I Don't Think These Shoes Fit
From a dream.
(Digital)
Here in Minnesota, we are currently experiencing the season in which it is too chilly to run the AC and too warm to run the furnace, meaning there is no industrial-level filter cleaning the air in my house. Therefore, I'm currently playing the “Can Allergies Actually Be This Bad, Or Am I dying?” Game.
The prizes suck and are primarily in the shape of pill bottles of various sizes and dimensions. All eligibility varies by the volume and pitch of my wheezing and perpetual coughing.
This dream started with the ill-fitting shoes and escalated until I was covered in my own blood, stumbling around in a forgotten park. While I had managed to fall— and stay — asleep, the discomfort of breathing had followed me.
I can’t wait until actual winter. I know I’ll be complaining about it in February, but right now it can’t come soon enough.
The Wheel of Fortune
Tarot Major Arcana X
(Ink on Paper; see more in the Tarot Gallery)
My favorite book of the Bible is the Book of Ezekiel. It’s a delightful gem of off-kilter occult matrices and fixations that never took root in canon. Aside from Revelation, which is basically a dude wishing he could rewrite Ezekiel but make it weirder, it has the best imagery of the entire Bible.
(Not the best imagery of all of the Biblically-adjacent writings; of all of them, I vote heartily for the Gnostic Gospels because that many layers of reality is just… impressive. Also, I am a big, big fan of the word “archon” for no discernable reason.)
I enjoy the flaming wheel as the Wheel of Fortune primarily for its connection to Ezekiel and the living creatures that make up God’s chariot. But I also like that it reminds me of Event Horizon and Contact, both of which clearly referred to Ezekiel's flaming wheel as a link between man and something beyond (one for better and one for worse).
The spinning wheel of fate does more than mark us, it moves us through states of being by virtue of altering our (spatial, temporal, and spiritual) course on a continuous, unrelenting basis. That sounds very woo-y, but it’s really just a matter of fact that we’re all hurtling through a chaotic universe bouncing off of one thing after another until one of those things is simply too much and we die as a result of the impact.
That’s not woo; that’s just physics.
I want my Wheel of Fortune to be perpetual. Not in a narrative cycle of up and down, death and rebirth kind of way, but in an every moment is the shattering and rebuilding of an infinite amount of realities kind of way.
The wheel turns, fate burns.
The Bounded Infinite
Pencils for the next Tarot card
(Pencil on Paper)
A number of years ago (6 now? …man… 7?), I had the privilege to work on a Tarot deck that was completed in memoriam for another tattoo artist, Mo Richard, who had started a deck but had died before its completion. Mo had planned the multi-stabber deck far ahead of time, so the organizers of the deck sent out guidelines along with our card assignments, to match our work to Mo’s original vision.
My card was the Four of Swords. I had to incorporate a chrysalis into my image, but I didn’t know enough about Tarot then to know why. I completed my card shortly after my sister died, and I know that because I do not remember completing the card at all. I only know that one of the organizers, Joe Rheault, very patiently asked for my image, which was late in arriving. Bless Joe for his kindness; I think about it often. I doubt he even knew that my sister had just died, he’s just a really great goddamn human.
Now that I’m working on my own deck, and I’ve made it to the fours, it seems necessary to include the chrysalis again. It was perfect the first time (thanks to Mo, not me), and seems everlastingly fitting.
Three of Wands
The threes! Complete!
(Ink on Paper; see more in the Tarot Gallery)
Throughout these early cards, I keep singing Peter Gabriel’s Growing Up to myself (“three dot; a trinity, a way to map the universe; three dot”). After the fours (“four dot; is what will make a square, a bed to build on, it’s all there; four dot”), I’ll need a different soundtrack to roll through my head alongside all the other perpetual sounds (“my ghost likes to travel, so far in the unknown…”)
One Wand of Many
A brief glimpse of a wand while I determine if there should be creatures in this drawing.
(Ink on Paper; WiP detail)