April 5, 2007

Genug ist genug.

Oder ist es?

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH. OR IS IT?

What if one day you discovered….

That you are enough.

That you have enough.

A fellow named Jesse used to show up at my former office in Berkeley—he was a guy on the street with a bucket and a squeegee I used to pay $35 out of petty cash to wash our windows. My boss was suspicious of him—mostly, if you ask me, because he was black and had bad teeth—I told her, OK, the guy is not wearing L.L. Bean, but he’s out there making a living as best he can, with a smile on his face. I enjoyed talking to Jesse about his latest escapades, classes he was taking, or movies he’d seen (he wanted me to give “Spiderman” a chance; I never did).

One day he was carrying a 600-page tome by Laurence G. Boldt called Zen and the Art of Making a Living, a Practical Guide to Creative Career Design, Penguin Compass. Many of the ideas in this volume are self-evident to me, but if you hate your job and have “no direction in life” you might want to pick up a copy. One idea is that “you are enough;” that is, you are adequate for this life.

We fear living because we don‘t believe we are adequate to life. Tangled in the mumbo-jumbo of conditioned beliefs, we get so hung up on limitation that we fail to recognize our basic adequacy as human beings. Denying limitation or obsessing on it keeps us knotted up in fear… The artist accepts the limitations of form, not with fear and dread, but as the starting point of creation.

You can be the artist of your life by recognizing that, for all your limitations, you are basically adequate to life. For all its difficulties, life is basically adequate for you…

Your basic adequacy is not won or done. It is not because you own a home or because you have a good job, not because you have a big bank balance or because you have a certain relationship, not because you are American or politically correct. Your basic adequacy is in your breath, in your beating heart—in your life. You are adequate to life because you are life. You have all you need—a heart, a body, an imaginative mind, a basic connection with all of life. You have an earth to walk on…It’s an adequate earth. The sky is adequate.

ICH HABE GENUG

Maira Kalman titled the December 2006 edition of her illustrated New York Times column “The Principles of Uncertainty,” after Bach’s Canata BWV 82, “Ich habe genug.” She explains that she embroidered the phrase on a dress thinking it meant, “I’ve had it, I can’t take anymore, give me a break!” She declares she was wrong, however, that “It means, ‘I have enough.’ And that is utterly true. I happen to be alive. End of discussion.”

Not quite the end of the discussion, though. She goes on to add, “But I will go out and buy a hat.”

AND THAT IS HUMAN NATURE

Even as one asserts, “I have enough,” one is seeking more.

Kalman was right the first time, however. “Ich habe genug” does mean, colloquially, “I’ve had enough.” If you look at the Cantata text, it is about leaving the “chains” of this body behind and joining Jesus. I will quote only the bass recitative:

I have enough. My comfort is this alone, / that Jesus might be mine and I His own. / In faith I hold Him, / there I see, along with Simeon, / already the joy of the other life. / Let us go with this man! / Ah! if only the Lord might rescue me / from the chains of my body; / Ah! were only my departure here, / with joy I would say, world, to you: / I have enough.

http://www.emmanuelmusic.org/notes_trans/transl_cantata/bwv082.htm

My mother, who is fluent in German, Russian, Ukrainian, Lithuanian and Polish (after 56 years in the States, English is still her worst language), assures me that “I have enough” and “I’ve had enough” would both translate to “Ich habe genug,” an assertion supported by www.dict.leo.org German translation tool.

Genug ist genug/enough is enough is subject to the same split personality. It can mean either I have enough, I need no more, or, I can’t take it any more, that’s it. I saw an Italian restaurant once named “Basta Pasta” and my first thought was, why would anyone name a restaurant (I’ve had) Enough Pasta (already)? But it was no doubt meant to mean Enough Pasta (to feed an army).

But can enough ever be enough? Can one be content, and still strive? Can one have everything one needs, but want more?

IT BE THE NATURE OF THE BEAST

I am 100% happy with my life right now—I am right where I need to be. Yet I have the ambition to grow and learn and be more creative. I have the desire to keep what I have, my flat, yet I also don’t care if I lose it. There’s something more important. If I need to sell to avoid working, it will just be what I need to do at that time of my life. These contradictions come with the territory—the human condition.

