Wings of No Restraint (Danny Schmidt)

Maybe some of you recall the original owl visitation story a week or so after Eric's death.  There have been many more since I last posted, such that my words at Eric's Celebration of Life strengthened my desire for a tattoo.

"So far, he's given us signs of rainbows... and an owl appeared to me that I am sure was a visitation.  And, even though I've declared a moratorium on tattoos ("seven is the number", sings Dave Carter), if I hear Eric's voice whispering in my ear that it might be time for more ink, one of you will be getting a call to accompany me."

Last week, he whispered:  "It's time."  

Lovely backstory:  in September 2013, Eric decided to get a tattoo (not his first) of an octopus attempting to pull a ship underwater which, to me, represented his life-long struggles with anxiety (I am still trying to find the finished product, but here is the initial line work).  Look at that gorgeous detail, even in first draft form:

I wanted a tattoo for my 60th birthday (10 years ago), and Eric recommended his guy, Adam Forero... who immortalized our family on my back with a compass tattoo I designed; Sarah came with me, and got a beautiful flowers/dragonfly/butterfly on her lower back/left hip.  We had such a good time, laughing and chatting; Adam told us that one day he would have his own shop, 4 Arrows (sparked by his surname).  Sarah was a bit nervous so she asked Adam to put on Dave Matthews Band (her favorite music group) and, since it was late and we were the only ones there, he obliged (straying from the heavy metal that had been playing earlier - ha!).

Back to present day:  over the last few months, I had narrowed my new tattoo down to three ideas... and of course it only made sense for Adam to do it; I went in search, and he does indeed have his own shop now (six years!):  4 Arrows Art.  

I sent an e-mail before we went out of town last weekend for my niece Julia's wedding; he replied the Monday after, we continued the conversation, I sent him my idea, and we made a Wednesday a.m. appointment.  When I showed up, not only had he sketched it up, but he had found and researched the artist:  Amanda Clark.  So. Many. Owls.  Just one more validation I was in the right place... 💥

Also, Dave Matthews jam band music was on the PA.  Double-bam... 💥💥

And we hugged and we talked and we got down to business.  And he showed me his own owl tattoo; and he brought me water in an owl glass (his sister works at Disney).

Whatever might have been a consultation morphed into a full-fledged session, as I climbed into the chair, sitting comfortably cross-legged with my back supported, closed my eyes and settled into Zen mode while still carrying on a non-stop, in-depth conversation about anything and everything.  What a nice as well as talented young man!  Oh, and did I say gentle touch?  I was in the chair almost three hours, and barely felt a thing... 😌

And when we were finished, I gave Adam a pouch of E's ashes... 💜

Wednesday's experience meant so much to me on so many levels:  to see Adam again, 10 years later... to realize his 4 Arrows dream came true... to have a full-circle moment for/with Eric; I know Adam will take him on many adventures!

I already feel more peaceful, comforted, and protected with E on my left shoulder, next to my heart; I expected to cry, and was pleasantly surprised that I didn't.  The time was right, we made it happen, and I am beyond delighted with my new ink... 💘

[edited to add:  I realized, days later, that Wednesday 6/26/24 (when I got the tattoo), was 9 months to the day of Eric's death... 💞)

SONG:  Wings of No Restraint by Danny Schmidt

BOOK:  The Woman With An Owl Tattoo by Anne Walsh Donnelly, Isabelle Kenyon (Editor), Sally Mullaney (Illustrator)

POEM:  Beneath the Sweater and the Skin by Jeannette Encinias

How many years of beauty do I have left?

she asks me.

How many more do you want?

Here. Here is 34. Here is 50.

When you are 80 years old

and your beauty rises in ways

your cells cannot even imagine now

and your wild bones grow luminous and

ripe, having carried the weight

of a passionate life.

When your hair is aflame

with winter

and you have decades of

learning and leaving and loving

sewn into

the corners of your eyes

and your children come home

to find their own history

in your face.

When you know what it feels like to fail

ferociously

and have gained the

capacity

to rise and rise and rise again.

When you can make your tea

on a quiet and ridiculously lonely afternoon

and still have a song in your heart

Queen owl wings beating

beneath the cotton of your sweater.

Because your beauty began there

beneath the sweater and the skin,

remember?

This is when I will take you

into my arms and coo

YOU BRAVE AND GLORIOUS THING

you’ve come so far.

I see you.

Your beauty is breathtaking.

