Friday, January 22, 2010

A New Beginning


About a week ago I got my third tattoo. For those of you who don't know me very well, I dream about a full sleeve which may or may not happen. Doesn't matter really. But, to that end I have been saving scraps of drawings, tattoos and designs that I find powerful and that have meaning to me. So when I decided to get a new tat, I simply opened the file folder to see which one it was time for. I was certain it would be my beloved kitsune, but no. File after file were opened and I heard 'NO'. One of the last files I opened contained a really beautiful watercolor drawing that I had saved but told myself even as I tucked it into the folder 'Oh that's not for me'. When I opened that one I heard a resounding 'YES'. Really? I think to myself. I didn't save that one for me.

But I like it so off I go and get it tattooed onto my right shoulder. (yesyes - this is exactly backwards of how most people decide things like this. All I can say is COYOTE - remember). Even as it begins to peel, I notice that things have shifted significantly and that I am more balanced than I have been in quite a while. WTF? So I do what perhaps I should have done before the tattoo, I open a dialogue with the helper it represents. Turns out that it is my keeper of the Dreamtime - or the Shamanic Realm if you will. I remember how many times this exact helper has been brought in or recognized near me and how many times I have said 'Oh, that's not for me'.

I think the things that hung me up are that I know someone whose major helper is the same. Wanting to be different perhaps I discounted it as MY helper. What was I waiting for I wonder now? Mostly the thing that I struggled with is that when people would tell me they saw this helper, I immediately got a picture of it here in this reality. And that never felt 'right' for me. But they were right. It's just that this helper exists only in the Shamanic realm and as such has no form like what we would recognize here. The painting that I liked enough to save even though it 'wasn't me' was an abstraction of this power helper.

Last winter I got a tattoo to remind me to live in the present moment, to laugh, to take things less seriously and to say fuck it if people don't like it. The year that followed was an exercise in doing that. The last bit of the year felt logy and my connection to my peeps a bit tattered. This tattoo it seems is about my connection to my peeps, the other side and to walk in the Shaman's footprints. Seemingly opposite things. Here and now. And all heres and all nows. But if you think about it this is really just another of those dichotomous things that I seem to accept. Science v. Spirituality. Reason v. Feeling. Real world v. Other world.

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