I waited thirty years to get my first tattoo and seven more to get my second; tattoo #3 follows #2 at a hair-raising 15 months, and was also the shortest inception-to-ink turnaround in my life. If Tumblr is to be believed – and this will be a story of Tumblr, among other things – I saw flatbear‘s “If She Be Worthy” temporary tattoo art on or around the 30th of May of this year, and immediately replied with “GOALS.” A month later, it was done. This one needed to happen, and happen fast.
The defining attribute of the tattoos, in terms of deciding to get them carved permanently into my body, was only that when I first saw the image (or imagined the idea, in the case of tat 2), I immediately thought, “that’s the one.” So it was in this case. There’s something subharmonic that happens, beyond just the art or the meaning beneath the art; some elixir of varying and random threads that tie the whole concept of the thing together in my mind in a pleasing and passionate way, which makes the strings inside me hum in tune – like finding a soul mate, I suppose. In If She Be Worthy’s case, the miscellaneous accumulation of resonances were: Tumblr, art, Lady Thor, colour, worth, and women. Those six threads played a chord for me, and I knew right then and there.
One road trip to North Carolina (to meet the artist), and one (shorter) road trip to Yonge and Eglinton (to consult with Savannah at Seven Crowns, who adapted Nicki’s design into something more permanent-tattoo than temporary-tattoo) later, and the only thing that was really holding me back was Demetre’s bachelor party and my own sense that really, a month was tidy enough in terms of time to decide if I was serious about this or not. (Savannah, to her credit, wanted to put it on me pretty much immediately – like, 2 days after my consultation. I balked.)
Have I mentioned that I hate calling her Lady Thor? Per the creative team on the book, I’d much rather just go with Thor, but it gets confusing, I know. Suffice to say that as much as I love Thor (the dude) – and truly, Thor was the missing piece to my entire architecture of how to read and enjoy comic books, for reasons too numerous to get into here – I love Thor (the lady) even more. Surprise surprise, I suppose, to anyone who has ever met me; if Thor (in general) was comics’ missing piece, Thor (as a lady) was Thor’s missing piece for me, the Retcon of the Gods, the thing I never knew I wanted till it was right in front of me. I mean – the goddess of thunder. I glow from within just hearing the words.
I have known goddesses. Again, to those who know me, none of this will come as any surprise, but having had my perspective on love, passion, and the soul so completely rearranged in the last few years, there is something intrinsic and powerful in the new iconography to me, Thor calling the lightning, holding the power in her hand. Things I understand now only by not speaking about them, which will make this a frustrating subject for a blog post I suppose, but them’s the breaks. I got cracked open by these experiences, for good or ill – my heart grew three sizes – and I am gratefully, mercifully changed.
I said this was a story of Tumblr, and this is where the social media platform weirdly enters into things, because the process of sorting out my heart and my thoughts and my soul seems better served here than it does anywhere else. I don’t really blog any more – this piece will be an exception – and my interest in Twitter is fading, but Tumblr bubbled up at just the right time when words no longer seemed adequate. Words have been my secret weapon since I was four, but my other side of myself – the side beyond them – grew so suddenly and so insistently in the last half year that the ability to troll through endless hours of curated feeds of thoughts and feelings that express what I’m going through without my having to find the words myself, is invaluable.
And so that’s what I do; I make my coffee (in my Thor mug, natch) and I sit on my balcony and I wander around the internet looking for thoughts, images, feelings, and all manner of other things that the people in this community have found and made, which makes us all part of the same thing, and lets us share that power around – power of recovery, of healing, of representation and change. There’s something of the hammer in that too – Mjolnir, and beyond it, Marvel, just a small piece of a big story, but a story where the privileged have had their time in the spotlight, and other beings are stepping up in their stead. It’s happening in the real world too, but as is more and more often the case for me, the only way I can articulate the story to myself is through these artful archetypes – and, thank the goddess, I live in a world where those things are not just plentiful, but gaining strength.
So here’s this Tumblr artist, and here’s my arm; right above the real estate still reserved for my one and the kids, and it all just sort of pops – because, as you might know, 2014 was not exactly the best year ever, but as of the 15th of May of 2015 or so, I have at least survived it. (Yes, I considered a Fury Road tattoo – briefly – but really, what for? That movie is a tattoo upon the world.) And there is an intrinsic lesson for me in everything that happened, too, and it comes from this: I have a long, dreadfully repetitive history of thinking that if I just prove myself worthy enough of others, I will get the things that I want; and while I am by no means striking that belief from the record, I’ve come to understand the importance of those who are worthy of me, in return. I have value, I guess, is what I’m saying, and saying for the first time.
It’s not a complicated thing, but it’s very quietly true. And so the needle goes in the arm.
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