the calendar year.  Better yet, why don’t you follow Gramps’ savvy investment lead and stash all of your earnings in a coffee can as a prelude to venturing outside to bury it in your backyard for long-term safekeeping.  Your money will doubtless be secure and risk-free hidden there beneath the soil as it shares space with nightcrawlers and grubworms and their ilk, but a solid hunch of mine keeps insisting that the cash you hid away probably won’t grow too much in value over time.  Truthfully—even assuming a low rate of inflation, which is never an ironclad certainty—any money you have hidden away in your coffee can will depreciate in value with astonishing rapidity not unlike the once-new car sitting in your driveway or the year-old appliances anchoring your kitchen.

Not Like I Used To Be

By Frederick J. Blahnik

I found a note sitting in my mailbox today…….

My class reunion is coming up next month.

Ten years ago but it seems like an eternity;

When I was walking down that aisle and my life was all ahead of me.

I’m still young but not like I used to be……

Those ten years are both yesterday and a lifetime.

Everything is clear, like I’m peering back through a shimmering window.

Racing away, reaching back desperately for things that once were a part of me.

Wanting to retrieve them, but they’re moving too fast for me.

I’m still young but not like I used to be…….

Ten years ago we marched triumphantly out of that old brick building.

Early June evening–The air was cool and so amazingly crisp you could slice it with a butter knife!–late lilacs still magisterially blooming.

We were hugging and dancing and hatching plans to change the world forever.

We were young then, but more than that we could not see.

Oh yeah, the life we were leaving behind would finally set us free.

I’m still young but not like I used to be…….

I suppose I’ll attend the reunion next month.

Bullshit with old friends; find out who’s married and who’s not.

I wonder if any of them will have the same feelings as me.

When we all get together, will it be the same as it used to be?

Can we make ten years disappear for just one night?

Just one measly little night?!?!

We’re still young but not like we used to be……

The life we were leaving behind would finally set us free.

I’m still young but not like I used to be……

We’re still young but not like we used to be……

Let go of the past, for God’s sake!!!  Let go of it already!!!  It’s nothing more than yesterday’s news—LITERALLY!!!  Focus on what’s in front of you, not on what’s behind you!  The past is sand in the bottom of the hourglass.  It’s a ship that’s sailed.  It’s a used condom.  It’s a gnawed apple core shading towards brown in color.  It’s the extreme distal end of your digestive tract.  Who really gives a shit about those insipid, dated things anyway?  The present is unquestionably most important, the future—provided one is granted the divine luxury of entering that uncharted wilderness—is easily next most important on the spectrum of life, and the past?  Well, the past is not important at all.  A mound of useless refuse.  A nullity.  Nothing can be changed about the past, hence why should anyone find solace in constantly revisiting that vast wasteland which lies forlorn and irretrievable and receding in one’s rear-view mirror?  The answer is there is no reason.  The past is the province of professional historians, glory day enthusiasts, and Monday morning quarterbacks, but no one else has any real use for it.  Leave it behind where it belongs and set your sights on the present, for sure, but also on the future to a lesser extent.  Today matters; yesterday no longer does; tomorrow is purely a promissory note from the gods of destiny with no assurance that it will ever be cashed.  The moment.  Live for the moment.  Yes, live for the moment, for Christ’s sake, and only for the moment!  That is all you really have, both right now as you read this and then stretching into perpetuity too…..for as long (or short) as that grand illusion might last…..

…..she entertained so many dreams that if they were water you could have floated an ocean liner atop them with plenty of room to spare, yet those dreams bore no more resemblance to the real world than a banty cock does to an imperial rooster.  No more resemblance than a wren does to a ostrich.  No more resemblance than Donald Trump does to Abraham Lincoln.  No more resemblance than yin to yang.  She existed in a dream world—in a parallel universe devoid of savvy and wisdom—and coming to grips with reality was as impossible for her as it would be for you or me to take ample time relishing an ice cream cone while levitating on the surface of the sun.  Many things are possible in this sphinxian Universe of ours, but to provide appropriate balance and symmetry just as many are not…..

…..the hours came and went, the days came and went, the weeks came and went, the months came and went, the years came and went, the decades came and went…..and she still stubbornly kept struggling to decipher the meaning of life—the deep-down, transcendent reason for why human beings are allowed—Encouraged!—to live transitorily on the surface of this unassuming little planet of ours in a universe without end.  Why finitude in a system defined or, rather—undefined—by infinity?  That implicitly doesn’t make any sense.  Death and infinity are not compatible principles and do not come remotely close to explaining consciousness, even allowing for the fact those same molecules of life persevere and “live on” inertly against the backdrop of an endless universe after sentience has fled a mortal body.  How can order and disorder peacefully exist in the same system unless a greater power isn’t orchestrating the machinations of said system to ensure discordance?  Is there any beauty and meaning in nothingness…..in randomness…..in pointlessness…..in benign anarchy?  Are “nothing” and “irrelevance” the universal answers to everything?  How…..?????  Why?????  But the years finally caught up to her—predictably and in direct compliance with the elementary and well understood laws of biology and physiology—and she died quietly and minus the cacophony of saluting trumpets others might cherish, still no closer to the truth she pined for more than anything and sans any clue insofar as to why she had been born in the first place……