Limes with Orange

This Week in Review

Breaking News: That neighbourhood Primal Grounds that I was so excited about has turned out to be a bust. It's in the local tennis club and is as depressing as every fleabitten motel I've ever stayed in while driving across country through hick towns in the northern states.

Adventures in Film: Pre-screened my latest film at a Media Crit Night for feedback from other artists with CSIF, EMMEDIA and Quickdraw Animation. I've realized that I need to stop being shy about asking my friends in filmmaking about my work, because I'm at a stage where it's easier for me to hear feedback from people I know than from people I don't know.

The Culture Corner: Had a fun filled weekend attending Tank Standing Buffalo's art show and my sister's bellydancing recital!

Journeys with Judaism: Tattoos. Frowned upon by Jewish tradition. Obviously not frowned upon by me. So I did a little research and thought over a few things...

The oft quoted passage, Leviticus 19:28, says "You shall not make gashes in your flesh for the dead, or incise any marks on yourselves: I am the Lord." I would argue first of all that a tattoo is not an incision. That would be cutting. (Even ear piercing would be closer to being an "incision" and yet that's okay.) And secondly, I believe it is only referring to marking yourself with the name of God. Then what about Isaiah 44:5? "One shall say, 'I am the Lord's,' and another shall use the name of Jacob, and another shall mark his arm 'of the Lord' and adopt the name of Israel." Mark his arm? Sounds like a tattoo to me. And this tattoo even refers to the Lord. Sounds like there's room for interpretation on this one as far as I'm concerned, because it seems to me that the only thing being objected to is tattooing yourself with some variation of "I am God"... which I have no intention of doing.

Maimonides sees tattooing as an act of idolatry, which would explain the prohibition if true. But my tattoos are not acts of idolatry, they simply tell the story of my personal journey. So shouldn't tattoos be considered on a case by case basis, depending on the reason behind them and the images in the tattoo?

Then there is the argument that we are created b'tzelem Elokim (in the image of God) and that our bodies are to be viewed as a precious gift on loan from God, to be entrusted into our care and are not our personal property to do with as we choose. But we make choices for our bodies every day, from whether we smoke or drink to what shampoo we use. Whose to say what is the best way to care for this gift? I believe my tattoos are actually helping to make my "gift" more personal.

This is a much bigger debate that I'm prepared to go into here, but I would like to take a moment to point out that it's an urban legend that you can't be buried in a Jewish cemetery if you have tattoos. And one last link on the subject: Tattoo Jew, the movie.

Life with Emma: Methinks it was a bad decision to play Emma's DVD on my computer monitor. Now she watches over my shoulder whenever I'm on the computer and it's a little unnerving!

Quest for Quotes: Marsha Ellen Meidow recently posted this quote by Anais Nin on her Facebook profile and I think it's amazing... "I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me, who does not doubt my courage or my toughness, who does not believe me naive or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a woman."

Labels: highlights, judaism, tattoos

I've decided to put together a list of things I want to accomplish in 2009. I suppose most folks would call these resolutions, given the time of year, but I'm a list maker by nature so to me this is just another list:

1. Breakthrough my "neurotic procrastination" and make a "guerrilla" film from start to finish by the end of February. (You can thank Scientific American Mind for providing me with my self-diagnosis of "neurotic procrastinator"; as for the "guerrilla" part… I've realized that I've become obsessed with permissions and copyrights, not a completely bad thing but I think that sometimes I just use that as an excuse to continue procrastinating.)

2. Add a short workout to my morning routine. (It's a two-hour long routine anyway, so what's another 15 or 20 minutes?)

3. Get a vermicomposter (for all of those banana peels I'm left with after making my protein shakes)… Corollary: Try not to be grossed out by the fact that it means I'll have worms living in my apartment.

4. Try to complete sleep restriction therapy and get a handle on my insomnia.

5. Learn more about Judaism. (I mentioned my interest in Judaism a bit in my post "I Believe…" and followed up a smidge in "A Piece of the Pi", but it's not something I feel like discussing in depth on my blog.)

6. Get a tattoo to memorialize my cat Tobi. (The design that I've come up with incorporates the Egyptian goddess Bast; I'll post a pic of it once I get inked.)

7. Learn some animation techniques.

8. Finish writing current draft of my feature film screenplay and submit it to Sundance to apply to their Screenwriter's Lab. (I have more film goals for myself for the year, but I'm trying to have this list reflect that I do try to have a balanced life… try.)

I did think about some of these things from a "resolution" standpoint, the types of ways that we try to "improve" ourselves: lose weight, quit smoking, etc. I remember this book that I read that talked about how many of us focus on "packaging" and "marketing" ourselves but spend far too little time on "product development"… so I thought about whether I'm addressing "product development," i.e. improving myself as a person on the inside. While I suppose starting to work out and compost could be seen as improvements, I think they're still more external.

