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July 30, 2008In the midst of chaoswilt I find peaceIN THE MIDST OF CHAOSThou wilt find peace, was a “fortune” handed to me at a Renaissance Fair in Oregon. Fortune, refrigerator magnet motto, blessing or prayer—of the many things it may be, I know only that it was handed to me. I have it wedged into the corner of a picture of Chekhov I have displayed on desks through all my life since Philadelphia, captioned “The aim of fiction is honest and absolute truth.” Also stuck into the frame is Jerzy Kosinski’s comment, “Nonfiction is outdated by reality. Fiction amplifies reality.” GOD ARE MY SURROUNDINGS CHAOTIC!Just like my brain—but there is no need to make sense of either of them right now. Because in the midst of it all, twenty some years after a stranger foretold it, I have found peace. IT’S THE BEGINNING OF THE END OF AN ERA,the beginning of the beginning of another. Saturday July 26th. Kind of a big day. For me. Today was the first Open House for my Page St. flat, which signals the upcoming end of an era, which could stretch on indefinitely into one long now. Though my new life in the Mission has begun, my life in Lower Haight has not ended. I was just over there sweeping the deck. Instead of getting anything done arranging my new headquarters I am enjoying the moment. You know, the one that’s always happening. Life, your life, the life of the planet and the universe, is one long now. Ever say, “I wish this moment would last forever”? Well hey you got your wish! It forever is this moment! THERE IS ONLY ONE ERA(Now.) One long now emanating from the universe, incorporating in you. The universe flows through you continually, everywhere you take yourself. You’ve got a ticket to ride. You are the universe. FULLY HUMANThe things you do in your life, says my friend John Beck in Sweden, who I would have bet money has mown his field with a scythe, as he indeed has, are metaphorically representing the struggles of your soul. “Cleaning up, conquering new territory, pulling up weeds, clearing out old trash,” he says, “it feels good”. “To be fully human is so enormous—there’s so much you can be, he says, “we’re all in baby shoes.” Exciting, our own potential, but also scary. How many of us live up to it? I’m going to do this, I’m going to do that…unless it involves my getting up and doing it. This past year has been a continual slashing of weeds and bringing order to an overgrown field. I’ve been swinging that scythe like a pendulum till I can finally see the path I tread. I’ve known my path for some time, but my ankles have been snagged in the brambles. No more obstacles within sight. PEOPLE ARE MORE INTERESTING THAN TREESsaid a much-admired-by-me visionary professor at Temple University, John Raines, upon his return from a rural setting.I am calling to Zahra for a hug, and find her behind my screen at my toe. I pat my chest for her to come lay down; she instead leaps into an empty box and immediately leaps back out and crawls onto my chest. Apparently people are also more interesting than former trees. THE FEEL-GOOD DRUGA friend told me some kind of chemical is released in people when they touch each other, oxy- something he thought. I don’t know if the composition of the chemical alters as to whether the touching is pleasant or unpleasant, but this here chemical’s feeling pretty damn good. I require solitude to live my life, but cats add a dimension neither obtrusive nor distracting. Everyone needs someone to care for. My cats’ breathing and heartbeats, the thuds when they leap off their perches, and needle-sharp claws tapping on the floor, rejuvenate me. To Zahra, stroking and smooching her, I verbalize the feel-good concept: “It feels good to be touched. It feels good to be kissed.” Mmm, indeed. Her little purring motor is in high gear as she paws at my face. We can’t get enough of each other. It’s a regular love-fest. But eventually, like all lovers, we settle down into just being together. She is doing what she is doing (grooming herself) and I am doing what I am doing (writing about it)—she’s just doing it on me. Two as one. One as two. The perfect marriage. “Companionable as a cat,” I believe is how I’ve described my perfect mate. I’ve always been attracted to older men, men like my high school creative writing teacher who became my lover, who was 23 to my 17, and then in my youth I usually found the famous father more attractive than his famous son—the olden days of Dean and Dino Martin, Jerry and Gary Lewis, Frank Sinatra and Frank, Jr., Kirk and Michael Douglas, even Julio and Enrico Iglesias (the kids just didn’t look fully grown), and now men like Howard Zinn and Lawrence Ferlinghetti and David Amram. They’re sitting on the Rock of Ages. So when a date told me the other night, “I’m 58,” it was to me an erotic statement. Only five and change years between us, but it’s sexy he’s almost sixty. Ten years ago I had given him a gift of a book of poster art, including a couple of his images, and inscribed “to my favorite San Francisco forty-niner.” SUNNY DAY, FOGGY NIGHTThere are searchlights in the fog, they catch my eye and spark my curiosity but I won’t disturb Zahra on my stomach or Zazu on my knee, to go up on the roof and check it out. THE THRILL IS BACK.Except that I abruptly do change the energy of the moment to indeed go up on the roof, and wow, I’m standing out here in awe of the vastness of sky and elements continually around us as we live our narrow-seeming lives in one cubicle or another. Huge layer of fog circulating in the air like someone’s pumping insulation into the sky. Fuzzy searchlights cross like arms waving. Clouds fly past at the speed of wind, clearing one section of sky in seconds. Stars hold their own