The lazy eye

I was born with a "lazy eye" which causes me to have inaccurate sterescopic vision, double vision, and sometimes no stereoscopic vision at all when my eyes are tired. I have never seen a straight line in my life. I look at a doorway, for instance, and see overlapping images that are constantly shifting. When I think about it, I find it amazing that I can negotiate moving from room to room, or doing anything for that matter, without constantly bumping into things. But, since I've seen this way all my life, I've learned to compensate without my even knowing it. I did have serious problems learning to drive, and I do feel nervous at the edges of land, or on bridges, but that is certainly reasonable, given that I don't know exactly where the edge of anything is.

I've always found it surprising that I am a good draughtsman. The fact that I could tattoo at all seemed implausible. But it made sense to me, for I had an obsession with what I called "the perfect line" for decades. I spent countless hours life drawing, trying to find the edges, never interested in light and shadow. To capture a form in the the fewest possible lines, and have that line be sure and strong - oh! - what a pleasure and a challenge it was.

Now I find out that some Harvard neurobiologists are investigating a link that they believe exists between having poor depth perception due to strabismus (that "lazy eye") and having a facility for the visual arts. Rembrandt, Gustav Klimt, Chuck Close, Robert Rauschenberg, Marc Chagall, Edward Hopper, Man Ray, N.C. and Andrew Wyeth, Roy Lichtenstein, Frank Stella, and Willem De Kooning all had "ocular misalignment".

I did think my obsession with line drawing was some sort of overcompensation for my "eye problem." I also believed I might see the world in a flatter way than was normal, and though I can't say what "normal" looks like exactly, it seemed rather natural to portray reality on a flat plane. Now, I read that the ability to translate reality onto the flat plane may be facilitated by having this visual "impairment." I'm fascinated. I'm also rather excited, for I've always thought that my eyesight played a role in how I saw the world, not only visually, but in other ways, and I find it gratifying in some way that science is looking into a piece of this.

When I was very young, my eyesight made me think about just what reality was. Seeing two of everything, and having it overlap and move about, I was fascinated with the problem of knowing which image was the real one. I had to know, of course, in order to move about in the world. These days, I do not labor over which image is the "real one", but I clearly remember struggling with it, and those struggles caused me to question the notion that there was but one reality, or that anything was clearly fixed in space. However, if I judged wrong, there would be consequences.

Very young, I saw knowing what is "real" and where it was as some sort of construct, or agreement. Dogs and cats see the world differently than we do, and goodness, bees see it in a very different way, but we all are looking at the same thing. We are not all bumping into each other (for the most part), and that is truly extraordinary.

Today, I feel rather grateful that I was born with a lazy eye. I've always felt it gave me a different perspective and got me thinking about some interesting concepts at a young age, and so there's always been some gratitude, but now I feel like I'm in some great company. How marvelous!

Image note: Man Ray photographed by Carl Van Vechten, 1880-1964
There's another photograph of him where it's clearer that his eyes are not aligned, but I can see it here somewhat. One can't tell with me, unless I've just awoken or am quite sleepy. When I was a kid, before I went to eye training school (yep - there's such a thing, or was once), it was quite noticeable.

Addendum: I have mistakenly called strabismus a "lazy eye", which turns out to wrong. I haven't read anything about this subject since I was quite young, and seem to have been harboring a common misconception. I also have amblyopia upon occasion, which is when the brain does not "acknowledge" information from a healthy eye. When my strabismus was quite pronounced, I did have amblyopia, and did not see double most of the time. This was before the eye training, which was an attempt to correct my "funny looking" left eye. It did not work entirely, and it appeared that when the information my brain received was accurate enough, it started to take notice, thus producing the constantly shifting double vision. I remember thinking I preferred a single image, and wished I had not had eye training. It also took up two years of my life and caused a constant headache. Why I didn't have the more common surgery is a mystery.

A bit of scent

A perfume post! When was the last time? I just searched this blog, and the answer is "no results." Did I not use the word "perfume"? Using the word "scent", I find a lot of results, 10 pages of them, but the answer to "when is the last time I wrote about scent (or perfume)" is "I do not know."

It's not as if I haven't been wearing scents, or smelling things. My apartment smelled like pumpkin, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg for most of the day, and it was heavenly. While I was baking muffins, I didn't smell a thing, but when someone came in to do some work in the apartment, I had just removed the muffin tray from the oven, and he said, "It smells fantastic in here!" For that, he got a muffin, and I walked outside so I could walk back in again, and appreciate just how good those muffins smelled. I may like the scent I'm wearing, but the smell of baked goods has it beat.*

Today I'm wearing Serge Lutens' Chypre Rouge. I've written about this scent at least four times, including how I came to own a lovely little bottle of this stuff I couldn't possibly afford to buy, why I chose to wear it while duck was cooking, and my waffling about whether I loved it or loathed it (the scent, not the duck).

I have come to feel stupid about scent. I used to have a keen nose, and could tell you what some elusive note was without a thought. I could smell a scent once and remember it. When I lived in the city (not the last time), I could most times identify what scent any person was wearing, though these days that would be considerably harder to do, given the sheer variety.

I have no idea what point I came here to make. Maybe all I wanted to convey is that I still love scent. My obsession seems to have abated, and I no longer spend hours reading perfume blogs each day, nor do I trade samples, though I sometimes feel the urge. Then again, even though I've got a long list on MUA, no one has contacted me about a trade, so perhaps there's a general lessening of interest in the culture. Any perfumista reading this, tell me, is that true, or is it, as they say, just me?

There are some (not) new scents I'm quite curious about. I did find myself looking at L'artisan's website last week, and realizing I still have not sniffed Havana Vanille, which was released in 2009. A 2008 release, Nasomatto's China White, has remained a mystery, for no one sells samples of it, and not one person has it listed for trade. These are but two, and there's at least a year of new releases I am utterly unaware of.

I did count my samples before I moved six months ago, and I was up to over 250 before I gave up counting. Amongst these, I haven't a clue how many I have not worn, but only held up to my nose to assess. I'm nervous about application; I wore some Chergui a few weeks ago, a scent which I declared was my "new lover" on June 17, 2008. So much for old loves. I developed a headache, nausea, and couldn't scrub enough. I wasn't that I didn't like the smell (well, theoretically); it made me sick. I had to take a long walk outside after my futile scrubbing. Afterwards, I felt a bit sad. I was concerned my love of scent was truly over and done with.

