• A gift only becomes a gift when it is used for the first time. Prior to that point in time, a so-called “gift” is nothing more than an official transfer of a commodity; usage is what confers value to an item.  So too with natural talent.  If or until a natural gift is utilized, it is nothing more than a latent ability lying dormant just waiting to be ignited by a catalyst—normally the beneficiary’s inner drive—although there is no guarantee such a thing will ever happen; too frequently it doesn’t. In truth, squandered natural abilities are more commonplace than grains of sand on a three-mile-long ocean beach.  The fact someone is born with immense talent does not mean that talent will ever be realized.  Potential does not equal fruition.  Fire requires a match to ignite it, and minus that match oxidation and the phenomenal power contained therein will never occur; it will forever remain just so much untapped potential energy.

• …..what are you waiting for exactly?!?! Is there a better time to do what obviously needs to be done?!?!  Huh?!?!  Well…..is there?!?!  I think not too!!!!!  So get your ass in gear right this minute and do what needs to be done!!!  Enough already with the goddamned all-day procrastinating!!  That important job is waiting for you and, trust me, time by nature is NOT a very patient entity! Time does not stop moving simply because you do.   Hence just go and do the work now and get it over with, lest someone else or—more likely—fate intervenes and ultimately denies you the opportunity.  Yes, distilled down to its barest essence, that is actually what this whole fucking thing inherently represents:  An opportunity, and if you don’t grab that elaborately disguised opportunity by the horns right now and wrestle it to the ground and pin its shoulders to the mat you will then have a lot of explaining to do to Someone far greater than myself or your exasperated friends and family members…..

• Permanence doesn’t exist. Doesn’t.  Never has.  Never will.  The concept of permanence is impossible.  Nothing lasts forever.  Not we humans, not the Earth we live on, not our sun, not our galaxy, and not our universe either.  Certainly not the batch of dreams we hatched and pursuantly incubated when we were only knee-high to a grasshopper and still fervently believed in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and the benevolence of government and the intrinsic equality of all human beings.  In terms of theory, permanence and infinity belong in that same conversation, in the sense neither can be understood or logically explained with this feeble entity that passes for human intellect.  On metaphysically complex issues such as those referenced, we of the Homo sapiens species can only speculate and make unsupported guesses, rendering us little different than the yak, the ostrich, and the ring-tailed lemur.

• There is a learning curve associated with EVERYTHING in life. No shortcuts. No dazzling end-arounds. No stunning pole vaults. No warp speed time obliterators. No catapaulting over the gathered masses. No unobstructed pathway to the finish line. No sirreeee, there is a learning curve for EVERYTHING you encounter or will ever encounter in life, and the sooner you accept this fundamental truism when starting a new endeavor, the more satisfied and better grounded you will be. Please understand and commit to memory this salient truth, Readers: Proficiency and expertise do not happen purely by accident; you habitually and with only rare exceptions have to pay a steep premium in the guise of sweat equity and a significant time commitment in order to reach those enviable objectives! Anyone who insists otherwise and touts shortcuts to the top is a dullard of colossal dimensions.

NOTE:  The following narrative is excerpted from the book “The Hardest Life I Could Ever Love”, written by Mary B. Blahnik and extensively edited by Fred Blahnik.

 

My new “career” was poised to change dramatically yet again……and it would forever thereafter be referred to as motherhood.

On May 16th, 1940, Jimmy warned of his pending arrival. My placenta had already ruptured previously, but Jimmy understandably decided to wait a while longer for a warm, sunny day to make his grand earthly debut. The “Icemen Days of May”–well known to the ethnic Czech people clustered in our immediate region akin to ants in a colony–were at last over.

In the darkness of the morning on May 17^th, Dad drove over to our close neighbors Souceks in order to call Dr. W. B. Grise so he could inform the good doctor his medical assistance would soon be required. Mama came to be my midwife, and Jimmy was triumphantly born at approximately 10:00 a.m. on a Friday morning with a swelling–or exaggerated bump—prominently displayed on his head resulting from his contumacious refusal to cooperate with the birthing process.

Dad beamed proudly and rivaled any peacock in flamboyance; the brand new father now boasted a slightly greater than eight pound son. Jimmy’s birth served to somehow validate Dad in his own eyes; he seemed to feel it made him just as good—in some instances perhaps even better–than many of his neighborhood friends and acquaintances……dare I say unspoken competitors? My naturally humble husband now stood more erect, there was a new steeliness in his eyes, and he walked with a decidedly new bounce in his gait.

The name James Peter had been waiting patiently for our firstborn if the youngster turned out to be a baby boy. That name was in honor of the newborn’s deceased Grandpa Blahnik—James–and an uber-proud Grandpa Peter Snyder, since this was his first grandchild.

