• Life, and by extension wisdom, is all about timing: “Intuitively” sensing when the time is optimal for doing something, and subsequently following through with that premonition in an expeditious manner.   I know, I know:  It sounds a lot easier than it actually is!   Almost everyone ultimately arrives at the proper conclusion as more and more details become available, but kudos go out to those few who can discern that conclusion’s general outline well before the abstract entity becomes obvious to the masses.  This ability defines wisdom; preternatural TIMING defines wisdom.  The ability to anticipate potential rewards and, more importantly—adverse consequences—well in advance is what sets smart individuals apart from dumb ones.  No more complicated than this succinct summation, yet said is a sacred plateau of savviness only a select few ever achieve while the preponderance of others get tripped up and fall to the wayside on the journey there.

• He who blissfully waits for everything in his life to turn out just peachy without actually contributing any meaningful effort to achieve that heavenly goal better be blessed with unlimited patience, zero self-esteem, and, perhaps most importantly—a nearby bathroom…..cuz he’ll be needing to use that elfin chamber more than a few times in this ridiculously unrealistic quest. Life never comes running to you like a trained puppy dog, slavering and salivating and just dying to accommodate your every wish.  Contrarily, you have to commit to go face it determinedly on its arbitrary, oftentimes harsh terms.

• …..they talked about the importance of solidarity—talked about it A LOT while emphasizing its criticality—yet when the rubber hit the road they all scattered wildly not unlike a flock of terrified prairie chickens ambushed by a coyote, each looking out exclusively for his/her own self-interest and a group consensus no more likely to be found amongst this pack of angst-ridden recreants at that chaotic juncture than would be the likelihood of discovering nutritious milk in the breasts of a hermaphrodite. Solidarity???  Well, yeah, solidarity—–Hell!!!!!  Who gives a flying fuck about solidarity when it’s your head, not theirs, that is squarely positioned on the chopping block?! Solidarity is about as important at that stage as a Death Row inmate remembering to brush his teeth on the morning he is to be executed…..

She Worshipped Bob Dylan

By Frederick J. Blahnik

 

 

She worshipped Bob Dylan.

What more can I say? 

She loved me, on some occasions probably even a lot, but she worshipped Bob Dylan.

She absolutely revered him, adored him, venerated him, worshipped the very ground the Rock and Roll demigod trod upon.

So is it any surprise then that our marriage didn’t last very long?

The biggest surprise of all may be that the sham lasted as long as it did.  Five years of marriage may not sound like a lot to geriatric dinosaurs who have been conjoined at the emotional hip for forty and fifty and even sixty years, but for every single day of those five years I had to put up with her Bob Dylan idolatry.  Every single fuckin’ day, I swear to you, and I ain’t exaggerating one bit here either!!!  I know it probably sounds like I’m making myself out to be some sort of martyr as I write this but, to be perfectly honest, that is a spot-on description of Yours Truly’s situation throughout those five soul-wrenching years which seemed uncannily closer to fifty.

Five whole years, and nothing ever changed from Day One.

Not a thing, I tell you…..

She worshipped Bob Dylan.

She thought he was the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.

She would gladly have kissed his ass if he had dropped his drawers and bent over in front of her.

She thought he was a deity.

She would have cut out her own heart with a dull butcher knife and offered it up as a sacrifice to the guy had he so requested.

And when I pointed out to her that she shouldn’t do this, shouldn’t hold another human being in such hallowed esteem, that it wasn’t normal or healthy—that Bob Dylan was a mere mortal, constructed of flesh and blood like everyone else, inflected with faults and foibles just like every other creature condemned to an arbitrary beginning and an arbitrary ending, eternally damned with the exact same clutch of oftentimes disloyal emotions as Joe and Jane Schmoe—she just rolled her eyes, shrugged her shoulders, and pronounced her undying fealty to the curly-haired  music legend all over again.

Long story short, I thought I could change her following our wedding, but she refused to be changed.

Just stubborn as hell—ridiculously stubborn, irrationally stubborn; she utterly refused to change!

She worshipped Bob Dylan, worshipped the very ground he trod upon.

In light of that, is it any wonder our so-called marriage only lasted five years?

I tell ya, the fact it lasted even that long is a huge wonder bordering on a miracle and a testament to my undying tolerance and patience.

Here I must finally bare my soul and confess outright:  I screwed up big-time.  I should have pulled the plug months, if not years, earlier on our unworkable marriage.

In the face of impeccable reason and my fervent desire and loads of persuasive cajoling, she refused to ever change or even consider changing…..

And When I Flipped Over a Rotten Log…..

