Monthly Archives: May 2009

Tomatoes Murdered – The Cages Did It!

Posted on by
3

Dear Reader:


I know you may find what I say here hard to believe, but it’s true. As you know I have been tending to my first vegetable garden. Some of the plants are doing well but I am here to report that all 15 tomato plants have died. In fact, they were murdered. Yeah, I know, I can sense your doubt, your misgivings, thinking I’m being silly, but they were murdered and Bonnie, who I still love, had a hand in it. She got the 15 tomato cages that ultimately ended their lives.


Don’t believe me? Well then, consider this. And before you do, let me say that the vegetable coroner does not agree with me when it comes to cause of death. But I’ll get to that shortly.


I planted those tomatoes indoors when they were nothing but seeds, little adorable newborns they were. They were born free in other words. No cages or cells, no restrictions – free, I tell you, free!


And then one day in a group discussion Bonnie says, You need cages for them. Now that I think of it I am responsible too. I am guilty as well. As soon as she said the word cages I should have seen the red flag (apologies to my 15 dead red friends, potentially red friends, I should say. They would’ve been red if they’d been given half a chance). The reason I should have realized something was wrong was this: when was the last time you saw someone running down the middle of the streets bellowing, Help me! Help me! My tomatoes have escaped!! Answer? Never. Cages…really now.


But no, I believed her and one or two other helpful souls who chimed in saying¸Oh yes, Peter, they need cages.


Well, here is the truth of what happened. It is simple and tragic. I carried the 15 funnel shaped tomato cages outside and my beloved 15 baby tomato plants took one look and in unison, committed mass tomato hara-kiri. One look at those cages and they were out of there. Done, dead, over, fini, no mas.


The coroner said suicide, but I know murder when I see it.



The cages did it.


More soon,



Soil Boy

_________________________________________________________________

Eagle Productions, Inc. & Blog Comments

Posted on by
Reply
A reader recently wrote in and asked if I was the Peter Kahrmann who was forming Eagle Productions in 1980. The answer is yes. It was nice to get that question, it has been a long time.

From time to time people will leave comments asking for a direct response from me, which I would be happy to provide but in order to do so I would need their e-mail address.

Anyway, I am glad this person asked. I will not put their name here as unless this person says differently, their name should remain private.
_____________________________________________________________________

Writing My Mother’s Suicide

Posted on by
1
Writing about my mother’s suicide in the memoir is, as you might imagine, a deeply emotional task. I can’t say it’s an unwanted to task because at least when I write the sentences I have some control over their content, and suicide, if you’ve had the misfortune to encounter it in life, is a remarkable and merciless reminder that we control very little. Even with our best efforts, we can’t stop someone from ending their life if that is what they want to do.

My mother commited suicide with a well-researched mix of drugs and alcohol on August 12, 1992. I will say nothing more about that in this essay for it is not the salient point of the essay. The salient point is this; my mother, Virginia Kahrmann, was a complete human being who does not deserve to be defined by that admittedly singular moment. Nor does she deserve to be defined by some of her rather harsh and emotionally brutal treatment of me when I grew up. Very few of us, if any, are all one thing. We are amalgams of life experience. My mother was no exception.

Her suicide was the culmination of a life that, for a variety of reasons, some I know, some I don’t, robbed her of her ability to love herself and thus her ability to believe anyone loved her. How do I know this to be true? She told me.

I once told her that her death (no matter how it came about) would be one of the biggest blows I would ever endure in life. She was completely and utterly baffled by this. “Really, Peter? Why?” I was speechless, a rare state for me.

As cruel as she could be to me at times – days after my father died when I was 15 she told me if I hadn’t been such a bastard he might have had enough strength to live – she inflicted far more damage on herself.

Yet, she was far more than the aforementioned. She was brilliant and the best conversationalist I’ve ever known. In the last 10 years of her life we became very close. I’d go to visit her in her Pearl River, New York home mid-morning, and we would talk straight through into the evening, our talks being accompanied by coffee, crackers and cheese, and going out to dinner.