JUST CLICK THE EASY BUTTON

Think of the anguish you could spare yourself if you believed, I am enough. I have enough. People are apt to place undue importance on their perceived flaws that others may not and probably don’t even notice. I have two surgical scars on my back that don’t bother me in the least—I think scars are cool—but when I see other women in backless gowns I always admire how smooth and unbroken their skin is. There is also the galaxy of freckles I acquired after a serious sunburn from a Grateful Dead show at Autzen Stadium. But so fucking what? I’ll still wear a backless gown if I want to. Because I am who I am—scarred and OK with it.

YOU’RE THE HOTTEST THING SINCE SUNBURN.– R. Crumb

Every picayune complaint—by you—against your own appearance erodes self-esteem. One should pay oneself the respect of never insulting oneself. What’s vexing you, anyway? Age spots? Enlarged pores? The extra five pounds? Crow’s feet? Your hair color? The gap between your front teeth (which in Ghana is a sign of queenly beauty)? Your rough-heeled pedestrian feet? They make a special cream for that, you know.

Guess what, none of that stuff matters. At all. You can forget about it all right now. Those things are naught but capitalism’s inventions, manufactured problems that require an economic investment to solve. No one can extort money out of someone who does not recognize a “problem” as a problem.

If age spots are not a problem, I have no need to spend money to try to disguise or disappear them, and I won’t be convinced they are by slick ads. Because my tooth gap is not a problem, my parents saved $10K in orthodontia bills. My five-pound sugar sack of a belly is not a problem I must join a gym to rid myself of, but a voluptuous pillow for my cats to nest on. My knees are not “knobby,” they are just functioning joints that allow my legs to bend. In fact, thank you, God for my knees and thank you that they’re healthy.

WOULD THAT HEALTH WERE ENOUGH!

Would that people would so cherish being alive that other needs would seem secondary. I happen to be alive! End of discussion! But maybe your lifestyle is the problem? You want to drive a Ferrari, not a Hyundai. You want not only a husband, but a handsome, rich, successful one, and you’ll do what it takes to snag one. You want a Home Theater System, not a junky old TV. The latest Apple gizmo. The cell phone with the most non-phone features.

BUT WHAT ARE YOU STRIVING FOR, EXACTLY?

And what is the price you pay? And whom are you trying to impress? The one person, the only person you MUST please is yourself. If you don’t please yourself, you will forever be seeking approval from other people, for your car or your job or your house, and none of it will “stick.” It won’t build your self-esteem, it will erode it. Too much will never be enough. You’ll need more crap to keep the cycle going, and gain less satisfaction as you go.

Of course one doesn’t want to please only oneself. That, too, could be a hollow, smug existence. I am xyz, and if you don’t like it, tough shit. But you should please people only because you want to bring them joy, not to curry favor.

But granted, our lives are composed of things and people, and you may well lose things that gave your life meaning, things you took for granted and had no control over—someone dies, a storm takes your house away, you get fired—but regardless of what you do or don’t have, you have the most important possession you can have—life. Take it from there. You’re alive. Work it girl.

LIFE GOES ON.

It’s a basic precept of life. Life goes on, because it is alive. Refers back to the pronouncement in “I Heart Huckabee’s,” “All you could ever want or be, you already have and are.” When you have life, you’ve got the basic goods, and it’s up to you to develop them. And you don’t need to curl your eyelashes, whiten your teeth, lose ten pounds, buy a new outfit or wear painful heels to be lovable; you are love. You can glow on your own.

Physical image issues are mixed up with societal feedback and an individual’s vanity and what makes that person feel good (wearing makeup, being thin, tattoos, nipple rings) and weight is a touchy arena as it is both a health issue and an image issue. I say, listen not to society but to your doctor and yourself. Be honest with yourself as to whether you have the will to do what he or she tells you is best, and about whether you are instead willing to spend the rest of your life at your current weight. If so, then accept it and carry on. I want to lose weight not to render myself more lovable, but because I want to feel healthier and more energetic. But I have to make it happen or I’m just strolling down that famous road paved with good intentions.