By Frederick J. Blahnik

 

 

Consider me naïve, but I used to wonder and find myself perplexed at all the anger and animosity directed at Barack Obama when he was president of our country.  Now, admittedly, Obama was not a great president—not even close; average probably—but he invariably gave the impression of being a decent, altruistic individual and there was never even a whiff of scandal surrounding the guy, nothing to suggest that his character was anything other than admirable.  Yet so many conservatives clearly held great personable animosity toward the man, and naïve country bumpkin Fred Blahnik could never quite conjure a good reason for their disproportionate feelings of hatred.

Well…..now I know the answer, as I am sure every perceptive American has discovered since that horrible (the favorite word of someone we all know; irony intended), infamous day in November of 2016 when Donald Trump was “elected” (more on that later) president of the United States to succeed the aforementioned Obama.  The animosity I mentioned had nothing to do with Obama’s pedestrian performance in discharging the duties of president of the United States.  Rather, it had EVERYTHING to do with the color of his skin, a fact that has become abundantly clear since Trump “ascended” (How’s that for an oxymoron?!) to the presidency.

Donald Trump’s blatant racism and bigotry opened the floodgates for everyone in this country who agreed with him to vent their own objectionable opinions and prejudices, if not directly than with about as much subtlety as an elephant at a tea party.  For a certain grotesque subset of our national population, the Donald Trump presidency has been cathartic, inasmuch as they no longer have to go to great pains to conceal their underlying bigotry—bigotry that was of course lurking subterraneanously  all along but in a better, more enlightened society could not be made manifest.  Well…..now it can and unfortunately is.  Donald Trump has made it fashionable amongst this group of people to be overtly prejudiced and to judge people not on the content of their character but on any of a wealth of physical or cultural characteristics that distinguish Person A from Person B from Person C from Person D.  And not just to exercise this abominable behavior either, but to be smugly proud and demonstrative about it at the same time.

The election of Donald Trump was tantamount to when one flips over a rotten log in the woods, and then you immediately take note of a slew of creepy-crawly creatures scurrying about on the forest floor—woodlice, millipedes, fire ants, grub worms, crickets, and others of their ilk.  One quickly realizes that these loathsome creatures were there all along and probably have been since time immemorial, yet because they were not visible to the naked eye one didn’t appreciate their presence in our world.  Ditto for the legions of closet racists which Donald Trump’s illegitimate election foisted upon the general population of the United States.  These people have been amongst us all along—hiding in plain sight, if you will—but convention, basic compassion, and societal norms prevented them from trumpeting their true feelings to those around them, other than an occasional tantrum i.e. the aforementioned savaging of Barack Obama when he was honorably occupying the Oval Office.

Donald Trump’s “election” obliterated the previous norms, and those creepy-crawly creatures who have been hiding in closets throughout the prior years—understandably afraid to voice their true feelings owing to the societal blowback they would have rightfully received—now feel liberated and free to speak their minds just like the bigoted blowhard in the White House.  If he can freely express egregiously misguided thoughts from a pulpit as previously sacred as the White House without fear of meaningful retribution, well, they sure as hell can do the same around the evening dinner table or down at the bowling alley or when gathered with friends for a few beers at a local tavern or with family members at a holiday assemblage.  Donald Trump has made racism fashionable amongst this character-stunted segment of our country’s population, and these miscreants—who for so long had to hold their genuine feelings inside for fear of societal scorn—now frolic about unapologetically, secure in the knowledge that they are not doing anything different from the top office-holder in the United States.

Finally, about the so-called “election” in November of 2016.  I am frankly sick and tired of hearing about how Donald Trump “won” that presidential tilt.  He didn’t, so quit insisting that he did.  The contest was not particularly close, and I’m not saying this because I’m a big fan of Hilary Clinton (I absolutely cannot stomach her for other reasons and subsequently didn’t vote for either candidate).  The pathetic dotard Trump lost the popular vote—undisputedly the benchmark by which democratic governments should decide general elections–by three MILLION votes, more than the total population of “red states” Alaska, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming combined.  And I am not just referring to the voting populations of those red states either; said number is the TOTAL population of the aforementioned four highly conservative states whose populace as a whole now joyously celebrates American society’s U-turn back in time to a medieval milieu which promotes puritanical values, repulsively jingoistic nationalism, and gleefully ravaging the fragile environment which surrounds us.

Now, I am not suggesting the votes in any of those states should count for less just because they happen to be sparsely populated but, on the other hand, should they count for more?  Try explaining your rationale to a voter in California or New York or Illinois or other populous states—three million of them, in fact—whose vote DID ultimately and inarguably count for less than one in predominately rural states.  The Electoral College is an unfair, antiquated sham—anyone with half a brain (which admittedly excludes a throng of Donald Trump sycophants) knows that–but such is the undisputed vehicle which propelled Trump to the presidency in 2016 as an embarrassing minority “victor”.

