Author Archives: Peter Sanford Kahrmann

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About Peter Sanford Kahrmann

Writer, disability rights advocate, civil rights advocate.

Leaps of Faith

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I heard the following joke recently. A man falls down a deep hole that extends miles into the earth. He manages to stop his fall by grabbing onto a root with one hand. As he begins to tire he looks up at the small circle of light above him and yells, “Is there anybody up there?!” Suddenly a bright light from shines down and a deep voice says, “I am the Lord thy God. Let go of the root. I will save you.” The man pauses for a moment and then yells, “Is there anybody else up there?!”

Real leaps of faith, by any measure, are not easy. They often mean you’ll be holding hands with some gut ripping fear for a bit. Which is exactly what I felt this past Sunday when my landlords, a truly good and decent couple, informed me I would need to move out of the home I’ve been renting from them for nine years, in 30 days. It seems their marriage is coming to an end and the husband need to take up residence in the house.

I don’t need to tell you how frightening it is to lose your home. Home is far more than a physical thing. It is a spiritual, physical and emotional sanctuary.  Not so when you realize it is lost. Frightening for anyone, with an added degree of difficulty when the very part of your brain that allows you to manage emotion is damaged, which is where my damage is. The frontal lobe. And so for the first day I was pretty much incapacitated, difficulty speaking, trembling, hunched over, knowing what it was that was happening to me but unable to shake it and knowing too that that’s okay. Those disabling moments still grab me during the day – and night. We are all allowed our human experience, even when upsetting and unpleasant, and we make a mistake, albeit an understandable one, when we try to avoid the more unpleasant experiences of life.

I long ago learned that the only way to get through a terrifying or heartbreaking time is to give myself permission to go through it. In other words, allow the experience.

And so here I am with my three dogs hoping that I will be able to find a new home in time. I have already gotten a storage space and will begin to place things in storage and look for friends to watch my dogs for me if the worst happens and no new home shows up in time. I have been homeless in my life and the homeless monster is, even though I know intellectually it will not get me (I don’t think), bearing down on me with glistening hatred eyes.

There is one thing this experience will not take from me. My sobriety. One of the wonderful things about being sober is when all hell breaks loose in life, I can look the circumstances in the eye, snarl to myself, and say, You can’t take my sobriety.

Anyway, one day at a time. Keep the faith, even if doing so is a leap. It is for me right now.

And remember, it’s okay to be afraid, don’t let it scare you.

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Special Favors Threaten Lindsay Lohan’s Life

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If news reports that Lindsay Lohan is receiving special favors in jail are true her already at-risk life is even more at risk. I say if because if there is anything I am sure of, it is the penchant of some members of the media to close-dance with rumor rather than spend time in the world of reality. The latter being something someone facing the challenge of addiction must do if they want to stay alive –and free.

Anything that gives someone facing the disease of addiction the message that they do not have to deal with reality is, in short, life threatening.  Like cancer and other diseases, addiction doesn’t give a rat’s ass if the person it has hold of is famous. Addiction knows no bigotry. It simply destroys everything in its path.

One news report claiming Ms. Lohan is getting special visiting privileges says that whenever she leaves her cell everyone else is placed in lockdown. Another report says she has been given a special room with a TV, hospital bed, and a dresser for her clothes. If any of these reports are true, Ms. Lohan is being put in real danger. In order for an addict-alcoholic, like me for instance, to get well, they must fully experience the damage the addiction is inflicting on their life. To spare someone this experience is to empower the addiction and put the person at greater risk.

Ms. Lohan is not her fame, she is not her looks, she is not her addiction. She is a human being who, unless she fully experiences the damage be inflicted on her by addiction, is, in a word, doomed. 

For those who continue to use the story never ends with, they lived happily ever after.  For the most part the media doesn’t give a damn about Ms. Lohan.  In fact, you can be sure some members of the media would love it if she died from an overdose of some kind because oh my the papers they would sell, the ratings they’d get.

Ms. Lohan, like anyone facing the challenge of addiction, is in a fight for her life. If those who love her give a damn, they will allow her to fully experience jail, and not seek to create an abbreviated version of the experience. After she is released, she should go right into treatment, her father should get his self-serving ass off the talk show circuit, and those who love her should show their love by supporting all things sobriety.

Ms. Lohan deserves to get well. And she deserves  people around her who empower her, not the addiction.

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Breaking Hills Redux

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Back in 2003 I began training for my first lengthy bicycle ride, a 175-mile trek from where I was shot in Brooklyn to Albany. I live in a very hilly area so I began thinking of a motivational term I could link to the challenge of reaching the top of a steep and, at times, lengthy climbs.  Finally I decided on breaking hills. Breaking the hill meant defeating the climb, taking the challenge and pushing through it no matter how grueling.