QUOTE:  “Rooted strongly yet bearing wings, Owl Woman signifies the wisdom that awakens through grounded seeking of the unknown. She presides over ritual, over ceremony. Grounded in solid practice, she opens her heart. With humility, she remains aware and is not afraid to look into the heart of darkness, knowing that she may find the lost parts of herself there. And when she does, she welcomes them back through the portal of her heart, digesting the experiences, retaining that which nourishes the soul, rejecting the rest.

Owl Woman aligns with the Moon, she understands what it means to cycle with the ebb and flow of the seasons. In ceremony, she smooths the way. On softened wings, she glides through the night, listening for the wisdom of the heart.” ~ Ona Christie Martin, Art of Awakening

What Do You Hear in These Sounds (Dar Williams)

There's no late in blogging, right?  All my good intentions to post Tuesdays and Fridays oft go awry, right, Mr. Burns? (the poet, not Homer Simpson's boss).  Thus we end up with Thursday.  In the grand scheme of things, it's most certainly a First World Problem.

My favorite day is every-other-Monday, during which I have a therapy appointment with L at 10 a.m. and my bereavement group from 12:30-2 p.m.  By mid-afternoon, I am ridiculously peaceful and relaxed; Ectoplasm R Us.  "Oh, how I loved everybody else when I finally got to talk so much about myself"; Dar is brilliant (brilliant... 💖)

When I arrived this week to see L, I wanted to talk about brain blips; I've done the research, and shared on this blog that grief causes brain fog, as a result of trauma.  My recent go-to, when I hit a blank, is: "I know there's a word for that." Sometimes it comes to me, sometimes not, and often I find a paltry substitute knowing, with my obsession with semantics, it's not the *intended* word. Ugh.

Um, here's a tip for you:  multi-tasking is over-rated (shockeroo). For the last few years, I've just been trying to do one-thing-at-a-time well, instead of many things poorly. It helps.  Then there's aging. And post-menopause. I am a big fat f*cking mess and I have to be okay with that for now, trying to be gentle with myself while still attempting All. The. Coping. Mechanisms... 🤷‍♀️

An example:  Sunday about noon I headed to the pop-up market in Hollywood (FL) and somehow mis-entered the address in my GPS, inadvertently leaving off the fourth number (zero), so... I was led substantially farther east than I needed to be, and there was a drawbridge, and my trip ended up taking an hour rather than the usual 30 minutes.

And as I was regaling L with this tale... she stopped me, leaned forward from her lotus position on the couch, and shared one word:  Pause... and it was as if an electric current went through my entire body.  Yes.  Of course.  Quelle nouvelle.  And then she added Patience.

Not one to be left out, I added my two favorite P words:  Ponder and Perspective... not to mention my Word of the Year:  (Be) Present.  And, after all that, I need to make it a Priority to Practice (see what I did there?) being in the stillness to clear my mind.  Whew.  I have indeed been practicing since Monday, and it's made a big difference.  Phenomenal (silent P... 🤣)

The day after Eric died, I resurrected my blog (best f*cking coping mechanism ever!)... daily until the end of October 2023, and twice-weekly since.  In late-November I pondered making a Spotify playlist of healing songs... then realized, rather than reinvent the wheel, I'd create an ongoing journey, in chronological order, of all the songs I've used to title my blog posts.  To be continued; I will add this Dar song as soon as I Publish this entry...

[It hasn't come to fruition yet, but I found Eric's former tattooist (the ship and octopus on his right shoulder/bicep; on E's recommendation, he actually did the family compass on my upper back, and Sarah's flowers/dragonfly/butterfly on her hip)... and will be following up soon... 🧭

P.S.  Tomorrow is the four-month mark of Eric's death.

SONG:  What Do You Hear in These Sounds by Dar Williams

BOOK:  Finding Your way Through Loss & Grief: A Therapist’s Guide to Working Through Any Grieving Process by Christine Hopfgarten

POEM(S):  Let Yourself Rest by Jeff Foster

If you’re exhausted, rest.

If you don’t feel like starting a new project, don’t.

If you don’t feel the urge to make something new, 

just rest in the beauty of the old, the familiar, the known.

If you don’t feel like talking, stay silent.

If you’re fed up with the news, turn it off.

If you want to postpone something until tomorrow, do it.

If you want to do nothing, let yourself do nothing today. 

Feel the fullness of the emptiness, the vastness of the silence, the sheer life in your unproductive moments.

Time does not always need to be filled.

You are enough, simply in your being.

Fierce Wild Joy by Beth Weaver-Kreider

May this year bring you joy

like crows rising from the fields

fierce

wild joy

yelling full-voice

into the wind

rowing through the tempest

with nothing but feathers.