It appears not. I'm loving the way I smell right now. Don't ask me to describe it, though. I can do that no longer.

Image note: Juan Sanchez Cotan "Still Life with Game Fowl, Vegetables, and Fruit" 1602

*However, I do not want to wear the smell of baked goods or any other edibles (save mushrooms, perhaps). There's a plethora of perfumes, plug-ins, candles, shampoo, and just about anything one can stick a scent into that smell of chocolate, pumpkin, cinnamon, cakes, even donuts, and, well, I just find them oh so cloying. I'm going to sound like an old curmudgeon, but I want my food to smell like food and my perfume to smell like perfume. Yes, I've made chocolate soap, but it was a disaster, and someone tried to eat one that was in the shape of star. It didn't help that I had wrapped them with colored cellophane like the edible bonbons they should have been.

Okay then

Maybe I'm feeling a bit provocative of late. I didn't mean to shock by voicing some ideas about tattooing that were a bit dark . I was only thinking out loud, and wanting a bit of dialogue. I didn't get it here, but I did in real life. It upset a few, but it did provoke some interesting conversation, and that is all I wanted.

I sometimes don't see what's taboo, or if I do, I want to talk about it and find out what others think.

So, I might be doing it again, by airing these thoughts:

There was a plate of crudites at a party that were particularly beautiful. Carrots with purple skin, bright yellow carrots, "watermelon radishes", and a bunch of other things, all quite colorful, that I had never seen before. I met the grower of these delightful vegetables, and we wound up talking about the immense variety of beans. I do not recall their name, but a friend grows some beans that are particularly stunning - magenta pods filled with purple skinned brilliantly lime green beans. When I was done describing them, a man said, "They would be wonderful to photograph with nudes." Okay. Sure. I said, "Well, they are quite sensuous." He responded, "I didn't say they were sexual." "No, sensuous", I replied.

As it turns out, he was a fine art photographer, and it wasn't some strange comment coming from nowhere. I looked at some of his work on the Web, and some of it seemed to fall into the category of "erotica" more than "fine art photography" (if there is a line). Seeing this, I wondered why he took such seeming offense at thinking I had said "sexual." Reflecting on this, I thought about those slippery categories: 1. Fine art nude photography. 2. Erotica. 3. Pornography. Where's the line?

I have never had a good answer to this question. It seems that the answer is simply a modicum of discretion, and aesthetics, nothing more or less. We know it when we see it.

The "law" has not been able to figure this one out. I certainly can't.

It's considered fine for men to take photographs of nude young women. I'm not saying it's wrong, though sometimes I suspect their motives, but I got to thinking: if a woman did the same thing with young men, wouldn't people, in general, be bothered? I believe so. If I did it, I'm sure it would be scandalous in this small town. Yet, there are many middle aged men who photograph, draw, and paint young nude woman every day here.

This is the kind of thing that makes me want to go out and do something. So, when I think I'm not provocative, or transgressive, I suppose I'm disingenuous, or just blind to myself.

I'm not planning on becoming a photographer of young men, but the idea that it would challenge people did make me think someone ought to do it, simply because it's a taboo based on sexism. Additionally, since I have strong feelings about abuses of power regarding sex and age, and about the idea that youth equals beauty, I will not be engaging in this project (and of course, I'm not a photographer). But, I did think, if I were a photographer, I'd like to photograph older people naked, to challenge myself, for one thing, about my feelings that my body has become "ruined", and this will only get worse. Are wrinkles and sagging skin really that aesthetically displeasing? Isn't this just a remnant of our gaze being affected by having to assess quickly the fecundity or virility of potential mates? I suppose, too, that we are repulsed by that which is dying, but autumn is beautiful, and the starkness of winter can be breathtaking. These last thoughts were not on point, but these are but ruminations. . .

Image note: Goya "The Clothed Maya" 1803
Goya painted the "The Nude Maja" in 1800. "Without a pretense to allegorical or mythological meaning, the painting was the first totally profane life-size female nude in Western art." * The questions start here. Does intent and meaning create the divide between high art and pornography? When I hear a heterosexual man state, "I find the female form beautiful", though that may well be true, why is admitting lust a taboo (and how can it not be so)?

*Licht, Fred: Goya: The Origins of the Modern Temper in Art

Addendum: I have compressed my thinking about these subjects into a smallish space.vI do like talking and writing about my half baked ideas. I also do enjoy hearing what others have to say on any subject I babble on about, so please, if you are so moved, even if I write something that bothers you, please leave a comment.

Rehash

I'm engaged in a way, but I couldn't be bothered to go back and check.

Maybe that's okay, but there's so much I want to intellectualize.

Maybe that's okay, but there's so much I want to explain.

I don't want to read about bad hair cuts.

The truth is I'm overwhelmed by too much information that I am stupid, and have been blind to it.

Then I thought, I doubt that was possible.

I was in the index (or so I thought). I doubt that was possible.

I think I couldn't be bothered to intellectualize.

Sometimes I doubt that teacher.

I wound up bringing in the problem.

Y'know, I took out every book about nonsense and blurry thinking.

But, I took meticulous notes on Geronimo.

Image note: A piece of Hannah Hoch's Cut with the Dada Kitchen Knife through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany, 1919.

You too, can mash up your writing, with the Markov Text Synthesizer.

Trivial matters

I keep threatening to quit blogging. I'm thinking about it, but I can't quite do it. I can't write about what I want to, either.

I'm engaged in a struggle. I could blog about trivial matters, the things (according to Google Analytics) that people want to read about (bad hair cuts, mattresses), or I can try to blog about what really matters to me. But, oh, that's hard.

I can write about nonsense and memories pretty easily. It's not great art by any means. I just write as if I'm talking to someone, or to myself. I correct a typo now and again. Done.

This other stuff, I can't quite access it. I have this problem when I try to talk or write about Buddhism. I feel stupid and inarticulate. I can't find the words. I become convinced that I am stupid, and have been blind to it.

I know that's not true, but it feels true, as feelings tend to do. Feelings are such good liars.

