5 questions
1. What's the next tattoo you intend to get, and why?
This question inspired me today to speak to a tattoo artist about my idea for a tattoo. I went to Body Manipulations, which is my piercing home base, and consulted Tex about what she thought of my idea. I want an egret tattoo'd on my left calf, w/ the egret standing w/ right leg bent, thus, the egret is standing on it's left leg. I'll explain that. Tex showed me some horses she had done. I want it done to look like chinese brush stokes, very stylized almost abstract. I have a postcard that captures the essence. For an $80 deposit she would draw it out for me. She also informed me that white can turn yellow and ruin the tattoo. I had hoped to have the highlights done in white. Mikal at Black and Blue had previously said she would do white, and showed me some of her work done in white. A huge conundrum. Take the advice of the artist at Body Manipulations whose employees I trust (and who charges more) tho I've never talked w/ Tex before. Or go w/ someone who will do what I want and take a risk that the white ink will look bad later.
---For those of you who don't know me, this is one defining characteristic of mine: I tend to trust the higher class establishment that charges more. And the area that I want white would be large. A lot to go wrong. The safe thing to do is have the black ink drawing done. Wait a few years and there will be I higher quality white ink on the market eventually. Here's an important fact for those considering white tattoos: they cannot be removed by laser. The laser works by heating the pigment so it breaks down in your skin. The white gives the laser nothing to latch on to, and is completely permanent. Another type of tattoo ink that is permanent is black light ink.
Why an egret? Why standing on one leg? Why on my left leg? The shortest answer is the the egret is my spirit animal. Why did egret choose me? When I went Beyond I spent many hours standing at the side of the road. One of my hitchhiking meditations were the exercises the Mevlevis taught me while I was studying the dervish turning. I would stand on one leg and chant 'llah. When I got bored of that I would pick up the garbage in my area and create sculptures. I had learned that the colors of litter went in rhythms and patterns, and used the pattern to find further clues to my journey. A key part of the journey took part in the South, and egret was there watching me. Egret also stands on one leg and picks things up from the ground, or out of the water. One of the voices told me that people who pick up garbage get blown up. When the fever would mount and I wd. feel in danger of combusting, I cd. call on egret's stillness and attention to the subtlies, and get OUT. When my garbage spell was done, then someone wd. stop and give me a ride. The swamp is still a powerful image of Nature to me. The hurricanes demand that we return the swamplands. Ocean is rising. And as the swamps spread, egret thrives. All the little fish. In the Tarot I read the 8 of cups as the Swamp. No one likes to hear that they are stuck in a routine, but I try to teach the value of going into the Swamp and finding magick plants that are medicine for bitterness. The Swamp is a filter, and from out of the filth is brought purity. Egret is a reminder of the Swamp. The city were I became myself was a drained swamp, Houston. So to me, what lessons Houston taught me about community are the hidden value in being trapped in a routine. It's the same-old, but is intensely meaningful.
2. Other than making a living with it, what's the real purpose of all this study of the Tarot?
Tough question. Tarot has been the driving force in my life for many years. It has been w/ me from before I went Beyond and helped me come back. The stories Tarot revealed to me created Beyond, and BEYOND--- all the way Home. I learned the meaning of XXII, XXIII, and XXIV. Tarot has not been a great form of income for me. I would like to be doing Tarot 20 hours a week, and devote a portion of the rest of my week on my multimedia studies. But I started in Multimedia at City College to learn how to create an animated Tarot. I still haven't learned the level of programming necessary, and Flash melts my brain. By the time the fall semester starts I hope to have enough work done on the Ace of Wands to show the instructors what I am trying to do. So even the schooling I've been doing this century has ultimately been about Tarot. (The vaster project behind that is a novel I have been in the midst of since I was 19. If you like, this is practice for that.) Tarot is in the top 5 things I think about all the time. Probably ranking higher than sex (though one datum the Tarot has often revealed to me during a reading is how to seduce the person I was reading for. The only time I really paid attention to that was when I gave a free reading to trancemagick. I laid out my 13 card Celtic Knot reading and spent an hour w/ her. I learned she was looking for the Queen of Cups, but that she was remembering the 4 of Swords. In her heart was the Ace of Cups and reflected there was the 2 of Cups. The Empress was in her body, I don't remember the rest. But I don't remember readings, the same way I don't remember conversations. I usually forget right away. But trancemagick was on my list from the moment I first saw her. In my first Multimedia class. So Tarot even guided me to my wife.)
