• ALL KNOWLEDGE IS GOOD KNOWLEDGE!!!!! Ignorance may be bliss, but–Truthfully!!!–would you rather be informed and thus somewhat armed…..or blissful like a chicken striking out to cross a busy interstate highway without a care in the world?  Knowledge, even knowledge of the distasteful variety, is a potent weapon in the hands of an intelligent person, and when squared up against a worthy opponent we surely need all the weapons we can muster.  So don’t mimic an ostrich and shy away from receiving news, even if you fully expect it to be of the negative variety.  You may not be able to avoid immediate pain in concert with whatever hideous detritus may accompany same—granted—but in the long run this new knowledge could very well prove to be invaluable and serve as an informed launching pad for effective ensuing action.

• …..nothing could prepare him for the day when HE—the undisputed Master of the Universe, the King of Kong, the Boss of Bosses, the Great Knower of Everything, yes, he…….THE Superman among Supermen……suddenly grew feet of clay in the presence of his teen-aged children and fell permanently from his lofty pedestal. The demigod who could never do any wrong now could do no right in their newly insolent eyes, and this abrupt transformation and subsequent fall from grace left a gaping hole in his erstwhile teeming self-confidence, a hole that ensuing time could never hope to refill…..

• Many of the so-called “dark clouds” that supposedly follow us around are of our own making. That’s right—they aren’t real.  They are figments of our imaginations, nefarious ghosts hiding out in our cerebral attics, mere fleeting apparitions meant more to scare than to actually inflict injury.  They are no more real to a learned eye than the existence of the Tooth Fairy or the probability of a balanced federal government budget in the foreseeable future.  Hence, move on with your life and quit inventing feeble excuses for remaining average!

• …..it had now only been five days since he died, yet she no longer felt an affinity for him or the phalanx of shared memories he left behind. That was a different time—a different era almost—and she found that her life since his death had veered off on a whole new trajectory…..an exhilarating trajectory she never even could have anticipated just weeks ago.  A part of her still felt gnawing pangs of guilt that she didn’t feel more remorse over his sudden and violent passing, but her stronger inner self reassured her conscience there wasn’t anything more she could have done to dissuade the bullheaded bastard from his serially self-destructive behavior.  Death was imminent for him, just as unfettered happiness would be for her now and extending indefinitely into the future……

• Do not expect more happiness out of life than it is capable of giving. Happiness is without doubt the greatest blessing to be found and nurtured in life but, like anything else worth pursuing, it comes in finite quantities that are inelastic in nature and firmly bounded on all sides.  Expecting more from life than it is able to offer and not knowing when to gratefully settle for something less than that is the greatest mistake a surprisingly large number of people make.  Do not be overly rapacious and find yourself emotionally drowning amongst this dumb, Panglossian majority!!!

• …..from a moment to a memory…..that’s all it was…..one second it was out in front of me and highly tangible…..and in the next second it was filed away in the back of my brain, as inanimate and unchangeable as the color of my skin. The bridge between a moment and a memory is teensy indeed—almost infinitesimal—indeed no longer than the attention span of an average human being, but depending upon its import what transpires in that span can easily last a lifetime—or cut short a lifetime—and possesses a transcendent power more mind-boggling than the splitting of an atom…..

• Whatever looks too good to be true, or seems too good to be true, or feels too good to be true…..IS too good to be true, you guileless fool! Always!!!  Every fuckin’ time!!!!!  There are no exceptions to this cardinal rule and there never will be, despite the googol of meager attempts at rationalization we inevitably struggle to make to justify our naturally avaricious impulses and to partially sate our raging earthly desires.  Nothing is given free in life; you have to go out and earn everything.  To think otherwise—to think shortcuts and faux miracles will unfailingly be available to lessen our work burden and assist us in securing benefits and largesse that we have offered no personal sacrifice to deserve—is a fool’s errand and a fool’s mentality.

• Just as bad times never last, in all honesty…..neither do good times. Everything in life is perpetually in a state of random flux.  Change is the only real constant in this universe of ours.  Hence, if your life seems too good to be true at the moment, it probably is, and change of the negative variety is in the offing.  This is inevitable, no different than the arc of a pendulum.  But always remember:  The opposite is likewise true, so don’t get too dejected and quickly give up hope when the pendulum swings once more to the left and sinister clouds move in overhead and take up temporary residence, as I guarantee will ineluctably happen.  This condition is temporary as well; the pendulum won’t remain stuck in that position permanently; life is structured in such a way for no apparent reason…..

• 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.  Who really gives a shit about those insipid, dated things?  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.  Nothing can be changed about the past, hence why should anyone find solace in constantly revisiting that vast wasteland which lies forlorn and irretrievable 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!  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 might last…..

Note:  The following passage is excerpted from the book “Leftovers from the Feast”, a compilation of non-fiction stories written or edited by Fred Blahnik.