Could it happen again?

Of course it could, for the simple reason nothing has been done in the interim to mitigate the foolish, disproportionate clout largely rural Western and Southern states wield over the remainder of our national population.  Our republic, as currently structured, is NOT democratic government—not even close.  Something must be done to rectify this onerous situation, obviously, yet it is already too late to level the playing field for the upcoming 2020 presidential election.  And that could doom us to another four years of disastrous, divisive Donald Trump policy-making, while at the same time set back the direction and momentum of United States society for a hundred years at the minimum.

Now back to square one. Barack Obama was not a good president, nor was he a bad one; he was just average—a decent but overly timid guy who was too afraid of offending anyone and someone who was held hostage to blind convention (Yes, strange I would say that, I know; these are the exact same qualities Donald Trump carries way past the acceptable threshold on the opposite side of the spectrum!), yet he was a person who unvaryingly did his best throughout his tenure and was refreshingly free from scandal and corruption.  But none of this mattered one whit to the phalanx of individuals who insisted on pillorying him during his two terms in office.  The only thing that mattered to them was the color of his skin.  The fact he was darkly complected made him unsuitable for the office of the presidency.  Simple as that.  No qualifiers; no valid reason to speak of.  I didn’t understand this fact at the time, but I surely do now.  The ensuing election of Donald Trump has rendered the dynamic our country presently faces crystal clear to me.  This ignorant despot has made bigotry and race-baiting avante gard, and for his surprisingly large horde of disciples—those slimy, creepy-crawly critters who were hiding out beneath rotting logs for all those years—the liberation and alacrity they feel at this moment in time must be downright exhilarating.

My advice to them?

Savor it while you can.

Thankfully, those malicious, specious feelings won’t last.  It may take five years, it may take fifty years, it may take five hundred years, it may take a thousand years, but given the DNA hardwired into human nature, history proves that democracy and basic compassion inveterately triumph in the end.  This era will be no exception.

Note:  The following passages are excerpted from the book “The Hardest Life I Could Ever Love” (pages 342-343), an autobiography penned by Mary Blahnik and extensively edited by Fred Blahnik.

 

A humongous meal consisting of a roast goose or two ducks, stuffed dressing, and all the other traditional trimmings generally had to be squeezed in sometime between the Rose Bowl Parade and a plethora of college football bowl games which ensued on the first day of a virgin year.

Prior to 1962, those festivities came to our family only via the radio. On New Year’s Eve, Dad inveterately played the card game “Whist” with our children in a determined effort to help them stay awake so they could dutifully “ring in” the New Year with panache and style—not mention a slew of high-calorie snacks!

One bitterly cold New Year’s Eve back at our Austin farm–as the children and Dad sat playing cards, laughing, and munching on food–they would occasionally hear strange sounds emanating from the outdoor porch adjoining our residence.  Dad reminded one of the youngsters to check whether the front door was locked; it was.  And then around midnight, there came a loud “RAP RAP RAP” on the front door.

A little bit frightening, huh?!!!!

An obviously inebriated man who had been out celebrating early apparently drove into a snow-clogged ditch and his vehicle had become stuck in it, and next the soused sybarite had wandered to the relative shelter of our front porch and encamped there.

Dad firmly demanded of the freezing wastrel, “Who is it?!!  WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM US ANYWAY?!!”

The stranger’s reply:  “All I want is to get inside from this freezing cold, sir.”

Dad informed him in no uncertain terms that he best go elsewhere or face grave consequences.  Eventually the drunk found his way over to Warner Haney’s place, our close neighbor just down the road.  But I must say this:  It was a trifle unnerving looking back for those individuals who had been sitting close to our front door–to eerily realize that some unknown, grossly intoxicated miscreant had been lurking on the opposite side of that thin wooden barrier throughout most of the festive evening.

And finally, there was the sinisterly stormy New Year’s Eve of 1968-69.  On that particular evening–much to Dad’s understandable dismay–Carolyn and Dorothy joined some of their friends on a trek up to Rochester to celebrate and usher in the New Year.  Dad and I grudgingly resigned ourselves to the folly and intransigence of youth, and then commenced the nerve-wracking task of awaiting the wayward pair’s return.

The northwest wind outside our door howled menacingly, endless snow fell from blackened skies and blew uninhibited, the temperature continued to nosedive into obscenely uncharted territory.…..and still no sign of the adventuresome twosome.  Meanwhile, the clock hanging on our kitchen wall just kept ticking and ticking away, and Dad and I felt like we were being subjected to a water torture session……..