beneath the swirling skies. I’m in love with San Francisco again. Back on the couch I notice it’s after 8:00, which stuns me, not because it’s later than I think, but because of the absurdity of attaching the number eight to this universe of time and space. I spend a lot of time on this couch but I am not, I insist, a couch potato. I am a red, ripe, juicy couch tomato! I AM DOING THIS vs. I DID THATI asked outrageous Berkeley printmaker Mark “Silver Fox” Marsh what is the first thing he tells students in an art class. Different is OK. Outrageous is OK. The rules? Fagedaboudem. A friend asked, in admiring my writing, isn’t it one of the “rules” of writing not to write in first person present? Whatever writing rules there are, I never heard of them. I’ll make up my own and break them. As comic book artist Scott McCloud puts it, in comics caps, “THERE ARE NO LIMITS TO WHAT YOU CAN FILL THAT BLANK PAGE WITH—ONCE YOU UNDERSTAND THE PRINCIPLES THAT ALL COMICS STORYTELLING IS BUILT UPON. IN SHORT, THERE ARE NO RULES. AND HERE THEY ARE. I use first person present because it’s more lively and immediate. I find I can’t help it, because when I recall the past, I am recalling it in the present. When thinking about a past event, I do so in the now. So if I’m remembering and want to write about the time I was standing at 16th & Harrison waiting for the 22 bus, I write, as I did in “Welcome to Death Little Girl,” “I’m standing at 16th & Harrison waiting for the 22 Fillmore after attending the mini Cornell Woolrich “NOIRtaud” festival at Project Artaud, three nights of noir, noir and noir leaving me wanting moir, moir and moir.” Because when you read “I” can you not help but put yourself in the starring role? Don’t you virtually have to picture yourself standing there waiting for that bus? I could well have written, “The other night I was standing…having attended the festival” but that describes the past, and when I remember something I am essentially reliving it, I am putting myself in that place, as I invite you, the reader, to do, to put yourself in my place. Well, yes, an event I describe may have happened already, but not to you. You’re reading about it now, and you don’t know what’s coming. Besides, the present tense affords me the opportunity to narrate my stream of consciousness as things bounce in and out of my brain. THERE IS ONLY ONE THOUGHTYou might as well be I, as we all share the same thought. You may not know anything about physics, but in the pool of humanity’s knowledge in which you are swimming, someone does. And guess what, you can learn physics right from Albert Einstein, because when you read his books you enter his mind and are exposed to the wealth of knowledge he communicated to us all. The ideas are out there. You can hook into them at your pleasure. “EH heh heh heh heh,” someone laughs on the street, and Zzyzzy’s head whips around as if to ask, “What’s so funny?” All-around great guy and saint, Eric Bergquist of The Page Street Center, turned me onto The Long Now Foundation. Soon after, Laughing Squid turned me onto Scott McDonald, author of Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, a book admired by Stewart Brand, Co-Founder of The Long Now Foundation. Their web site cautions, “Civilization is revving itself into a pathologically short attention span. The trend might be coming from the acceleration of technology, the short-horizon perspective of market-driven economics, the next-election perspective of democracies, or the distractions of personal multi-tasking. All are on the increase. Some sort of balancing corrective to the short-sightedness is needed-some mechanism or myth which encourages the long view and the taking of long-term responsibility, where ‘long-term’ is measured at least in centuries.” THIS IS NOT A COLUMNScott McDonald does a fun take-off on Magritte’s painting “The Treachery of Images” (Ceci nest pas une pipe), the painting of a pipe labeled “This is not a pipe.” He made a series of iconic images—a flag, captioned “This is not a country,” a STOP sign captioned “This is not law,” a fast food meal captioned “This is not food” (that one serves double-duty), but my favorite is two panels of a man, in one about to tip his hat, the next having just raised it off of his head, captioned, “These are not separate moments.” (This, as I write it, is not a column, it is a Wordpress file, but as you read it, it actually IS a column, in that the web is the format in which it is intended to be seen by the public. My Ax Files logo, however, is not my column.) THERE IS ONLY ONE MOMENTThere are no separate moments, only the one you are living now, one era containing all the eras of your life, undulating like silk flags in the wind. “With the rain from a storm, a river is born/Winding down to the sea, and the river of time/Keeps on rollin’ thru eternity…” (Bill Miller,”River of Time”). Out of the corner of my eye and mind, I am aware that parading proudly beside me is an elegantly arched feline tail. With what inherent, un-self-conscious grace does a cat move. They are not “cursed with self awareness” as Annie Savoy puts it in “Bull Durham.” They are never in doubt as to what to do next. They are fully here, now. In Buddhist meditations I have participated in, there has been a random ringing of a bell, I believe to keep you present, to snap you to attention, to recognize the moment. That just happened to me with a crisp snap and rattle of my Venetian blinds. Hey girl! Stay present! This here now has been long enough! Yes, brother and sister, you too. ------------------------------------------------------------ If not now, when?
Can anyone tell me what I've been talking about? copyright Alexandra Jones 2008 |
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