Sovereign Nations

More than a year after the death of my friend and tattoo artist, Gypsy Jill, I find myself really looking for a new artist.  It’s taken me this long to come to grips with the idea of putting my body and my story in the hands of a new person.

I’ve realized that I don’t know how interact with a disinterested pro.  Jill and I had a beautiful connection.  She expressed me so well, in her own visions, that my tattoos feel completely integrated into who I am, who I was, and who I want to be.  How does one begin a relationship, from a cold start, that will result in tattoos that do that?

This post is going to be long and detailed on the subject of my tattoo history.  Even if not interested in reading the whole story, please consider commenting with names of good tattoo artists in the Baltimore Area.  Checking out my photos and story might help keep the referrals on topic, though, so here goes.

Here is my collection so far:

The first piece of work I got was the sun/eye on the back of my neck.  It is a symbol of meditation, centering, and cleansing of my mind and energies.  I can get very scattered and have a hard time moving forward down a single path, but a simple “brain flush” type of meditation can often get me moving again.  Problem is that leaves my tension in my neck, and this piece reminds me both to do the meditation and to take care of the spot it marks.  This is not Jill’s work, and it doesn’t show the shading and attention to detail that she is known for.  This was done at Slave to the Needle in Wallingford, Seattle, by an artist who is no longer there.  It was done in about an hour and a half, in March of 1996.  The photo is by James, taken in March of 2010, right after I had my head shaved for St. Baldrick’s.

The second piece I had done has been incorporated into Jill’s backpiece.  It’s in the picture farther down, but here’s the story, first.  I was suspicious of all drugs as a teenager.  Control was very important to me, and it’s clear, looking back, that I did everything I could to avoid losing it.  Even drinking was something I did rarely and in secret moderation.  I cleaned seeds and rolled joints for friends, but never smoked.  At twenty years old, I experienced my first real high – on LSD.  It felt like LSD gave me a step sideways, a new position from which I could view my usual reality.  Like with language, where you never really understand your own until you learn a new one, LSD helped me figure out how to create and use a stronger “observer effect” in my own life, about my own reality.

So a few trips into this new love, I went with some friends to a screening of…wait for it…From Dusk Til Dawn.  Yup.  My George Clooney love was born that night, and so was the vision that became a tattoo.  A lifetime of energy-talk from my dad made it easy for my acidic brain to transmute the vampires into psychic vampires.   Those people who drain the emotional energy of the people around them.  And I (coming out of a terrible relationship) made a visual connection between the yin/yang symbol (which I loved so much that I painted it ten feet high in the bedroom of my teens), blood sucking, and relationships as energy transfer that needs to be even to be healthy.

So yeah, little fetal critters, sucking each other’s blood in a womb-like environment.  This piece was tattooed by Bandana Mike at a defunct studio in downtown Seattle.  Must have been April by then, still 1996.  (I was hooked and gave up eating for tattooing.)  He got the point and drew it out for me wonderfully.  His color palette was simpler than Jill’s, though, so when she incorporated it into her piece, it got a sprucing up with more shading in about five more colors.

My third piece is what catapulted me into a relationship with Jill.  I enjoyed the Rocky Horror Picture Show, though I wouldn’t call myself a fan.  I’ve never been to a live showing, and I only know 90% of the words…grin.  But I thought that the poster picture of the lips, with a hint of teeth pulling on the bottom one…well, sexy, right?

So I talked a local video store clerk into letting me borrow the case rather than just the video tape – oh yeah, it was that long ago – and I brought it with me to a shop-that-will-not-be-named in order to show it to a tattoo-artist-who-shall-not-be-named.  I used to name her with impunity, but I’m not bitter and she is better now.  She assured me that she could tattoo that sexiness on my hip and made an appointment for the next week.  When I came back, she was creepy.  Something was wrong.  But I didn’t trust that feeling and only later found out that she had, in the week between meeting her and going under the needle, fallen off the wagon and gone back to CRACK.  For reals.  (I don’t name her because she’s been clean a hell of a long time now and does good work.  But still.  Ouch.)  This was, perhaps, May, 1996.

