i am filing this primarily under "family textiles" (a rather chilling post-halloween suggestion, really), but it is the living, pulsing, arm and shoulder of my oldest friend, rai. (sometimes ray.)
rai has a lot of birds in her house. cats and dogs too, but she really likes birds.
and she really likes tattoos. she's had quite a few done on her over the years. it seems lately she is picking up speed (both she and her partner carole are, actually.) she's getting these feathers done currently, and from what i can tell, there isn't an end in sight.
tattoos. as with anything else, it really depends on the person who has them, how seriously they need to be taken. there was a discussion at the office about this last week: a young woman was rather painting herself into a corner by insinuating that people who didn't want to get tattooed must not have anything in life that they feel strongly enough about. if they didn't want it drawn on their flesh, they must not be committed to it -- be it a partner, family member, hammerhead shark, or whatever.
luckily, someone (not me!) responded to this young woman's challenge with the calm assertion that it might in fact be the tattooed folk who were less sure of their own devotion -- otherwise, why did they have to try so hard to advertise it to the world? what was the matter with privately and quietly re-asserting that particular loyalty, to person or shark or sports team or whatever, in one's own mind, day by day? and for that matter, this person also said, they had never seen a tattoo that made a person look better anyway.
this wasn't a long dialogue, thankfully, but it was nice to hear two sides of it.
where would rai fit into this dialogue? first of all, she'd probably be bottlefeeding a tiny macaw hatchling in her pocket and wouldn't be listening. rai is on the extreme end of the tattooing spectrum, but she means it. rai has the courage of her convictions.
those convictions were put to the test for me when she got the "tank girl" tattoo. i thought, oh god, why are you doing that? why not just get an "urkel" tattoo? but rai still loves her tank girl tattoo. and that is why it is cool.
and the feathers -- the feathers are just cool because they are cool. because now she has feathers.
i have known rai since i was fifteen, and i worked washing dishes in the kitchen of the boarding school she attended. rather romantic! she was my maid of honor in my wedding, and whatnot. (that was, in fact, nine years ago... today!) rai's been happy with some of her tattoos longer than i was happy being married. "tank girl", "holy matrimony"... can't say one's more important than the other in this house, can we?
hey, did you notice that i did not title this entry "becoming papagena"? i didn't, did i? i've mentioned, haven't i, how i hate those verb(ing ending) + proper noun titles for things. they are rampant. in the few minutes before i fall asleep at night, i tell
ben
stories about how i want to cultivate microbes that eat all the useless things in the world, like the dead skin on one's feet, and books and movies with verb(ing ending)+ proper noun titles. when will it ever, ever stop?