[life] Irrational Fears

I think it's time I stopped being afraid of the dentist. I have a very nice dentist who certainly doesn't warrant the fingernail creases I put in his chairs everytime I'm there. I am aware that it's irrational and stupid and a bit childish, and I'm a adult, dammit.

In sheer pain terms, the only really bad time I've ever had was when I had my wisdom teeth out, and that didn't really hurt until afterward. Getting a tattoo hurts more than getting a filling. It's not about the pain, that's the problem. It's about lack of control, and not being able to see what's going on, and about a lack of trust for people in white masks holding little mirrors on the end of sticks...

Damn you, elementary school dentist.

I think that I will bring some music or something in with me next time and just try and tune out everything that's going on. Some nice relaxing instrumental stuff, or possibly some episodes of "This American Life." Try not to be there, try not to be so focused on ohmigod he's bringing in the drill again, dear god why can't I just be gassed for this. We'll see how it goes.

[life] brain - on

Things I learned today:

Lance Armstrong has some sort of mutant circulatory system that allows him to maximize his power-per-pound output.

Strawberries soaked in Grand Marnier are delicious.

Hurricane Katrina is expected to destroy New Orleans. Like, mutant Japanese monster destruction. Like when you used to play SimCity and turned the "natural disaster" button all the way up to max. May God or his/her equivalent deity/power of choice be with you, New Orleans. I wish that I'd gone to Mardi Gras when I had the chance, because you are a beautiful city and if Katrina doesn't turn aside, it's going to be a major loss to the U.S. cultural scene.

[life] whoopsie! There she goes.

I sprained my ankle. Not in any fantastic, sex or life threatening situation related way, either. I did it like a little old lady, by coming down some stairs and missing the last one. I fell, and I couldn't get up.

Enter a week of enforced inactivity. I was all set up to be super bored, or else get a lot of sit-down sort of work done, like, oh, writing or something similar, but here I am at Friday and what have I done? Nothing of any particular use.

Well, I did the laundry. Sort of. There's still some in the dryer.

What the hell happens to time as you get older? Seriously. I'm wondering if it maybe relates to how much energy you have. Such as, five year olds are the biological equivalent of an exploding atom bomb, and twenty minutes in time-out to them is an eternity. Twenty minutes to me is the amount of time in between my decision to read and the actual opening of a book. Where does that time go? I have no idea. But I sure could use a nap.

I've always felt secretly superior to people with heavy duty caffiene habits. Okay, not so secretly. But maybe those people, the ones who come dragging into work like partially deflated balloons and suck up a double long expresso like it's the last few drops of fermented camel milk in the sahara are the ones who have it all pegged.

[writing] lo, it is written

Back from the tattoo artist. Loving the new ink. Pics soon, when it stops oozing and starts to look more like itself. The only place that really hurt was when she was working on the middle of the piece, which is right over my spine. The general rule of tattooing is that the more flesh and skin and fat between the needle and your bones, the less it hurts. When she was working over my sacrum, I could feel these hot, sparkly flashes of pain all the way up my spine to the base of my skull.

I think that I like the actual experience of getting tattooed almost as much as having the thing on me afterward. It hurts, yes, but it is also a conduit to an incredible, visceral connection with my body that I experience otherwise only in sex. Which is not to say that getting tattooed turns me on, only that it makes me very aware of myself as a thing of flesh and nerve endings and breath... It's intense.

When I got the tiny green leaf on my left ankle at the age of eighteen, I certainly didn't know why I was doing it, other than that I was young and newly independant and my parents couldn't say no. I'm glad I was conservative and went with something small and relatively inobtrusive. The friend who went with me got a fairly large and gaudy dagger and rose combo all up her calf. I did my best to talk her out of it, but she was adamant. I wonder sometimes what she thinks of it now. I'm still quite fond of my little green leaf - now joined by four more, trailing down the top of my foot - and I understand a bit better the impulse that drove me to it. I was marking my body as my own. I was stating that I controlled it now, that it was up to me what happened to it and what didn't, and a tattoo was the best and most permanent way to declare that to the world. I still like my leaf, but more as a piece of decoration than for what it means to me.

The set I'm slowly building on my back are rather more. What I felt as the artist drew fire across my flesh was a deep and abiding contentment. My back, white skin and stark black ink, is my testiment to what writing means to me.

[writing] my body, my blank page

And such a pure white page it is, too. It's only fitting that I write on it.

Two years ago I got this tattoo as both a promise and a celebration. I made the choice to pursue my writing seriously, with the solid goal of publication, and chose this design to echo what I felt to be important to me as a writer. The Elvish is of course for Tolkien, and my love of fantasy. It says "My silence will not save me," which is a paraphrased quote from the writing of Audre Lorde, a famous and brilliant feminist poet.

I reached my first goal this past April and now it's time to record and celebrate that by going back to Alex, my tattoo artist, and beginning the Book of Me.

A black base piece that echos the themes of the frame at the top, and then a branch climbing my spine with the name of my published poem in Elvish script will be etched into my skin on Saturday. It's both a reward and a further promise to myself. I've taken the first step, and now it's up to me to keep moving. My writing has been at a standstill, more or less, for months. Time to rededicate myself.

Perhaps in ten years time my back will be an extensive record of a rich and diverse career. Perhaps the branches will be sparse and few. Perhaps there will still only be the one word, solitary and small. But I will not have been silent, whatever the outcome.