My Own Kind

The lines in quotes below were written by Tom Kromer from his book, “Waiting for Nothing.”  It told of his life riding the rails from town to town during America’s last Great Depression.   

“This friend of mine Karl, is a writer.  He is always hungry.  You cannot stuff yourself on a dollar a week.  It is not his fault he is always hungry.  It is that nobody buys the stuff he writes.  He writes of starving babies, and men who tramp the streets in search of work.  People do not like such things.  For in Karl’s stories, you can hear the starved cries of the babies.  You can see the hungry look in men’s eyes.  Karl will always be hungry.   He will always describe things so that you can see them as you read.”

My guess is that if Karl lived in contemporary America, he would have a blog that nobody ever read. 

 

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“Karl goes across the hall to get Werner.  Werner is an acquaintance of ours.  He is an artist.  He paints pictures of people he sees in the park.  All the people in his pictures have a hungry look in their eyes.  He has no better luck selling his pictures than Karl does with his stories.  They are good pictures.  People will not buy them, though.  I think it is because of the hungry look.  Even the picture of the fat millionaire leading the Peke dog had a hungry look in the eyes.  Karl says it is more than an empty belly that puts a hungry look in people’s eyes.  I think that if Werner would take the hungry look out of the eyes of the people in his pictures, he could buy more hamburger steaks and take the hungry look out of his own eyes.  Karl and Werner say this would be sacrilege to art.  I do not understand this.”

I do.  Of all the souls who have incarnated on this planet, I hold these types above kings and presidents.

They would rather starve than sell their souls by using their talents and contributing to the twisted lies of this evil system.  Soon, I will find out how much I am willing to suffer as the price of nonconformity.  But that’s just a matter of degree.  My kind have always suffered for it. 

I hear their voices throughout the centuries calling to me: “Stay true.”  I know that there are others that can hear their voices also.  See you soon.