• You can never outrun your mistakes of the past, no matter how hard you try and how much distance you manage to cover and how mightily you struggle to rationalize them; they become a permanent part of you, no different than your physical features or your God-given personality. You must thus somehow come to terms with these mistakes in a manner which allows you to proceed forward with a clear conscience and an unburdened mind.  Mistakes will affect and bedevil everyone throughout the course of their lifetimes; that much is a given and as etched in stone as Moses’ Ten Commandments.  Yet this we know for sure:  How we react to mistakes that occur spontaneously and in no logical order is the true test of our character and the only meaningful variable secondary to that larger-than-life equation which governs our day-to-day existence.

• Each new day is a day spent in school. Oh, not a school of the bricks and mortar and stern headmaster variety, but rather the school of life.  There are new lessons to be learned every day out there–Valuable, transcendent lessons, to be sure!!–but we must eternally embrace the attitude of the student and be willing to engage and participate and learn.  The learning process doesn’t come to an end as we age, nor does anyone ever become so full of knowledge that they become overly saturated with the irreplaceable stuff, causing it to begin dripping out of their pores analogous to sweat.  We should all continue learning new things until the day we die, because if we are ever of the supercilious attitude that we know everything……well then, you may as well be dead at that juncture, since the amount of value you bring to society and to those who live within it is thereafter nil and you hastily mutate from an asset into a loathsome burden.

My  Long-necked Lover

By Frederick J. Blahnik

 

Scoping the town last Friday night

McMurphy’s Saloon…..

Patrons crammed together shoulder-to-shoulder in the dim light

But then I spied HER, standing up at the bar

And, honey, it was love at first sight!

 

Sidled right up next to her, my eyes never once leaving her shapely curves

Yet when I slyly slipped my right hand around her body, I could tell the bartender thought I had a lot of nerve

I looked him square in the eye, winked and smiled….the guy just shook his head.

Then as my lips daintily brushed up against her fragile mouth

I heard him whisper, but couldn’t understand what he said.

 

So I escorted my baby out to the dance floor

All the while relishing her smooth feel and exquisite aroma

As my lips once again reached to envelope her mouth

Someone clubbed me hard from behind on the shoulder.

 

I saw my love tumbling fast toward the dance floor

Couldn’t catch her in time–I’m not sure it mattered

She hit the ground with a resounding crash

Then lay there helpless…..visibly shattered…..

 

Anger boiled over inside my breast at that moment; totally furious, Fred turned bright red

I next wheeled around to confront the bartender sneering at me, and this is exactly what I said:

 

“Why’d you have to do that, you miserable, cold-cockin’, son-of-a-bitchin’ asshole?!!  I’d have gladly paid for that long-necked bottle of Grain Belt beer if you’d only had the balls to ask me!!!”

• …..he thought about it more and more as he grew older–thought about it way too much, in fact–namely: If terrible things can happen to him and to her and to him and to her and to him and to her as well as to countless other unwitting victims like those you read about in the daily newspapers or hear about on the nightly news broadcasts…..then why couldn’t they and–more importantly–why shouldn’t they happen to him or one of his loved ones?  Who or what is in control of such things?  Who is selected for martyrdom?  Is it by grand design or is it entirely random?  Is there any rhyme or reason as to why some people are chosen to be victimized while others–oftentimes inarguably less deserving–are spared bad happenstance?  Is there any logic at work behind the hand of fate?  Does the Law of Averages apply to any degree here?  And this preoccupation with death tainted his every action and relationship, to the point where he imagined only the worst things occurring under even the most mundane of circumstances.  He couldn’t watch a loved one leave on a routine errand anymore without worrying fate would nefariously intervene on this particular occasion, that said person might be killed in an auto accident, and it therefore could quite easily be the last time he would ever see that cherished individual alive.  He couldn’t watch a loved one cross through a T.S.A. screening line at the airport anymore without ghoulishly thinking theirs might be the one plane in ten million (?) that crashes or is hijacked by deranged terrorists.  He couldn’t watch a loved one frolicking in the ocean surf anymore without imagining a diabolical riptide would carry them away to their screaming death in the deep bowels of the ocean.  He couldn’t attend a major league baseball game anymore without thinking a ferociously hit foul ball would target either him or one of his loved ones sitting nearby out of the fifty thousand other attendees.  He couldn’t read about rogue, Armageddonesque asteroids in scientific journals anymore without believing, in the furthest reaches of his mind, that one of those destructive bastards would choose to target Earth in his lifetime.  He couldn’t go to sleep at night anymore without the passing thought he might never wake up the following morning. He couldn’t live life anymore without fear this divine stuff mirroring consciousness would suddenly and cruelly be snatched away from him–either directly or by close proxy.  The vagaries of fate, the whims of fate, the erratic unpredictability of fate–whatever you want to call those kismet-serving goblins–they bothered him more and more the older he got.  Yes, constantly!  Every hour of the day and night, it seemed.  And, logically speaking, one would think the opposite should be true, inasmuch as when one’s fuel meter draws nearer  and nearer to empty, theoretically the value of one’s life becomes less extravagant and hence more affordable i.e. disposable…..

