"The essayist is a self-liberated man, sustained by the childish belief that everything he thinks about, everything that happens to him, is of general interest." ~~ E.B. White
If you’re going to tell a story, start with the facts as best you know them. Set down what you know for sure, then move on from there.
Your voice, dialect, the walk-of-life in your speech. They have and deserve no say over your setting words down voice. Your writing voice. Set the words down when they arrive.
I, for one, know for a fact that sometimes, the only reason a nice sentence of mine reaches the page, was because I managed to stay out of the way. Something deeper down – in me – writes the words. I write them down. Had my conscious mind interfered, the sentence would never see the light of day.
I believe it’s a simple, non-negotiable reality; any artist of any walk of life deserves to strive for. Unflinching honesty. Honesty is your massive ally. Period. It may take you time to discover and trust this. That proves you’re a human being. There are times summoning up an ample supply of moxie may be needed when, well, openly telling someone you love them. There is no overture more honorable, when it is honesty in purest form. There’re are times when some have been so wounded by life, that their capacity to trust, let someone in close, not hold onto the life management patterns that are built in dishonesty. We needed them when we were kids, or younger and not lying meant catching a beating, or god knows what else.
The challenge for many of us is that of disengaging from dishonesty on all fronts, be honest about the missteps. Own them. Apologize. Nothing any of this makes you a bad person. It’s the unhealthy patterns that need to be disengaged from. Which brings us back an ally called honesty.
Honesty is a friend of mine – albeit a bit of a Drill Sgt. friend at times. Honesty is a singular part of my life’s foundation. My life is built on stable ground – the all of my life. Say your words from the soul-soil of your honesty. Tell the story, your story, as best you can, with all your heart if you’d like.
Honesty is also a sanctuary we all deserve. Yes, you too.
I say inaugural because, while this remains the Kahrmann Blog, it’s home has a new web address. And why, pray tell, the change? Because your’s truly has the software and app-management skill of a tree stump. When I made the decision to move the blog from WordPress.com to WordPress.org, and used a host named Bluehost, all hell broke loose.
The blog content that did get transferred was incomplete. Three years of blog posts were missing.
Trying to get things resolved through Bluehost customer service is as easy as climbing Mt. Everest, without extra oxygen, all while having an asthma attack. Nothing worked.
I want to keep writing here. I can’t and won’t allow any app glitch or misstep on my part in resolving it from, well, keeping a good blog down. Yuck yuck.
And so, the journey here continues. Hopefully I can recover all the posts and then learn how to import them here.
A belated Happy New Year to each of you. Be safe always.
Today is Thanksgiving in the year 2022. I am grateful beyond words to tell you – if you’ll forgive this moment of self-absorption on my part – I’ve published a paperback book on Amazon called, “Touching Hunger.”
The book’s a collection of some of the short stories and poems written over the years. The earliest piece is a poem, In All Times. I wrote it when I was 15, right after my father died August 16, 1969, sitting on his bed as I wrote.
Both stories and poems carry the patina of character-study in their tapestries.
Many of you have been reading this blog over the years. Knowing you’re there makes my life a better place to be.
As we move into this New Year, be kind to each other, please. I’ve never heard a single soul complain there is too much kindness.
If willful acts of lethal cruelty resulted in criminal charges, Alex Jones would be serving life with no possibility of parole. Not ever. Lethal cruelty, as evidenced by Jones’ lethal propaganda aimed directly at those who survived the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
Allegiance to honesty compels me to confess that if I were to allow my emotional and physical experience of Jones to handpick the jury, my response would be written by some form of violence, and I have had enough enough enough of violence. Jones he has no conscience. He does not care that his behavior is lethal on every front. Period.
It is hard but not impossible for me to live Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s guidance., not so much live up to that, as live that.
King said: “Let no man pull you so low as to hate him.”
For me this means, identify a choice that is just, and one that is not dehumanizing. Then, live it. Live the choice made.
One of the gifts life has given me is meeting and learning and knowing victims of violent crime. All forms of violence. Loved ones of adults and children who’d been murdered.
There’s no bigotry in violence’s bloodstream.
In late 1984, early 1985, I was attending a community meeting with actress Theresa Saldana, founder of Victims for Victims in California in 1982, at a college in New York City, allowed me one of the most powerfully intimate moment of my life. Theresa survived a knife attack by a stalker. She sustained several stab wounds. To say she barely survived is to engage in the act of understatement, and do so center stage.
If willful acts of cruelty (cruelty being a form of violence) resulted in criminal charges, Alec Jones would be serving life with no possibility of parole. Not ever.
If I were to allow my visceral emotional and physical experience of Alec Jones to handpick the jury willful cruelty – he has no conscience. He does not care that his behavior is lethal on every front. Period. It is I tell you now hard for me to live Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s guidance.
King said: “Let no man pull you so low as to hate him.”
It is hard for me to, not so much live up to that, as live that. Meaning, identify a choice that is just and not dehumanizing. Then, live it out. Live the choice you’ve made.
One of the gifts life has given me is meeting and learning and knowing victims of violent crime. All forms of violence. Loved ones of adults and children who’ve been murdered. There’s no bigotry in violence’s bloodstream.
In late 1984, early 1985, I was attending a community meeting with actress Theresa Saldana, founder of Victims for Victims in California in 1982, at a college in New York City, allowed me one of the most powerfully intimate moment of my life. Theresa survived a knife attack by a stalker. She sustained several stab wounds. To say she barely survived is to engage in the act of understatement, and do so center stage.
The meeting was not long after the airing of the movie, “Victims for Victims: The Theresa Saldana Story” in which Theresa played herself. It aired on NBC, Monday, November 12, 1984. spoke and at some point, we went around the room to introduce ourselves. It was up to us if we wanted to share why we were there.
For me, being in a room with adults of all ages, individuals who each who knew trauma in merciless form was, for me, to be with people whose presence in this country’s history I treasure. Beyond words.
When Theresa spoke a moment arrived when she invited those in the room to introduce themselves if they’d like and if they were a crime victim or a loved one of a crime victim, you’re more than welcome to share, but you don’t have too.
Most gave their first name and most were very open about what brought them there. Survivors of rape, assaults, muggings, stabbing, survivors of adults and children who’ve been murdered.
When it came to the row I was in, I was sitting just to the right of a woman I’d guess was in her forties. She spoke first. She stood up, gave her first name, and said, “My son was shot and killed in a hold up this year.” Then I stood up and said, “I was held up and shot in the head this year.”
We looked at each other and hugged. No words were needed. As I remember it, I think everyone in the room would have hugged us both at that moment. They all got it.
Which brings me back to a lethal being named Alec Jones. Think about something for a moment. The families of the children and adults slaughtered in Sandy Hook are just like the folks I just told you about. Those who lived through the trauma. Not those, like Jones, who live off the trauma.
I wish there was a way to criminally charge Jones and those like him. Their propaganda is cruel; cruel is violence, and a threat to life in so many ways. I choose not to hate him. And, hate the behavior, not the person. But establish a law that allows someone to be criminally charged for abetting and promoting, you name it, acts of deadly violence and hate. It if his were a medicinal poison, a deadly product he handed out, sold, he’d be arrested and charged in the blink of an eye.
Give him his room and board and no freedom for the rest of his life. Period. Take anything about him that’s of financial value, and allow its fate to be decided by the families of the children and adults that died or survived the merciless explosion of gun violence at Sandy Hook, in real time. Let them decide what happens to it.
Peter S. Kahrmann - Est. 1953 