The truth is I'm overwhelmed by too much information that I have no idea how to integrate. I've had this problem since I was a kid. When I was in the 5th grade, I had to write a paper (probably called a "report") on Geronimo. I had an adult library card, and I took out every book about Geronimo. That wasn't enough. I took out every book that had the name Geronimo in the index (or so I thought - I doubt that was possible). I read every single one of them. I took meticulous notes on index cards and put them into shoe boxes. My room was filled with boxes. When the paper was due, I had not even started it. A month of weeks went by, and I did not explain to the teacher what was going on. I was overwhelmed. I had no idea how to express what I'd read. Did I understand it? I think I did, in a way, but I was no genius. I wanted to write about the problem of the Native Americans, our country's history, assimilate all this information, but I could not, and I was too embarrassed to tell the truth.

I wound up bringing in all my shoeboxes filled with note cards over a period of days. I vaguely remember the bemused and compassionate eyes of that teacher. She gave me a good grade even though I never wrote the paper.

Y'know, I don't think she should have. I was always a sloppy thinker. I went to private school in 10th grade, and was confronted with significantly higher standards than I was used to. Did I rise to the occasion? Nope. I was too used to coasting. At first I was excited by the great teachers who didn't dumb down the classes, who gave us truly tough stuff to wrestle with. I read for pleasure, but I couldn't be bothered with the hard work of writing a cogent argument, or explaining what I'd read. Please, don't make me explain it.

I haven't changed. It's not that I mind working, or studying hard. I just can't explain. I don't want to explain. I don't want to intellectualize.

Maybe that's okay, but there's so much I want to express that's so damned hard, and I've grown tired of my lazy and blurry thinking. I have no idea if I can change. Sometimes I think I'm disabled in some way; I just can't do it.

I guess I'll find out. Not today.

Image note: Tried to find a painting of languid opium smokers to illustrate "fuzzy thinking." Didn't find one that wasn't protected by copyright. Then I thought of Francis Bacon's strange heads. Not in the public domain. The ones I could cadge are too scary (good for the last post). Came across a new artist (for me) - Nassar Azam. Gave up. See what I mean about lazy thinking? Yet, I spent 45 minutes looking at images and learning some new things. What do I have to say about Azam and Bacon? Nothing.

So, I give you the pair of fingerless mitts I knit and designed for Good Karma Farm. They are cozy.

And yeah, I believe I wrote about my fuzzy thinking just last week. I can't be bothered to go back and check.

PS. Too much "I" in this. Way too much. Therein lies the problem. . .

Missing

It's been nearly three years since I closed my tattoo studio. All my equipment has been sold. Tonight, I can not sleep. I feel the desire to tattoo. Drawing or painting won't satisfy that desire, and if I explained it, it would probably sound bizarre.

I used to have school groups come up to my shop on field trips. How funny, in retrospect. Once, a kid asked, "Are you a sadist?" The teacher told him it was an inappropriate question, but I said I thought it was fair. After all, I spent my working hours hurting people. I could have painted or drawn on paper or canvas, but I plied by trade in blood and skin. I do not remember what I said in answer to this young man, but now I think that I probably am a sadist, in the strict sense of the word, even though I did what I could to lessen the pain of being tattooed (yes, folks, one can do that).

I have often said getting tattooed can become an addiction, but now I think tattooing itself is, too.

I miss the whole bloody mess.

The first time I tattooed someone other than myself, I was scared. I was also excited. Hmm. Does it sound like I'm talking about sex? Perhaps, though I don't remember thinking "I hope I don't scar this person for life" when I lost my virginity.

So, what's the difference between tattooing and painting? For me, it's the struggle. Painting and drawing came easily to me. Tattooing was hard. There was always this crazy tension, and I got a rush out of it most days. Some days it would drain me completely. In the end, I didn't want to go to "work", when once I happily worked six days a week, sometimes twelve hours a day in a street shop, drawing flash or making needles on my so-called days off. The guy I did an apprenticeship with told me he wouldn't take me unless I was willing to "eat, sleep, and shit tattoos" and I did.

I'm skirting the question of sadism, I know. Did I enjoy hurting people? In a way, I must have. I was (and still am) opposed to the use of topical anesthetics. Take the pain out of the equation, and something ineffable is lost. I enjoyed the act of tattooing when tattoos were seen as rites of passage, rites of feeling, of memory, of bonding, acts of manhood (and womanhood), marks of internal pain, and of triumph. I, as tattooist, felt, at times, shaman-like, and this is a powerful feeling. Is a shaman a sadist? Is a doctor a sadist? Sometimes yes. Sometimes no.

Now I"m not so sure of my original thought about my answering "yes" to the question.

I do not know.

Like a painter loves his rags, I loved the paper towels covered with pigment and blood. Though some people challenged me, (fish factory workers at the end of a work day), I loved the smell of the work - bodies, sweat, sometimes the scent of shampoo or perfume, green soap, betadine, and again, blood.

I loved working with music cranked up loud. I'd be high on it, tapping out rhythms with my left foot while my right foot was on the pedal to the power supply. It was like driving over 100 miles per hour without any fear (and no cops).

And yeah, sometimes I enjoyed what can only be called the fight. No one calls a midwife a sadist, do they? Some tattoo sessions felt like helping someone birth a child. One guy I remember so well - a big tat on his concave stomach, from hips to under his nipples. I'd tattooed him before, and he had no problem with it. But on his tender belly (like many), well, that was another story. Every minute of that six hours was excruciating. He would not give in, get up, or give up. He'd see it through. Sweating in pain, I by turns encouraged him, teased him, told him totally inappropriate jokes, made him push through longer spells without a cigarette break. . .and yeah, I enjoyed myself.

Maybe it's only about power. How often does a five foot tall woman feel stronger than a man over six feet?

I can see I'm going to go off on a huge tangent, and I'm getting quite sleepy, so I'll just let this entry peter out. . .there'll be no neat bow tying this one up, nor any fancy catchphrase to end it.

Image note: I don't know who to attribute this photo to. I found it on the web. I imagine these folks worked in the circus. When I became a tattooist, my father said to me, "You're going to become a circus side show freak." My, times have changed, though, damned if I don't yearn just a little bit for the days when tattooing and being tattooed were rare and freakish enough to gain one entry into the world of the true outsider.

Hodgepodge

In the month plus that I haven't blogged (or written, as we used to call it), I've been thinking. I've tried to write, but the thoughts going through my mind have become difficult to articulate, and as I'm not skilled in thinking (or writing) precisely, and am prone to a certain kind of intellectual laziness, these half baked ideas of mine have sat gathering proverbial dust in the virtual drafts folder.