For reasons that are not entirely clear to me, I am back on the bike breaking hills and loving every minute of it. Perhaps a recent reduction in coffee intake,  which brought about a nice drop in anxiety levels, helped me rediscover the joy of getting back on a bike and going for it. Then too, there has always been something about taking on a physical challenge, getting back in touch with my body, that I’ve found emotionally and spiritually healing.

Many years ago, around 1986 I’d guess, after nearly a year in seclusion, I began  going to the 23rd Street YMCA actually named the McBurney YMCA with my friend Dane.  The nine-story McBurney YMCA was built in 1869. When Dane and I went I’d play racquet ball, diving all over the court with a somewhat manic little boy joy. I was genuinely saddened when I learned the YMCA closed its doors there and reopened on 14th Street. I find it hard to believe that the Michael Bloomberg era of money first tradition last had nothing to do with creating the atmosphere that led to the building conversion to a bunch of condominiums in 2004. 

Later, in 1991 I ran my first marathon and from 1991 to 1995 tacked on five more.

At any rate, the spiritual glory of breaking hills is on me again. Recently a man in Long Island asked me if I was planning to do any more lengthy bike rides. I did the 175 mile ride  in 2003 and a 1,000 mile ride in 2004. I surprised myself when, without pausing, I said, “Yeah, why not?”

And I meant it.

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A Writer’s Dream

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Words of different colors, shapes, sizes, tastes and sounds tumbled from his mouth, falling onto the table and spilling over onto the floor where they skittered about, disappearing under rugs, under doors, swirling about the room, in the air, into and out of cabinets and drawers. They were everywhere, out of control, unmanageable.

He was dreaming!

Here he was a writer and words were dancing about so quickly, so frenetically, he could not make sense of them. Had he ever made sense of them? Really? Or were those just moments of luck when a sentence that escaped his pen held its shape?

As an increasing number of words poured out of him and scurried about, they now began to make an inexplicable unpleasant noise, a cacophony of clatter, crunching sounds like knuckles cracking, skidding, spinning, tapping, a beating out of rapid disjointed impossible to follow rhythms. Yet he knew they were pleading with him. With him! What could they possibly want? They are all, he knew, each of them, living beings, so they could not possibly be pleading for some kind of meaning. Like all living things they, above all perhaps, were born with meaning. They would live forever with their meanings. So what then? What was it they were pleading for? There was a yearning, he felt it.

He awoke sweating.

The sheets and pillow cases were soaked. He got out of bed, walked into the kitchen, turned on the tap, poured himself a glass of cold water, and drank it. He changed the sheets and pillow cases and showered. He drank another glass of cold water from the tap, peed, went back to bed, and fell asleep.

This times the words poured from his mouth, eyes, ears, nose, they flew from the palms of his hands, his arms outstretched, somehow he knew they needed to be outstretched. Why? Was this some kind of crucifixion?

The words again produced a cacophony of wild indecipherable noise and again he heard pleading and, more evident now than before yearning.

He wanted to shout out to them but his mouth would not work. He wanted to shout, “But you’re words! You have meaning! Why can’t you tell me what you want?” But try as he might, he could not speak.

It was then he saw the little boy looking up at him. The boy had dark hair, deep chocolate eyes. And although the little boy’s mouth did not move, the little boy spoke to him. The little boy smiled and said, “They want what I want, what everyone wants, what every living thing wants.”

The writer woke up and said, “Purpose.”

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The LIE

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With a nod to W.C. Fields, let me say I spent a month on the LIE yesterday afternoon. Fields said the same of a weekend in Philadelphia.

One car had a bumper sticker that read, “I Drive the LIE, Pray for Me.” I will. However, I will not pray for the nitwit guy in the pickup truck splattered with bumper stickers that read, “Eat Shit” and, “Looking for a hot lunch? Eat My Shit”. Now there’s a fella who is not getting enough oxygen.

The LIE, full name Long Island Expressway, is a 71-mile stretch of highway that was built from 1939 to 1972 and first opened to traffic in 1940. I would imagine when it was first built it provided more than enough room for those rambling along its surface.

Not so today.

Today, it tests the limits of those with the greatest patience and, if you’ll permit me, calls into question the sanity of those who live within its grasp and pay large amounts of money to reside in settings that require steady doses of the LIE experience.

What I get a kick out of (though I must confess there is bit of a mean streak deep inside me that would like to run the little shits off the road) are drivers that swerve in and out of lanes as fast as they can to gain a car length and put life at risk. What exactly travels through the mind of someone that jumps from one lane to another in a burst of speed only to discover they are merely one care length ahead in a line of cars that is so long it extends through several time zones?

I do like Long Island very much, once I am here. It is the getting here and the leaving here that makes me long for country quiet and a cup of mint tea.

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