• There is a good side and a bad side to every situation you’ll ever face in life–not always in equal proportions of course–but that doesn’t mean the good side will be plainly visible to the naked eye. Oftentimes you will have to go hunting for this so-called good component–They tend to be bashful little creatures who hide out in dark corners and don’t like to be seen or heard!–but bear in mind, they do exist and they are present in any dynamic you’ll ever face.  So let this be your rubric, then, along with your attendant ongoing goal in life:  Struggle to find the good in any situation or predicament, even–and ESPECIALLY–if it is not readily apparent on the surface.   You owe it to yourself and, more importantly, you owe it to those around you.

• …..she hid behind the night, laid low behind the curtain of darkness. It provided her with cover that wasn’t available in the glaring sunlight of daytime.  The night served as a protective shield for her; it shrouded her in secrecy and resisted the peeling away of various layers of her persona and, attendant to that, the peeling away of various layers of secrets she held which the sun not only allowed but seemed to actively and enthusiastically promote.  So for that reason and that reason alone she hated the sun, hated it with a fulminating passion which defied logic.  The night?  Ah, yes, the night!  The night allowed her to hide on certain occasions, to hide from the intense scrutiny of others’ vicarious desires and too-big expectations, and consequently the night was her dear dear friend, one of the few authentic friends she could implicitly rely on anymore…..

• The early sixtyish man watched the watershed New York Stock Exchange thoroughly crater in less than a month’s time, and his instinctive reaction to this ongoing debacle materialized in a matter of a few days, if not hours: I need to batten down my financial matters NOW, I need to spend markedly less money NOW, and I need to weather this economic calamity all the way through to its conclusion starting right NOW!!!  I need to spend less less LESS money until the Stock Market and, generally speaking, the national economy as a whole recovers substantially and things ultimately return to “normal”, whatever normal might be.  And so our late middle-aged securities maven obdurately resolved right there on the spot to follow this financially prudent course of action and spend less money until the dire monetary situation found a modicum of traction, gradually achieved solid footing, and ultimately resolved itself.  Doesn’t that sound logical?  Doesn’t that conservative financial strategy make sense and resonate with you, the reader?  Isn’t that the right and proper and intelligent way to address a pressing monetary matter like the one I just described?  Meanwhile, the sexagenarian’s life clock continued to tick along relentlessly and unheeding with a mind of its own, wholly oblivious to abstract concepts such as normalcy, fairness, logic, and blindly waiting for desired outcomes. It didn’t give a rat’s ass about rankling human problems; it’s only mission was to move mesmerizingly in a rightward direction while never stopping.

• …..immediately after she died he sought to hoard her material possessions–just as many as he could feverishly take hostage within his sticky clutches–as though such a rapacious course of action would somehow draw her closer to him and help cement her legacy for a longer sojourn in his grieving mind.  She had once possessed and handled those items and that fact alone made them sacred, or so he gullibly convinced himself.  But then over time–many years, actually–he gradually came to realize the keepsakes she left behind were nothing–That’s right.…NOTHING of import and certainly nothing to venerate–no more a part of her true essence than the soil she once tread upon or the air she shared with other earthly inhabitants while she transiently graced the surface of our blue planet.  Consciousness was key and its residual handmaidens, pluperfect memories and invaluable lessons learned at her behest, were the only things that genuinely mattered any longer secondary to her shining legacy.  The aforementioned keepsakes were just small pieces of cosmic matter that had been on loan to her while she lived, and now that she was dead they held no more personal connection to her or anyone else than the water in the oceans or a wayward comet wandering aimlessly through the Andromeda Galaxy myriad light years away…..