“I’VE HAD ENOUGH!”

can be a useful tool. I recommend it as an agent of change. Don’t sell it short. It’s what finally got me out of my employment rut. I had reached the point of no return at my job. Basta! Emergency, emergency! I needed to quit to restore my sanity and redirect my life towards writing for a living, and I had to sell my beautiful Portland house to do so. I struggled with this decision because unless you’re a millionaire, there is no housing security in San Francisco. When/if I could no longer afford to live here on my own terms, the Portland house was Plan B. But if you’ve been paying attention to the Ax Files, you know that I am also willing to give up (sell) my beautiful Lower Haight flat in pursuit of my dream—living as a writer. With luck, the proceeds from my house will keep me going until I sell a book.

I was willing to give up Portland, but I am not willing to give up San Francisco. After a few weeks in the not-quite-insufferable March Mexican heat, I have to rule out Brooklyn for its truly intolerable summers. I won’t submit myself to that misery again. You are my city, San Francisco, you bitch, and I will outwit you. You are not getting rid of me.

ENOUGH CAN BE TOO MUCH

says “Puke” Llamas, who, not sure why, perhaps jokingly, asked me not to use his real name. But since he published pictures of my flat in his Dog Doody Journal without consulting me, I’ll feel free to use his real face. The lad can play the piano, by the way.

I had enough in Portland before I came to the Bay Area. I had a four-bedroom house with a $28,000 mortgage, a mortgage payment of $328, great friends in a cool city, and my freedom, living on the $25,000 I had saved up so I could quit my job in 1995. It would seem I had it figured out. But enough was too much for me. I wanted out. I was too content, stagnating, in fact, and I needed stimulation. I had to unsettle what had settled. When my money ran out and I got my old job offered back to me, I used that as the impetus I needed to pack up and move to San Francisco, a cobbled alley dream I’d had since I passing through it in 1981.

YOU’VE HAD A FIELD DAY,

someone said, pointing to my City Lights shopping bag. Well, today’s the one to have one. It’s March 31, 2007, Jack Kerouac Alley Dedication Day, the narrow passageway where the twain between east (Chinatown) and west (North Beach) does in fact meet.

I indeed did fill in some of the gaps in my Kerouac library up in the Beat/Poetry Room. Notably, departed angels, Jack Kerouac, The Lost Paintings. I keep planning to be a painter. To get away from words. But I lack the impulse. I’m a talented draughtsman. I can draw with a pencil. When I do, my brain enters a language-free zone that stutters to return to words. I can’t say Jack’s visual work resonates much with me. If it were my work, I would have torn much of it up. I suspect he had a first stroke, best stroke philosophy.

But, still, it’s another Justification Day, one like the Rainbow Library Kerouac manuscript day. One’s life vision and purpose are once again affirmed. Doubts fall off around one like the confetti littering the alley. Although I wonder if the “local dignitaries” present—Mayor Newsom, Supervisor Ed Jew, City Administrator Ed Lee, or Board President Aaron Peskin (standing next to me and to whom I introduce myself as “h brown’s kid sister,” and whom I, at 5’2″, can look straight in the eye)—do any of these people really give much of a damn for the life Kerouac lived?

A partial quote about San Francisco from On the Road is written in gold in the alley: “The air was soft, the stars so fine, the promise of every cobbled alley so great…”

I THOUGHT I WAS IN A DREAM,

he went on to say.

People spoke, opera was sung, the alley was blessed, firecrackers cracked, dragon lions butted heads, musicians performed, but the focus seemed more on the Alley’s significance in San Francisco history, than on the man it was named after. The beautiful, sexy owner of Jazz at Pearl’s showed great Kerouac spirit in reading some of his jazz-inspired poetry.

But it was SF Poet Laureate Jack Hirschman who most obviously gave a damn for the life of Jack.

This heretofore unpublished poem says it all:

JACK KEROUAC: A MEDITATION

When I was

student young

one day the

Kerouac way

suddenly was

felt far and near

like an eruption

of the American

moment I’d only

been hanging around

or talking about

or studying about

but not living

in the sense of

being inside its

being inside me,

and from that time

forward I was

the word for myself within:

My ear-drums

could sound,

the tympany

of my tongue

could mystify

with holy galores,

and the motion

of my breath

upon the waters

of the streets

where I’d wept

and hallelujahed

would become

the adventure of

the life I’d give

my life for:

Poetry! That’s

Jack Kerouac’s path

in verse and jazz

prosody: Poetry!