Tarot is what I have been doing for so long that I have ceased to ask what it is for. A path to self-actualization, certainly. I want a more real connexion to my deepest potential, and the Tarot is a path of insight and meditation that is more meaningful to me than any other system I have encountered. Tarot is powerful and sophisticated enough to absorb any system you throw at it. It will take a lifetime to Master it. It is my calling. When I asked Tarot what I shd. do for a living it said Tarot. (It also said I wdn't make any money at it for a long time. When I told divarabbit she said that it had been long enough. So in a way, the question now is, aside from self-realization, when is Tarot going to start making you money?
3. Is it more important to you to be liked or to be respected, and why?
Depends on which kenne you ask. Ask my default persona and it is ∞ly more important for me to be liked. I am very insecure, and hide myself from people in order to get along. I often perjure my beliefs and opinions out a deep hypocritical need for approval. But my default persona isn't the outspoken poet who tells outrageous truths for the sake of art. Nor is he the opinionated fellow who stubbornly puts his foot in it for the sake of making a point. Nor does the witty urbane kenne care the least what those people think. People who get me tend to like me, and if they can't take a joke I've learned to shut up about it. Don't think I don't agonize over the frequent faux-pas I commit in the course of an unguarded tongue.
I care deeply about whether the people I wish to respect me like me. People I don't respect I don't give a damn whether they like me.
4. What's the nature of your relationship with the creatures you eat for food?
I love all creatures profoundly, and feel at my greatest communion w/ them as I consume them. I am so grateful. "You are cute and delicious!" When I observe the behaviour of carnivores I feel that we are kin. Having said that I am a bit squeemish. I would have a hard time cutting the throat of a sheep or a goat. I have never slaughtered a chicken. Even eating chicken can be a bit viseral at times. But as it is in my nature, I embrace it. I do like what divarabbit says when asked if she wd. like some meat: "No thanks. I don't indulge." Meat is an indulgence in some ways, but my religious impulses don't impell me to deny myself.
5. What's the first thing you would do if a $10,000 windfall suddenly appeared, and why?
This is the question I've been thinking about all day. "$10,000--- that's not much!" It's not enough to start the business I have been thinking about. I have a long list of things I want to buy including the egret tattoo. But, what is the first thing? I would fly out to see my mom, and then accompany her here to visit San Francisco. She has recently had a health scare and I don't have the money to fly out there just because I am worried about her. So I wd. be making travel plans w/ my mom. The 3 of us cd. take the Coast Starlight train to LA and she cd. meet trancemagicks family. There are a few family heirlooms that I want from her house. Mom and I have discussed it. I need to be clear which of her things I want or else my sister will assume it's all hers. That's a fight my sister Alison wd. win w/out this $10,000 windfall, because I cannot afford to move massive pieces of furniture out from Texas. And I don't have room here for the furniture, so I wd need some of that money to put it into storage. But flying back and forth, and a moving van, that is only going to cost a few thousand dollars. I wd have enough left over to get a degree in Performance Art from New College and still have enough for the tattoo and a new guitar and a better amp and still have enough to buy presents for trancemagick. And still have enough for dinner at Zuni. I have never eaten oysters to my heart's content. I wd buy a less expensive guitar in exchange for an oyster feast for my mom and trancemagick. And I still wd. have some of that $10,000 left. New gold jewelry to upgrade my piercings. A visit to Amoeba. More presents for trancemagick. Wait, I need new shoes--- buy the airline tickets then go out and buy new shoes. A good pair of dress shoes they can bury me in. Whatever is left, not spend.