So I ended up with a buck-toothed, oversized, Dali-esque set of lips on my hipbone.  Not. So. Sexy.  I didn’t like it.  Not one bit.

By the time I met James, I had three tattoos and a powerful yen to get one covered up.  I went into tattoo shops in Seattle for years…and there are a whole lot of tattoo shops in Seattle.  Every time, I got the same reaction.  “Um, do you like black?  Maybe a big black star?”  And my reaction never varied either.  “Um, no.”

Shopping around for tattoo artists became something I did on a whim, when passing a shop I hadn’t visited yet.  James and I moved in together in 1997, relocating to the Glencoe Apartments on Capital Hill, on Boylston between Pike and Pine.  Those were good times for me.  I started working for Toys in Babeland, James and I were closer and closer, and I walked into American Beauty Tattoo.

The man at the counter did the “Um…black?” thing and I did the “Um, no” thing.  When I started to turn away, he asked me to wait, said maybe he knew who could help me, and disappeared behind the curtain.

Skirts kicked high with every step and multi-colored extensions swinging wildly, Gypsy Jill swirled into my life.  She came out like the dynamo she was and said, “Let’s see what you have.”  Baring my hipbone, a glimmer of hope was born.  She concentrated on the piece, turning her head this way and that, reaching out with thumb and forefinger as though to pinch it but not touching.  “That could be anything.  A bird of paradise or a piece of fruit.  Let’s talk about what has meaning for you.”

The end.  Actually, the beginning.  I pondered mightily, deciding on a pomegranate because of its symbolism of fertility.  I was at a stage where I needed to affirm that having children and being a fertile human being were not necessarily the same thing.  This would be my reminder.

These pictures were taken by Jill as she worked the piece.  A triptych display of these photos won Jill a Best Coverup Prize at a National Tattoo Association convention.

In the process of designing and tattooing this coverup, we got into the subject of my body plan.  Of course, I had none.  Never thought of such a thing.  I liked the idea, though, and Jill was inspiring to me.  She reluctantly agreed to do a backpiece – reluctant because her last had been an unpleasant and unfinished experience.

The concept of tattoos as simultaneously forever and representative of a moment in time gave me the inspiration to carry a symbol of Seattle.  I was at home for the first time in my life, but there was no way I would be content to settle and be a Seattlite for the rest of my life.  Casting about for a symbol of, not just Seattle, but the entire Pacific Northwest, I visualized a madrona tree, growing alone on a pebbled peninsula.  This image is from a trip James and I made to Brentwood Bay on Vancouver Island.  We rented a boat and motored out to the mouth of the bay and deep into the inner reaches.  This lonely, gnarled, persistent tree represented my favorite parts of the area.

Speaking of acid, there was another tree, the love for which was born in an acid trip.  It grows out of and over the cliff face at Discovery Park in Seattle.  It has a crotch in which a group of giggling, tripping kids sat and played, while I had climbed out to a heavy branch.  I surveyed gamboling friends and saw them as cubs and myself as a lioness.  I went back to that spot over and over, to read or just meditate.  When deciding to get a tattoo of a madrona, I went back out there and found a fallen branch, which I brought to Jill along with photos of the whole tree.

She took my ideas, the meaning I wanted to express, and her own artistic sense of style and started sketching.  She believed that the trunk of the tree needed more character and gave me a book on Chiparus’ bronze statues.  Those beauties meshed so well with how I imagined the tattoo would look, and I fell in love with a gypsy named Shiva.  These aspects became parts of my tattoo.

My backpiece took three years to complete.  It was begun when I lived on Summit at Republican (still Capital Hill) and the work continued through moving aboard my first boat and setting sail for the San Juan Island and settling for a winter in Blaine, WA.  It was done between 1999 and 2001.   The final piece looked like this a few years afterward.  The photo was not taken by James and I can’t remember the name of the photographer.  He was uninterested and irritating, so I guess that’s only right.

(You can barely see the critters, my second tattoo.)

The bottom is unfinished because I’ve gone back and forth on how I wanted to finish it off.  I thought about having the roots grow together into a ball, at the center of which would be another eye to balance the one at the top.  I also thought about having my new piece…ah yes, I already had a new piece in mind!  – continue around and form a base for the tree and the gypsy.

