It’s that time of the year. The time when I post a blog for probably the only day this year.
I don’t blog at all anymore, essentially. And not for lack of material, certainly.
The only reason I do this blog is that I need a space to explain all the embedded meaning in my tattoos. A facebook status or instagram post seems too small for something like that. It’s nice to have something like this to refer back to, so allow me the space, and maybe enjoy yourself while you’re here. I am sure there is entertainment to be found in prior posts on this blog as well as this post.
I got my fourth tattoo yesterday. This comes following the obtaining of my Master's degree in education and my English teaching credential. This comes following my first full-time teaching gigs in the bay area. This comes as the prelude to a big change; both my transition into full-time career work, no longer juggling school and accruing loans, and also transitioning into cohabitation with my life partner. We are coming to a point where we are at about the same place in life and are going to be able to support and lift up each other in ways we weren’t capable of before.
These feats and transitions are evidence of all I have learned and accomplished, but also a reminder of how little I know. I don’t know how to live with a partner, not really. I don’t know what it’s like to have a full-time salaried job with benefits. I don’t know how to work as a part of a team for the betterment of young minds. I still think of myself as a lone island. It is said that the more you know, the less you understand. Einstein, maybe more simply put it as; “The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don’t know.”
Even in going back to therapy, this concept is rearing its head. I thought I had dealt with everything there was to unpack about my traumas and mental illness. It was tangible. I had made so much progress! And yet, going back to therapy in January was a sobering reminder that once you level up, problems don’t go away… They just get more complex. You have to keep coming back to them, and mining more meaning and learning from them. My physical health problems have, over the past year, become so obviously linked to my mental well being that I had to stop seeking answers from medical doctors. Going to therapy proved that my physical problems were my body’s reactions to being triggered. My body had stopped trusting my mind to tell me when I was in danger, when I was uncomfortable when I was sad or angry. I spent the last 5 months training my mind to trust my body again; that my stomach, my bowels knew what they were talking about, and also to train my body to trust my mind; that my mind is better now, it knows when I’m safe and when I am not.
But I had to relearn. I had to go back to my past traumas. Traumas I’ve gone over again and again and again with different therapists, different partners, different loved ones, but that I had addressed less with feeling and more with clinical distance, removing all emotion, all feeling. This time I had to go through them all and feel them, feel them in my guts, in my bowels, in my uterus, my legs, my shoulders.
I’m still in therapy, but I’m getting better at it, and for the first time in about three years, I can actually control my episodes. I can literally talk my body down from an anxiety attack. I have essentially removed all prescribed drugs and diets from my system and I’m doing much better then I was when I was being told to avoid gluten, to avoid spicy food….to get a colonoscopy/endoscopy.
Similarly, in my work, I have had to be constantly reminded that just because I have a degree, just because I have a credential doesn’t mean I know what’s best. I am still new, I have a lot to learn from veterans in the field. I have a lot to learn from all the students I am going to teach. While I have learned to become adept at accepting criticism since high school, I have found myself getting worse at this recently. I think my heart is so tied to how my students succeed that someone questioning what I think is best just has higher stakes than being told the best way to mop a floor, the best method for transcribing an interview. And, like my body, I need to accept that I know nothing. That to be wise, one must accept wisdom.
As an educator, it is going to be forever integral to my teaching practice that I keep this in mind. That I will forever be learning and growing, and that attaining wisdom comes with a growing realization of one’s ignorance. My fourth tattoo is to remind me of this phenomenon.
Coincidentally this tattoo is also commemorative as yesterday I just got offered my first full-time, salaried gig. The first step in my actual career. So, without further stalling, I give you:
The Infinity Ouroboros
A- The Oroborus is the familiar symbol of a snake or dragon eating its own tail. This image is seen in a wide range of different cultures and styles but goes as far back as ancient Egypt iconography or ancient Hindu Upanishads. There is one symbol of this in particular that has the phrase “One is the All” inscribed inside the oroborus ring. My syncretic spirituality identifies with this idea a lot. That no thing in the universe is really very separate from god. It is also known as a symbol of eternity, of life and death being inseparable from each other. It is typically a circle, though, which mine is deviating from to make an —
B- Infinity symbol to further illustrate the idea of eternity and the cycle of death and rebirth being never ending. It has —
C- Shackles dispersed around it’s body that might eventually have a phrase written in them, but which could also stand for the three poisons known in buddhism: ignorance, greed and malice. The neck shackle being just a tie to the earth. The idea is that no matter how much effort I put in to dispel myself of these poisons, I may never be free of them, and just have them inside me like a poisonous —
C- Snake which, is also a middle finger to my Christian roots. As before it’s symbolism was bastardized by the Abrahamic faiths, the snake was a symbol of feminine wisdom, held, one in each hand, by the goddess Ariadne. As the symbol of feminine wisdom, I wanted this infinity ouroborus to be a symbol of this idea of forever learning, while also forever living in ignorance. No matter how much I learn, I am opened up to more that I need to learn. This turmoil, of life and death, wisdom and ignorance could also be help as Apep, the Egyptian god of chaos. I do eventually want a quote with this, but I haven’t decided in what language or where but —
D- The eventual quote comes from this tomb painted in ancient times I learned about in college writing courses that has the phrase “I was what you are, you will be what I am” inscribed along the side of the tomb which I think is a great way to describe the relationship I will be having with my students and further solidifies the death and rebirth idea both in literal and figurative ways.
Your body is a vessel, it transports you to be of aid to those you have the capacity to help and it is your job to take care of this vessel so that it has the capacity meant for it to aid those who you were called to aid. Let this be one of many reminders…
2018 Tattoo: Read here.
