This is a temporary tattoo (obviously) that Michael ordered on-line. I helped him come up with the word. Pretty soon, he's going to have the tattoo done permanently on himself. For keeps.
I intend to get "Consumer" done in smaller format. But definitely barcode.
Why?
Well, one, tattoos are more than cool. They are a new rite of passage for the severely underpained generations. We learn something through these rather animistic, primitive methods of self-exploration. Video games and T.V. cannot teach us pain management, sacrifice, or meditation. Tattoos can.
Additionally, the tattoo he intends to get is extremely thought provoking, I think. One, it eliminates any question about our existence. We are all bound for entropy. Death and destruction. Secondly, I think a consumer society says a lot about our fear of expiration. We purchase to waylay death, a very futile gesture. We are bound for the grave, and no exlir of youth will dissuade nature. Face it. We get old, wrinkled, tired. And then, we get dead.
Consumption does not delay this; nay, it promotes death, for consumption is the death of the soul, the agape, and the spiritus.
Why so glum? you may ask. But I say, no, not glum. Noteworthy. It shows us that the most well-intentioned life is often led to persuade the individual that death can be thwarted.
I say, expire daily, and live daily. Each breath expelled is a tiny death (the French translation of 'orgasm', strangely enough). The heart beats one beat closer to stopping. The brain thinks one more thought toward no thought. The skin sheds and flakes; we are experiments of death.
There is something incredible about being alive and dying all at once. I often wonder if this huge truth is too much to bear, and so we avoid such 'morbid' thinking in favor of sex, God, and taxes (thanks, chelsea girl, for these thoughts). Inevitably, we are faced with the Real Truth about our little tiny lives. We were born in order to die, and that separates us and unifies us in some of the most complex and thrilling ways.
Think about it, tonight, before you sleep. You are nothing more than dusty molecules, sharing up to five percent of the universe's atoms, sharing ONLY five percent of the universe's atoms. You are destined to die, and your body become nothing more than a hump of decay. What does this mean? All is futile? No.
All is counted for, and extracted, and 'made flesh'. The truth is: we are all a tad bit the Christ, aren't we? Sacrificed and killed for some Greater Truth, our non-sequitur lives actually create the Mystery that is God and Un-God. Bear with your death, mourn your loss, and dwell in your enigma of Life.
