Author Archives: Peter Sanford Kahrmann

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About Peter Sanford Kahrmann

Writer, disability rights advocate, civil rights advocate.

FRANK IN MY HEART

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A man I’ve grown to love very much over the years will likely leave this world soon. He is under hospice care as I write these words. His name is Frank. I’ve never known anyone more loving, nor have I ever known anyone with their feet more firmly planted on the granite landscape of integrity. When he does leave this world there will be a little less light in the day and a little more light in heaven, of that I am sure.

Like far too many of us, Frank is a brain injury survivor. It is in the world of brain injury that I met him and discovered his passion for justice and fairness, his wondrous tenacity and his seemingly endless willingness to give to others while asking nothing for himself in return. He is, I might add, well known for speaking his mind. More often than not, lovingly and gently. But, believe me; he can ratchet up the furnace when needed. Not a problem.

On one occasion, Frank spoke his mind directly to me in a way that I will never forget, always treasure, and, in a way that caught me completely off guard. I had just arrived at a podium to speak at conference hosted by the Brain Injury Association of New York. I can’t remember why I was speaking that day but I do know room was packed with an audience numbering in the hundreds. Having arrived at the podium the first words I said were, “I love all of you.” And then it happened. Unbeknownst to me, Frank was sitting in the center of the audience directly in front of the podium. He stood straight up and said in a loud voice filled with heart and soul, “And we love you, Peter!” I knew he meant it. Frank meant everything he said and you can’t say that about too many people, at least I can’t.

Frank told me a few years ago that words I’d said to him had helped him decide not to give up. Who Frank is and who he has been to me has helped me not to give up. Now, in this moment, as Frank moves ever closer to his departure, I find myself wanting to work even harder in life to give hope to those who feel there is none, help someone unfurrow their brow, lift their chin, square their shoulders, raise their eyes.

While Frank may soon leave this world, he will never leave my heart, nor the hearts of the many, many people who love him dearly. Frank will always be in our hearts. Death doesn’t get everything – not even close.
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BACK TO STOKES

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This Wednesday I return to a cabin in New Jersey’s Stokes State Forest for four nights. Lest any of you who have been following this blog find yourself thinking, Why is he doing that when he has no money and things are so horribly tight, the cabin was booked and paid for last April.



I stayed in the cabin in the picture last October.


It will good to go back. While I love where I live more than anywhere I have ever lived since my father died in 1969, there is something wonderfully special and cleansing about being in a spartan and rustic environment. These cabins are powerfully built and are not luxurious. They are cabins, cabins in the best sense of the word. One main room with a wood stove, table, two benches, two Adirondack chairs, a bunk bed, two single beds, a small kitchen off the main room and a small half-bath. There is electricity but no phone and no TV. Thank you God.


As I write I have quite a bit of my packing already done: food, books (three novels, a dictionary and thesaurus, along with Steinbeck’s Life in Letters), journals, books on tape and CD (I am bringing a tape/cd player), music CDs, a desk lamp for the table, and folding chair that gives my butt more mercy than the hard surface of an Adirondack chair.



I am bringing all of the memoir: the polished section of close to 150 pages at this point and the remaining 200 or so pages to be polished. I am bringing a ream of lovely blue typing paper to write on. A friend of mine, Dan, told me once that writing on a blue background is easy on the eyes and he was right. I use a pale blue background when writing on my PC and, whenever possible, plain blue paper for longhand.


I will not be posting anything on the blog while I am away but, I suspect, there will be a flurry of posts when I return. It’s funny, while I know some of you personally, the large majority of you who read this blog regularly I don’t know. Yet, in a way I feel like I do, and so let me say I’ll miss all of you and look forward to “seeing” you all when I get back.


In the meantime, take care of yourselves and remember to live.


Peter

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ILENE KRISTEN

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We are walking together on East Second Street when a woman standing in doorway to our right shouts out, “Hey, Delia! You’re my favorite bitch!” The shouting woman, who wears an ear-to-ear grin, is shouting to my companion who, upon being told she is the woman’s favorite bitch, is now also smiling. My companion waves to the grinning woman and says, “Thank you!”