The sun shone brightly that day, Fred was planting corn in the fields, and several neighbors stopped by to see if our new baby had arrived yet…..and then to pointedly inquire what sex the infant was. A new era had inauspiciously dawned on the nondescript Blahnik farm northeast of Austin, Minnesota, even though the buildings and fields and trees appeared exactly as they had the day before…….the week before……the year before.

No, things would never again closely resemble the way they had stood previously at the carefree “Blahnik Boy’s Place” in the days and weeks and years which followed this landmark birth.

Incidentally, during that mid-twentieth century era babies born at home were weighed on a small household scale which had a ring at the top for the “weigher” to hold onto, as well as a hook at the bottom for attaching to the baby’s diaper to suspend the infant in mid-air while it was being weighed.

Jimmy spent his earliest months in a baby buggy we bought from our neighbors immediately to the south–the Watkins. As he grew older Jimmy graduated to a wooden playpen Dad’s nephew Earl Ondrick had designed and built. The contrivance could be folded up conveniently to shuttle around our house and yard as needed.

Aunts, uncles, grandparents, and cousins watched admiringly at each new accomplishment Jimmy mastered, since he was the youngest member on both sides of our expansive family and represented the hopes and dreams and promises of an entirely new generation.

As Jimmy grew a bit older and could skitter around outside by himself, he soon developed a wanderlust feeling on nice temperate days. Quite frankly, the impish little fellow could no longer be implicitly trusted when left alone outside.

One bucolic Sunday afternoon little Jimmy disappeared from our farmyard. Dad and I searched desperately to find him……in vain; Jimmy could not be located anywhere, and as a first-time and probably overreacting mother I was rapidly approaching hysteria!

Finally, we spotted a Lilliputian set of footprints in the dusty field drive that led over the railroad tracks to Fred and Catherine’s place. Sure enough, we followed the tracks in that direction–and found Jimmy perched in their kitchen, serenely munching on one of Catherine’s delicious cookies just like the cat that swallowed the canary…..and wondering what all the fuss was about!

Yet another time, those telltale miniature footprints led me to our neighbors’ house across the road from where we lived—the Larsons. Alice Larson later confided to me that Jimmy showed up on their front doorstep—totally “out of the blue” and not scared in the least—and loudly and belligerently demanded, “WHERE ARE THE GIRLS?!?!”

A true Casanova was unmasked that day, and I had a minor epiphany and realized with a somewhat sinking heart that Dad and I would be sharing living quarters with a natural-born lady-killer from that point forward.

By this juncture in my life, I had finally learned to partition my time so that I could be—simultaneously–a successful homemaker and a doting mother.

 

 

• With life comes risks; you cannot have one without the other. Happiness—the unquestioned currency of life—is best measured by how one chooses to address those aforementioned risks and how much you allow said risks to dictate the trajectory your life will follow. Bottom line, you can be as brave or as cowardly as you want to be. You can live loud and brazenly like a lion or silent and timidly like a field mouse. You can roar in menacing fashion or you can go hide inconspicuously in a darkened corner and eschew any and all risks. No one else can determine the level of courage you choose to employ during your journey through life. That decision–easily the greatest and most transcendent decision any of us is ever asked to make–is entirely up to each individual. Thus, if you don’t like the direction in which your life is headed, for God’s sake don’t blame fate for it; blame yourself instead. You can exist at a stunningly rudimentary level analogous to a single-cell amoeba or you can proudly carry the banner of supernatural consciousness forward as a member of the human race. But you cannot do both at the same time; you cannot straddle this fence indefinitely; you ultimately have to choose between the two…..

Heaven on Earth (Part 1)

By Frederick J. Blahnik

 

5-4-10.

Just left the dentist’s office on North Broadway. Absolute shithole, that fuckin’ place is. Verbally accosted once again by the resident ugly dental hygienist regarding her ultra-strict oral hygiene regimen. Fuck you, too, you deplorable wench!!! I have far more important things going on in my life right now than brushing my teeth for thirty minutes each and every day and restructuring my entire waking schedule just so it revolves exclusively around my molars and incisors and gums……

Stop down at Silver Lake for a routine circumnavigation. And as I begin walking.…..my anger, consternation, and worries begin to slowly slip away…….yes, slooooowly slip away…..…

NEW GOSLINGS!!!

This year’s goslings are here, as though by legerdemain and sorcery–six new families of them by my best count. They weren’t present on Sunday, just two days prior, when I made a similar trek around the man-made lake. Cute, adorable, fuzzy little goslings pattering about in the lakeside grass…….or swimming in teensy convoys with their proud parents leading the way out in the middle of the scenic body of water….…or just resting in lush foliage while their mothers busily forage for food……..

And I am a boy again, back when our Blahnik family used to raise Toulouse geese on our medieval farm north of Spring Valley and the arrival of goslings in late April and early May was like an unofficial passage into the exciting season of virgin life……

I continue walking, marveling at the tiny little fuzzballs dutifully chasing after their mothers, fuzzballs that just three days earlier were still encased in eggs before the enchanting call of nature mysteriously summoned them to hatch…..and to be alive today.

