51 posts from November 2007

very fresh ink

1 comment

I get tattoos for specific reasons.  Not generally on a whim.  Today was part whim, part specific reasons.  The tattoo is an adaptation of a necklace I purchased during the weekend when I really started to question how happy I was in my marriage and whether or not I was living true to me.  I only recognize this looking back as the beginning of the road to self awareness that I'm on.  So when K's mom said she wanted a tattoo and K asked if I wanted to go with her and get one, I said sure.  And the artist made this from the metal necklace I wear often.

It's not the big piece I'm getting when the divorce goes through.  That'll be a set of frogs on my right hip (you know, to match the left hip). But this is smallish and a good adaptation of the actual necklace. 

Self awareness is a journey.  My body is its memorykeeper.

"When someone shows you who they really are, believe them."
- Maya Angelou

I don't much care what people think about me.  It's been one of those things that I've truly come to terms with in myself over the past year or so.  Yes, I went through a bad phase where I hit rock bottom and cared deeply that people liked or disliked me.  But I think everyone has to hit that at sometime in her life to really know who she is.

And to like herself. 

Now, I know how to play the games in life.  The work politics, the social niceties, the little white lies that get us through difficult situations.  I don't think playing those games, hiding aspects of myself to get done what needs to be done (even if getting done is just getting through), but I try to do it as little as possible.  I am who I am.  And most of those that I've shown that to have believed it and remained in my life.  There are those that didn't believe.  My not-soon-enough-ex is one of them.  And there are those that believed and moved on.  This is ok; it's the way it's supposed to be.  Because I don't exist to make anyone but me happy. 

I know that sounds selfish, but I don't care what people think.  I show you who I am - rainbows, clouds, snowflakes and everything else - believe that's who I am.  The good the bad and the ugly.  Accept it and be my friend or don't and move on.  I'm not going to change to be what you think I should be.  I will only change for me.

And I learned that one the hard way.  Which is also how it should be.  No lesson worth learning is ever, ever easy.

We walked the narrow path
Beneath the smoking skies
Sometimes barely telling the difference
Between darkness and light.
Do we have faith in what we believe?
The truest test is when we cannot see.

I hear pounding feet in the streets below
And the women crying
And the children know
That there's something wrong
It's hard to believe that love will prevail.

It won't rain all the time.
The sky won't fall forever.
And though the night seems long,
Your tears won't fall forever.
- Jane Siberry, "It Can't Rain All the Time"

Because I think I converted my friend Jim this morning when I was playing this song.

I can't do it
and as for you--
can you in good conscience even ask me to
Cause what do you care
about the great divide
as long as you come down
on the winner's side

And how am I different?
How am I different?
How am I different?

Just one question before I buy
when you fuck it up later,
do I get my money back?
- Aimee Mann, "How Am I Different"

Show us something you believe in.

the curls! the curls!

I truly truly believe in me.  Is there anything more I should believe in?

What's your musical horoscope?  (Put your player on shuffle and write down the first 10 songs that come up.) 

This is always fun.  And all 3 players have their own personality so here they are.

Big computer:
Love To Be Loved - Peter Gabriel
Scuttle Buttin' - Stevie Ray Vaughan & Double Trouble
Metal Heart - Garbage
Little Room - The White Stripes
Love Letters - Diana Krall
The Accident - David Byrne
Angels Would Fall - Melissa Etheridge
Xanadu - Oliva Newton-John
Crossing the Frame - Coheed & Cambria
The Well and the Lighthouse - The Arcade Fire

Xanadu2 (my iPod):
Fire On the Mountain - Grateful Dead
Sad Dress - Belly
Did I Make You Up - Joan Armatrading
Peg - Steely Dan
Poor Places - Wilco
The Loved One - INXS
Farewell Ride - Beck
Your Next Bold Move - Ani DiFranco
Still Take You Home - Arctic Monkeys
Kara Dean - Ike Reilly Assassination

Laptop:
Political Song for Michael Jackson To Sing - Minutemen
Feather in the Flame - The Kennedys
The Celibate Life - The Shins
Over the Sea - Information Society
Feel Flows - The Beach Boys
Invincible - OK Go
New Friend - The Concretes
Tales - Wolfmother
Pacific Theme - Broken Social Scene
Rondo In A Major - The Dickies

Yes, I know.  I've taken a couple days off.  It's the end of the semester, my real job has been nutz, and, well, that's it.  Here's what I've been listening to to kind of keep myself somewhat sane.

Call an optimist,
She's turning blue.
Such a lovely color for you.
Call an optimist,
She's turning blue.
While I just sit and stare at you.

Because I don't want to know.
I didn't want to know.
I just didn't want to know.
I just didn't want.

Mistook the nods for an approval
Just ignore the smoke and smile.

Call an optimist,
She's turning blue.
Such a lovely color for you.
Call an optimist,
She's turning blue.
Such a perfect color for your eyes.
- A Perfect Circle, "Blue"

I make no apologies for my love of Sheena Easton.

Where I come from there's a place
Called heaven.
It's the place where all the good children go.
The houses are of silver,
the streets are gold.
But there's more where you come from
My sugar walls.

Blood races to your private spots
Lets me know there's a fire
You can't fight passion
When passion is hot
Temperatures rise inside my sugar walls

Lemme take you somewhere
You've never been.
I could show you things you've never seen.
I could make you never want to fall in love again.
Come spend the night inside my sugar walls.
- Sheena Easton (written by Prince), "Sugar Walls"

What's your alma mater?
Submitted by Lies.

High School:  Lower Moreland High School
College:  Beaver College, now Arcadia University (see the wikipedia entry as to why, to me it's all silliness)
Graduate:  University of South Florida School of  Library and Information Science (where I now teach as an adjunct)

"Intimacy is meaningless without barriers to overcome--and to lower."
- Diane Duane

Now, I don't read Diane Duane.  Couldn't tell you what she's written without looking it up (but that's what librarians are known for, right?).  But Mr. B sent me this quote about a year ago when I was having issues coming to terms with the fact that someone that I was in love with (note the "in love" not "loving") had walls higher and more impenetrable than mine. 

I've already blogged about the difference between being in love with someone and truly loving someone.  And in some ways, this quote relates better to that post than the one that inspired it.  I said in that post that I don't think walls are unhealthy, as long as you know they're there and when to raise and lower them to let people in.  And that's what I've been thinking about since the last post.  Those walls.  Not loving or being in love, but true trust and intimacy. 

I let very few people in.  I know I didn't let my not-soon-enough-ex in, but for all those years, I didn't know it.  Because I didn't know me.  I hadn't let myself in.  Which is,  in a lot of ways, what this quote says to me.  You have to know yourself, truly be intimate with yourself, like yourself, before you can lower your walls and let someone else in. 

And that's what I've spent the last year doing.  Getting to know me again.  After so many years of denying me, ignoring me, in some ways destroying me, I have started discovering me.  Letting the walls down for myself and becoming intimate with me.  And this allows me to understand my relationships with others and let them in when I want.  Because I'll never get rid of my walls - I'll never trust completely or let someone totally in (I don't understand people who can) - but understanding them is huge.