: About Me

Chris Kling was born in 1964 with hydrocephalus, a disorder that effects 2 of every 1000 births, and results in an excess build-up of cerebral spinal fluid in the skull. Left untreated, it can cause a myriad of problems, including blindness, physical and learning disabilities and even death. Less than a decade prior to Kling's birth, there was no successful treatment of the disorder.

Less than three months after his birth, Kling was operated on. A valve was implanted in his skull and a tube was inserted, shunting the excess fluid from his skull to the venous-artery.

A series of surgeries followed over the next decade, culminating in 1976 when it was discovered that his body had essentially rejected the last tube which was inserted - but his body somehow (Kling says, 'miraculously') adjusted to life without the shunt, and he remains today "non-reliant" on the shunt, and in a state of "arrested hydrocephalus".

He has charged at life with both barrels and has experienced many of the ups and downs life has to offer. From the day he turned 16 in 1980, he's worked a myriad of jobs from busing tables at a pub in coastal Connecticut and waiting tables a "friendly" ice cream and sandwich shop, to selling appliances and working a deli. He's been a trolley conductor and a trolley engineer as well as a tour guide at the Shoreline Trolley Museum in East Haven, CT, and a galley cook on American Cruise Lines. His resume also includes stints as a radio DJ on two different AM radio stations in coastal Connecticut and as a weekly columnist for the New Bern (NC) Sun Journal daily paper.

His poetry has garnered national attention when he was the invited "Newsmaker" guest on the nationally syndicated "The Barry Farber Show", and was honored when the host recited Kling's poem, "The Gulf" to his listening audience.

He settled down (some) in Eastern NC in 1989, where he supports his writing with his career as a lumber and building material salesman, and nurses his creative tendencies with freelance writing opportunities and as a part-time professional musician and graphic artist.

(Economicas interruptus: He's been laid off from work at the lumber yard since October 2008 and is currently going back to school to finish his degree).

Kling lives in eastern NC with his wife and their three kids, and enjoys visiting with their two older daughters and their children when they come back home to visit.

My passion is ...

abolishing apathy... but who cares?

I know too much about ...

trivial matters that won't possibly save my life.

My parents always told me ...

"I hope you have kids JUST LIKE YOU when you grow up"... I did.

My childhood ambition ...

Being a journalist.

My favorite memory ...

Walking across the Abbey Rd. crosswalk with my wife & kids.

Why I write ...

People need to hear what I've got to say...

My first job ...

busing tables at the 280 Pub in Branford, CT

My best moment ...

Getting married.

My inspiration ...

Christ

Arts & Humanities > Philosophical Concepts Is there such a thing as absolute truth

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Is there such a thing as "absolute truth"? Or is "truth" more akin to "temperature"? With "temperature", there is always one degree hotter or one degree colder. Will we always be faced with the relativistic view that there are gradients of truth? Will there always be something that is one degree truer, and one degree falser? In my mind, I like the idea of finite truth. Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, German poet, novelist and dramatist once wrote, "It is easier to perceive error than to find truth, for the former lies on the surface and is easily seen, while the latter lies in the depth, where...

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