By the time I arrive back at my car–1.8 miles later if one is to believe the lakeside signage–my mood has changed dramatically. I look up, and the sky is a beautiful hue of blue punctuated only by a few rogue cirro-cumulus clouds racing to stay ahead of a doggedly pursuing but eternally frustrated zephyr. To my right a mother is pushing her daughter on an old-fashioned, towering steel swing-set, while the little girl beams and hollers excitedly as she flies ever higher. Just across the street from me a man is intently mowing his diminutive lawn, the raucous purring of his push mower not an unwelcome sound on the pregnant spring air. I glance once more at the gorgeous lake scarcely rippled by a brisk spring breeze, and take a deep, invigorating breath of fresh vernal oxygen.

5-4-10…….a good day to be alive indeed.  

After a bumpy start, life is good today!!!

But then again: Isn’t it always???

• …..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. The process is immanently boring. The long-awaited solution? Rapturous and exhilarating!!!…..

The Old Farmer

By Frederick J. Blahnik

 

The old farmer knelt down and dug a dandelion up by the roots with one of those forked, divoting devices you can oftentimes buy on sale at Mills Fleet Farm for $4.99 plus sales tax.

He then moved on to the next plant, and the one after that, and the one after that. This is the same old farmer who used to wage a pitched battle against quack grass, Canadian thistle, and wild mustard in the sprawling fields on his one thousand acre farm. This is the same old farmer who used to pay no heed whatsoever to the acre of land immediately surrounding his house; his eyes were trained solely upon the other nine hundred and ninety nine acres he depended upon to make an honest living off the land.

But things changed when the old farmer moved into town.

Yeah, you might say things changed an awfully lot for our grizzled farmer friend then…..

You see, now he had time on his hands—yes, lots and LOTS of time on his hands–to make sure everything was ship-shape and wholly up to snuff around his tiny manor situated on the far edge of a boringly ordinary, bucolic village. And thus that is how the old farmer spent the preponderance of his time now—constantly on the prowl around his bantam-sized lawn, on the lookout for any signs of mole activity, making sure his grass was adequately watered, and always—ALWAYS!!!—keeping a sharp eye out for any rogue dandelion plants that may have furtively snuck onto his property in the dead of night.

Those dandelions—Those fuckin’ dandelions, if you will!!–they were his declared and undisputed enemy now. Unlike in the past when he farmed a thousand acres and his list of horticultural foes was somewhat lengthy, the only one that captured his attention currently were those scurrilous, uber-aggressive dandelions; why, the fuckin’ things were forever conspiring to take over his front lawn!

But the old farmer would be goddamned if he just stood back and helplessly watched them do that.

NO FUCKIN’ WAY, JOSE!!!!!

Maybe—Probably!!!—he would just have to work a little bit harder and devote a little more time in order to thwart the weeds’ dastardly progress.

Hence the old farmer walked to his miniature yard shed, swung open its creaky door, and with a painful grunt stooped over and grabbed his five dollar divoting device.

He had more work to do this afternoon!

Yeah, a lot more work and a lot more hours before he could claim ultimate victory over this newest foe, these fuckin’ devious dandelions, the toughest and most persistent nemesis he had faced in his not-short lifetime.  Truthfully, the damned things were working overtime and then some just to spoil his long-awaited retirement.

The nerve, yes, the unabashed NERVE of those persistent, yellow-topped bastards!!!!!

Well……he just needed to invest more time—However much time was needed; ya hear me?!–in this newest crusade of his and ultimately outwork the dandelions, I guess.

And our crusty old farmer thereafter had an epiphany and realized with abject depression married to a sinking heart that he would never be able to find the peace of mind he was seeking in his lifelong battle against the land, a force of nature—No, what am I saying here—NATURE ITSELF!!!…..a sublimely proud entity which of course collaborates at all times with its throng of tenacious denizens to stymie anyone or anything who might be entertaining hubristic, grandiose notions of conquering same.

• If opportunity knocks on your door, irrespective of how shabbily it may be dressed or the inconvenience of its timing, for God’s sake—Answer the damned door!!! If you don’t respond—And quickly!—to an unexpected overture, rest assured your visitor will move on to the next residence, and then the next, and then the next one after that, with the exact same offer he is presenting you.  And rest assured of this:  Someone will eventually open their door and embrace the stranger bearing unknown good tidings, and when that happens I don’t want to hear one fuckin’ utterance coming out of your mouth decrying your “bad luck” and how the odds have always been stacked against you.  True opportunities rarely come gaudily and obviously attired like NASCAR race car drivers; they are majorly more discreet than that.  But that doesn’t mean they are invisible and do not exist. To the contrary, they are very real. The simple truth is, you had your shot and you opted to pass on it.  So live with that fact.  Accept it.  The opportunity you passively rejected went to someone else and you will not see it again in your lifetime.