It is some time in the 1980s and my walking companion is Ilene Kristen. At the time, Ilene was playing the role of Delia Reid in the ABC soap opera Ryan’s Hope. She now plays the role of Roxanne “Roxy” Balsom Holden in One Life to Live.

Delia, as you may guessed, was not a pleasant character. Ilene’s ability to play the role with uncanny expertise was and is testimony to her truly superb acting skills. How do I know this? Because I have known Ilene since we were something like 12 or 13 and were students at Professional Children’s School in New York City. Professional Children’s School, or PCS as it is more commonly know, was a private k-12 school for kids involved in the arts: musicians, models, painters, actors, dancers, composers and more.

While I was never liked school a whole lot, I loved PCS. It was like being among an endless supply of siblings. And, for me, PCS meant going to school with the two most beautiful girls in the world: Meg Gordon, a dancer, and Ilene, an actress.

Meg Gordon was in my class. She went to the New York City School of Ballet, had long straight glistening dark hair and looked like an Indian Princess. Ilene, then and now, has as beautiful a face as I have ever seen. I can think of no face more beautiful. Both Meg and Ilene were what I would, in later years, come to call, kneebucklers. My ability to look at them without my legs giving out from under me (or dribbling) was nearly always in question.

But while Meg was nice, she was distant and reserved. Ilene, on the other hand, could melt through any nervousness with genuine warmth, charm and kindness. She was and is amazingly smart, thus when I would talk with her I would find myself caught up in the conversation and lose track of the fact I was looking into a gloriously beautiful face with a smile so full of charm and warmth I swear it could turn ice into hot tea in instant.

Ilene, then and now, was never about her looks. She was about being Ilene, being the best actress and performer she could be, and she was and is anything but full of herself – and she is no bitch.

We were walking down East Second Street those many years ago because she was co-directing a short film I’d written called, It Was Your Heart I Wanted. While the film was never completed (my fault, not Ilene’s or anyone elses), it was about a couple whose marriage had ended because his violence had destroyed it. I named it It Was Your Heart I Wanted because then and now I think almost always two people could say that at the beginning of the relationship and they would be telling the truth. Moreover, the film was my way of continuing to work out what had happened in my first marriage. My violence destroyed that marriage. There is no easy way to say that other than honestly and openly. While I can never undo the past, I can at least be proof that it is possible to free of the disease of violence, which, like alcoholism, is its own form of addiction and requires intensive and likely lengthy treatment. To this day I believe, I know, that had I not had this hideous disease, my wife and I would still be together.

I reached out to Ilene to help me direct the film for several reasons. I knew I could trust her completely, I knew she was strong willed, brilliant, and fiercely committed to the quality of any work she was involved with. I also knew, and told her, that while I had no doubt I would direct the work honestly, I would be doing the work an injustice if I did not have a woman involved in directing it. And so Ilene jumped in with all her heart and believe me, her input was amazing.

Recently, as some of you who have been reading this blog are aware, I have had to re-apply for disability, a step I had hoped never to take. I have received help from some. Recently there was an e-mail from Ilene which read, “Hey darlin’, sent you a little something…..you’re in my thoughts.” It brought me to tears. People who love you no matter what can do that to you. Well, to me anyway.

A few months back, maybe longer, there was a reunion at PCS. Ilene let me know and offered to go with me and give me a place to sleep for the night. I couldn’t go, not because I didn’t want to, but because at the time the combination of brain injury, PTSD and depression was keeping me from getting out the door. Of course I wanted to go; not only would it have been wonderful to see Ilene and others, it would have been kind of heady to walk in with the most beautiful woman there on my arm.

