picture this, my telephone number

I rarely serve up pictorial evidence here on my pretty dumb things, but I've lately embraced the photo booth feature on my iMac. Pictures, for all their two-dimensional limitations, do provide an accurate, if peccable, documentation. I've been documenting change, in short, and I'm going to show it to you, courtesy of my iMac and some help from my friends.

For any number of reasons, I've been slowly emerging from the chrysalis of doom that held me in its livid embrace for so many months and, for any number of reasons, that emergence has caused me to changey appearance. Part of my choice to relinquish the cookies of pain--which I've written about previously--and to implement the diet of vigor sprung from internal forces: the feeling that I was just over and done with managing my emo self by eating. But the other part of my choice came from purely external and vain reasons.

Two months ago, I decided to put into action my friend Karl Elvis's kind offer to buy me a tattoo. I saw my tattoo artist, the very fabulous Stephanie Tamez, at her studio in Brooklyn, and staring at my toad-white upper arm in the clinical fluorescent light of the studio, I was appalled. I got my tattoo appointment, did some quick calculations and cemented my desire to get into shape. If I was going to sport a new tattoo, I wanted that arm to look good enough to eat.

I wanted Stephanie to transform my memorial Spencer tattoo that I already had from its thug life incarnation into something pretty (see original at left; click to embiggen; my computer flips photos; the text isn't mirror image in real life). I'd had an idea that Stephanie, in her infinite dermal wisdom, quickly convinced me was stupid beyond the telling of it. Mercurial and dark, Stephanie rummaged through some of her many drawers and pulled out a tattered and battered book of Victorian clip art. Rapidly, she thumbed through the book, pausing every once in a while to jab a forefinger at one illustration or another. I told her that I absolutely deferred to her good judgment, and after Stephanie took a picture, drew a diagram, filled in a form, and looked at me decisively, I got an appointment.

Stephanie chose for me a design based on Victorian graphic filigree, and yesterday's tattoo session was long-ass, highly painful, and incredibly successful (again, picture at left, the clicking and embiggening). Naturally, because my tattooist's opinion of me is paramount, I sat still as a Maori and stoically let Stephanie have her painful inky way with me. We chatted about books and sex work and her girlfriend and my lack of boyfriend and Texas and why it's difficult to go home again, and three hours later I had new art.

It's not quite finished yet. Stephanie wants to add another curlicue or two and shade the bellies of the cues with gray. "It'll give it depth," she said. I'm not 

entirely sure what that means, but given how well she does what she does, I'm tractable as a lamb. The next appointment is Friday 15 May.

I've another physical transformation in the works. On Thursday, I have an appointment with Randall, my Texan hairstylist, for a haircut. I've not had my hair cut in a year and a half, pretty much to the date (see eighteen months for significance here). I grow hair like Julia Roberts grows teeth. My hair is an unstoppable force. It grows recklessly, willfully and with an assertively healthy abandon. Currently, my hairstyle is out of Lord of the Rings (see left, and what the hell, right). It reaches my waist. And while even I must acknowledge it's pretty, I nonetheless feel like it's also sort of creepy in its Crystal Gayle excess. It's not going to be turning my green eyes blue, but it's not making me happy. Plus, it's a heavy, itchy, cumbersome animal, and I just want to hack it off with an Exacto.

The haircut I'm considering is that of Starbuck in Season 3 of Battlestar Galactica. Which basically means that I'll be taking my hair into hyperdrive and crossing time and space, as well as transforming it from Eowyn exorbitance to Kara efficiency. Hair has always held a kind of Victorian significance for me. I understand with visceral inarticulacy why in Robert Browning's "Porphyria's Lover" the eponymous Lover chooses to strangle Porphyria with her own hair: her hair is inextricable from her eroticism and to use it to kill her is to punish her for her promiscuity. I fear cutting my hair will divest me of my mojo, but I'm so very tired of this beast decorating my scalp that I'm ready to risk it.

I may still change my mind.

Finally, my friend 1st Republic, 14th Star has made good on his promise to photograph my much beloved graveyard, the one I felt such nostalgia about after reading Neil Gaiman's Graveyard Book. Looking at the photos of this halcyon/eldritch space, I get that strange emotional palimpsest of recognizing the old while seeing the new. The graves, their decaying gray and wind-worn nubs, remain the same. The pointy fence and the arching sepulchral trees, however, are gone. The hill to the east remains, but while it had been carpeted in spiky evergreens, houses now peek above the sight-line.

It's hard for me to look at these images. A tsunami of remembrance hits against a flood of newness, and I swirl in the vortex. That said, I do love the one with Camel's Hump in the background. This is the view I remember well, and in a strange reverse-Proustian memory, looking at it summons the taste of meadow, earth, strawberries and growing things.

So many changes, so little time, and yet also so much.