I think "I'll get back to that", but I don't.

So, what have I come here tonight to share with you?

Too many disparate ideas are competing for my attention. I no longer suffer from the endless chattering of self-talk that I used to, so don't imagine there's a cacophony of thought in this head of mine. No, thoughts come slowly, and then fade away. This is one reason it is hard to write. I can't do math in my head, nor play a game of chess decently, for I don't think in pictures, and the little I do fades away too quickly to snatch at. I don't know how I think, quite frankly. "They" say we all think and learn in different ways - visually, musically, physically - I don't remember all the categories, and won't cheat and google the answer (I think you get the point). Well, I think I think in no such way. I can't name it.

I'd thought I was done with blogging because I was done with the business or pleasure of story telling. The urge to disgorge myself of semi-secrets and memories had left me. I still love to tell stories, but they no longer feel like they are mine, nor do I have the urge to be known the way I once was or did. I may be lying to myself to preserve my sanity. Perhaps. I've come to appreciate greatly the company of strangers, and seem to feel no need to tell much of myself. I bought a pack of gum earlier this evening, and the exchange between me and the cashier was a perfectly good social interaction.

But, the exchange of ideas, well, I miss that at times. It just occurred to me that I used to share the minutaie of life on this blog. I've been baking muffins of late, and if this were a year ago, I would have blogged about it every week. If it were two years ago, I would have blogged about it every time I baked a batch. I would have regaled or bored you, depending on your taste, with news of buckwheat, raisins, walnuts versus pecans, a new stainless steel cooling rack, why I want a professional muffin tin, muffin eating as addiction, my fear of getting fat on muffins, my distaste for the smell of buttermilk, the discovery of yoghurt as a perfect substitute, how recipes call for too much sugar, my constitutional inability to follow a recipe exactly, having two kinds of butter in the 'fridge, how my kitchen counter is impossible to keep clean and why, how this entry is making me want a muffin, and lastly, where the word "muffin" comes from. And that would not have been the last you'd hear of any of it, I'm sure.

And then there's my sudden fascination with the Civil War. I finally succumbed to a national obsession in this time of the tea parties, trying to make sense of this country of mine (and don't get me started on how I don't believe in nation states, and don't really think of this as "my country"). That, I believe, is what's driving my desire to get back to blogging. I'm fascinated with my own ignorance, and quite frankly, I'm horrified by other people's of late.

So, with that, merely a preamble to what, hopefully, will come, I'm about to conclude, well. . .nothing. Just saying hello, again: "Hello", and wondering what's been fascinating you.

Image note: When faced with the question "knit or write?", knitting has won out. In the last two weeks, I've knit five hats, two pairs of fingerless mitts, and one shawl, while listening to nearly 27 hours of Yale's David Blight lecturing on the Civil War. Lecturing! What a terrible word. It conjures up wagging fingers or watching a clock's second hand move oh so slowly clicking into place for what seems like an eternity as one waits for a bell to signal the end of a class taught by one who has long ago lost any passion for their subject matter. I hung on Professor Blight's every word, though I was knitting.

Yesterday's woods

I stopped and stared at a pile of scat. Something else was there, but I did not see it for a while. A porcupine's bones. I picked up one piece of vertebrae. The foramen (a fancy word for hole) once held the spinal cord. A sentient being! A little ways away was what was left of the jaw with teeth intact. The teeth were fascinating. They looked like little packets of paper burnt at the edges, only harder (like teeth).

One cedar twisted itself entirely around another tree. Another simply (simply?) twisted up to the sun. They all twist in the same direction. In the southern hemisphere, trees twist in the other direction. I thought of hula hooping. Most of us tend to spin the hoop clockwise. Do folks below the equator tend to spin the other way?

I'm delighted when I have questions like this. I feel grateful I have not lost my almost absurd curiosity.

In the woods, I felt awed, and I'm grateful, too, for that. Once, someone said to me, "Once you've seen one tree, you've seen them all." It was not in jest. Another person said the same thing to me about bald eagles with annoyance when I'd stopped my car to watch one swoop in from the bay.

I'd thought I'd lost all my "firsts" in life, and had been feeling wistful. It is not so. I had never seen a tree scratched by a bear until yesterday , nor had I seen a porcupine's tooth. But even if I had not seen these things, I am never bored by trees or birds or flowers or clouds or even a pile of dung. For this, I suppose I am lucky.

An afterthought: I feel I must have seen a a bear's scratchings before, in the Smoky Mountains certainly. . .but I have forgotten. Recently, someone told me that losing one's memory had a good side - one could re-read one's favorite books and be delighted (or not).

Blog, interrupted.

I listened to an old episode of This American Life today, called "Somewhere Out There", about finding "the one", that one true love, one special friend - y'know, all that youthful optimism of young friends and lovers - forever and ever, amen.

Well.

I took a pause, collected my thoughts, and then heard the sound of incoming email. Must check it! There's a link to a video, The Dead Weather on Letterman.

I may have lost my romanticism, but my love of rock n' roll is not dead. Is that romantic? Nah.I still like passion in music.

So, to heck with the wistful posting. What's left is a link to Randy Travis' sappy 1987 country hit, "Forever and Ever Amen", and the first paragraph, in which I accidentally referenced his song.

So much for getting back to blogging. Besides, I shouldn't be typing. I've got tendonitis and my hand hurts.

Since this has become a post full of references and links, here's a poem I once spent an awfully long time memorizing for you to munch on, "The Dirty Hand" by Carlos Drummond De Andrade, translated loosely by Mark Strand:

My hand is dirty.
I must cut it off.
To wash it is pointless.
The water is putrid.
The soap is bad.
It won’t lather.
The hand is dirty.
It’s been dirty for years.

I used to keep it out of sight,
in my pants pocket.
No one suspected a thing.
People came up to me,
Wanting to shake hands.
I would refuse
and the hidden hand,
like a dark slug,
would leave its imprint on my thigh.
And then I realized
it was the same
if I used it or not.
Disgust was the same.

Ah! How many nights
in the depths of the house
I washed that hand,
scrubbed it,
polished it, dreamed it would turn to diamond or crystal
or even, at last,
into a plain white hand,
the clean hand of a man,
that you could shake, or kiss,
or hold in one of those moments
when two people confess
without saying a word.
Only to have the incurable hand,
lethargic and crablike,
open its dirty fingers.