Thank you, dear kindly Jack, tovaritch, for your giving me this second opportunity to publish your work.

If you missed the other poem, “One Day,’ click here, as they say. It’s at the end. http://sfbulldog.com/alexandra/2006/07/16/axfiles0608/

Truly, I don’t know who could give a damn about Kerouac’s life and not be affected by it, if not transformed.

DANNY GLOVER FOR MAYOR

“I’d rather see an actor being a mayor than a mayor being an actor.’” – Janet Tandy on Danny Glover/Gavin Newsom, Friday March 30th, h brown Salon at La Reina’s.

I can hardly believe that Gavin Newsom, who has had his eye nonchalantly on and off me during the ceremony, allows himself to skulk away through the crowd without meeting me!

The many pretty faces of our Mayor

Unbeknowst to him, it was I who sent him flowers for the second time this past Valentine’s Day—he again sent the personalized thank you note—but off he goes. Though I do not believe in kicking our mayor when he’s down, near the end of his term, and I’m attracted to the weaknesses mysteriously mixed with his strengths, I don’t plan to vote for him (nor did I last time) and I’m 100% in support of Danny Glover for Mayor. Step up to the plate, dude. If California will buy Schwarzenegger, there’s no way San Francisco won’t elect you.

IT WAS SAN FRANCISCO LEGEND

Lawrence Ferlinghetti who talked the Board of Sups into renaming alleys after local literary figures in 1988. He speaks for a bit and signs off invoking “the brotherhood of man.” The alley is graced with his words, “Poetry is the shadow cast by our streetlight imaginations.”

Newsom and Ferlinghetti congratulate each other on havingbeen named two of San Francisco’s sexiest straight men

http://sfbulldog.com/alexandra/ax9.html

I also like this quote from John Steinbeck: “The free exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world.”

AFTER THE SPEECHES,

I move inside to work on my column at Vesuvio, the famous Beat bar created by Henri Lenoir as a “living room for artists,” and Janet Clyde, one of the owners, buys me a Hefewiezen, and another Guinness for Donna, who is celebrating her 48th birthday with a fabulous Mad Hatter-style birthday hat.

Across from me is Dan Macchiarini (son of Peter), a sculptor and jeweler whom I met when specifically trafficking upper Grant for something to discover, and Ward Dunham, “A Man of Letters,” calligrapher supreme of Gargoyle Graphics and bartender of the late and soon to be resurrected Enrico’s. Ahead of me Ferlinghetti is drinking at the bar. Free food keeps coming around, pizza and sandwiches.

AFTER A WHILE

I start to leave but Donna stops me at the door with her birthday brownie cake. This is a living room for this writer. Then I take off and spend some money at Neverland’s 50% off sale. They are moving over to just shoes and jewelry. I buy some handmade red silk pants from Martha Egan, designer and seamstress who, sadly, after eight years in North Beach, is being forced out to the East Bay when her building is sold. Can’t afford to stay.

OTHERWISE

a fabulous North Beach day. It’s a San Francisco weekend. Today, Jack Kerouac Alley; tomorrow April Fool’s Day and the St. Stupid Parade (patron saint of the First Church of the Last Laugh). Turns out I oversleep till noon and miss it. I had planned to wear the joke sunglasses I got from a street vendor on Haight, fashioned to look like two Bloody Marys, and carry a bouquet of celery to give out. But I blow it off.

Perhaps I should take this opportunity to blow myself off. Surely you’ve had enough of me.

The author casts her shadow on Jack Kerouac

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Short Attention Span Poetry Corner

Respect the skin you're in
For in it, your life begins

Don't stress it--caress it
Admire it when you undress it

Soak it and stroke it
Pet it or regret it

Massage it and barrage it
With TLC and Vitamin D

Go bare if you dare
But take care

Beware the sun, hon
Overdo it and you'll rue it

Warm yourself with your smile
The glow will last a while
And carry you many a mile

Be kind, and a little blind
A thoughtful wrinkle
Don't make you R. van Winkle

Pamper the skin you're in
Always give it its due

Love the skin you're in
For it houses the beauty of you
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Ich habe genug. I have enough. I am alive. End of discussion.
4/5/07

goofcitygoof@yahoo.com

copyright Alexandra Jones 2007