Internally, in terms of character or personality, I suppose I would like to be more patient. And while it may not look like I'm addressing that with my list, I think that reducing my insomnia would increase my patience as a direct result of increasing the amount of truly restorative sleep I get (which is practically nil at the moment). So, since it addresses both health and character, I guess I should put that "resolution" at the top of the list.

I start courses on both Judaism and animation next week, so I'm getting going on those ideas. And I just bought a hip-hop workout DVD that I put in this morning (and realized just how long it's been since I took a dance class… yikes!). I'm already working on my guerrilla film and plan on doing some recording for the vocal track on Friday. So that just leaves my vermicomposter, tattoo, insomnia and screenplay. The vermicomposter and tattoo should be simple enough, but the other two are rather more daunting. Then again… I don't need to do it all right away, right? So maybe I'll just keep on with what I'm doing now and address those two when I've adjusted to my new routines and finished this little film.

Am I procrastinating by leaving these bigger goals for later? Maybe. But the fact is those courses that I want to take start now and I can't change that. And I can only do so much. Am I now just justifying myself? Possibly. But it's my blog so I can justify if I want to (hmm, "justify" may rhyme with "cry" but the extra syllables kinda mess up my play on words… oh well).

Labels: education, film, health, judaism, philosophy, tattoos, writing

Well, this has to be the easiest meme I've been tagged for yet... Thanks Marisa! My mission, should I choose to accept it (and I have) is to take a photo of one of my tattoos and post it on my blog. So here's my lotus flower kanji tattoo on my lower right abdomen (only visible when I wear my lowrise jeans):


To me it symbolizes the power to thrive in times of adversity, just as the lotus flower thrives in the mud. I have three tattoos so far, I don't regret a single one and I plan on getting more in the future.

As for who to tag, I don't remember who has tattoos and who doesn't, and I have to admit that I'm too tired to try to remember or find out. So if I tag you and you don't have any tattoos, no worries. But if you do have tattoos, then I showed you mine so you can show me yours.

Tagging:
GirlieGeek
Life in the Fast Lane
Scribble Scratch
Donna
Inner Dialogues

Labels: memes, tattoos

I love tattoos. I have three so far and plan on getting more. But I know that permanent tattoos are not for everybody. Whether it's the thought of the pain or worries that they'll regret it when they're older, I know plenty of people who toy with the idea of getting a tattoo but never do. Which is where these Temporary Airbrush Tattoos (TATs) come in.

TAT International supplies everything that anyone might need to create an airbrush tattoo. They've got a whole tattoo system for folks who actually want to set up a business. But they've also got hobby kits for the average folks who want to dabble in it for themselves. Personally, I think that would be a really cool party game… forget the traditional bridal shower, let's do airbrush tattoos instead!

Labels: cool stuff, tattoos

I was getting all prepared to add a "Most Popular Posts" feature to my sidebar, when one of my posts dropped off the Google map, so to speak. My post that talks about my tribal sun tattoo was attracting huge amounts of traffic but then that traffic completely disappeared overnight. Formerly, when you would do a Google image search for "tribal sun tattoo" or "hebrew tattoo", the image from my post used to be right there on the second page out of thousands of images:


Well, it isn't there anymore. And it didn't just drop down in the rankings. It's simply not there. I know because when I added "Limes with Orange" to the search there were no results. How can it go from being one of the more popular tattoo images on Google to being invisible to them? Very disappointing.

Update May 24, 2007: I don't know what happened there for a while, but whatever it was appears to have been fixed. My tattoo is back and even higher than before in the search results. Cool!

Labels: rant, tattoos

I went and got a couple of my tattoos touched up yesterday afternoon. And I remembered that I had promised to post the genesis of my most recent tattoo:


The tattoo is a tribal sun with the Hebrew letters for Truth in the centre. I had long decided that I wanted some sort of tribal sun on the small of my back, but I needed to decide what I wanted it to represent and what design elements to add to it to make it personal to me.

Around this time, my mother was updating my astrological chart after we ordered my official birth certificate which I needed to apply for my Métis card, and discovered that the time on my certificate was slightly different than the time that my mother had previously used for my chart.

Anyway, it turns out that I have a whole bunch of planets in Virgo in my ninth house, which apparently has to do with our search for meaning, and having four planets in that house meant my search was central in my life. I read some more and I thought about things, one of them being the common themes that I have seen emerging in my scripts: "What is real?" And as everything connected in my brain, I realized that my particular search for meaning is a search for Truth. Which is when I decided to have the word Truth tattooed in Hebrew in the middle of the sun.