And the dirt was vile.
It was not mud or soot
or the caked filth of an old scab
or the sweat of a laborer’s shirt.
It was a sad dirt
made of sickness and human anguish.
It was not black;
black is pure.
It was dull,
a dull grayish dirt.
It is impossible
to live with this gross hand
that lies on the table.

Quick!
Cut it off!
Chop it to pieces
and throw it into the ocean.
With time,
with hope and its machinations,
another hand will come,
pure, transparent as glass,
and fasten itself to my arm.

Thinking about tattoos, still

A Facebook comment got me thinking about tattoos again. I suppose I do think about them often enough, as it is. After all, I was a tattooist for 15 years, a good chunk of my life. Often, I long to do it again, but my hands are shot. I had tattooed for some years that way, and I was hurting myself daily, and not being able to work as well as I once did. I couldn't live with that, and so I stopped.

I also had terribly mixed feelings about tattoos themselves. I never understood the urge to be a tattooed person, though I had it myself. The first time I saw someone being tattooed, not a tattoo itself, I wanted to get one. I went to every tattoo shop I could find (not an easy task way back when), and was refused over and over. I wasn't yet 18. Luckily, I knew no one who tattooed from their home and it never occurred to me to pick up a needle and ink and do it myself.

The other thing that made me wait was one tattoo artist that told me not to get a tattoo until I was absolutely sure I'd never be a part of normal society. This in itself will give some idea of how long ago this was.

In spite of the fact that approximately 1 in 8 people in the United States now have at least one tattoo, I still hold that there is something essentially true about the seemingly outdated advice that this unknown tattooist gave to me.

The motivations for marking one's skin permanently are myriad, and so little examined by those that get and give them. Just ask yourself this simple question, "Would you want to wear the same shirt for the rest of your life?" Some might say "yes" with comfort and perhaps even pride. Bikers wear their jackets and their colors for a lifetime, or hope that they will. Same with a military person, anyone who wears a uniform.

Therein lies the contradiction of the identity of a tattooed person. The notion is that a tattoo reflects a person's unique identity, but the tattoo marks that identity now as a "tattooed person." Not so unique, no matter how hard one tries. Add to this that what one's tattoo looks like the same ones of those you identity with and what the passing fads of the year are, and the conundrum multiplies.

Here in New York, I'm seeing hundreds of Japanese sleeves these days. Beautiful art, no doubt, but identity? What part of a person finds meaning in the goldfish, the tiger, the rolling clouds, the lightning, the ties to the centuries of Japanese culture and to the Yakuza? Borrowed imagery, borrowed identity. For years it was "tribal" work, other years a million Godsmack suns across America, Japanese calligraphy, Celtic knots. . .

Upon my own body, I have a mishmash of borrowed culture. There's nothing wrong with that in itself, but ultimately, I see it as empty. For years, I covered my arms and legs. The weather is getting warm, and now I have little choice but to uncover. The person who acquired these tattoos long ago is no longer with me. Who I am today is not who I was decades ago. I am not ashamed of my tattoos but it's not who I am. I am not part of the heavily tattooed "tribe", even if I look like it.

I hear about pride at having the guts to wear such altered skin forever. This is a false pride and a false stance. It's a scream that demands a response from strangers at first meeting: "accept me." I find this a childish notion. It is the cry of a little child who needs unconditional love. It's the longing for belonging. It's the desire to have others accept us as we are underneath the skin, and that altered skin wears the owner's longings for a lifetime.

As tattoos became more acceptable, those who felt as outsiders turned to more drastic measures to set themselves apart - tattooing their hands, faces, necks, places that could not be hidden. They say it takes strength to wear these marks. I contend this is a false strength, or an empty challenge. Life's struggles are hard enough without having to win over every stranger who judges. And yes, they will judge. You who have tattoos may balk at those who do judge, and align oneself with those who were born with skin color that causes them the same problems. On the other hand, oddly, some of the most heavily tattooed white people are racist. Try to figure that one out.

At the heart of the matter, I have held for years that the resurgence of tattoos obviates a deeper problem in society. We all yearn to belong to a tribe, even more than we yearn for individuality. We also yearn for ritual and meaning where there is seemingly little left. And so, we go to the tattoo shop and unconsciously pray that we'll have an experience that will change us, mark us, fix us, fix us in time, memorialize this or that moment, our grief, our happiness, our idealism, our rage, our fears, or conquer our fears, or make us learn some lesson, or man up, or give us relief through going through some pain. The reasons are endless.

I live with my tattoos. I rather wish I had none, that I could wipe my skin clean. Other days I do wish the bad tattoos were covered up, the old ones touched up, and the unfinished ones finished. And yes, I also yearn for a Japanese sleeve, though I'd need a third arm for that. Even I, who's given this years and years of thought, still find it a mystery, though, in the end, I do think it's a search for self, and a part of the mistaken desire to absolutely once and for all be sure of who that self is, and as a Zen Buddhist, I have to say, grasping at the permanence of the tattoo to deal with this dilemma is searching in the wrong place.

Blog posts that trigger memories

Over at Perfume Shrine, there's two posts that brought up memories for me. One is about the closing of the Japanese department store Takashimaya. I've never never been to their glistening new store in New York, but when I was a young girl, my mother and I would make yearly pilgrimages to their seemingly secret one, which, in my memories (that may be wildly inaccurate), was easy to miss, even though it was right on 5th Avenu. We'd go to the virtually empty store and wander around in awe at the beautiful, impossibly expensive and elegant merchandise. The salespeople were cool but friendly, and it seemed no one spoke English. But, we loved it, and we considered it our store, and our big secret. Did we ever purchase anything? Perhaps, but my memories are dim. We may have bought chopsticks, or had tea. I do not recall much except my awe, and the knowledge that being poor and loving such elegance was a frustrating combination, even as a child. My mother loved window shopping at high-end stores, but she preferred actually shopping at bargain basements where she could rummage through the merchandise. She preferred acrylic to wool, thought linen was useless because one had to iron it, and didn't give a hoot that a pair of cheap shoes might last all of two wearings. I was a little snob. From an early age, I wanted handmade shoes that would last a lifetime.

Another post at Perfume Shrine shows us some truly fun antique perfume dispensing machines. Check it out! They are fun just to look at.

