Letter about your life story
 
 
 
By John Kaminski

http://johnkaminski.info/
 
Dec. 15, 2010
 
 

Dear Jimbo,
 
Your book reminds me very much of one of the great novels of all time,
“Jude the Obscure,” by Thomas Hardy, a “bestseller” of the late 1800s,
in which a young man confused by most things takes his lumps very much
like you have taken yours, or should I say, like we have taken ours.
 
Two thoughts immediately come to mind after zooming through your sweet
little autobiography, and they both involve the similarities you and I
have about the way we look at things.
 
The ability to go places in your imagination, do things and work
wonders is, in fact, where I spend most of my time. Sometimes I
imagine it’s a kind of schizophrenia in which we have set up our own
world as a response to too much pain from the outside world at too
early an age.
 
And second is the dependence on love for others (certainly a necessary
ingredient in anyone’s life) that at times has all the painful
characteristics of an addiction. Although I recall having a very
loving mother with whom I was very close (I’m the youngest of four
kids, now 66) and a father who scared the hell out of me, I think I’ve
learned from my various readings in life have taught me that
overimportance on achieving love derives from an obvious lack of it on
some level at some crucial juncture of one’s life. But I’ve never
proven that connection to myself, as I was the baby of a loving family
and got plenty of attention. My siblings swear I was spoiled rotten.
As a teen, I kept running away from home, weeks at a time, hitchhiking
all over the country. I’ve had about 40 different jobs in my life, 14
as a newspaper editor of one kind or another.
 
So I’ve had, in the course of the last 45 years, four wives, although
I was officially married to only the first one. Each relationship
lasted four years or so, exactly the time it takes for the glow of
romantic love to wear off, and when the role of parent is supposed to
kick in, and partners must be friends with a common goal or they won’t
make it.
 
When I think about it — and it’s not that often anymore — there have
been a lot of very sad days in my life, and I have injured myself
severely by my own psychological deformities. But I don’t think about
it much anymore, probably I should, since my life is a wreck, and I
have blundered through time, usually with very little money,
occasionally homeless, and often very sad. It’s really the same
feeling I had all those times I ran away from home. Problem never
really cured. But I don’t worry about this much anymore, possibly
because I’ve transferred my presence on this planet to the Internet,
and have become on the Web what I wished to become in real life — just
somebody who cared and tried to do something about it. Besides,
there’s way too much work to do for self-recrimination once the basic
analyses have been made.
 
Still, there is the real life be lived, and I guess I’ve made a nice
accommodation to it, although I feel like a musician in the subway,
playing tunes of my own device and then asking passersby to throw a
few coins in my hat.
 
All I really want is the opportunity to keep doing that. I got a book
in the mail from a famous author the other day (who I still have to
write back) who thanked me for “my service.” It struck me as odd. I
don’t think of what I do as “service.” I think of it as “why in the
hell would I be doing anything else, and, most puzzling of all, why
isn’t everybody else doing it too?”
 
Most people would look at me and say, “Man, he hasn’t gotten that much
out of life, he has an old car, an old house, a pot belly and some
nasty vices.” I would respond, “I’ve gotten out of life all I need to
know and I don’t need any more to make me happy.”
 
And I know it sounds trite, but everyone underestimates the power of
gratitude. I know you’ve heard it before — yeah, yeah, yeah — be nice
to your mother, etc . . . but there’s a funny thing about gratitude.
It has a way of changing your mind, instantly. Best of all it has the
instantaneous effect of vaporizing depression, because you know how
deep your own pain is, yet it suddenly lessens when you realize other
people have it too.
 
The most important thing, Jimbo, is that you wrote that book.
Everybody should write their book. It’s how we get to know each other,
and realize that on one level we are all very much like each other,
all with the same needs and wants, and on the other hand, we are all
distinct critters, with a perfectly designed itinerary inside us that
takes us through life. The very small fact that we can find anyone for
any period of time at all, no matter how short, who understands what
we are saying and how we are hurting is cause for great joy . . . no
matter how brief the encounter might be.
 
Then notice how the use of gratitude and practice of it generates . .
. I don’t know the best way to put it . . . more contact with
beneficial things. Maybe it’s the question of how your attitude
attracts exactly what it reflects. But I know for sure that gratitude
led me to all those angels I know, and angels I didn’t know, who
always seem to arrive in my life at exactly the right moment, bestow
their blessings, and invest in me a kind of fuel for my confidence
that spurs me onto greater heights. That’s the way it’s come down,
Jimbo. And it’s joyous. I am humbled by it, I think it’s a connection
to what I call the universal vibe, which is the love of life best
expressed in the sound of a whale singing. I’m glad I have it, I’m
keeping it and riding it for the rest of my life and maybe beyond.
And, Jimbo, it’s a very satisfying thing to know that everybody else
is on it too, whether they know it or not.
 
And even be grateful for the ones who don’t know, because then you
have the pleasure of telling them what it is.
 
Keep up the good work, Jimbo. We all thank you for it.
 
Best wishes,
John K.
 
 
John Kaminski is a writer who lives on the Gulf Coast of Florida
preaching the message that no problem in the world can be
authentically addressed without first analyzing tangents caused by
Jewish perfidy, which has subverted and diminished every aspect of
human endeavor throughout history. Support for his work is wholly
derived from people who can understand what he’s saying and know what
it means, and now would be a good time to send some to 250 N. McCall
Rd. #2, Englewood FL 34223 USA . All of the writer’s Internet works
can be found at http://johnkaminski.info/