Oh, one last thing…visit her website. She is truly a good and loving person and while she is definitely beautiful, it’s a shame you can’t take pictures of a person’s heart and soul; because her heart and soul are 100 times more beautiful then the beauty of her looks, and that’s saying something. If you go to her personal collection of pictures, you can click back to the days when I first knew her…if you look closely at her smile…you may just get a real feel for how warm and loving her heart is.

http://www.ilenekristen.net

Love you, Ilene

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DREAMS IN ISOLATION

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I heard Bruce Springsteen once say that a song title can open the door to the song. The same can be said of an essay title like this one, Dreams in Isolation. While isolation is a web many of us are caught in from time to time, it can be, if you allow silence or, for me anyway, music, a method of allowing an idea to move, shift, emerge. Dreams are allowed to come to light for the first time or come back into the light after having left for a time. The thing to do is pay attention and, if you like to write, write it down – if you’re fast enough.

Although I may not be as fast as I was some years back, I am honest now. Therefore, when I write things down, some silly twist of disingenuous ego doesn’t distort the phrasing; at least I don’t think so. God I hope not. You can spend an enormous amount of time second guessing things, don’t you think?

For years I have thought about writing an essay about my closest friend, Michael Sulsona. He is, in my heart, my brother. In more than 30 years of friendship, we’ve never had a fight. That’s remarkable. Even now as I ponder writing about him, I know I can’t get close to the extraordinary bond between us. I can tell you that our bond is built, not simply on a genuine love and respect for each other, but on our capacity to accept each other for who we are. I also think we have each seen so much brutality in life that we just don’t see the point in fighting.

Here, I’ll tell you what. I’ll give you a glimpse of Michael’s ability to right size a moment with an expertise matched by no one I’ve ever known. First, some background.

Michael was born and raised in Brooklyn. He joined the Marines when he was a teenager and went to Vietnam. When he was 19, he stepped on a mine and as a result lost both his legs above the knee. You take that experience and all else that comes with going to war and you know Michael has known and seen things the large majority of people have thankfully been spared.

As most of you know, I was held up and shot in the head at point blank range in 1984 leaving the bullet lodged in my brain and loss of hearing in the left ear along with the brain damage that happens when you don’t duck quickly enough.

I was living in New York City’s Lower East Side when I was shot and there came a time when I was having a lot of flashbacks. I called Michael and he said he’d come pick me up and we’d go for a ride.

An hour later we are stopped at a red light at East Second and Avenue A when Michael says, “Hey, you’d agree we’re a little fucked up, right?”

I say, “Well, yeah, a little.”

He says, “Whattaya mean a little? You got a bullet in your brain, fucked up hearing. I got no legs, lots of shrapnel in my body, fucked up hearing. Don’t you think we’re a little fucked up?”

I smile and laugh, “I guess so.”

He says, “You guess so? You see that woman?” and here he points at a couple in their twenties holding hands and crossing Avenue A. They were coming in our direction. They were both model gorgeous. He looked like he just stepped out of GQ and she looked like she just stepped out of Cosmopolitan. The what’s wrong with this picture aspect of this glamorous image was the pizza she had balanced on her head. Michael says, “You see her? She’s never stepped on a mine, she’s never been shot in the head, and she’s walking across the street with a pizza on her head. You think we’re fucked up?”

Like I said, I’ve never known anyone who can right-size a moment with greater speed, accuracy and humor.

As to what any of this has to do with Dreams in Isolation? I haven’t a clue. But hey, it’s my essay, and I can promise you one thing, I wasn’t balancing a pizza on my head when I wrote it either.

Love you, Michael.
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FRENZY SOFT MOMENTS

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It went from frenzy soft

Moments slipping deep into

Moisture warm sliding into

Each others center

Losing track of where body

Moments began and ended

This salacious duet seizing

The moment whole

Their passion

Diving deep and deeper

Into each other’s grasp

The walls of where

They were embraced

Fell full away into

Velvet warm black

Leaving the slippery glow

Of skin to skin sliding

In a creamy warm embrace

Their eyes puffy

In primal heart-soul rhythm

Her soft glistened wetness

Slid across his tongue dipping

Into her deeper tasting

 Seed in feathered droplets

Across her lips

Drinking

Each other dry

As their souls

Embraced

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