I'm sure I've encountered one in my early childhood. The minute I saw the first red one (check the site!), memories of my grandmother flashed through my mind. It's plausible that I did use one, or at least saw one, when having lunch with my grandmother and mom in the City. Or maybe it just reminds me of the years when these things were still lurking in the bathrooms of places now long gone. I'm sure it wasn't in the automat, yet the automat, too, flitted through my mind's eye when I saw the picture. I'd be duplicating old posts by writing more here. Go here to read about the automat and other bits of a lost New York, and here for memories of my grandmother.

Looking over these old posts is illuminating. I was pining for New York way back in 2008. I was also a much more interesting blogger back then. At some point, I ran and out of inspiration but kept on writing. I hope that the rest of 2010 sees a return to more interesting posts!

Photo note: I believe that when I was a kid, this was the only indication that there was a store inside the building. No wonder it was nearly empty.

I had forgotten about depression

I spent about an hour trying to untangle some balls of yarn earlier today. What a waste of time. I wound up throwing the lot in the garbage. Surrounded by bags of trash, empty bags, bags of unfinished projects, bags of scrap fabric, bags within bags, bags of receipts, bags of things for projects never started, bags, bags, and more bags, while sitting upon a rug that hasn't been vacuumed in who knows how long, I wondered how it had come to this. I've never been a slob, yet I was sitting in piles of evidence that I've been one. Huh?

I forgot I'd been depressed. Seems ridiculous, to be sure, since depression, unhappiness, or whatever one wants to call it, has been the ball and chain that's dragged me down for years. How can one forget that so easily? Perhaps this is another reason I'm finding this packing business so difficult. I'm sitting in my own shit, every day, seeing what a mess I had made of my life, and sifting through the tangible wreckage is exhausting.

I've got piles of books I'll never have use for, and it's not because I love books (though I do). It's because I have books about medical transcription, massage, medical billing and coding (what was I thinking?). . .piles of books that evidence my flailing about trying to find a new path in life.

It's not that I feel remorse for any of it. I don't. I think of past flailing, past errors, past anything, as fodder, and I'm lucky for it. Living with regrets is a killer, and it's a soul killer that seems to haunt so many people I know.

I've had rough times, but I am grateful I don't spend much time with the "what ifs?" What a horrendous waste of time and energy they are. We can what if ourselves into true misery. For everything we do, there is always an alternative, and though It's sometimes a useful exercise to wonder about where another path might have taken us, looking back and thinking we've done the wrong thing is mostly an exercise in self-loathing.

Recently someone said to me "You should never have moved to Maine." Absurd! First off, telling anyone that they've made a mistake with nearly twenty years of their life is just plain impolite, if nothing else. Leaving that aside, I just don't believe that even the worst mistakes should be seen as "wrong." Within every thing we do there's an opportunity to learn and to grow, and for that simple reason alone, so-called mistakes can be seen as wonderful things.

I used to feel "less-than" compared to people who had one thing they'd done with their lives and done it well. Amongst my relatives, leading a linear life was held up as the ideal, and those who did otherwise were seen as fooling around. Now, I'm grateful that i've not lead a linear life and that I've tried many things.

As for Maine, in these 19 years, I've done so much. I've raised sheep, woven linen and tartans on huge 19th century looms, communed with moose and ermine and had bats, rats, squirrels, chipmunks, turkeys, goats and lambs right in my own home, grown my own food, owned a tattoo shop, learned to live without running water, electricity, indoor plumbing (and all the things of modern life), met people who had jobs I'd never dreamed of (worm diggers, for instance). . .the list of riches here is long. So, now, I've not got a big 401K plan, or a paid-off mortgage, or any of the things that a linear life would have given me, but, my goodness, I'm glad for all of it.

There's been losses, huge losses, and there's been pain, and life has been tough. But, even as I write that I think "so what?" Life has been rich and life could have been richer. It's been what it was. I'm not disowning any of it. I feel badly that people do disown vast stretches of their lives. What a terrible thing to do to oneself.

Painting note: I was going to post a Resurrection painting, but then i found this. I am more than fond of Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen's portraits, but I don't recall ever seeing this intrguing painting, "Saul and the Witch of Endor"(1565). As a kid, I used to spend many a weekend at the Museum of Metropolitan Art, spending inordinate amounts of time in the portrait galleries. Click the link to see some of my favorite work. It fascinated me then how I could feel as if I was communicating with people whose lives were inconceivable to me, and it still does. For me, a great portrait conveys a life; one can see it in the eyes. The dead do not die through this work. The afterlife? Literally, I do not believe in it, but i don't feel the need. Music and art fill that void (if indeed there is a void to fill).

Not a procrastination post. . .(okay, it is)

I've just stopped dead (from packing, that is).

Tomorrow is Saturday, but I need a day of rest. I feel I ought to write about packing, but what is there to say? Packing is an awful business. Some people dislike it because it's a chore. Some dislike it because it brings up memories. I've figured out what it is I don't like about it: I shows me that I'm a slob. You may not think so if you visited, but my closets, and rooms that are not used (and therefore are just large closets) are evidence that I need to seriously think about my organizational habits. I make sure that what others can see is tidy. Otherwise, the hidden space in my life operates on this rule: "open door and throw stuff in." That's fine if one lives in one house for the rest of one's life, but when moving, it's hell. Not only do I need to go through all this clutter, I'm confronted by a dysfunctional behavior in myself that I don't like.

In my new apartment, there is only one small closet. So, I'm going to have to mend my ways, and I'm pleased that that will be forced upon me.

So, I got the moving part of this post out of the way.

On to other things. I've been blog surfing this morning and here's what I note: Popular blogs, unless they're written by famous people, give lots of stuff away, have lots of links to other personal blogs. and basically operate like Facebook with prizes. Long entries are not common (unless they're written by well-known authors). Lots of magazine style graphics are the norm. Comments are are way longer than posts. Lots of advertising.

Okay. I have none of that. I vowed I'd not use Adsense. I do have links to commercial sites but they're hard to find. My posts are often quite long. I'm not famous. I could be, but I don't use the has-been stuff to promote myself. Every time I think of doing so, I bristle. I am nearly appalled by old acquiantances who use what they've done oh-so-long-ago to keep their names alive in the public eye. How can anyone stand to be known for one thing they've done when they were kids? There's something creepy about it to me. Am I engaging in this just by bringing it up?

