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| Alex's first design. He did not like the layout. |
I could stop there.
No explanation needed – especially if you know me really well. You know that those five words represent every truth about me on every level: physical, mental, spiritual, emotional. All.
Of course, my ego wouldn’t let me put such a small post out there so, of course, I need to share the whole explanation. And, as with my other tattoos, there is a larger story…a story of my heart and soul worn on my skin with pride and with love.
This tattoo started so many years ago, maybe a little under ten years ago, with a student of mine. He was asked to create a piece for the slam poetry fund raiser our class was throwing on the 10th anniversary of the Columbine shootings.
Morbid topic? Not really – not when you are a member of an alternate program which, at that time, was made to feel unwelcomed in your own school by many of the adults who worked there. Fortunately, we have come a very long way and this is not the case any longer but at the time it was very painful to teach the kids who were reminded on a fairly regular basis that they were unwanted.
Unwanted at home.
Unwanted at school.
Unwanted by society.
We wanted to unpack how it could be that you could feel so alone and so shitty and so neglected, forgotten, betrayed…so bullied that you would commit suicide by cop and take a bunch of your school mates with you.
What made them different from us? How did we survive without committing mass murder and they did not?
That group of kids had some really talented poets – some of the best poets and artists I have ever taught.
In that group there were a pair of boys - best friends – who became the root of my heart. One, the poet, was expelled and I couldn’t hold him.
The other, the artist/poet, was nearly expelled but wasn’t.
He taught me how to fight – to rebel – to rage against a system that was self-entitled and empowered with the notion that it could chew up and spit out kids because the kid didn’t fit. He was the first kid I went toe to toe with an administrator over. I was scared shitless but I had to stand up for him because I was right - we had not done enough, in terms of support, so kicking him out was wrong.
It wasn’t the right thing to do – it was the only thing to do.
I owed him that much – and I loved this kid to pieces. Still do. He is, to date, one of the greatest teachers I have ever had.
He created this piece for our slam fundraiser:
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| Cody's original piece created for the fundraiser. |
I took this canvas to my tattoo therapist, Alex Rousey (yep…same artist who created my chest piece) and Alex created his version of CT’s piece. I loved it.
This was the first piece Alex created for me…February 2013…a little over one year after the car accident I wrote about in my last post, and a couple of months after I needed to leave the trades. I was soul-deep in Siegfried Sassoon and had come across his poem Banishment, while reading his biography. When I read:
I AM banished from the patient men who fight
They smote my heart to pity, built my pride.
Shoulder to aching shoulder, side by side,
They trudged away from life’s broad wealds of light.
Their wrongs were mine; and ever in my sight 5
They went arrayed in honour. But they died,—
Not one by one: and mutinous I cried
To those who sent them out into the night.
The darkness tells how vainly I have striven
To free them from the pit where they must dwell 10
In outcast gloom convulsed and jagged and riven
By grappling guns. Love drove me to rebel.
Love drives me back to grope with them through hell;
And in their tortured eyes I stand forgiven.
I discovered that someone else knew the pain of having to walk away from horrible situations, having done the best they could. One of my first couple of blog posts is a discussion of this poem and what it means to me.
So, “love drove me to rebel,” popped out and stuck to me and I asked Alex to add the quote to the piece…and the rest, as they say, is history.
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| Alex Rousey's final piece. I love it! |
I dedicated the tattoo to the boys I left behind and the one I would always carry with me – the one who taught me how to rebel…with love and for love…how to fight for what is right.
Thank you, again, to Alex Rousey and to Cody T – the inspiration and the artist, artist and inspiration. You know how much your work, and lessons, have meant to me - both of you. Blessed be you two always.
Mad love to you both.
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