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Comments

[X on the MTA]

In the two years of religiously reading your pretty dumb things I have, for better or worse, formed a mental image of what you must look like. It wasn't so much based on what you wrote of your own appearance, as it was on a lot of completely arbitrary unconscious decisions mixed in with a healthy bit of randomness and a dash of what I imagined Lola must have looked like. None of the many renditions included you with hair that long, and most of them included you much shorter, shoulder length hair.

[Von]

Wow, very nice hair! Well, if you're hesistant about cutting it...what about cutting it for a good cause and donating it to cancer societies?

I wish I could grow hair as quickly, I've been trying to grow it out long enough to donate it, but I'm tired of long hair.

[1st Republic 14th Star]

Do you need to flip those photos so people can read the text around the tattoo of Spencer's paw print?

[chelsea g.]

My friend Karl Elvis is flipping the photos for me. I can't deal with it all; frankly, I think I'm still knackered from the tattooing.

Thank you 1/14 for your photos. I really appreciate them.

kissykiss,
chelsea g.

[~]

From what I can see, you look a little like Gail Greenwood from Belly/L7. (Which is a compliment.)

[Unnur María Bergsveinsdóttir]

Congrats on your new tattoo! It looks good! I look forward to seeing pics of it finished and healed. :)

[Karl Elvis]

I flipped those photos for you. The engineer in me was unable to tolerate the bassakwardness.

looks awesome, baby.

[Pete]

CG,
Tat looks great! I am married to a woman who grows hair like you, she gets it trimmed about every 6 weeks so that it is about half way down her back most of the time. I guess you can tell that I prefer long hair, but you have the ultimate decision.
Pete

[Samantha]

Absolutely love BSG, and I would love Kara's hair, except that my hair does exactly as it wants, especially if I cut it to look a certain way. Good luck with the cutting. Also, your ink looks awesome!

[Jack B]

You look nothing like I pictured. I guess I always pictured someone like Mrs. Robinson. Now I can finally put a face to the name (sort of.) Thanks!

[sera]

It's funny how many of us had a (different) mental image of you. I expected you to look like the purple girl at the typewriter in the top left corner of the blog!

I love the hair, but I can understand the urge to get rid of it, especially with hot days looming.

[dbs]

What is it about hair that is fascinating to people, and I include myself in this realm. My recent ex has butt-length blonde hair, and bangs (swoon!) - it's like carrying around your own mobile configurable pool of sexyness.

But gosh could it be a hassle. So I respect and understand people who have long hair and trim it back in a fit of "ZOMGIDONTWANTTODEAL!" - but somewhere there's a bit of sadness because of it.

What keeps throwing me personally off is that short-bobby hair can be super-sexy too. What is it with the aesthetics of the world messing with my hind-brain? Be consistent, dangnabbit!

Good luck with the new 'do!

[Svasti]

I love the tattoo work. But then, I love tattoos. Especially I love the way the new stuff kinda hugs your original tatt.

Getting one's hair cut can be so cathartic. Especially when it seems, you're in the process of re-building yourself, re-claiming your center, your power. That's the vibe I get from your posts about getting back in shape - you're sort've kicking depression's butt.

I'm kind of where you were a while back. Still wrestling with that fucker, Depression. I'm still eating crap, and not taking care of myself. I'm trying, but its an up and down thing.

So thanks for the inspiration. I'm working towards the place you're getting to. Its hard work, but very much worth it.

[chelsea g.]

You know, I never noticed, but I actually do look like Gail Greenwood. Good on you, strange punctuation mark.

Hair. Catharsis. Yes. Also, it grows back incredibly quickly. I do need a change, and yet when I sit down in Randall's chair tomorrow, I may very well chicken the pluck out. I'll let you all know.

In the meantime, it has been really interesting finding out what-all you-all thought I looked like. If Karen Black and Elisha Cuthbert had a really smart, slightly bitchy, middle-aged love child with good genes and a habit of eating a green thing every day, that would be me.

kissykiss,
chelsea g.

[DL]

You should have tatooed your clitoral hood and mons. That would have been super hot

[chelsea g.]

Thank you, DL. I shall certainly keep that under advisement for the very next time I feel bored by the sheer weight of my bland existence.

[DL]

Glad you appreciated it.

[G]

At first glance of the first picture, my thought wasn't about the tattoo, but, "Wow, her hair got really long!" Was then tickled that you wrote about it. Your tattoo and hair both look smashing!

Also, thanks for the link to the tattoo artist...I've been thinking hard about getting inked in the next few years. Maybe, but for now, I love looking at Stephanie's portfolio and am keeping her name in mind. :-)

[Reeder]

Couldn't pass up your excellent phrase "visceral inarticulacy". We've all felt things that we understood deeply but couldn't put into words. Thank you for a good way to express that! --RW