The idea to create Enough came out of some conversations that started in July on my livejournal cruciferous and continued and continued and continued and continued and continued. It turns out people have a lot to say about this stuff, and that inspired us to dedicate this space to it. We hope you find it helpful.
More than Enough: Precarious Lives, “Mere” Survival, and Abundant Joy
by Kriti Sharma
“Can’t believe
How strange it is to be anything at all.”
-from “In an airplane over the sea” by Neutral Milk Hotel
The day I stop being astonished by my own aliveness might be a good day to die. It’s my great fortune and my only grace that such a day has not yet come. Good air rushes in through my nose and hugs my lungs, oxygen melting into my beating blood and warmly flowing everywhere, leaving no piece of flesh untouched. My body is a lively forest, an intricate, densely populated world. Each of my cells whir and hum in their quiet watery way, knit tightly with trillions of other cells, each miraculously complete and simultaneously a part of a greater whole. Like the cells, I whir and hum, jump and flow, open and close, stretch and breathe. Some fire makes it all crackle, some gravity holds it all together. Some mystery keeps this body alive. If I didn’t know what a body was, I don’t know that I’d have the creativity to imagine it. In its intricacy and enigma, its completeness and its vulnerability, it exceeds by far anything that I could dream.
Even on my most devastating days, when earth looks warm enough to sleep in forever or when fire seems a merciful ashy alternative to despair, there comes at least one moment when grace flashes like lightning into my hours. Every day, there is always a moment, at least one sudden, ecstatic moment when a simple exclamation rings clear in my mind like a bell:
“Alive!”
Yes, emphatically yes! “how strange it is to be anything at all.” Continue reading “More than Enough: Precarious Lives, “Mere” Survival, and Abundant Joy”
Buy One, Get One. Free.
by Alexis Pauline Gumbs
Debt is spelled with a silent “be”. (I mean to use the passive voice.) Debt is spelled with a silent “be”, an empty letter holding space next to unopened bills. Debt is spelled with a silent “be”. As in “be quiet, feign ignorance and master the timing of smiling and leaving.” But I learned this before I learned to spell.
My mother learned from my father that debt was the American way. A $9 trillion US deficit backs this lesson up. From letters dropped out of my mother’s mouth I learned that money was something we never had enough of, something we needed urgently. From cards dropped out of my father’s hands I learned that money was not real. From the hypocritical narrative of consumer capital I learned shame and silence. I learned that we were less than empty, that we were less than zero.