Wings on Fire

Utah 2015

Freak.

Sinner. Pagan. Slave. Criminal. Sick. Chief. King. Lord. Princess. Spiritual. Clean. Unclean.

Reborn.

There are many different labels that can accompany the personal branding of a tattoo. With my travels around the world, I have come across many different types of tattoos that people got for many different reasons and meant very different things. A monk in Tibet, a sailor in Spain, a Celtic soldier, an American marine, a German artist, and a Samoan prince… to name a few.

The ancient Hindus believed tattoos to be both beneficial and harmful to the soul of a person depending on what is being tattooed and the placement of it. It affects not only the energy of one’s body but also the energy (and attention) that is attracted from the outside. Tattoos have always been a permanent act of transformation. From slaves in the Middle East and criminals in China to the spiritual leaders of ancient Russia and the social rankings of the Samoa, tattoos transform the human form not just physically but on a spiritual and social level as well. Aside from the ‘purging’ side affects of tattooing, it has also been used as a literal form of healing. Ancient Egyptian mummies and Ötzi the Iceman (dating from the late 4th millennium BC) have been found with tattoos in most of the same crucial zones used in acupuncture and other ancient medicinal practices.

With the gradual Christianization of Europe came the prohibition of tattooing because it was considered the ‘evil’ remnants of paganism. Although the stigma still lingers in America today, it is becoming increasingly less taboo as religion gradually loses its grip on Western culture. Interestingly enough, most people outside of Utah assume that tattoos would be a rather taboo topic given the extreme religious nature of the region. However, one of the largest Samoan populations in the United States is in Utah. They brought with them the cultural acceptance of tattooing.

“Tattooing is designed to purge or purify as a primary step to a spiritual life. Not everyone has a spiritual experience from a tattoo or piercing, but it is not because they lack the capacity. It is because they did not understand these painful paths as corridors leading to a side of our mind that connects to that “other,” the energy source that informs all, often referred to as Yahweh, God, Jesus, Allah, Osiris, Aten, Innana, Cernunnos, Indra, and so on. Pain and suffering, whether voluntary or forced, are used in many traditions as a form of purging in order to prepare for a spiritual life whereby one lives with one foot in the tangible universe and the other resting firmly in that spiritual realm. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are but three traditions that subscribe to pain and suffering as the path, the Dao.”― John A. Rush

March 27th, this tattoo will be entered into the Salt Lake Tattoo Convention contest.

With all of those things taken into account on top of my own path of suffering and personal reformation, I decided to express my process in a permanent and physical way.

It was two years in the making and there was much I learned through the process. Interestingly, the more I allowed myself to be intentionally wounded for the sake of my purging, the more my mind adjusted and it hurt less and healed quicker. I know it seems cheesy, but it really has a very strange parallel to how we heal in life as well.

“’Which came first, the phoenix or the flame?'[…] ‘I think the answer is that a circle has no beginning.'”― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows 

The phoenix was very intentional on my part. I know the phoenix as a tattoo can be very cliche so I worked with my friend and tattoo artist Danny Madsen (Good Times Tattoo in Salt Lake City) to create a way for it to be not only beautiful but also frightening. All of the fire birds in folklore and mythology are incredibly beautiful (albeit feminine) creatures. I wanted to focus on the ugly and frightening creature evolving from a painful and beautiful process. It is far more realistic that way anyway.

What began as an emotional catharses and a new beginning a few years back ended up a beautiful peace of art. Funny how life works, eh? This is a deeply personal tattoo. Cheers to the next new beginning…

“The human spirit, like the  Phoenix, is a creature capable of renewing and reproducing its own being. The only difference is that one is a myth.”― Bryan Almond, I Can’t Take Me Anywhere

A Danny Boy

It is St. Patrick’s Day and I feel miserable. I’ve had a sinus infection for over a week now. Aside from one random green beer over the weekend, I am far from anything festive.

Luckily, I was able to get in to see a doctor. It was a new doctor with a really long Italian name –Abonnananti (or something like that) – that I pronounced in a more incorrect/ Arabic way – Alibabanti.

When he walked into the room, his boisterous personality and booming voice created an echo both in and outside of my overly-congested head. He was one of those Patch-Adamesque doctors who are big on a lot of small talk. While he was poking and prodding my face, he asked me everything from where I work, why I do what I do, etc. The whole line of questioning led to us talking about Chicago (where he is from) and his love for Opera and my former career. I was suddenly his primo molato, humoring him with my tales of opera in Chicago and Italy.

I was bombarded with aggressively Italian requests to sing Henry Mancini and Luciano Pavarotti’s “Mamma.” (He kept singing it grossly out of tune as if that would convince me otherwise.)

Then he caught me off guard while otoscoping my nose, “Hey! You are not wearing any green! You must wear green!” He pantomimes pinching my cheek with a threat.

“Well,” thinking quickly, “my sinuses are green, are they not?” The room fills with laughter. His med student assistant (a beautiful Indian woman) and nurse (a handsome black man with a really long and curly mohawk) were cut off by his dramatic disapproving glare.

“Now, Mr. Almond,” he scolded, “You must sing ‘A Danny Boy’ for St. Patrick’s Day since you are not wearing green!”

“Don’t you mean ‘OOOH Danny Boy?”

“That is what I said, ‘A Danny Boy!”

“I’m sorry, I can’t. I’m already running late to get back to work.” (I assumed it wasn’t the best time to tell him that “Oh Danny Boy” was written by an Englishman who’d never been to Ireland.)