A considerable spell after midnight, a snowplow forged southward through the preposterously clogged roadway…….and shortly thereafter a carful of young revelers swerved unevenly into our driveway…….

All of the occupants were in dire need of bathroom privileges, since they had been sitting in their car for an outrageously long period of time waiting for one snow plow to pull out another which had become hopelessly stuck in a Brobdingnagian snowdrift, and I am quite certain none of the youthful frolickers had abstained from drinking liquor that New Year’s Eve—horrible weather be damned!

My memory mostly centers on the torrent of questions the quizzical young people asked about a small number of milk cans brimming with baling twine we had sitting in our kitchen that winter.  Since we were desperately short of firewood that year, discarded hay twine would serve as the fuel for our woodstove in preparing our sumptuous New Year’s repast the following day.

After 1962, we enjoyed the luxury of watching the Rose Bowl parade and New Year’s Day football bowl games on our “new” black-and-white television.  What an extraordinary blessing it was for Dad to be able to watch and savor how most of the rest of the world lived, after all those years of virtual seclusion stuck on a primitive backwoods farmstead sans electricity…

Note:  The following dissertation was originally published in the book “The Changing Seasons of Life” (pages 355-356), authored by Fred Blahnik.

 

Heaven on Earth (Part 4)

By Frederick J. Blahnik

 

December 31^st, 2009.  7:15 a.m.  Driving north along a gravel township road in Pleasant Valley Township, Mower County, Minnesota, United States of America, Planet Earth, Milky Way Galaxy, As Yet Unnamed Universe Because the Existence Of Alternative Universes Can Never Be Empirically Proven.  The road itself is a veritable skating rink, totally glazed over with residual ice left behind from the great Christmas Day meltdown, when an epic blizzard long forecast for that day degenerated into a rainy, soggy mess in the face of uncharacteristic, mid-thirties temperatures.

Just off to my left lies a great, majestic orb hanging in the New Year’s Eve day sky—a gargantuan “blue moon”, the second full moon of this December.  One stares at it—fully mesmerized—wondering with equal parts awe and bewilderment how something so typically small and self-effacing could now be this gigantic and overpowering.  The morning air is crisp and pregnant with the sounds of winter as I carefully glide down “325^th Street”–which in reality is nothing more than a narrow, nondescript, gravel township road–towards a “T” intersection with its big cousin, blacktopped Mower County Road #6.

And that spectacular blue moon continues to dangle low in the northwestern sky, barely clearing the flat horizon, seemingly begging everyone on Earth to indulge in her once-in-a-year pageantry.  And what a unique day Ms. Luna has chosen to spotlight!

For this is no ordinary day, not at all, not by any means…….

A new year awaits less than twenty four hours hence, and not merely a standard, run-of-the-mill year either……but a whole new decade!  If one hasn’t particularly liked how the past ten years have gone, you can now—with some small degree of luck—enthusiastically enlist in the dynamic new decade parked immediately in front of each of us and steer your life in a decidedly alternative direction.

New year……. 

New decade…… 

Same old issues and problems as before, you say…..???  

Well…..does it really matter in the big scheme of things??

Truly?!?!?!

Today is undeniably a day to look forward, NOT backwards! 

As I swing a right turn onto County Road #6 and head off toward another day of work in Rochester, I reluctantly bade the transcendent, once-in-a-lifetime blue moon farewell in my Elantra’s rear-view mirror.  And this curious thought strikes me as I drive south on the uncommonly lonely highway:  How many other wayward travelers have carried on a similar conversation with “Ms. Blue Moon” in centuries past—long before I was even born—and how many more will be asking the same existential questions as me in the distant future…..long after I am gone?  Will anyone even still be around to witness the sheer beauty and peculiar awesomeness of our Universe then?!?  Unlike the moon and the sun and the stars which are not saddled with organic vulnerabilities, will humankind overcome its intrinsic foibles and blunders and blatant stupidity to survive for near perpetuity as well?

Only time will tell, but today is not the day to worry about esoteric celestial matters.  No, today is a day to exalt in the advent of a brand new year and a brand new decade, if only owing to the fact so many other earthlings did not experience our same level of luck and last long enough.

Therefore…..let the partying and merry-making officially begin!!!!!