The new piece…well, now an old piece as well.  I had placed my home and history behind me, literally, and I wanted to put my travels in front.  Gypsy Jill suggested I do so symbolically, keeping with the fruits and vegetables theme from my pomegranate.  We worked out the idea of a cornucopia, the horn of plenty, symbol of abundance, spilling my travels across my (abundant) belly.  Washington would be symbolized by apples.  By the time we began this piece, I was living in California, and the avocado was my best loved part of being there.

Once again, the piece took a long time.  I got good at negotiating the Oakland airport, learned that it’s best to board Southwest flights last so that I can choose my own seatmates (or get an empty row), and slept on couches.  It was begun early in 2004 and finished on 4/10/2005.  I know that because James came with me on that trip and took photos.

And this is where I’ve stopped.

Coming up next – the part I want to show tattoo artists of the future.  The next few tattoos will be catching up on my adventures.

The Big Island of Hawaii:  I’m thinking a batch of the darker cherries with some leaves as a fill-in or backdrop for the apple – to tie the whole thing together.  James suggested that I size the tattoos by importance, so this would not be life-sized – quite a bit smaller.

Then I’ll get a very small pineapple for Oahu.

And a whole bunch of spices for India.  I loved the street chai, which is not spiced, but my very favorite versions include some combination of these spices:

A little ear of corn for Virginia:

And, stretching the theme, a blue crab for Maryland:

So yeah.  I need an artist.  I need to love this artist.  And I need to wrap my travels around me as reminders, storytelling devices, and as art.

Like I said in my birthday post, my dad bought me an iPad for my birthday and James bought a whole bunch of great accoutrement.  This was fabulous, because James came up with the idea and conspired with Dad to bring me a very cool set of presents.  Problem was, the iPad isn’t the tool I need.

If I were a working pro photographer, I’d keep the iPad as a portable near-infinite portfolio.  If I were a non-profit, I would keep it for instant, always-ready presentations.  If I were an e-reader fan, I’d keep it as an increased-functionality version of something I already loved.

That’s not me, though.  And the bottom line is that wifi isn’t as common and easy to find as cell signal, and I don’t think the iPad is enough greater than the iPhone, if I’m going to be paying for a data plan anyway.

And really, I’m not the cutting edge on that kind of tech.  I plan to write a book and I want to do that on my laptop with my Clear G4 internet connection.  I plan to sail off into the sunrise and I need tools for that.

And like the guy at Sears said, the iPad can’t route.

Yup.  I returned my iPad with all its goodies.  I’m asking for the presents I really want (though it’s after the fact and certainly won’t be a surprise).

James took me birthday present shopping today, and I got a palm router with a great bit set, two new pots to replace my old beat up stuff and give us a larger size (for big egg scrambles), and a square baking sheet for biscuits and soysauge casserole.

I’m so happy with this stuff.  It’s really going to make me happier on a near-daily basis for quite some time.  The router will probably get used for finishing most of the projects I begin – why have a flat edge when I can shape it?  And the pots – well, I’m cooking a lot right now, and it’s making me happy to have the tools I need.

Now, Dad.  Will you please pay for our new settee cushions?  They will be expensive, but you’ll probably sleep on them sooner or later!  And it’s an excellent present that I will use daily and for which I will feel grateful long into the future.

We’ve now used the oven twice. This is our second masterpiece. The first pizza on a new boat has been our traditional way of making ourselves at home. This pizza, our first on this boat, is almost two years late, but now, finally, I am at home.

James usually makes the pizzas, but I did a pretty good job, Dad.  You would have enjoyed it!  He’s the clock-puncher and I’m the boatwright (focusing on not being the boat-wrong), so I make the meals for now.  Usually.

James and I have been living on this boat for nearly two years.  We know it pretty damn well, and there aren’t too many problems we haven’t fixed, created a plan for fixing, or decided to live with.  One of the few real irritants has been our oven.