Now this is when things got a little freaky. Because my mother had recently told me the story of when she was young and studying acting in New York and feeling rather alone and vulnerable. Her friend Jeremiah (Hebrew scholar, drama critic and mentor) suggested that she needed a protective word, a word in Hebrew where she could visualize the letters surrounding her in a circle of protection. My mother's word was amet, spelled with the letters aleph, mem and tav, which are the first, middle, and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet.

So there I was, surfing the internet, looking for the Hebrew word for Truth and I discovered that it's amet… my mother's protective word from the beginning of her artistic career. So I thought it was even more perfect to use in a tattoo that I want to represent the future of my artistic career. Truth.

Labels: judaism, philosophy, tattoos

I'm finally creating a topic post for my "Tattoos, etc." category. (I considered calling it "Bod Mod" but I thought that might make me sound more hard core than I really am). So here are all the posts where I talk about tattoos and piercings; hopefully, I'll have more to add in future:

That Tat (11.14.2006)
New Tattoo (10.21.2006)
The Blue Hair Effect (5.30.2005)
New Blue & Tattoo (3.22.2005)
Time for a New Tat (2.06.2005)
Agent Orange (11.19.2004)
Triskelion Tattoo (8.20.2004)

Labels: piercings, tattoos

Here's a photo of my new tattoo that I promised in my New Tattoo post. The story behind it will be posted at a later date...



Addendum: I've now posted the story behind the tattoo in The Naked Truth.

Labels: tattoos

I got a new tattoo! I decided I wanted to get one as a pre-birthday present for myself. I went in to Smilin' Buddha last Tuesday to take in some elements that I wanted to include and look through their books for additional elements (it is a larger and more complicated tattoo than my previous ones). I figured that it would take a few weeks to get in, so that I would actually be getting it after my birthday... but they had a cancellation for Friday afternoon!

So I now have a tribal sun, with the Hebrew letters for Truth in the centre, tattooed on the small of my back. I wish I'd asked for a photocopy of the sketch to scan and post here, but I guess I'll just have to wait for it to heal and then take a picture of it. Patience.

Update: photo now uploaded in my That Tat post.

Labels: tattoos

Now that I've recovered from my weekend migraine (in no way triggered by excessive jello shots on Saturday night), I figured it's time for my weekend update.

I finally got my new tattoo (only visible when I wear my lowest rise jeans). I ended up opting for the non-tribalized version of the lotus flower kanji and I love it!



Maybe I'm being completely fanciful, but this image strikes me as the perfect pictorial representation of the lotus flower and its symbolism (as I interpret it, anyway). With the top two X's as the surface of the muddy water (that which must be risen above), the main body of the image on the right representing the lotus itself (which lives and breathes in the mud) and the squiggle to the left as the force or person (with the dot as a head) swooping below the flower to lift it out of the water into the light. Anyone else see that? Yes? No? Maybe it's just me...

Anyway, I got it at The Arthouse in Kensington. No two week wait. No hours in the waiting room on drop-in day. Amber completed the tattoo in an incredibly short time and it looks fantastic! And it was cheaper than the Smilin' Buddha to boot. Gotta like that.

I had also been hoping to update my 'do at grrl's night on Saturday, because my cousin's girlfriend's sister is an amazing hairdresser who is happiest when she's keeping busy giving mani's, pedi's or messing with people's hair. But she wasn't there this time . Such a disappointment after I spent all Thursday afternoon hunting down the right shade of blue dye! (Well, not all afternoon. More like half an hour. But that admission kinda lacks the dramatic impact of the "all afternoon" hyperbole.) FYI, Purr on 17th Ave carries the complete line of Manic Panic hair colour... I bought "Shocking Blue." I expect to be seeing the aforementioned hair goddess this coming Saturday, so I'll let you know how it turns out.

Labels: tattoos

When I wore my low rise jeans dancing last weekend, I started thinking that I would really like a little tattoo on the front of my hip, well technically I guess I mean my right lower abdomen/groin area. Being a small tattoo (and therefore cheaper) it may end up preceding the other tattoos I've had in mind. Namely, a Celtic trinity knot with tribal embellishments on the small of my back and a string of Latin script around my ankle: "fortiter, fideliter, feliciter" (fearlessly, faithfully, felicitously OR courageously, faithfully, joyfully OR boldly, faithfully, successfully... depending on who you ask... apparently, they can only agree on faithfully). So what to put in this new location? I'm considering:

(a) An "Om" (or "Aum") Symbol: one interpretation is that it represents the Infinite; that each curve represents the three states of an individual's consciousness—the waking, the unconscious, and the dream states—merging into a transcendental fourth state of consciousness, all subsumed into the ultimate One, represented by the little crescent moon-shape and dot.


