Jim Kreisman, 1951-2011

Jim Kreisman, school days

I owe it to Jim to remember him in these pages. I'm sad that he's gone, though we'd been writing each other for less than a year. He was a pretty loyal reader (and occasional editor) of this blog. And he was a kind of soul mate--born just a month before me.

I will share some fragments of our communication here. For he said that it was in emails that he spent his frustrated writing energy. I believe that he wouldn't mind my sharing them.

Like so much of my past, the memory of Jim was shaky when he began to write to me. Then it started to come back: Jimmy, in Latin class, in the backyard when he visited our dearest next door neighbors, the Kohms, his cousins. But it was the strength of his writing voice that fascinated me. Like so many childhood friend from University City, his words carried a pride in articulation, a depth of expression beyond the ordinary howdy-howdy of Facebook. We shared a quaint verbal snobbery that causes you to devote so many years to Latin.

Jim with our Latin teacher, Miss Patterson

He remembered me so well--it may be easier to remember when you remain in the world we grew up in. But he didn't really remain there--he'd spent years playing piano on cruise ships, and marveled that we could compare notes on Borobodur, for example. He wrote:

I used to keep extensive journals when I was doing my crazy backpacking sojourns in the late '70s - used to write every day. I treasure those, although I virtually never look at them. I don't think there's enough in them that is worthy of turning into a book, but some of the memories are very rich in my mind all these years later. One of my memories is of something I never did. I had a visa to go to Libya. The original goal of my trip was to visit the pyramids. After hanging around Europe, I went down to Morocco and slowly started making my way east. I made it as far as Tunisia. Had all the paperwork to take a train or something across Libya and into Egypt. But this was after 4 months on the road, and I was running out of energy, not to mention money. Since then, Libya has become a very hostile place for a traveler, and that is what makes me rue passing up the chance when I had it.
I did spend some time in Algeria, and I crossed over from Morocco in the south which was a most unusual border crossing. Have some great stories about that, but won't bore you! Let's just say they run the gamut from kids who had probably never seen a westerner throwing rocks at me to living the high life once I got up north to Oran, where the people couldn't have been nicer.

He loved Paris, too, where he studied piano as a graduate student.

    I have this fantasy of moving back to Paris and being one of those guys who sweep the streets with those straw brooms, if they still do that. Living in poverty in a poor quarter, hanging out at the local café. I don't know why my daydreams revolve around barely surviving and living in a poor area in some freezing garret on the fourth floor walk up. I imagine jobs are impossible to find now, esp. without a work permit.  The thought of living an upper class or upper middle class life in Paris doesn't appeal to me for some reason. I think I have some romantic vision of myself being in Paris during the French Revolution.
    Thanks for writing back!
Salut
Jim

The early morning street sweepers still work and laugh at dawn. I also love those early hours. That is when I walk through empty streets to the quai, to do tai chi in front of Notre Dame.

It was partly because of Jim's reminiscences that I began my blog with Hemingway's Paris, though it turned out he didn't like Hemingway. It was Henry Miller he loved. As he mentioned above, he also wrote---perhaps someone can unearth his old travel journals:

  I admire you being a writer - I am a frustrated one, and take out my writing energy on e mails. When I was much younger and life was more crazy, I used to keep a journal in the Kerouac style, hoping to turn it into a book, but frankly, I don't think I have what it takes to write a book. Writing a novel as you are doing is something I don't have in me.
    I used to write songs - probably nothing commercial. ... During this time (on board ship), the songs were just flowing out of me. Eventually (my girlfriend) met someone else while I was away at sea, and the sadness killed that creative part of my brain - strange how that works. Haven't written a song since.
    I apologize if I babbled on too long, but I always tell people they are not obligated to read my never-ending e mails.
    ...I crave a trip back to Paris to relive what I experienced when I was 20 years old, so I guess the grass is always greener ... Your description of the french psyche is most interesting - I think I got a taste of that when I was there, but of course, not to the extent you have been able to soak in.
Thanks again for writing - hope the weather cooperates with your travel in the coming days and weeks.
Jim

What strange journeys we have been on, class of 1969, University City High School. One old friend devoted his life to guitars, and sadly developed Parkinson's. Another ditched it all to become a song and dance man. Jim's guiding career principle was that he would only play the piano. He refused even to teach.

