tattoos and other hippie witch redneck mystic lore
tattoos and other hippie witch redneck mystic lore
The Witch and I drove down to Birmingham yesterday, to Classic Tattoo on 2nd Avenue South, where she had herself quite an adventure- her first ever tattoo. She took to it like a fish takes to water.
The Witch said she’s going back to get a tattoo on her right leg, which will feature Eve, Adam, an apple and a snake, which she will call “Paradise Mating”.
I’m going with her to get a tattoo on my left shoulder, which will feature a black witch on a broomstick over a red heart, to go with this tattoo on my right shoulder.
I got the VAGRANT tattoo in Key West, in 2007, because it became vogue there to call homeless people “vagrants”. I had been a vagrant there and elsewhere from mid-2000 to early 2006, when inheritance from my father on Valentine’s Day got me off the homeless rolls for a few years.
I got the Yellow Rose tattoo a couple of years ago, because a solitary yellow rose lay on the top of my infant son’s simple oak casket when I buried him at Elmwood Cemetery on September 12, 1967, after he died of sudden infant death syndrome during my senior year at the University of Alabama School of Law in Tuscaloosa.
In 1988, I visited my son’s unmarked grave for the first time since I buried him. I carried a yellow peace rose I had poached off a climbing yellow peace rose bush I had planted in my yard when I practiced law in Birmingham.
As I approached his unmarked grave, I collapsed and fell to my knees and shook violently as oceans of tears and rivers of snot gushed out of me for about ten minutes. I repeated that ritual several times until I stopped shaking and crying. I ordered a flat grave marker for his grave on which was etched, “Infant son, he opened our hearts and set us on our journey.”
On September 12, 1993, son’s spectacular eulogy poem burst out of me accompanied by massive shaking and oceans of tears and rivers of snot. I do not to this day know how to find a copy of that poem, which opened the heavens to me.
The following March, this poem leaped out of me:
Only fools rush in
where angels fear to tread,
but if there were no fools,
who’d lead the angels?
Right away, I felt something huge and wonderful trying to squeeze its way into me. I went in and out of rapture and crying for about two weeks. Out for my regular morning walk one warm April morning, I felt the presence of angels around me, and I heard, “This thing coming into you is your angel twin, all people have an angel twin, and yours will live out the rest of your life with you.” I thought that was neat. Then I heard, “By the way, this is your son.” Tears came to my eyes, my knees got weak, and I nearly fell to the ground.
It took a while longer for me to fully appreciate that his death had so unhinged me that, no matter how hard I tried, it was not possible for me to fit myself into the plans my father and his father had for me.
The other day, I planted a climbing peace rose at the base of the telephone pole in The Witch’s front yard, and then I planted a red trumpet climbing plant at the base of the telephone pole’s guide wire.
