Charon, the Odd Angel

The Monday before Thanksgiving was a travel day through the remainder of New Orleans. We had the opportunity to reflect on the weekend’s events, which had included a visit with some Renaissance Faire circuit friends on Saturday evening. Vince Conaway had mentioned on his blog that he was in the NOLA area and I’d immediately texted him to find out where. This exchange culminated in a visit to a large house well off the beaten path north of Lake Pontchartrain where many performers and vendors were staying during the run of the Louisiana Renaissance Festival. In addition to Vince we saw Tom Zadoyko and met a wonderfully enigmatic gentleman who now works with him in the swordfighting act. When not swordfighting, this particular gentleman portrays Edgar Allan Poe, movingly and accurately. He gave us a taste of his interpretation while we were there and I came away from it very affected. We also caught up with a jouster we’ve shared shows with for many years and got to hear him share his opinions of handling large breed horses and the like. He apologized several times for what he felt was pontificating but we were fascinated by what he had to say, his world being far removed from ours in many ways.

We all tend to forget that our own lives are interesting to those who aren’t living them. Being able to share in this fashion was a wonderful reminder of that fact. It is difficult not the feel gratitude when one is surrounded by so many good friends from so many different backgrounds and life paths who are still able to find common ground in the joy of simple company over shared libations. It is humbling and it is beautiful.

We arrived in Baton Rouge later the same day we left NOLA and were amongst more family less than two hours after setting up camp. Our campground was less than 2 miles from the home of Joanie, my father’s cousin, and Jim, her husband. In addition to us there were several of their children and grandchildren about, including AT and his wife Christy, who have a beautiful home in southern VA. Christy is an accomplished jewelry designer and had much of her work on display when we arrived so that another relative could Christmas shop from it when she arrived. AT showed us a video portfolio of their home and land and some of their combined work.

It’s difficult to describe the mix of feelings that welled up in me as I looked at the beautiful cabinetry and other woodwork on the video. For years I have felt as much an outsider in my own family as one can imagine, having interest and likes and dislikes that seemed so very far removed from anything I had grown up with or was exposed to. I had little idea where my sensibilities had come from and it certainly never occurred to me that it might have a basis in my bloodlines. Yet as I looked at the photos AT shared with us I suddenly realized that I was gazing at those same sensibilities. Everything about the work produced through Narrogate Woodworks resonated with me, gave me a sense of hope, of belonging, of being safe and secure.

These are not feelings I am used to experiencing at family gatherings. I am used to holding back, staying quiet while my more respectable relatives speak up. I have developed a practiced reticence when it comes to my own accomplishments and interests so that it often feels as though I am holding my breath for prolonged periods of time.

Suddenly in this particular moment I found that I could breathe again, and as I did, the tears came. I felt such relief and joy that it is difficult to convey it in words. I’ve since promised myself that I’ll never stop breathing again. I have new validation for who I am and what gives me joy in life and I’m not about to stuff it any longer.

But stuffing is exactly what we did Thanksgiving Day, once the parade was ended. There were three rounds of food, beginning with some breakfast items, followed by the cheese plates and finally the turkey, which was cooked in a bag on the grill, and all the trimmings. Best. Turkey. Ever. So juicy and succulent that AT was able to carve the entire thing with two forks, it was a delight to consume it along with all the other traditional dishes that this portion of my family prepares every year.

Puddin, a cousin of a few removals, made the dressing and was lauded for how wonderful it was. She and her husband live in Kansas City, as it turns out, so when we get back to that area we now have blood family in addition to Faire family to look up and spend time with. We even determined that there is more family in Huntsville, AL right down the road from where my eldest brother is living, whom he didn’t even know about.

It has been a Thanksgiving of discovery, bonding and connectivity. I couldn’t imagine what better way to give thanks than to be surrounded by people and places that are important to you. This was one I’ll never forget. Our next stop was Huntsville to visit with even more family. I’ll get to writing on that trip next week.

It’s out!

I, along with several other remarkable women, am Chapter 5 material.

Amelia Klem Osterud has provided an amazing account well worth having on the shelf if you are at all interested in tattoos and tattooing.

Thank you Amelia for all of your hard work on this project! You are truly an inspiration to me as a novice writer.

My posts here have been much less than I would prefer and I’m cultivating the habit of posting a minimum of twice a week from here on in, so I’ll use this post to begin getting us up to speed. I would venture to say that I kinda blew the whole AEDM thing, but I really don’t feel that way. I generated tattoo art that I didn’t post and writing that was posted elsewhere, but the majority of my time this past month was spent in the art of communication with family members, many of whom I hadn’t seen in almost two decades and others I’d never met at all.

