I'm trying to think of things to get tattooed on my back... I already have one tattoo, but I want more. But at the same time I kind of want to limit it to my back so a) it won't effect me at work; and b) I won't get sick of it quickly.
So this desire lead me to think about a few possibilities
1. "There's no end to the love you can give when you change your point of view" This is the first line of the song "Delilah" by the Dresden Dolls. As I'm sure you will already know if you know me, I LOVE Amanda Palmer and the Dresden Dolls. This would mean so much to me on that level alone. Add to that the fact that philosophically it reflects one of my major beliefs and you are on a winner. Plus I think I will get my Grandmother to write it for me so it can have that extra sentimental value.
2. Runes. I talked about this with my friend Lils ages ago. 2008 actually, that shit of a year. I wanted to get the Futhark to show the circle of life, and that all things have meaning and will lead you to higher things if you allow yourself to believe that possibility. I was thinking of maybe just getting the ones that specifically referred to overcoming trials, but the whole first cycle seemed more appropriate.
3. The eternity symbol. You know, the three swirls heading in the same direction... I have loved this symbol since I first saw it in a carving in an Irish tomb.
And thinking about all this lead me to remember that phase I went through where I believed that all my art should have if not all, at least some writing, because language and words were just as beautiful if not more than abstract forms. I still believe that language and words are beautiful and so very, very important, but I don't believe that they are more so than visual art. I still like the combination of words and images, but I think that they mostly serve different purposes... And blahblahblah I could go on about it but that'd be one massive tangent.
Anyway - the point is, I remembered that I own 3 poetry books by my favourite poets: Judith Wright, Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath.
I can't find Emily and Sylvia (although I've a sneaking sensation they are in the boot of my car for some reason...), so I will just reproduce firstly the only poem I have ever remembered in its entirety, and then two of my favourite Judith poems.
I felt a Cleaving in my Mind -
As if my Brain had split -
I tried to match it - Seam by Seam -
But could not make it fit.
The thought behind, I strove to join
Unto the thought before -
But Sequence ravelled out of Sound
Like Balls - upon a Floor.
-Emily Dickinson
The Flame Tree
How to live, I said, as the flame-tree lives?
- to know what the flame-tree knows; to be
prodigal of my life as that wild tree
and wear my passion so?
That lover's know of water and earth and sun,
that easy answer to the question of baffling reason,
branches out of my heart this sudden season.
I know what I would know.
How shall I thank you, who teach me how to wait
in quietness for the hour to ask or give:
to take and in taking bestow, in bestowing live:
in the loss of myself, to find?
This is the flame-tree; look how gloriously
that careless blossomer scatters, and more and more.
What the earth takes of her, it will restore.
These are the thanks of lovers who share one mind.
- Judith Wright.
South of my Days
South of my days' circle, part of my blood's country,
rises that tableland, high delicate outline
of bony slopes wincing under the winter,
low trees blue-leaved and olive, outcropping granite -
clean, lean, hungry country. The creek's leaf-silenced,
willow-chocked, the slope a tangle of medlar and crabapple
branching over and under, blotched with a green lichen;
and the old cottage lurches in for shelter.
O cold the black-frost night. The walls draw in to the warmth
and the old roof cracks its joints; the slung kettle
hisses a leak on the fire. Hardly to be believed that summer
will turn up again some day in a wave of rambler roses,
thrust its hot face in here to tell another yarn -
a story old Dan can spin into a blanket against the winter.
Seventy years of stories he clutches round his bones.
Seventy summers are hived in him like old honey.
Droving that year, Charleville to the Hunter,
nineteen-one it was, and the drought beginning;
sixty head left at the McIntyre, the mud round them
hardened like iron; and the yellow boy died
in the sulky ahead with the gear, but the horse went on,
stopped at the Sandy Camp and waited in the evening.
It was the flies we seen first, swarming like bees.
Came to Hunter, three hundred head of a thousand -
cruel to keep them alive - and the river was dust.
Or mustering up in the Bogongs in the autumn
when the blizzards came early. Brough them down; we brought them
down, what aren't there yet. Or driving for Cobb's on the run
up from Tamworth - Thunderbolt at the top of Hungry Hill,
and I give him a wink. I wouldn't wait long, Fred,
not if I was you; the troopers are jut behind,
coming for that job at the Hillgrove. He went like a luny,
him on his big black horse
Oh, they slide and they vanish
as he shuffles the years like a pack of conjuror's cards.
True or not, it's all the same; and the frost on the roof
cracks like a whip, and the back-log breaks into ash.
Wake, old man. This is winter, and the yarns are over.
No one is listening.
South of my days' circle
I know its dark against the stars, the high lean country
full of old stories that still go walking in my sleep.
- Judith Wright.
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