Tattoos and other life stories – part 1
I got my first tattoo in plain sight, where I could see it, where everyone could see it. It’s a little outline of a triangle, like a hollow mountain. A mountain that could be filled.
Mountains are some of my favorite things in the world. When I want to really get to the essence of God, without all these songs and words and phrases and contexts we have for him, I look at the mountains. It feels raw to me, deliciously abstract. Beauty and glory’s tabula rasa, bare and jarring, unneedy, content. I feel like I’m looking back, before we start adding all our misconceptions and ideas and small praises. Sometimes I just want to be.
But I didn’t choose a mountain for my tattoo because I love mountains. I choose it because I am afraid of them.
I always had a dream to live in the mountains. It didn’t come true until high school. I moved to one of the most beautiful places that (even in retrospect) I have ever been. But before I moved there, before I knew I would move there, I visited. And I was terrified of the mountains. They were my enemies. For some reason, those particular mountains threatened to close in on me, attack me, consume me, laugh at me, chase me away because I didn’t belong there. It was true, I thought, I didn’t belong there. Could never.
That was before I lived among them. Now the mountains surrounding Anchorage, Alaska are beautiful to me, home to me. But they have never stopped being wild. Never stopped being as uncomfortable as wolf teeth on the neck. Never stopped being the truest kind of mountains.
I don’t know if they ever will be safe, but I know they are good. And I’ve learned that comfort hardly ever means best or right. That’s the kind of mountain I got tattooed on my hand.
Seven glorious unending Alaskan summers, and six gnawing winters later I took a job in South Florida. Building up to the move, I had recurring nightmares and senses that I would die on the way there, in a plane crash. But I also knew I had to go. It was my next adventure. This ties into another important part of the tattoo. I see the good yet uncomfortable/terrifying paradox summed up well in the concept of adventure. Adventure rips you out of your comfort zone. Adventures can range from the mild: exploring a new country by yourself, to the extreme: taking a risk in expressing that you love someone, etc. But either way, “adventures make you late for dinner.” They are not straightforward, predictable, or tame.
I feel I will die if I don’t travel the world. But because of my fear of flying (it inconveniently increases the more I fly) I often feel that I will literally die if I do. Like the mountains, adventures aren’t safe. But they’re good. I’d rather die trying to travel than never travel. I’d rather live risking that God is real than to die without ever believing. Even if God is not real, God is the most beautiful idea I know. Even if the plane does crash, I’m setting off with my little pack and my comfy shoes.
On the flight from Alaska to Florida I also told myself I would get a tattoo like the one I have if I made it alive to my next adventure. And slowly, the more alive I became, the more I realized that arriving was just a part of it. That moment of “safe” solid ground isn’t at all a resolution, it’s at best a transition. The adventure started with saying I would go. By choosing beauty over safety. Ironically, at this point, the safety was back in the mountains of Alaska that I used to be so afraid of. I am still afraid of them sometimes. But I am not only afraid. There is more now than just my fear. There is love. There is more than doubt, there is faith. That’s why I wanted my little mountain to be hollow inside. So it could be filled with the things that, unlike fear, can truly sustain me. Now I have sometimes fear but always wonder. Always the sense that if I could pick any mountains in the whole world, it would be those. Any adventure, it would be this.
Slow Zoom Towards the Mysterious Unseen
I wrote about a rather obscure short film called Wavelength and the way it parallels our own longing. Read the whole piece over at Mockingbird.
I wrote about a rather obscure short film called Wavelength and the way it parallels our own longing. Read the whole piece over at Mockingbird.
“We don’t do a lot of waiting nowadays. A few extra seconds of Internet load time merits a complaint call. We don’t like waiting, but we’re asked to do a lot of it. We especially don’t like waiting when it comes to movies. We tend to favor fast cuts and snappy punch lines. These movies “reward” the viewers (and also usually the characters) for their time by pairing questions with answers, effects with causes, and situations with explanations. There are actually storytelling formulas that dictate how long the viewer should be left to wonder before the truth is revealed, how long the protagonist should have to struggle before their want is achieved. This is effective storytelling, and a lot of fun, but sometimes we’re left to ask why our own lives aren’t resolving in this “normal” amount of time. The longer we wait, the more our faith is tested. We can’t skip to the end of our stories.”
Dive In
A boy is silhouetted against open space – maybe an infinity of possibility, an endless horizon – and his eyes are ahead. His knees are tucked under his chin. He is ready. He is mid-air, suspended between land (where it is safe) and the water (which could be unsafe).
I’ve thought for a long time that I want to design wine labels. There is a wine label design I like that is called Cannonball. I like this one because it is minimalist and clean and full of momentum. A boy is silhouetted against open space – maybe an infinity of possibility, an endless horizon – and his eyes are ahead. His knees are tucked under his chin. He is ready. He is mid-air, suspended between land (where it is safe) and the water (which could be unsafe). In the image the water is neither smooth or fierce – but it is clearly alive. He is half-way between where humans should logically be (as pedestrian mammals) and where we must learn to be. He is, for a few split seconds, level with the horizon – maybe even he is in the horizon, as I sometimes feel I am in a sunset. We do not know the story of the boy. Maybe he jumps often: he learned long ago how to be out of his element. Maybe he has jumped before and it was traumatizing. Maybe he has never jumped in his life. Maybe the water is cold, or very deep. Maybe there are sharks. Maybe the boy is thinking as he leaves the shore that he might have forgotten how to swim. But what matters in the picture is that he is jumping. In that image, past and future are surrendered as the boy looks the horizon in the eyes. The rest of the story is coming, but not yet. The top of the bottle says “dive in.”
How to Eat Apple Pie
Ingredients: 1 piece of apple pie (the kind with the apples still crisp and coated in only cinnamon, with the kind of crust that you imagine when you imagine baking a whole pie crust to eat by itself and by yourself. I prefer pie a day old, when the flavors have become friends and the warmth left is a result of the pie and not the other way around)
Ingredients:
1 piece of apple pie (the kind with the apples still crisp and coated in only cinnamon, with the kind of crust that you imagine when you imagine baking a whole pie crust to eat by itself and by yourself. I prefer pie a day old, when the flavors have become friends and the warmth left is a result of the pie and not the other way around)
1 half-piece of bacon (the kind of bacon that is leftover from breakfast and is lovingly split between you and your brother. The last piece of bacon is usually the best, but this is difficult to prove. Any good real bacon will do in a pinch, but sharing always adds to the satisfaction)
1 drizzle of homemade caramel sauce, also a day or so old (the kind made with heavy cream, real butter, love and vigilance: “watch the sugar carefully but do not stir or touch it!” is a difficult triumph)
Lastly, 1 splash of coffee. Note that this coffee should be at least a few hours old, preferably from the fourth or fifth cup of the day, the one you have been nursing for the better part of the morning or even afternoon. The first coffee of the morning, the kind you reach for zombie-like before you can think of or muster anything else, should be savored by itself and in hearty quantities. The coffee used for this pie should have been sitting on a desk while you have written or on a windowsill while you have read. It should have heard at least a few conversations, perhaps been microwaved once or twice to be fully matured. It’s purpose here is not to lift the spirits, but to remind them why they are lifted. It is more sacramental than foundational: the communion rather than the salvation.
Note: Apple pie, all pie rather, is exceptional cold or lukewarm, but I like this mixture warmed, once all the components have met in a sprinkling of introductions. If weather permits, eat the pie outside, observing the both the earth and the Creator you are enjoying.