Mark as Unread

A loved one has told me several times that I might be bordering on being narcissistic, owing to the fact that whenever she asks me a question on any topic, after giving her an answer I always circle back to me -- my experiences, to be exact. I told her that that's the only way I can make sense of my answer, or think clearly, for that matter -- basing it on my own experience. I'm pretty confident that I'm not narcissistic; I just believe that there's wisdom to be gleaned from the personal.  Which is why I've always been drawn to writers of the personal essay, the memoir, epistolary novels in the form of journals, and to fictionists who write in the first person. That's why I'm drawn to blogging. So this is narcissism? So be it. 

I have a lot of artist friends -- graphic designers, illustrators, painters, calligraphers, photographers, architects, tattoo artists -- and I have a ton of respect for all of them and for what they do. In the case of the latter, I've ALWAYS tipped them on top of the actual price of the tattoo they quoted me -- almost always 15%, at least. I have 30 tattoos now (and counting), since I was first inked way back in 2017, spread over hours and hours of 14 painful sessions, and I've been fortunate enough to have been tattooed by a total of 10 talented artists, majority of them Filipino and Mexican, and a couple of Americans. The way I see it, I'm just borrowing their art, which they painstakingly inked onto its permanent canvas, my skin -- until I draw my last breath, that is, and the canvas and the art burns to ashes in an incinerator (I prefer to be cremated when the time comes). My point? Artists (any kind of artist, not just tattoo artists) aren't respected enough these ...