A marine propane stove/oven is a fairly simple creature – but it’s so important that things be done right.  For one thing, you can die many horrible deaths if things are done incorrectly.  For another thing, they’re expensive beasts – running over a thousand for an updated version of the model I have – so mistakes can be costly.  Even smallish parts are usually over a hundred dollars.  For yet another thing – death?

So yeah.

Our oven has never worked.  The stove works great – all three burners – and we have just used the stove for the last two years.  Actually – these horribly hot summers have been mostly cooking-free, but still.

I found this troubleshooting guide online, by a Seattle company – go Seattle boating community! – and found it pretty clear.  There’s propane coming in to the oven knob.  When turned to “Pilot”, it allows propane to flow through one copper tube to the pilot light, at which point I can light the gas with a long-nosed lighter.  All good.  When turned to any temperature other than pilot, it allows more propane to flow, creating a “high” pilot.  This flame should now heat a sensing probe that is connected to a mercury control valve.  Registering heat, the valve opens and allows propane to flow into the entire burner and heat the oven.  This valve keeps propane from flowing when there’s no pilot – a safety measure so that you don’t get explosive gasses flowing through the bilges when the pilot is blown out for some reason.

Bottom line – I had a low pilot, a high pilot, but no burner flame.  Holding the lighter directly under the mercury control valve’s sensor probe did nothing – not even when the probe was glowing red hot.  That’s supposed to mean it’s the mercury control valve that’s bad.

But their website specified over and over that this valve almost never goes out and that people buy the wrong thing more often than not when they think it’s the valve that needs to be replaced.  I let this go all last winter.  An entire (chock-full of dead-poor and super-busy) winter without biscuits and gravy or pizza aboard.  Sadness!

With the nice long fall, I only now thought of diving in.  Turns out our valve cost $160 (plus a core charge that will be returned when I send back the old one – mercury is toxic, after all).  So now I’ve invested in a winter of eating on the boat…wonder if the math will be in our favor?

So finally it arrives.  James and I removed the old valve, only to find that they sent us the wrong attachment bits.

The mercury control valve is on the left and the attachment bits are on the right.  The top two are from our old valve and the bottom two are the ones sent by Sure Marine.  Looking back at their troubleshooting guide, those are the parts for ovens with the valve near the temp knob rather than in the oven wall like ours.  No problem – we’ll just reuse our own bits!

Here’s the oven without the valve:

And the valve assembly. with the sensor probe dangling at the end of its wire:

I got the new valve installed – James had to go to work…

And then…I lit it up.

And the final good news:

Now for the “perfectly honest” part.  This last photo shows success, right?  Well, it was a good step – definitely moving in the right direction.  But it took a lot more fiddling around to get the thing to work right.  It would come on fine, but when it thought it was up to temp, it would shut off.  Perfect – just like it was supposed to.  But it wouldn’t come back on when it cooled down a bit.  Sigh.  I worked on it another few hours (testing while doing other things, mostly) and now it’s working well.  I had to change the angle of the pilot and clean the pilot orifice (am I the only person who thinks that orifice is a sexy word?).  Also, the thermostat you see in the pic above doesn’t match the temp knob for the oven – there’s almost 100 degree difference – but James is going to stop at the store for a new thermostat and some…

Biscuits!

I have had the best birthday week, and I’m going to ignore any pesky ideas that birthdays are supposed to be single day events.

The birthday-eve celebration was hosted by Tanya and Rafael on their boat Isabella Grace. Since we could easily fit three of our boat into theirs, it’s a much more suitable party locale.  We ate tremendous amounts of food – roasted shrimp cocktail, lasagna, and two kinds of dessert – and drank and sang and danced and talked…we’re some talented talkers…

Here are a few photos:

Not-so-early the next morning, James and I did breakfast at Jimmy’s…but I don’t recommend it.  We’ve enjoyed breakfasts-past from there, but these (cause we went again the next day) didn’t treat us so well.  Anyway.  We had thought we could do a big museum trip, but really – who can fit a bunch of museums into a single day?  I mean, maybe if you’re running laps in the place, but that’s not how we roll.

