is it in you?

paul

too much to say in a comment box, so here we are... i have no idea if you should get a tattoo, so here's a train of thought, which may or may not help you think about what you think about whether you should get a tattoo...i think it's all about autobiography...

tattoos tell you a lot about a person... i don't intend that in a judgmental way, just a statement of fact... the person i know with the most tattoos is married to a jewish person, who has cultural/historical issues with the act of tattooing... thus both relate to tattoos in a very different way... and i guess they are a good example of why tattoos, whilst capable of representing playfulness, are at best to be treated with a sense of sacredness, or rather, we should treat ourselves with some sense of sacredness perhaps...it's why i don't really "get" piercing beyond body adornment or heightened sensual pleasure - they have have, for me, no intrinsic meaning, despite perhaps telling me something about the person who is pierced (i know that for some piercing is a deeply symbolic act)...for me tattoos are all about their symbology. and what it tells me about me. how it symbolises who i am and what matters to me, as we are no doubt about to find out. i feel a splurge comin' on...

for me personally, the symbology, the coded message if you will, came first in some respects. i knew i was interested in getting a tattoo but i knew more strongly that there was something in me that wanted to speak...stake a claim. what followed then was trying to let that come out and when it did i knew i felt a great sense of conviction but that i also had to have something ambigious, open, tentative, provisional. i am asked by a lot of folks, "what does your tattoo say?" to which i typically reply, ""do you mean the literal or the intrinsic meaning it might have? and in explaining i have at times said, "you can decide what that might mean for yourself", although i am now less inclined to do that... not sure why, but i love that how i relate to it changes. its meaning is provisional as well as highly convicted... it is about what to me is perhaps the ground of all being... what do i believe of love and of god? it is a cypher... a door to so much more... and the writer in me just 'knew' when i had found the combination of characters that i could live with. i also knew that by including an anglicised version of the hebrew tetragrammaton i was being wilfully playful... i could have had it written in hebrew script but there is a sense in which i wanted to acknowlege the journey that the unnameable name of god has taken... that we have romanised the language of our hebrew forefathers... that to write the unnameable name of god is an exercise in mystery, a perhaps futile act... the name of that which cannot be named pointing to the ungraspability of the divine... the tetragrammaton is itself mythically a cypher, a code...and for me there is a tongue in cheek playfulness to suggest the unnameable name might be Love, to pin it down... and of course alpha and omega as not only representing the beginning and end of time outside of time, a sense of eternity but also Christ as the alpha and omega, the trickster... the code incarnate? the choice of using the latin amor rather than english signifies my love of the root of words... again, more codes... more linguistic forebearers...

for me, getting my first tattoo was an act of rebellion (waste of time. parentals quite liked it), an act of self determination, choosing to do something for me by me with no apology to anyone, (worth it. it was an empowering experience (and the act itself a very sensory experience), although a day or two after i was shocked i had actually gone through with it - i had to deal with my own sense of conviction, it created a kind of inner vertigo and i had to adjust to it, which had nothing to do with the tattoo but with how i understood who i was, i had to embrace the me that would go through with it, as it was a highly uncharacteristic act, to actually follow through)
but also, something akin to prayer... or maybe like wearing a cross... something i haven't done since around the same time, hmm, no, perhaps it's very different to that... it's like a message to myself, and perhaps to the unknown Other: whatever i say, whatever i do, i am drawn (as in pulled towards and as in pictorially depicted (shaped) by either DNA or psychology or a Creator, or indeed by my own hand) to believe in something we call Love and i think when we speak of god we (or do i mean I?) mean the same thing... they may be the same thing... and for as long as i might have on this earth i want to be reminded daily of the significance that trying to understand what we mean when we talk about or invoke both love and god has had in my life, for better or worse... their interchangability is an eternal mystery, a perhaps divine wordplay...

okay i know we're about to go dandering on a tangent - not sure if this a metaphor for tattooing but let's see where this goes, it may just be that i haven't written enough the past couple of weeks and i'm needing to stretch my fingers or that there is something triggered that wants to come out... bear with me and we'll see if this says anything...

having recently had the opportunity to listen to someone's experience of what it is like to be of christian faith and in relationship with someone who is not, i was struck in reflection afterward that whilst in younger years i wanted to be in relationship with someone of faith (ie christian), nowadays my own comfort zone has shifted so much... not only do i hold my ideas of belief so much more lightly but i am unthreatened by the idea of being in relationship with someone who doesn't share my particular set of beliefs (beliefs being by definition as unique and subjective as we are)... but what i do know is i doubt i could be in relationship with someone who doesn't take religious belief seriously, who thinks religion is for dumb people... and i certainly can't imagine having anything close to intimacy with a devoted nihilist (is that an oxymoron?)... and by nihilism i mean having committed to a belief in life's lack of meaning and hope, because i can't imagine having a sense of wonder if life is just a meaningless existence (i am predisposed as the next person to temporary states of nihilism, which i think is probably a close sibling of depression), nor with someone who didn't value the value of mystery, or respect the desire to live with faith, or grace, or meaning, even in a life after god... i guess at the other end of the spectrum i can't imagine being in relationship with someone who put a set of "beliefs in" before relationship with people - something i am all too guilty of (and which causes me to know that there is inherent self conviction in this tangent).... i guess it comes down to what ikon (or maybe i should say pete) has called the how rather than the what of belief... that in relationship i am seeking out (if seeking at all) another with a how that is compatible with my own, whatever the creed or lack thereof...

ah, i see where my mind is going with this... yup. rather than it being "getting a tattoo is like finding a compatible partner", that all speaks to a desire to hold one's belief or faith, or desire for belief or faith, however me might use those terms, both provisionally (or lightly) but with a sense of sacredness and value... someone said to me yesterday that they were more interested in what a person values rather than what they believe... i kinda like that, although value as a word somehow lacks the metaphysical mystery for me personally but that's more an issue of semantics... but i guess it all points toward what it was within me that wanted to speak... the essence of conviction towards a search for Truth, that appears so often to be outward but is actually an inner journey... the desert and kingdom are carried within us... that i entered a phase of a journey a couple of years back where the metaphorical became more powerful than the literal... all of that somehow became distilled into a mark i put on my arm... that we cannot speak of a life after god, without speaking of the god that was there, or the belief that was there... and how that shapes us... of who we are. maybe it guards me against nihilism (which for me would be like a shark stopping swimming), that i can wander on this journey but i will always be reminded of where i have been and therefore to where i may return... and that i hold my beliefs lightly but with no less a sense of conviction... that love demands of us a conviction... and as soon as we drawn a line in the sand we are called to question it... to destroy our idol and seek again... this code will never be cracked... and that i want to always try and live that life of searching with hope that looks forward... to keep trying to crack it... is that faith? perhaps...

and yet, tomorrow i might say it means something totally different... for the verbal thinker, i guess truths are so often tested by trying them on for size... saying "how's this?" and seeing if it'll work... i speak with both conviction and with the implicit understanding it only speaks to who i am in that moment... in recognising my own willingness to get it wrong, i then desire to know Truth... a solid thing to be grounded in... but as chris reminded me recently, a (psychologically) healthy life is one grounded in stability so that one can live flexibly...

so. should you get a tattoo? that depends: why? what is it you want to mark? what is in you wanting to be voiced?

you say tattoo, i say testimony
let's call the whole thing off

;0)

LB,x