The Mobile Renaissance Faire was an interesting experience this year, with the event taking place on the infield at the Hank Aaron Baseball Stadium. We literally swallowed swords on second base. Feel free at this point to insert whatever interesting metaphor you would wish. We certainly did. The event drew more people, mostly families with children, than we had ever seen in years past, when it was held at the fairgrounds just down the road. We played to active and enthusiastic crowds both days and had an absolute blast doing so. There was enough room to work with whips, a tall enough ceiling on our platform to make fire visible and big and the press gave us both photographic and video coverage throughout the weekend. We did well enough that we decided to take an extra day following to head down to Gulf Shores to celebrate and unwind before we headed west to our next stop in New Orleans. We stayed in a small campground just off the highway along one of the fishing canals in a lot that allowed a clear view of the sunset on the water. They had a yard pig named Zoey that wandered about the campground snuffling merrily, making the place most memorable.

Gulf Shores is a fabulous little resort town that still has enough room between the condominiums to enable you to actually see the beach from the highway that runs parallel to it. The color palette for nearly all the dwellings is the range of pastels you would expect to see among sand and souvenir shops along most any coast, but without as much crowding as you would find in larger resort towns. There’s room to breathe here, and we did a lot of it as we walked along the shores watching the tide wend its way inland. Small mollusks worked their way into the sand at our feet and I was so engrossed in watching them burrow their way in as fast as their little feet could dig that I nearly missed the cownose stingray that was making its way along the shoreline. Easily three feet across, it veered away to a safer distance when it saw us and made its way back inland the further up the shore it traveled. Having never seen a stingray in the wild I followed it for several yards just to watch it feed. It was an amazing experience.

Rolling into New Orleans the next evening we quickly set up camp at Bayou Segnette State Park, a wonderful little gem just southwest of the French Quarter, before heading into town to visit with the owner of Forbidden Art at the Frenchmen Street location. This was followed by a visit across town to Forbidden Art’s second location, a brand new shop in the Garden District, the first tattoo shop ever to be opened along Saint Charles Avenue, which turns into Bourbon Street as it enters the French Quarter. For those of you conversant with the layout of New Orleans, you will understand immediately why this new location is such an important one. That’s right. Mardi Gras. More specifically Mardi Gras parade route. And yours truly will be back to tattoo there the week prior to Mardi Gras, 2010.

This past visit, however, there wasn’t much happening. No tourists made foot traffic nearly nonexistent and the shop being so shiny and new made for long and quiet days, which we filled with talk, drawing and the occasional tattoo for the senior artists there. I took the opportunity to finish some work on Anaphys, which was also an opportunity to demonstrate to the other artists and the shop owner that I knew the game and worked clean. It was exactly the right decision at exactly the right time and I’m looking forward to the craziness of Mardi Gras next year, when I’ll likely wish for some of the slowness I experienced on this visit.

Taking some time on each end of my tattooing guest spot to get into the French Quarter for some postcards, Yuletide gifts and, of course, food, was absolutely an essential goal during our time in the Big Easy, mainly because Anaphys had never been there. Finding our way amongst the tourist traps and souvenir shops was necessary only to procure postcards to be sent to loved ones and we quickly turned our attention to the French Market, the riverfront paths, the artisans and buskers along the Square and the general sights and sounds that make the city what it is. We ate a good lunch at Ralph and Kacoo’s, a Louisiana restaurant I’d been telling Anaphys about since time immemorial. We stopped in for a drink at Molly’s at the Market and stroked Wu the cat. We watched the Christmas Tree lighting ceremony. We patted the mules hitched to their carriages as they queued up for the evening’s business. We admired the architecture and balconies on one end of the Quarter and the work of the talkers outside the adult clubs on the other. We listened to the steam calliope on the steamboat Natchez as the sun set on the Mississippi. It was a very different city than what I recall from my previous visit nearly 20 years prior, before Katrina and Gustav did their dirty work. There was only one item I absolutely insisted on waiting for until we made the next jump to Baton Rouge, and that was café au lait and beignets. I’ll talk about that in my next post.

Get a certain distance into a southerly drive and you start to find gems like these.

I LOVE this place!

Can hardly wait to get to Louisiana. It’s been way too long since my last visit.

Haven’t forgotten about AEDM, just been intensely creative in ways that don’t require a pen and paper in order to prepare for my first weekend of shows in quite some time. I’ll be posting photos to share as the fair weekend gets underway.

And Monday, we return to the beach! If the above photos intrigued you, just wait ’til you see what we bring back from Gulf Shores.

Here it is! My beloved coelacanth! In koi tattoo form! I heart it so much …

The coelacanth was believed to be extinct for many millions of years before turning up in a fishing boat in 1938 and attracting the eye of a museum curator. It’s such a wonderful embodiment of every fish story and parable related to the finding of the impossible that I return to it for inspiration when I’m feeling I’ve reached an impasse of any sort.

I don’t know that I’d ever get it tattooed (mainly because I’m running out of space … yikes!) but if a worthy paleontologist would like either of these pieces of fishy tattoo goodness, you know how to reach me to make the arrangements. Hey, you never know until you ask, right?

More paleo tattoos to come. I’m so very grateful for AEDM and the inspiration to move forward with an idea I very nearly talked to death. I have so much more in mind and in store for the remainder of the month and I can hardly wait to get to working on it. For the next two days, though, I think my contribution will be in the realm of actual in-the-flesh tattooing.

Stay tuned! And if you’re an artist, join in!!!