Episode Nine: Tattoo'd Tracks Of My Tears

Recovery Escapades: A Newsletter Of 2nd Chance Life Across Cardiac County Line Road

Episode Nine: Tattoo'd Tracks Of My Tears

In my 1st Recovery Escapades newsletter I sobbed "Mea culpa" for whacking y'all with TMI on the medical details on my recent open heart surgery. Details are the devil's brush, painting the scene with reasons for why Harley Davidson tire marks ought to run across my chest like a water mark on fine stationery.

Tire treads - a poetic mark for reminding me of my shaved chest skin being sliced, my chest bones sawn and split apart, then wire-stitched back together. Such poetic musing lead me to consider tattooing some motorcycle treads across my cute pink scar. To do that instead of my original idea, which was to put a rising lotus flower over my razor thin puckerline.

I first imagined a tattoo with a lotus bud snaking its way up my chest, playful and colorful. But my awakening experience of hospital ICU ‘bliss’ gave me pause on this. An awakening to bliss that inspired me to lean towards the meaner image of blackened motorcycle treads.

Yeah, a zipper pair of treads, partially undone to reveal a hint of skeleton underneath a re-fused sternum. Anatomically correct and as realistic as waking up after surgery felt surreal. But geez, that lotus flower I first had in mind was sure purdy and cute; more likely folks to be reading that like a poem instead of dismissing zippers and bones as garish and comic.

A tattoo is a fine fashion accessory for the soul - good for completing the closure of ripped sternum and wobbled psyche. After the hospital bliss fades, and its bills are all paid; then, a tattoo. Worth the time to choose it right, design it good and proper. But which choice - the zipper or the lotus flower?

Simple answer, silly boy – pick both. Make a zipper made from tire tracks, and open it halfway to reveal a lotus flower hidden below. Fuse the ideas together into one like your repaired sternum had done, you dumb Texas ‘dillo brain.

Hmmm, these tire treads, how to arrange them exactly? I prefer they make a serpent’s forked 'V' tongue, a tall – and split down, very skinnied down - 'V' like something taken from an old vertically stacked, neon Las Vegas marquee. A marquee of ambiguity.

I say make the treads a ‘V’ as taken off from some ambiguous marquee, because one letter above the 'V' would be burned out, gone dark. The marquee sign then could have been read as the 'LOVE' casino or it could have been read as the 'LIVE' casino.

Read it either way, no sweat - both are fine names for houses of chance. The exact meaning would depend on what fizzled out, would depend on what vowel done gone wrong, done gone where all fizzled spirits and bad bets go – into the cold dark of desert night. Into a Vegas chance-taking night.

But I wonder - what significance does one scorched missing vowel make on such a broken neon marquee, when the message was surely ‘LOVE’ or’ LIVE’? No more than the difference between six and a half dozen; less distinct than what remains after subtracting two from a pair. Read that vertical neon marquee any sensible way you want, I don’t care.

Choose exclusively between to Love or to Live? Best not to do. Do that, and all you get is pocket change, less than enough to buy a piece of penny candy. We are at our best when carry on with both, spending Life to get Love and Love to Life. Much insight comes with a sketched skinny little ‘V’ of tire track on my chest. To Love and to Live – to Love with a burlesque verve and to Live with a burly measure of strength. Neither a choice of either, instead I ought to be true to both.

So tatt me up, put some ink on that chest of mine. It’s the tire track ‘V’ I want on my chest and I’ll allow that marquee sign to have had an 'I' or an 'O', either one. Just steal the friggin’ ‘V’ off that sign and put it on me as a zipper of treads on my chest.

Make on me a sexy love sign that unzips (some) to reveal an unburst lotus flower. A lotus bud like my new artificial artery, one not yet unfolded into Last Glory. An artery not exploded into Finality. A flower rooted from down in my guts, rising up from mucky ground that was rumble run over by wheels turned with raw, internal horsepower.

And these wheels – be them those weary wheels of being? Not too weary, not yet at least. Too wary am I of what I might miss if I leave before my appointed time. So gimme both. Gimme juice to Love. Gimme juice to Live. Gimme some chest ink to mark down my desire for both.

I already have the canvas, it’s skin stretched over a mended frame. Mix ‘em together – all the needed colors, sketch it all down in outline to write a shorthand graphic poem about that inseparable pair, LOVE+LIVE. Ink me up. Gimme both. Gimme the mark of the tender flower and the mark of the mean wheel.

More Updates Yet To Come From Yours Truly,
Living Vivid Across Cardiac County Line Road

James Sullivan