tylluan

Have had consult with artist AND done my prelim sketch.

...and has also been sent to my parents, in the hopes to un-horrify them well before any actual tattooing takes place. (Plus it’d be nice if they could come around to support the idea and maybe chip in as a birthday present or the like.)

Thoughts:
(composed after watching The Fountain)
The [movie & the graphic novel] were actually very similar, even in imagery. It’s hard to say which one was more coherent – the movie made sense sooner, but also derailed from its logic more, towards the end. I’d have to check to see if the endings were actually the same – I think not, but both were satisfying. The movie imagery was not quite as lovely as the book, though it had some very beautiful moments, some of which were only possible on-screen. A lot of work with very close-up shots that were really interesting and well done. Interesting camera work in general, actually. One thing I really missed in the movie was the importance and prevalence of the main character’s tattoos – when he was in space in the graphic novel, he was naked, and you could see the tattoos all over him. Gorgeous ones, and many many to count the years. There was much less emphasis on this in the movie (what with Mr Hugh Jackman not being naked) and in a way what we did see made less sense, without the rest of the context… ah well. Both were good. Sad, but in that good way. Heartbreaking and comforting at the same time.

I like the idea of his tattoos. They’re rings. Started with his wedding ring, a ring there. Then more rings all over to mark the passage of time. Like tree-rings, but not concentric. It makes me think… While wandering through some truly odd search results a few days ago, I ended up on a writer’s blog. No one I knew – not surprising, writers’ blogs are a dime a dozen – but I read a bit of it anyway. One of the things she mentioned was an exercise from a workshop she’d been in, about age and empowerment, or something. The exercise was to imagine yourself at your 80th birthday party. What were you doing, how were you celebrating, what would you wear, whom would you invite, what would you think about? You had 10 minutes. Go. The writer discussed how the group had felt surprised, happy, relieved – amazed to know that they were having fun at 80, surprised to think it was possible, happy and relieved to have seen this potential future for themselves. She touched only lightly on the last component of the exercise: what advice would your 80-year-old self give to you now? Or just, what would she say?

That’s where the exercise really connected to me, oddly. It seems so absurd – how can you know now what you’ll know and be wise about decades away? who knows what events will shape that future? – but I had a Moment, of absolute centered silence and stillness, and I knew what my older self would tell me, now:

We survived.

Even when I am not in a lot of pain, even when I am otherwise very much not depressed, there is a part of me that is certain I will not grow old, that my life will fold in before I get a chance. Something will happen, my body will finally break too badly, and it will give up and end things, or I will. When, I don’t know, or how, but there’s a part of my mind that says, yes, I suppose this will happen someday; might as well accept it. It makes me sad. I’d like to be an old person someday. I think it would be interesting. Maybe even fabulous. And I have things to do! But more than anything else, being old would mean that I was wrong. That despite all the fucking crap my body throws at me, it kept working, or I did. I triumphed. I lived. I survived.

So I was thinking, watching the Fountain, that time is a trial, each day or each week or each year tries me. What’s important is to recognise the successes, as much as the failures. More. I have been alive for twenty-one and a half years. For twenty-one and a half years, I have won.

And I wondered, watching, thinking, about how to make this thought more permanent. Making an undeniable statement of my victories, regularly, against plain old damn Time. I like the idea of an additive tattoo, a reminder for yourself, marking. Claiming. Because writing on your body is very much, to my understanding of it, a statement of ownership. This vessel, it is mine. I own it, I claim it, I change it as I will. I live in it. I survive in it. It is mine.
(/previously written part)

It’d go on my hip, my right hip, trailing down onto the outside of my thigh, probably. I’ve sketched the lineart (which is what I think I’d want; a lineart, black ink only); it’d be a little island of a tree, roots coming through the bottom, solid trunk, branches stretching up, empty, awaiting their leaves. One leaf per year. Other things could be added if necessary as commemoration for major life events… a bird, a flower, a spiderweb, fruit. In a way it’d become a tree of (my) life, a map of who I become. I like it. A lot.

sweater (duster actually): purchased!

one sweater’s worth of yarn, maybe plus some, for $9. it’s a nice autumn-tone variegated.