The so-called "recession" has starkly affected the amount of work I get - the last 3 years it's been  a pretty dramatic downturn. Whatever happens, I have managed to make it to age 59 and never had to teach (which I hate) and didn't spend the best 40 years of my life working in a job I hated. So who's to say 59 is not the same as 80 for a person who was miserable in their job, only to retire at 65 in declining health. I've never shied away from work - as long as it was performing music - it's just that there's not enough of it anymore to sustain life.

And he didn't even own a computer. But he owned his home in U City, and life brought adventures. He'd studied piano in Paris, and posted, on Facebook, charming black and white photographs of the 1970's city which has disappeared. Harkening back to those days, he mailed me a rigorous piano exercise book of a Polish Parisian named Mozkowski, with a note saying that he was happy that this part of his life would come home to Paris. Shortly after that he said he would stop writing, without giving any particular reason.

You're very welcome for the Mozkowski. I realize many of these may be beyond your current capabilities, but some that involved mostly single notes in either hand may be do-able. In any case, it might look nice on your piano music rack, if only you can figure out some way to erase my name on the cover page!

Thus in small ways he foreshadowed his end, without sharing why. He informed me a few times that he would stop writing. He also destroyed all his old mail, after revisiting it one more time. He was saying goodbye. He recounted to me---

I have been going through a lot of the letters written to me since about 1963, many to Art Kaufman, and even some of my own from the college years. Reading the old letters can be amusing, but also depressing, so it's kind of a Pandora's box of psychic tugs of war between entertaining and disheartening. I seldom get the box of letters out of the basement because I know they can be disturbing, but at 59 years old, I've decided to put some closure on the letters and dispose of them one way or the other. I shan't be delving into the box anymore. Yet I have no regrets for having saved them. Maybe ultimately I saved them for one last look as they offer an overview of certain years of my life. I think it's something we have sadly lost these days with e mails and tweets.
    But I came across a couple references about you which I would like to share.

Latin class, University City High School

    One was a letter I wrote to Art Kaufman in Jan. 1970. You had shown up at Webster College, where I was enrolled. In my letter I mention that we saw each other and I mentioned the possibility of getting stoned sometime. You seemed amenable, but I don't think it ever happened. The only other thing I wrote is that you told me Bennington wouldn't give you your money back so that was the reason you were at Webster. I don't think you were at Webster for more than a month or two. But there's something I never would have remembered without reading the old letter.
    The other one was a letter from my friend since Brittany Jr. High days - Joel Nadler. In high school he was sort of my "best friend" in one group, with  Art being in the same role in a different social circle of oddballs. Anyway, Joel had moved to Eugene before your father started working there, and sent me a newspaper clipping with a picture of him, and the article. The main thrust of the article was that he was the last to be interviewed, yet considered to be the #1 choice for the job. On the clipping, Joel scribbled "they should have put a picture of Louise instead." You may or may not remember Joel, but as I wrote you in my very first e mail, all the boys at U. City knew who YOU were. Joel had a famous father, Teddy Nadler, who won oodles of money on a quiz show in the '50's. He was a remarkable character whom I met many times.  He had something akin to a photographic memory and once he started talking and rambling on and on about dates, people, events, etc., you couldn't stop him.
Hope things are sailing along smoothly pour toi et Jacques.

Jim's last girlfriend had died tragically young, a few years before.

You're right that it's hard to maintain a relationship when you're gone for 4 months (playing piano on a cruise ship), but there is a tradition of it with men going off to sea. And my last girlfriend would work on the ships too, as a nurse,  but only one month contracts. When we were together, whether here or in Ottawa, it was 24 hours a day. We used to argue and have a lot of spats - something I had never experienced before. I like things to be cool and mellow. Or at least have a communications line going where you can work things out. She knew how to push my buttons. Finally I decided enough was enough - in 2005. In 2008 I got an e mail from her family that she had had a stroke and died. This is someone who was the model of health and lived life in moderation - too much sometimes. Her death affected me more than I thought it would - ex post facto. She loved camping and we did a lot of tent camping, including in the Pacific Northwest. The odd thing was that she still lived wih her parents, despite the fact that she had been married for a couple years in the '80s. Living back home when you're in your 40's is never a good sign. When we were getting kind of serious and talking about marriage, her conditions would be that we would not only have to live in Canada - but in Ottawa. This is a city of only one million people and while the St. Louis region has 3 million, it's hard enough to find work. I actually was willing to compromise and consider moving to Toronto - the key word is consider - but that wasn't an option for her.