• Inertia is easily the most difficult force to overcome in nature. Sitting still and not doing anything to upset the status quo feels totally natural.  Moving…..acting dynamically…..changing the way things are currently done…..THAT feels distinctly unnatural.  It feels way more normal to just sit on one’s ass and let life flow by unobstructed than to confront it directly and try to affect real change. Yet you MUST do this if you ever hope to amount to anything apart from just another anonymous Social Security Number issued by the federal government, a humdrum shadowy existence spent clinging parasitically to the gut of society and, ultimately, a pedestrian obituary which showcases a grainy black-and-white photograph taken decades earlier drowning amongst legions of others on the unread second page of the daily newspaper.

Scary Creature

By Frederick J. Blahnik

 

Scared???

OF COURSE I WAS SCARED!!!!!

I tell ya, I was scared shitless!  I was so scared I couldn’t see straight!!  I was so scared I made “bone-spurred” draft dodger Donny Trump look like a Congressional Medal of Honor winner!!!

But what good did that do me???

Really…..what good did that do me?!?!

I had to act—Do something…..ANYTHING!!!—and not just stand there shitting my pants, looking dumber than hell, with my heart racing along at one hundred and fifty beats per minute and my blood pressure spiraling straight through the ceiling.

But my feet were frozen to the floor in terror.  Like I had inadvertently stepped into a gargantuan version of one of those sticky traps ordinarily reserved for pestilent rats and mice.  Like my Size 12s had been immersed in a thick slab of freshly poured cement.  I couldn’t have run away even if someone had stuck a twelve-volt cattle prod six inches up my ass and punched the “Activate” button.

 

This wasn’t the way it was supposed to turn out….

No, no, not by a long shot!

When she first explained it to me—first laid out the general details of our joint excursion—she never mentioned the possibility of this happening.  All she said was that it should be fun and we might get back late.  Nothing about any imminent danger.  Nothing about otherworldly surprises.  Nothing about coming face-to-face with an entity scarier and more bone-chilling than anything I could ever begin to imagine.  Something so utterly dastardly and vile and revolting my pulse still hasn’t settled back to normal and those highly sensitive hairs on the back of my neck have yet to lie down flat.

But she lied to me.

Oh, damned right she lied to me!  Lied through her fuckin’ pristine set of teeth!!  Lied like an uber-expensive Persian rug!!!  Lied to the extent she put my very life in grave peril!!!!

 

I’m sure you’re probably asking yourself right now exactly what I encountered the other evening that has me so fuckin’ worked up and in a tizzy.  I’m sure you doubtless think that I’m being melodramatic and carrying hyperbole to heretofore invious heights.  I’m sure you undoubtedly think I’m a bullshitting blowhard who never passes on an opportunity to exaggerate any and every situation to the max at the proverbial drop of a hat.

But I’m none of those things…..

No, I swear to God, Reader—I…am…none…of…those…things!!!

So…..exactly what den of lions did my devious girlfriend lead me into that has me so unhinged and yammering on now like a drunken teenager?

Betcha can’t guess, can you?!

Not in a million years!

Or even a billion probably!!

Enough with the overdone suspense, though; I’ll tell you now what that horrible place was, and you won’t believe this bit of news either and in all likelihood completely sympathize with my plight and instantly understand why I’m ranting on so uncontrollably.

My girlfriend—yes, my beatific girlfriend, the same person I must confess to having taken an unhealthy shine to over the past six months after first meeting her last spring—had the audacity and unmitigated gall to take me on a surprise visit to her parents’ house for dinner.

Where—and you no doubt have already guessed this by now—I was forced to meet face-to-face and nervously break bread with her gruff, unsmiling father!