I have problems with the fame thing. I hated when I brushed up against it. I suppose some of what I didn't like had nothing to do with fame itself, but with being admired for something I was neither proud of or felt authentic. I also disliked what I've come to think of as the "Kurt Cobain syndrome" - knowing that many people who admired you would have rather beat you up than be seen with you once, and now claimed friendship. Poor Kurt, he never lived past that.

Nowadays, stuff like that makes me laugh. When I was 20, it made me angry and sad.

When I was looking for an apartment, I saw a few people i hadn't seen in over twenty years at a reunion gig of an old roadie's band. Truth is, it was truly sweet seeing these old friends. I don't remember knowing them well, and have a feeling I did not, but I wasn't much of a talker back when I was young. In fact, I was a total jerk who basically glared at anyone who deigned to speak to me. My default mode was being angry (or at least looking that way).

There was a menacing looking fellow named Von Lmo whom my old band did some gigs with, and I discovered that he was frightened of me! This, and other information I gleaned along the years, made me realize that I had developed a most threatening demeanor, which screamed "stay away from me!" I wore that like a skin for years, half consciously.

Being in the City without that cloak of menace is wonderful. One lovely evening last week I watched a man play the cello in Washington Square Park. He was wonderful, took my request (Bach's Cello Suite #4). Silly me, I would have preferred Suite #1, but I figured it was too common for his taste. I stood there smiling, rapturous, and he gave me a CD, on which was my beloved Suite #1, played with some improvisation. Delightful! If I still played the cello, I'd riff on that piece, too.

Yeah, this entry was another Seinfeldian piece about nothing much at all. I am not focused. I need to have my space set up and be back at spinning and making things! Soon enough. . .soon enough. . .

Photo note: The engaging cellist, Peter Lewy.

Trying to cure life

Last night I re-read my sidebar. I wrote that I'm a person who's struggled with depression. I came close to deleting the whole thing, but I was tired. I started writing this entry, but I put it in the drafts folder where things always languish and die. For the first time, I'm interested enough to go back and finish what I started; that's a big thing for me!

What is this thing called depression, anyway? It's been called a disease, and the drug companies sure would like us all to believe that, for diseases can be cured with medication. Anti-depressants have never worked for me, so what have the doctors said? "You have medication resistant depression." Intractable. Oh, a very bad case indeed!

When I was in high school, I read R.D.Laing's "Sanity, Madness, and the Family." This book saved my sanity. The quick and dirty explanation of what Laing wrote is that the "crazy people" were having reasonable responses to insane circumstances. I was a miserable kid with a host of problems who started going to shrinks at a young age. But what good was that (especially back then), when they couldn't get my family to change their crazy-making behavior? If only there was behavioral therapy back then, the shrinks may have been helpful. I would have learned better coping skills. I'm grateful I'm not a teenager now, for I'd have been drugged to the eyeteeth. My own self-medicating, I'm sure, was a whole lot less harmful in the long run.

So, this brings me to what I was thinking about earlier. Can we drug people out of feeling unhappy? As far as I can tell, most depressed people are depressed because of something. I used to balk at that idea when I was feeling at my worst, for it challenged me to examine my life and make changes. Oh no, there's nothing wrong! I just have the "disease of depression."

Is it even ethical to drug people who are unsatisfied with their lives, their jobs, their marriages, their finances, and even their health? I'm beginning to think not. Why don't we just hand out heroin to the entire populace? That would solve everyone's ills, and quite inexpensively, too. But that won't do, for big pharma wouldn't make the big bucks.

We don't hear much of the word "unhappy" these days. We hear people use the word "happiness" quite a lot, but it's flip side has fallen into disuse. What if therapists stopped using the word "depression" and used the word "unhappy" instead?

For one thing, there'd be an awful lot of angry patients. Imagine if you will a woman who's married to an unemployed drunk, is saddled with a posse of kids, does all the housework and cooking and has a low-paying 40-hour a week job, whose home is falling down around her, has a car that needs works but can't afford it, and is being harrassed by social services because those kids are doing poorly in school and they think she needs to spend more quality time with them. That sounds like a lot of people around here.

So, this imaginary woman is stressed out and unhappy. She's been unhappy so long that she has a pessimistic mindset and, yes, is depressed. All the joys in life, which are there on occasion, give her little pleasure. For one thing, she's too tired to feel much pleasure. She hurts all over because she's sleep deprived and eats a terrible diet of over-processed food straight from the microwave.

When this woman finally makes it to a psychiatrist's office, as she might, she's diagnosed with major depression. Oh, the notes might say there's mitigating circumstances, but doesn't everyone have them? What does she get? Prescriptions. Something to make her feel more upbeat, even if there's nothing to be upbeat about. Maybe she'll get some painkillers, too. Five years down the road she'll be in rehab and on Seboxyn.

What if, instead, her living problems were addressed? Well, no, one can't do that. But, if one stops for a moment and thinks about the price of meds and doctors and shrinks and social service workers, giving this woman a monthly stipend so she can work less outside the home, or hire a bi-weekly housecleaner, or whatever might ease some of her burden, well, it'd be a bargain. But no, that is just too simple And, on top of that, tea-party types would say we're handing out checks to folks who've made their own dirty beds and deserve to lay in them.

Well, to those who think the above, everyone is paying a lot for a huge bulk of our society's unhappy overburdened people already. What do you think is best? Enforced sterilization for the poor or soon-to-be-poor?

So, we've got a society in which we have many chronically unhappy people. It's not limited to the poor, of course, but poverty is the great equalizer in terms of creating misery. Sure, one can live in poverty and be happy, but it's not normative, especially in this society where families and communities are fractured, total self-reliance is the norm, and having money and lots of stuff is the barometer of success. This last bit alone is a major cause of unhappiness in itself. Any day of the week, one can read an inspiring story on the Web or watch one on TV about vibrant happy people who live in dire circumstances, but they are regarded as freakish exceptions. The reasons why these folks are doing so well are not examined closely enough. We study disease and dis-ease, not happiness.

And then, the drug companies do not want us to know about how to improve our resiliency and health. Where would they be if we all woke up to the simple physical and mental health-affirming realities of good support systems, life-in-community, and finding true meaning and purpose in these lives of ours?

What if the doctors simply diagnosed "unhappiness"?