We conferred regularly as we both threw all we had into fighting for the Brady Bill – a bill requiring states to have a waiting period to purchase a handgun until they had an instant check system in place – or when we fought against the death penalty, or the rights of immigrants. She countless volunteer hours to the GMHC (Gay Men’s Health Crisis) a group she referred to as the best run non-profit in the country, and worked tirelessly to help refugees from Laos find homes.

Her demons killed her love for herself and ultimately guided her into ending her own life. I am asking, hoping, that readers will not allow those demons to blind them to the beautiful person she in so many ways was, and in my heart, still is. If they do, then the demons win again, and winning again is the last thing they deserve.
_________________________________________________________________

No One Goes Home Again

Posted on by
Reply

“Oh woe is me,” said Scruffy Man, sitting at the diner counter. The Scruffy Man in oversized overalls, bushy eyebrows and a stained white t-shirt missing one of its sleeves. His red hair swirled on his head like a whirlpool, making it impossible for even the most attentive eye and fashion-plate mind to understand how on earth the hair had arrived at its visually dysfunctional resting place.

“I am the garden fool,” Scruffy Man went on. “All the planting for naught. Seeds unsown, dreams all famished.” Here he belched and scratched his groin with his left hand. Then, in a whisper, “Famished.”

No one knew what to say. This was not the first time Scruffy Man had let loose with phrases linked to a reality that only he and he alone understood.

“You know, son,” said Scruffy Man to the elderly man sitting to his right at the counter, a man easily 30 or more years his senior, “at night I remove my head and place it on the night stand. Never have bad dreams that way.”

The elderly man lifted his coffee mug in a toast, “Not a bad idea come think of it.”

Scruffy Man, in a whisper that only allowed everyone in the diner to hear, said, “Can’t get that woman out of my head.”

“Even when it’s on the night stand?”

“I know she’s in there.”

Outside the sun slipped behind a cloud, the light in the diner dipped into dusk, the diner lights suddenly stark, surreal.

Scruffy Man looked out the window, “I know she’s in there.”

The Older Man looked down at his forearms resting on the counter. A tattoo of a parrot was on his left arm and a tattoo of an empty cage was on his right. He’d gotten both 10 years earlier on his sixty-seventh birthday because it was then, after the death of his beloved wife Dora, he realized, finally, he would never go home again. No one goes home again.

___________________________________________________________________

That American Soldier

Posted on by
Reply
He is in full dessert camouflage and boots standing on a sidewalk not far from the Sears and Roebuck Merchandise Pick-up Entrance. He is an American soldier. At the moment he is talking with someone on his cell phone. His posture is straight, strong. He is powerfully built. I put him somewhere in his twenties.

My window is down as I slow my car in front of him. I start to tap my horn to draw his attention but as soon as my car slows I have his attention. His eyes are locked on mine. Still on the phone, watching. I think slowing cars must carry a different meaning for him.

Looking at each other I say, “Thank you – and stay safe.”

He relaxes into a genuine smile. “Thank you, sir,” he says, and he means it.

“God bless you, bro.”

We nod to each other. I slowly drive away. He returns to his phone conversation. I am suddenly near tears, so much so I can barely see to drive.

Why the tears?

Was it his youth? Was it the distinct feeling I had that he was saluting me when he said, Thank you, sir, when I should be saluting him? Or, was it simply heartbreak at the ineffable violence he has witnessed and endured? Was this compounded, perhaps, with my firsthand knowledge that nothing, not even dessert camouflage and boots, protects any of us from the split-second blood-drenched carnage of bombs and bullets, of violence?

That young man, that American soldier. That mother’s son, wife’s husband. That brother’s brother, sister’s brother, that grandson, that flesh and blood human being who deserves his life, as do so many others. And while all of us should be willing to go, none of us should be called to go based on lies, born of the maniacal minds of the Bush-Cheney disgrace. Those two should be in jail.

That American soldier should be free.
___________________________________________________________________