 

So Carolyn, Larry, and I were sitting outside our tent at a campsite picnic table next to a pristinely beautiful lake in way northern Minnesota one evening–casually talking among ourselves, listening to the enigmatic loons chortling their haunting messages out on the open lake, and savoring a cold beverage.

The only drawback to an otherwise thoroughly enchanting evening?

The mosquitoes that summer were horrible and wouldn’t leave us alone for even an instant.  Larry in particular was growing ever more exasperated with the persistent insects and his increasingly profane language reflected this fact, although quite possibly the overabundance of beer he was drinking also contributed heavily to his ornery, pugnacious attitude.

Anyway, an especially annoying mosquito wouldn’t leave Larry alone, so he finally took one last violent swat at the buzzing insect with his left hand.  I don’t remember what the hell ever happened to that opprobrious mosquito, but I will never forget what happened next to Larry’s expensive golden wedding band:  It raced off his ring finger not unlike a starving dog being called to supper.  The glimmering orb skipped perfectly off the surface of the wooden picnic table we were sitting at and proceeded to fly speedily into the tall weeds nearby.

Well, the situation we were facing at that moment wasn’t really so bad at first blush.  The thick weeds were taller than some NBA basketball players and an army of famished mosquitoes was no doubt eagerly awaiting the arrival of their smorgasbord meal back in that miniature jungle–True!–but the three of us “southeasterners” nonetheless figured it shouldn’t take too long to find the delinquent ring.  After all, we had pretty much seen the exact trajectory it had taken and also where it had alighted in the weeds.

Or so we thought……

Accordingly, Carolyn, Larry, and I ventured off into the thick foliage adjoining our campsite in search of Larry’s errant ring.  We looked……and we looked……and we looked some more.…..and yet we still couldn’t locate that damned piece of jewelry in those egregiously tall weeds!

Meanwhile, we three modern-day stooges were naturally and personally embodying the primary source of nourishment for half the mosquito population which inhabited the sprawling Arrowhead Region of northeastern Minnesota at the time.  And let me assure you right now, also, the plight we were facing that vexing evening was every as bit as frustrating as being locked in a tiny room with a know-it-all asshole for twenty four hours straight, because all three of us had very distinctly seen where Larry’s ring had sailed into the lush vegetation, but mere minutes later it was as though the mischievous little son-of-a-bitch had somehow achieved invisibility and disappeared from the face of the earth.

In the midst of my searching, however, serendipity at least showed enough kindness to pay me a visit; I happened to run across something of lingering interest lying on the moist soil back in the dense weeds.  This object was white in nature and not very big, so I picked it up in order to more closely examine it.  The riddle I held in my hand was soft in texture, cylindrical in shape, and unlike anything I had ever seen before in my young sheltered life.  I lifted it up right next to my face for a good visual inspection in the diminishing sunlight, squeezed it tightly to get a good feel for its composition, but I must confess my curiosity did obey certain bounds:  I may have smelled the strange entity in passing, but I can hereby guarantee you that I did not submit the inscrutable object to a taste test!

But, y’know, even after all that squeezing and ogling and inspecting I still quite frankly did not know what in tarnation  I was holding in my hand, therefore I finally beckoned Carolyn to come over to where I stood to see if she could help me identify the cryptic thing.

My older sister immediately sidled over and glanced down at the item I was clutching in my hand as though it was some sort of valuable door prize.  And then in the next fraction of a second her eyes exploded to the size of hula hoops and she cut loose with an instantaneous, otherworldly shriek of laughter that would have killed head lice.  I obviously didn’t know what to make of Carolyn’s weird reaction, so I just stood staring at her dumbly while continuing to stake proud ownership to the strange cylindrical entity.

But when she finally stopped laughing long enough to catch her breath, Carolyn pointed down in the direction of my hand and screeched, “THAT’S A TAMPON!!!!!”

A tampon….?

Did you say A TAMPON, Carolyn?!

What on Earth is a tampon anyway?!?! 

I was a gifted speller in elementary school who very seldom misspelled any assigned words, yet I could never remember seeing this particular word on any of the spelling lists my elderly, predominately female teachers had handed out to me………

As you might imagine, I was totally clueless and didn’t know what to make of the situation or Carolyn’s uproarious appraisal of the unknown object either, but I sensed from her reaction that it must not be anything good at the exact instant I instinctively felt my face turning redder than an overripe tomato, therefore I hastily tossed the peculiar white thing further back into the weeds and slunk back to our campsite to commiserate and lick my emotional wounds.

Truthfully, I don’t think Carolyn stopped laughing for the next ten minutes, meaning I was still no closer to knowing exactly what it was I had been protecting so vigilantly in my hand.  And feeling acutely embarrassed by Carolyn’s bizarre, unexpected reaction, I never bothered to follow up on the issue with her either, meaning the word “tampon” would not join my personal vocabulary with any degree of familiarity for a long time thereafter.

Incidentally—despite an exhaustive search—the three of us vacationers never did find Larry’s oversized wedding band that rankling evening in the wilds of beautiful northern Minnesota.