• Do you still recall the time you had a minor epiphany and realized that not everyone looked at things exactly the same way you do? That they possessed a different viewpoint and consequently addressed issues in a majorly different manner than you?  That they viewed problems through a different lens than you—a foreign lens which you never encountered on display in a storefront, let alone held in your hands to closely examine?  That their cognitive process worked drastically different from your own, thus churning out beliefs and dogma and “prejudices” drastically different from your own as well?  Well, my friend, the day that epiphany occurred also coincided with the conception of your TRUE maturity, a day when you graduated from an uncomprehending naïf who innocently believed that everyone’s thought process was homogenous to a discerning individual who understands that free will, free thought, and free expression birth an infinite number of viewpoints and perspectives—as many as there are currently people in existence on the face of our planet Earth.  And to authentically understand this crucial concept is to finally embrace the level of maturity which is rightfully expected of an adult Homo sapiens—past, present, and future.  Not to suffer all fools and endorse bald ignorance and rush out to purchase a MAGA cap, mind you, but just to recognize the diversity of opinions “out there” in the humansphere as well as the virtually indestructible roots from which many of those questionable opinions germinate and attendant futility in attempting to pull them up to be exposed to therapeutic sunlight.

• Trust actions majorly more than words. Words are intrinsically worthless, deceitful little bastards with few redeeming qualities.  That’s why things like promises, apologies, (excessive) praise, phony “I love you”s, verbal commitments, tired old clichés, and their other lowbrow cousins are vastly overrated.  And saying “overrated” here is being far too gentle:  Those aforementioned verbal vehicles are hollow…..unredeemable……useless…..nothing, actually.  Words require no sweat equity nor do they demand any form of sentimental down payment, thus their net value is zero.  Yes, zero, as in the manifestation of nothingness!  Show me, don’t tell me.  And if you can’t or are for some unexplained reason scared to show me, then all the words in the world—when distilled down to their primeval essence—are equal to, but definitely do not exceed, their basic chemical composition:  Legions of ill-used, physically transformed oxygen molecules unceremoniously dumped into the duped atmosphere in front of your face—an ethereal substrate which irrefutably was designed for much larger and nobler purposes than meekly accepting embarrassing blather from excuse-makers.

“You Can’t Go Back…..”

By Frederick J. Blahnik

 

 

And so the small-town newspaper reporter asked the grizzled old man who was living in a nursing home and celebrating his one hundredth birthday:

“What do you think about turning one hundred years old?”

No doubt expecting some flowery soliloquy or long-winded response espousing all of his gratitude for having lived so long

But the old man was taciturn to a fault and surprised her with his brief reply

Inasmuch as he expressed his whole philosophy of aging in a meager four words…..

“You can’t go back…..”

 

“You can’t go back…..”

 

What extraordinary profundity in just four words!!

He could have rambled on indefinitely about the nature of life and the invaluable lessons to be learned on a daily basis and the importance of nurturing critical relationships and the transcendence of a stalwart spiritual faith and his anticipation for advancing forward into a better, eternal place once his time on Earth ends

Yet he didn’t mention any of those things

“You can’t go back…..”

Truer words were never spoken!

 

“You can’t go back…..”

 

We can always look back…..

And think back

And wish that we had done some things differently along the way

And maybe changed or reprioritized some of our intimate relationships from past years

Changed everything, even

We always wonder about how differently things may have turned out had we only done this or done that…….done this or done that..….done this or done that…….

And yet, at the end of the day…..and at the end of a life…….

“You cannot actually go back and do things over…..”

 

“You can’t go back…..”

 

How many times in our lives have we hoped and prayed that we could just turn back the clock and relive parts of our lives and change the course of history–not world history, mind you, but just our own picayune, miserable, inconsequential little lives?

How many times have we laid awake at night commiserating over a bad decision gone awry?

How many times have we found ourselves bellyaching to our subconscious:  “If only I could have a mulligan on that lousy decision I just made……”

Ain’t never gonna happen, my friend……

“You can’t go back…..”

 

“You can’t go back…..”

 

The wizened old fossil could have said anything to the newspaper reporter and, coming from the mouth of a centurion, it would have naturally sounded prescient and profound.

Yet by volition he limited himself to a succinct four words

Four words that should resonate with anyone, which is to say EVERYONE, who has ever made a poor choice in their life.

Sagacious words to live by every day of one’s earthly transit, words that you should definitely not have to age to the dizzying number of one hundred years in order to understand their sublime relevance.

Words that transcend nosy reporters’ inane questions and speak to the very essence of life itself.

Incredibly splendid words by which to live every day of our preternatural existence.

“You can’t go back…..”

 

No, you can NEVER go back………

 

The past is timeless, just as the future—That vast warehouse of worthless, unrequited dreams!—is also timeless.

 

Only the present comes with form and boundaries.

Only the present can be trusted.

 

Today is your only guarantee……and therefore your best and only hope when pitted against an unchangeable past and a future sans warranty……