“You cannot leave until you sing.”

I laugh awkwardly with a you’ve-got-to-be-friggin-kidding-me tone.

“Come,” he said, pulling me into the hallway while signalling for the med student and nurse to follow.

Once in the hallway, he starts conducting dramatically in front of my face while he starts to sing “A Danny Boy.” Turning bright red, I held my ground. Reddening himself, he turned around and made the med student and nurse start singing with him. Wanting the nightmare to be over, I caved and sang the rest of the verse.

As I sang, the hallway became a mix of bemusement, shock, and delight. It felt as if I was in a medical musical of “Memphis Belle” starring the international cast of Star Trek (myself the emotionless Spock).

After my first turn around the chorus, I started walking out without saying goodbye– visibly irritated.

“Wait,” the doctor yelled after me, “where are you going?!”

“I really have to get back to work now.”

“But you aren’t done!”

“Where’s my sucker then?”

“We don’t have suckers here.”

In likely opera-nazi fashion, I yelled, “Then no song for you!”

I quickly shuffle out of the laughing lobby and back into my 9-5 world of strange faux-Irish Utahns and green sinuses. I decided I love that doctor. But I’ll keep that to myself.

Dances with Bears (Navajo Part 2)

The next day during my lunch break, I walked through the Adopt a Native Elder Rugshow that was in the same building I worked in. I ran into the woman I had “twerked” with in skis. Turns out she was a rug maker. After showing me her collection of simple runners and elaborate wall pieces, she demonstrated how she made her own yarn.

While she was showing me the plants from the reservation she had used for creating her dyes (onion skins, juniper, tree bark, sweet clover, and walnut shells), I realized what she had told me two subjects too late. “Wait, you cut your own sheep?!”

She laughs sweetly,  “They are not sheep, they’re Churro Ewes.”

“Eh? Like the cinnamony thingy?”

“Yes, just not as sweet smelling.” She winks at me and continues along.

She went behind her display table and pulled out a beautiful woven piece covered with bears. There was a bear in every color and a white one in the center with cave-art-like bear claw markings all over it. She explained to me that the bear claw was a symbol of strength and protection and that this rug was a ceremonial rug that goes on the back of a horse that a medicine man rides on. It is used for special ceremonies related to the Navajo history of Star Mountain.

She told me the story:

Many generations ago, after the Navajo were formed from combining smaller tribes in the 1500’s, a traveling group were camping on top of a mountain in what is now Colorado. They had been collecting natural crystals that had been laying around in abundance there. Medicine men collected these crystal for their healing energy practices. While they were up there, a large comet flew into the night sky above them. It frightened them because they felt it was a terrible omen.

Unexpectedly, different types of bears started coming out of the woods into the open to look at the strange source of light. The medicine man knew that bears were good luck and a great sign of protection so he suggested that the people should settle there. The round spot on top of the mountain with the bears and crystals were declared holy ground.

Every year on the same night, the medicine man would stick the largest, most pure crystal he could find into the ground. And every time it didn’t appear, he laid another crystal next to the first one. After many years of doing this, the medicine man died and a younger one took over his duties. By this time, the crystals had formed a circle around the holy ground on top of the mountain.

One night, the young medicine man was laying out the traditional crystal for the annual ceremony when the comet reappeared. Everyone was dancing and singing and the bears came out again and watched them unafraid. After the star continued on its way, the young medicine man counted the circle of crystals. There were 76 of them. Seventy-six years had passed since it was first seen.

Many generations, a few hundred years, and a European colonization later, the crystal laying tradition continued. By the time the comet had returned in 1835, word had reached them that a European man named Edmond Halley had identified it as a reoccurring comet and named it “Halley’s Comet” a hundred or so years prior.

The tradition has stopped since science has taken over but the mountain is still very sacred to them. However, occasionally a rare lone medicine woman is said to be found roaming the summit on horseback among the bears searching for crystals to heal her people.

I was so enthralled by her story, that I realized I had taken too long of a lunch break. I told her that I regrettably needed to get back to work and that I feel I could sit and talk to her forever.

“Please,” she said, handing me the rug, “it is for strength and protection.”

“What do you mean? You’re not possibly giving this to me, are you?”

“Yes, it is a blessing. Something about it makes me think of you, I can’t explain it. You must take it. It will protect you. I made this after I saw the comet at Star Mountain in Colorado in 1986. The original Navajo there were there around 1531. It will not return again until 2061. I want you to be healthy and well enough to be blessed by it a second time in your life. I will not be here, but this will be with you. Just do not frame it like these other people. It will block the positive energy of the earth that I have put into it.”

I was floored.

“Thank you so much!” My pale administratively soft hands glowed next to her wrinkled, calloused fingers which I’m sure told just as interesting a story of struggle and spirit as her ceremonial rug. “I’m not sure I will be in Colorado, or alive, when I am 83 but I will definitely take very good care of it.”

She nodded a ‘yes.’ “Now you must go back to work. Take care Bryan Bear Claw.” (I like this name way more than ‘Twerks with Skis.’)

After I took the rug home and stared at it for a few hours, it dawned on me that she must be the medicine woman who collects the crystals. I also noticed that there are 75 bear claws surrounding the white bear in the middle. The 76th, Halley’s Comet, forms the bear’s tail. The bears surrounding the other ends of it are all different colors. I could see so much of myself in this rug: traveling, waiting, healing, protection, strength, diversity, and of course… bears.

[Stay tuned for the 3rd part of this story as I journey to the Navajo Nation later that year…]