In the Woods of Language, She Collects Beautiful Sticks by Valzhyna Mort

like a snail with a shell of sticks

    — she loads them on her back —

Like a camel with a hump of sticks

    — on her back, on her back —

Like a horse with a knight of sticks and a stick for a sword

Where is she taking this load of sticks?

    — on her hump, on her hump —

She has no house, where is she taking the house she doesn’t have?

    — in the fire she is taking it in the fire —

In the fire she is making a poem entirely out of sticks on fire and it goes like this

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////

QUOTE(S):  “Time does not heal all wounds; it just gives them space to sink into the subconscious, where they will continue to impact your emotions and behavior. What heals is going inward, loving yourself, accepting yourself, listening to your needs, addressing your attachments and emotional history, learning how to let go, and following your intuition.” ~ Yung Pueblo

“Death is our friend precisely because it brings us into absolute and passionate presence with all that is here, that is natural, that is love… Life always says Yes and No simultaneously. Death (I implore you to believe) is the true Yea-sayer. It stands before eternity and says only: Yes.” ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

"Not causing harm requires staying awake. Part of being awake is slowing down enough to notice what we say and do. The more we witness our emotional chain reactions and understand how they work, the easier it is to refrain. It becomes a way of life to stay awake, slow down, and notice." ~ Pema Chodron

Gentle Soldier of My Soul (Dave Carter)

So... I got my third tattoo today - I've posted before about my first and second. This is something I've been planning the last few years, knowing exactly what design would grace some part of my body eventually when the timing felt right - when a co-worker had hers done last weekend, I knew my wait was over.

It's no surprise to some of you reading that I'm a devotee of Dave Carter, the musician *and* the person - his death in July 2002 was devastating to me. I've written previously about the many dragonfly sightings which occurred following his passing and, to this day, whenever I spot one of the flying insects, my first thought is "Dave"... followed by a heart twinge and then a knowing smile - when Tracy Grammer, Dave's "partner in all things" released her Flower of Avalon CD, which contained her recordings of many of his unreleased songs, the dragonfly on the cover was the perfect symbol for honoring his memory. It now resides on my left forearm - hey-yah...

A bit of dragonfly science, history and folklore here...

SONG: Gentle Soldier of My Soul by Dave Carter

BOOK: A Dazzle of Dragonflies by Forrest L. Mitchell, James L. Lasswell

POEM: The Dragonfly by Louise Bogan

You are made of almost nothing

But of enough

To be great eyes

And diaphanous double vans;

To be ceaseless movement,

Unending hunger

Grappling love.

Link between water and air,

Earth repels you.

Light touches you only to shift into iridescence

Upon your body and wings.

Twice-born, predator,

You split into the heat.

Swift beyond calculation or capture

You dart into the shadow

Which consumes you.

You rocket into the day.

But at last, when the wind flattens the grasses,

For you, the design and purpose stop.

And you fall

With the other husks of summer.

QUOTE: "Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragonfly hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky." ~ Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Tattoo (Sons of the Never Wrong)

I got a tattoo for my 40th birthday (soon to be 13 years ago) - it's of two beautiful hibiscus blossoms, one pink and the other purple, with green leaves, yellow centers and pistils and two black curliques swirling lengthwise under and over the flowers (to represent our then-recent move to Florida). It's about three inches long, top to bottom, just barely above my left ankle bone, very pretty and tastefully done - it was something I always said I'd do before I turned 40, and I haven't regretted it yet...

I swore I'd never have more than one but, it is said tattoos are an addiction, and four years ago I got another... a heart composed of a bass clef and a treble clef (representing my love of music) - the location: over my heart... <3

When people asked what I would do if my children ever wanted one, implying that I was setting a bad example, my standard reply was, "I'll tell them to do what I did and wait until they're 40!" - I'm now planning a third inking when the time is right... :-)

[ Added 6/22/07 - I love Mark Morford! ]

SONG: Tattoo by Sons of the Never Wrong

BOOK: Dorothy Parker's Elbow: Tattoos on Writers, Writers on Tattoos by Kim Addonizio and Cheryl Dumesnil

POEM: To the Engraver of My Skin by Mark Doty

I understand the pact is mortal,
agree to bear this permanence.

I contract with limitation; I say no
and no then yes to you, and sign

--here, on the dotted line--
for whatever comes, I do: our time,

our outline, the filling-in of our details
(it's density that hurts, always,

not the original scheme). I'm here
for revision, discoloration; here to fade

and last, ineradicable, blue. Write me!
This ink lasts longer than I do.

QUOTE: "When the designs are chosen with care, tattoos have a power and magic all their own. They decorate the body but they also enhance the soul." ~ Michelle Delio