My dears,
Many people have asked me to elaborate upon the meaning of Val’s tattoo. I tried a few times and got stuck, because actually, Val didn’t put it in words that often. But here are some of the meanings I understood her tattoo to have:
The spiral was to remind her body of “Everything in, everything out”: letting that hopeful, misguided cancer just flow right on through and out the other side. It was being permeable to the world, and trusting that being so would take her (and us and you) to a place of beauty. It also invoked the great spiral of the galaxy. She searched for quite a while for a spiral that looked beautiful and right to her, and in the end she patterned her particular spiral on a block print my sister had used in a fused glass art piece.
She placed the tattoo on her chest, over her lungs, in celebration of having survived that first year of diagnosis and chemo, and as a sort of pathway for her breath and cancer to remember to move on through. I think she also placed it so that it would be a little bit inescapably visible, because it turned out that part of having cancer meant being always vulnerably visible, and she sought out the strength in that.
The crows were because she liked crows. She liked their knowing, sassy ways, and their trickster natures. Her photographer’s eye liked their black cutout forms against the cloudy Portland sky. They reminded her of the ravens from her Alaska years, which I think reminded her of Native Alaskan art, culture and story; great friends; and beloved wild landscapes.
And the tree because growing and life and nature and complication, and reaching for big sky … And the roots for being grounded and stretching up and out… but really, the tree/roots parts are just my summary of things I know about her, not what she said about the tattoo, because she wasn’t precise in her description of the tattoo, at least in my memory. So much of my memory is imprecise. But then, so was Val. Which made room for improvisation, and for art to spiral out around all the edges.
Roz reminded me of another part to do with the tree: “I remember she loved trees, brachiating against the sky. I think maybe she already did [love trees], and then the lungs that brachiate somehow was mixed with the trees.”
I think that’s right, I remember branching being a part of what drew her to the image of the tree, and its kinship with the body’s vessel structure. And the breathing of trees and the breathing of lungs, both taking the world in and letting the world out.
I love it.
Thank you for that beautiful explanation, Deborah! I once asked her what it meant and she said pretty much the same thing……only not as detailed so it’s good to know the details.
Beautiful.
I’m not often drawn to tattoos, but this one is incredible.