On my birthday, we went to the very, very well done National Aquarium.  I loved many of the exhibits, and especially enjoyed the rain forest mock-up.  The birds didn’t look like they’d spent much time beating themselves up trying to escape (I’ve been to a place like that), so I was able to get into it.  The other thing I liked a lot was the design on the smaller tanks, with water partly filling them so that you had multiple habitats in each.  The glass was lensed in such a way that you had a great view of the whole interior without distorting the creatures.  And looking for the frogs was fun!

When we left there, it was already well after 3pm.  We wanted to see all four of the historic ships in the inner harbor, but there wasn’t nearly enough time.  Dedicated to coming back the next day, we chose to visit the submarine first – the USS Torsk.  What a strange thing – those subs are strongly built, of course, but I come from an electronic age, when I expect things to fail for no reason.  This was built at the pinnacle of the mechanical age, when a valve worked or you took it apart and fixed it.  And I seriously doubt they had a lot of equipment failures on these old subs – too many people with time on their hands to get behind on maintenance!

We gorged ourselves at Ra Sushi – they have a happy hour with half-priced appetizers and some sushi.  And $2 sake.  So we got toasty and full and finished my birthday with a cozy evening together on the boat…and the celebration continued.

We didn’t stop with the birthday just because it was no longer December 1st.  Why stop a good thing?  James had more time off, so off we went again, to see the other three historic ships.

The USCGC Taney was next in line.  Though she was built in the 1930′s, she saw continuous service through 1986 and so was updated and upgraded often.  She seems like a thoroughly modern Coast Guard Cutter in most respects, and goodness gracious – she’s the lap of luxury when compared to the submarine!  She was in Honolulu when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and was unscathed – even downing Japanese planes and protecting the city as much as possible.  She kept the major city power plant untouched, which enabled Honolulu’s hospitals to be powered and run through the attack and in the aftermath, with so many casualties to be seen to.  After other, similar stories, she came to be considered a lucky ship and (now, this isn’t how the guide told it, but I think it’s funny in a snarky kind of way) was therefore chosen as the host ship for the high brass – admirals and such-like people.

Lightship 116 was next on our list.  James has a long-standing fondness for these vessels, due to a pirate radio station that was operated from on board one.  They’re perfect for such things – designed to anchor through every type of weather and mark the channels for other vessels, it was important that they be sturdy and stubborn.  This one – the Chesapeake – maintained station through two hurricanes that broke loose its anchor and forced them to motor into the storm in order to keep position.  Amazing vessels – read up on them!

And last but certainly not least…the USS Constellation.  I can’t even tell you all about it.  You’ll just have to come visit.  What I can say is this – the wood used in the construction of this vessel does not exist any longer in tree form.  There will be no more of these ships made, and when they are allowed to fall apart, it’s a hard slog to bring them back.  So support these efforts where you can, okay?

On the presents tip – I’m the kind of person who likes to drag it out.  I got one present fairly early.  Rafael and Tanya gave me a cookbook called Moosewood Restaurant Low-Fat Favorites.  It had been Rafe’s mother’s, and I’m honored to be hosting it and cooking from it now!  Second, I got my favorite pen ever – the space pen.  It’s easy to carry in a pocket while being extraordinarily easy to write with when the cap is on the back end to extend the length.  Love it.

Morning of my birthday, I resisted some small urgings by James and only got one more of my presents.  MY WATCH!  I hate having things on my wrists, and James got me the perfect outdoorsy watch – it clips to a belt loop with a carabiner type clip.  It has a compass and altimeter and tells me when it’s going to rain.  I love this watch – and I killed the last one.  This one is even fancier and ought to stand up to my rough-housing ways pretty damn well.

After we did the three ships, we went to the gym for a hot tub extravaganza and then home, where…I got an iPad!  This thing is fascinating, but I haven’t been online with it yet so I can’t speak to all its abilities.  I’ve downloaded the Navionics app, and I can’t wait to see if it will really locate me…the GPS functions are not quite clear to me.  It took all my music and photos and the photos – wow.  They look so great that it makes me want to create presentations and try for sponsors.  With a tool like this, I think I could really sweep people off their feet (and hopefully the wallets out of their pockets!)…

I plan to write more about my iPad experiences once I’ve worked through it a bit more…stay tuned…