I think it would cause a revolution. We all know intuitively that pills can't cure the pain of unhappiness. Numb a person out enough, and they will feel better (or at least they'll feel less), but a nation of zombies we will become. I fear, sadly, that this is what we're becoming.

I, for one, am glad I woke up. I was unhappy. I may be unhappy again. That's life.

Image note: Adriaen Pietersz van de Venne "Allegory of Poverty" c.1630

Stuff

Once upon a time, I was really good about not collecting stuff. I had a rule that if I had something that I hadn't used for 6 months, I would get rid of it. As the years passed, time started flying by, and I no longer lived in cramped quarters, so that wonderful rule faded away. Though truth is, nowadays I would up it to one year. Six months? That doesn't even cover all the seasons!

I'm going through my stuff right now, and there's stuff I still haven't unpacked from when I moved into where I'm moving out of now. It's ridiculous!

Luckily for me, most of this stuff is easy to get rid of. There's no emotional baggage attached to piles and piles of magazines I've saved for doing collage. Some people would not agree, I know. Those are really good magazines for collage!

But no, out it goes. I'd like to give it someone who would like it, but if not, it's garbage. Oh well. Do you want it?

The real reason I'm blogging right now is because I don't want to face all that stuff. It's overwhelming. That's part of the horror of having too much stuff.

I like the word (as if you couldn't tell). From the moment I started writing this, I've thought about Carlin's routine, which I certainly can't top with my words!

". . .that's all your house is. . . a pile of stuff with a cover on it. . ."

Almost raw!

Today, if you offered me a choice between some barbecued ribs and a big bowl of fresh greens with avocado, I'd pick the greens. Okay, maybe I'd have a wee bite of the ribs, but that'd be it.

I feel so good after eating my huge dinner salad that I'd be hard pressed to give that up, even if someone waved a magic wand over my head and made my health problems go away. Hold on - that just made no sense. If I already felt great, and eating certain foods wouldn't affect me adversely, would I go on eating such a (supposedly) limited diet?

No doubt about it - YES!

Everything tastes so much better! My dinner salad takes me almost an hour to eat because I'm chewing so slowly. Tonight I had some fresh mung bean sprouts and the sweetest lightly cooked asparagus. Why would I want to wolf them down and miss the delights of how they taste?

One reason fast food is fast is because if one spent time savoring it, one would notice quickly that it doesn't taste all that good. The more raw food I eat, the more I can taste the chemicals, or notice the lack of taste, in processed food.

This past week I've been eating a lot of carrot sticks. That's what I really meant to blog about. I used to balk, scoff, even occasionally snarl, at the very idea of eating carrot sticks as a snack. C'mon! Telling dieters to eat carrot sticks instead of, say, a milk shake, is absurd. No one really wants a carrot stick, right? It's a farce. Carrot sticks' only purpose is to provide a colorful but cheap choice on a buffet table and a stupid, useless, and totally uncreative snacking solution for dieters.

But wait a minute - they taste good. How did I not notice that before? I've always loved carrot juice, and fresh carrots pulled right from the earth (especially the round ones, whatever their name is), but the carrot stick, well. . .phfft.

Come to think of it, I've always loved anything carrot-y. I used to make a light beef stew in which I'd place a pound of uncut carrots. i think carrot cake is the best cake there is. I adore carrot muffin. I used to also make a three color pate which had a layer made of carrots (an entire day's work for that baby). When I was a kid, I loved my grandmother's plain cooked carrots. I don't know what the deal was with her carrots, but one could always poke out the centers with one's tongue. For a child, this is simply too much fun!

Now I'm munching on carrot sticks without any resentment. That's the key. It's not that I'm craving something else and that carrot stick is a poor substitute - i want a carrot! What not to love? They're a beautiful shade of orange and they're crunchy.

I added Choosing Raw to my blog links before i wrote this post. There's many raw foods blogs out there, but I like this one a lot. Besides the friendly writing and good recipes, Gena has a great photo of an avocado right there in her banner. And for me, finding her blog was particularly great, for she's right in New York City, and I'm sure i'll be availing myself of her restaurant tips and such. Go check it out. If you like wheatgrass juice (I don't), she's got a wheatgrass juicer to give away to one lucky person.

Now, I'm gonna finish up drinking my soy not-so-smoothie. I'm looking forward to making my own fresh soy milk when i get settled in in my new digs.

Photo note: Neither round nor orange, these are Purple Haze carrots. For a ridiculously large selection of carrot seeds, go to Johnny's. Sigh. Now i want go grow carrots. It figures that I'm moving to the city now. But, it' s New York City, and I'm sure I'll be able to buy purple carrots if I want to, or maybe next year I'll join a community garden. Now, that sounds delightful!

I am having altogether too much fun

Spent part of an evening making these. What are they? I don't know yet. That's the really fun part.

When all is said and done, I'm quite easy to entertain, aren't I?

Uh oh. . .

. . .all the action still is over at the Scenic Turnout. But, I had an idea for a post about something a little earlier. Only thing is, i preferred to go card up a batt for spinning.

Moved

It's day twelve of the Olympics. I hadn't watched anything but a few moments of it.

I tend to think of the Olympics as a huge advertising festival. The enormity of that has wiped away wonderful childhood memories of watching the Olympics with great enjoyment. When I was ten years old, I watched speed skating with other children in a strange hotel for kids on the North Sea in the Netherlands. I couldn't speak or understand Dutch, but I loved skating, and we all watched with smiles on our faces.

But then came the up close and personals, and the Tanya Harding episode, and all the athletes plastered in endorsement patches. So, this year, when I realized I couldn't watch it on TV, and then came to find out that I could only see clips on-line, well, I said "I've got better things to do with my time."

But tonight, I watched some figure skating. Wow. Were they always this good?

But, nothing prepared me for the raw footage with no screaming commentators of the two young Estonians dancing to Metallica's "Nothing Else Matters." I love that I have no idea what the experts thought. I love that she has braces, and he's got yellow teeth and looks all of sixteen. They danced with such intensity. Oh yes, they skated. Nothing else mattered.

No commentary? I can think whatever I like.

Image note: From overhead shots of the ice dancing, here. Hey, I just found out the names of the Estonians, and they're Irina Shtork and Taavi Rand, and, well, she is 16 years old. What did you do at 16? On a night such as this, I was probably doing bong hits with some friends. . .

On this most rainy day

There's memories of late summer over at the Scenic Turnout.