So she was gone, the same year he lost his cat. And with all these intimations of closure, Jim opened up a vivid life on Facebook, with touching and lively photos of his life and travels, like the picture of the beautiful tiger cub in Thailand.

 I have a great photo of myself holding a tiger cub at a place in Thailand, near Sri Racha. I have always loved cats, am a cat person no doubt. My last cat only lived 12-1/2 years and got sick 3 years ago this exact same time of year and died within about a week. I can't see going through that again, plus, at my age, I wouldn't want the cat to outlive me and have to deal with a new living environment. So I feed some strays - mainly one male tom cat. He is not socialized to humans, and won't let me pet him, but we have reached an understanding.
    Probably nature is my favorite thing. I feed the birds, and every late summer/fall, the hummingbirds come through here and I get a lot of joy from that. Once in a while I see something unusual, like a groundhog, or a snake, and those are some of the magical moments of life. I'd like to be remembered as "Mother Nature's Son" like the Beatles title, although it sounds pompous to put that in writing. The song of an unfamiliar bird can send me into ecstacy. That's why I eschew living in big cities. At the same time, I never realized my dream of living in a cabin out in the woods. Living in New York is something I never aspired to. Paris always seemed more elegant and less threatening.
Çiao
Jim

Funny, the sound of birdsong can also send me into ecstasy. In fact at this moment I sit in the south of France, in Jacques' tiny home village, where birdsong is so thick and exuberant. And I feel sad for the United States, for all the birds that are being poisoned by the US Fish and Wildlife Service for the sake of big ag. But I am lucky to be here, now. I am lucky that Jim was my friend near the end, for nearly a year. He was nearby, inside my computer, but very far away. He shared his dreams--

My ultimate dream, which I don't think I'm going to attain in this lifetime, would be to live in a country cabin with a woman who was on the same wavelength as I.
(Keep them blogs a comin'!)
Jim

and gave me advice--

Sounds like you are trying to do it all. I'm loathe to give advice, but if you're a writer - if your brain is hard wired that way - you'll spend your time writing and the rest will fall away. If you're an actress, your energy will go into that. If you're an artist, you draw or paint or sculpt.  If you're a musician, you'll do that primarily.  If you want to be an "artist" in the general sense, make that your passion and your primary motivation. Whew! Who am I to give advice? I was lucky to find my "calling" at a very young age, and it didn't involve teaching. (I'm still trying to rationalize that to you.)
    And all your political involvements are great - I admire that more than you know. But don't let the computer and causes get in the way of other pursuits that might be more soul-satisfying. If there is anyone that can do it all - it's you - but I believe there are limits. If I were you I'd toss the computer out the window onto the rue Thénard. Hah!
    I am willing to admit you are my intellectual superior - and it's refreshing to be communicating with someone like you. My e mails might start to peter out a little bit now because I feel like the time you spend writing me could be better used to develop your artistic side. I am eternally grateful for your e mails. Getting in touch with you was an amazing and unexpected joy in my life.
Avec affection
Jim

Gratitude has a special nobility. There have been other moments in my life when I have spent time with someone about to die. I have felt a glow, something about being near the near-dead. Or is that my imagination? Is that only in retrospect?

Jim and I are almost exactly the same age--he's a month older. Beyond the vastly different life experiences we've had, there are so many qualities we share. He seemed so alone, just as I have been struggling with my foreign transplantation. There are some steep prices to pay for my apparently fortunate life in Paris and world travel. Steep prices to any relationship, really. I am struggling with a "famille recomposée", required to play a difficult role and on French terms. Jim chose instead freedom and solitude. Jacques and I were just getting into therapy during these conversations, and Jim wished us luck.

But maybe he didn't really. Maybe he thought it would be better if I came back home.

I am sitting in the garden, writing. A little songbird keeps circling closer to me. It has a golden breast and bright, curious eye. It's tiny. It matches the magnolia tree. I whistle to it, and it lands near, then takes off. I move into the sun, and there it comes. Circling in, watching me. Over and over. Is that you, Jim?