(b) A "Yin Yang" Symbol: representing two balanced, interdependent opposites that form a whole only when combined (it also has some appealing mathematical properties).

(c) A Lotus Flower: the lotus is symbolic of many different things in many different cultures. Because this water lily submerges itself at night and then rises from the water at dawn, many of its meanings relate to sun worship or, as I prefer to see it, the dispersing of darkness. Theosophy also interprets the lotus symbolism as alluding to the inner divine potential. And two additional personal connections for me are Madeleine L'Engle's book A House Like a Lotus and Rachael Sage's song Lotus Flower ("I think I am the lotus flower, You told me they live and breathe in the mud. And I am still breathing, Deep inside of... this love").


(d) Tribal Chinese Lotus Symbol: a stylized kanji version of the lotus flower (since I'm not convinced that I'm really a flower person... even though I was the daughter of flower children... ).

Any favourites? Any suggestions?

Labels: tattoos

Amazon.com is doing this thing called Amazon Theatre: Exclusive Short Films: "Every week for five weeks, beginning November 9, Amazon Theater will debut a new short film for your viewing pleasure." Last week's film, Portrait, was entertaining in an unoriginal, predictable sort of way. This week is Agent Orange, a psychedelic love story directed by Tony Scott (of Top Gun fame; apparently he's currently directing a script written by Richard Kelly who wrote and directed Donnie Darko!). Anyway, I definitely recommend checking out Agent Orange.

What I'm listening to right now: Miles Davis — Live at the Plugged Nickel.
I'm almost loathe to confess that I still have trouble appreciating this sort of deconstructionist jazz in a recording (I realize there's probably a proper term for it, but I'm not sure what it is... I don't think it's cool jazz; maybe modal music?). It's different when it's live... sort of like I can interpret the improvisations via the musicians themselves. But on a CD... I'm afraid I'm not feelin' it. Does that make me musically illiterate?

P.S. Another major upheaval in my life... another body modification (gee... I make it sound like I have so many ). Got my upper ear cartilage pierced today at Adorned (same place I went for my navel piercing). Just got a small captive bead ring. It stung a little bit more than the navel, but I really like the way it looks. It's probably a good thing that I only started this trend a couple of years ago, otherwise I might well be covered in tattoos and piercings by now. Wonder what the motivation will be for my next tattoo...

NaNoWriMo Word Count: 13,239 down ~ 36,761 to go
(but keep in mind, that my peak writing hours are between 11pm and 2am, so the night is early for me yet)

Labels: film, music, piercings, tattoos

Was just reading up on the Celtic symbol that I recently had tattooed onto my upper back (at Smilin' Buddha... anyone know if they've got a website?), called a triskelion or triskele (from Greek for "three-legged"):



I was initially drawn to it because it was reminiscent of the Isle of Man symbol of the three bent, armoured legs joined around a central point (my paternal grandmother was from the Isle of Man):



A little background: Long before the Christian trinity was introduced to the Celts, the number 3 was very prevalent in Celtic religions and had a variety of forms and meanings. Commonly seen images in Celtic art and symbolism include spirals and Celtic knots. Spirals are considered to represent spiritual balance between inner and outer consciousness, whereas knotwork represents the intricacy and interconnectedness of all things. The three Manx legs comprise one fairly literal form of triskelion from around the 11th century, but the symbol in my tattoo actually pre-dates it.

The triple spiral triskelion that I chose is often thought to symbolize the Druidic Sister Goddesses of sovereignty: Fodla, Eriu and Banba. Though others claim it represents the three forms of the Wiccan Goddess: Maiden, Mother and Crone. Other interpretations include the four elements, with earth at the centre surrounded by "the wave of sea, the breath of wind, and the flame of fire." Yet another theory is that the triskelion represents the continuity of life in the trinity of birth, death and rebirth.

I had expected myself to settle on the "maiden, mother, crone" meaning, but the wording of the last interpretation reminded me of a poem I wrote many years ago:

How Long

How long will these emotions last
a minute
a day
forever?

Through birth
then death
then rebirth?

If I live other lives
do my emotions live them with me?
If I live through a war
does the memory burn within me
through birth
then death
then rebirth?

Is that why I wake
in the middle of the night
with sweat on my brow,
hearing thunder when the sky is clear
hearing screaming when there's no one near
being afraid of...
nothing,
nothing at all.

How long will these emotions last
a minute
a day
forever?


Leaving aside for a moment the implication of reincarnation, I think the very cycle of the life we are currently living includes many metaphorical births, deaths and rebirths. Having chosen to get this tattoo as a sort of rite of passage marking a significant event in my life (not dissimilar to the Maori, I suppose), I like the idea of it representing a recent "death" and current "rebirth."

Labels: poetry, tattoos