Day: July 28, 2004

Tattoo number two: Ouroboros

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Some time ago, I got my first tattoo: a yin-yang made of smiley faces, a design I was taken with because of the symbolism of the yin-yang (light and dark intertwined and dependent upon each other) and the incorporation of the smiley face, which I interpreted as meaning that light or dark, good or bad, there’s some good in every situation.

For some time now, I’ve been pondering what to get as a second tattoo. I didn’t want to get something merely because it “looked cool” or struck my fancy for a passing moment. Rather, I wanted to get something to both complement and balance the tattoo I already had. As the smiley yin-yang is a roughly 3 inch diameter circle on my right upper arm/shoulder, I knew I something similar on my left upper arm, but I wanted to find something that matched thematically, as well as visually.

Nothing struck my fancy for quite a few years, but off and on for the past year or so, I’ve been thinking more and more seriously about one particular design that first caught my eye when I was around eleven or so.

At that time, movies often came to Anchorage months after they had wide release in the lower 48. I’d seen trailers on television for a new fantasy movie that looked incredibly cool: The Neverending Story. However, the movie just didn’t ever seem to come out, and I eventually went out and picked up the book by Michael Ende.

I completely and entirely fell in love with the book (and later was somewhat disappointed by the movie when it eventually hit Anchorage — it’s enjoyable and a lot of fun on its own, but it only covers the first half of the book, ignores roughly half of that, and scrambles what little is left), but the cover of that edition of the book featured stills from the movie, and had Atreyu’s amulet, the Auryn, featured prominently on the front cover.

The Neverending Story

The Auryn in the film was actually a stylized version of an Ouroboros: while the traditional Ouroboros is a single snake consuming its own tail, the Auryn was designed as two intertwined snakes, one light and one dark, each consuming the other’s tail.

The symbol has stuck with me ever since then, and more and more often as of late, it’s been popping into my head as what I’d like to get to complement the tattoo I already have. I spent a little time this morning trying to find good images and information on the symbol — something of a difficult task, unfortunately, as there are quite a few possible spellings of Ouroboros — but have found a bit of each. I’m not sure if I’ve found an image that’s clean enough for me to give to a tattoo artist yet, but I did confirm some of what I’d already believed of the symbolism of the Ouroboros:

The ouroboros has several meanings interwoven into it. Foremost is the symbolism of the serpent biting, devouring, eating its own tail. This symbolises the cyclic Nature of the Universe: creation out of destruction, Life out of Death. The ouroboros eats its own tail to sustain its life, in an eternal cycle of renewal. In the above drawing, from a book by an early Alchemist, Cleopatra, the black half symbolises the Night, Earth, and the destructive force of nature, yin. The light half represents Day, Heaven, the generative, creative force, yang.

So it looks to me like we’ve got a winner. Now, the search is on for a good, clean image that will work well as a black-and-white tattoo. Once that’s done, it’ll be time to get inked again!

iTunes “Behind the Wheel” by Kirk from the album Trancemode Express 1.01: A Tribute to Depeche Mode (1996, 7:30).

Ash to Ash, Dust to Dust

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August 18, 1992. I was living in Anchorage in an apartment off of Muldoon Road, and working slinging popcorn at the Fireweed Theaters. It was a rather muggy, hot day, and I was quite happy to be getting off of work at 6pm that evening. One of the girls I worked with offered me a ride home, and on our way across town, we turned on the radio, anxious to hear about the day’s news — the sudden eruption of Mt. Spurr, a volcano just across Cook Inlet from Anchorage.

Mt. Spurr erupts

The eruption had blown plumes of ash miles into the sky, and winds were blowing all of that ash directly towards Anchorage. As we drove down Northern Lights Boulevard towards Muldoon, we could glance behind us and see the sky starting to darken as the already overcast sky started to fill with the incoming clouds of ash.

I was wearing my hair long at the time — the very ‘alternative trendy’ style of shaved along the sides and back, with the top long, down to just past my shoulder blades — and after having it pulled back in a ponytail for work, was more than ready to let it loose. I pulled out the ponytail holder, shook my head a couple times to let my hair fall loose…

…and then yelped as my glasses slipped off my face and went flying out the open passenger window of the car. We pulled over as fast as possible, but it was too late, and all we could do was pick up as many of the pieces of my glasses as we could find after they’d been quite thoroughly demolished by the tires of the cars behind us.

For the rest of the evening, I watched as much of I could of the volcanic ash fall over the city, but given my poor vision (I’m legally blind without my glasses), that was limited to seeing the world get darker and darker as the city got blanketed by the ash from Mt. Spurr.

The next day I got a new pair of glasses, and got to see the aftereffects of the ash fall. The entire city was grey — apparently it wasn’t that big of an ash fall, only a millimeter or two, but it was enough to blanket the city and choke the air filters of nearly every car in town. Not far from my apartment, someone had scrawled ‘Ash to Ash, Dust to Dust’ on the back window of a car.

Now, it looks like there’s a possibility that Anchorage could be getting hit again — Mt. Spurr is showing signs of life.

Mount Spurr, the volcano on Anchorage’s doorstep, is kicking up once again, the first time since it erupted 12 years ago, scientists said this week.

Tiny earthquakes by the hundreds have been rumbling beneath the mountain across Cook Inlet from the city, according to the Alaska Volcano Observatory in Anchorage.

The observatory on Monday raised its official level of concern from Code Green, or “No eruption anticipated,” to Yellow, meaning “An eruption is possible in the next few weeks and may occur with little or no additional warning.”

Scientists hastened to say the earthquake swarm does not necessarily presage an eruption of Spurr, which blew its top three times in 1992 and, in the August ’92 explosion, spread a thin, obnoxious layer of ash over Anchorage.

“The most likely scenario,” geophysicist John Power said, “is that the earthquakes will die off.” That’s what commonly occurs.

But it’s also true, Power said, that when volcanoes blow, their eruptions most often follow just such a swarm of quakes.

Nifty! If it happens, I wanna see pictures, since I managed to miss most of the fun last time!

iTunes: “Stalemate” by Limp Bizkit from the album Three Dollar Bill Y’All (1997, 6:14).

Pay attention to the road, you idiots

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Years ago, while driving around Anchorage, I glanced to my right and saw a couple guys driving around with a portable DVD player sitting on the dashboard of their car, quite happily watching a movie as they motored around town. Very unamused by their obvious disregard to the safety of themselves and those around them, I made sure to move a lane over so that I wasn’t next to them, and then spent the next few minutes ranting to whoever I was in the passenger seat about the idiodicy of trying to drive and watch a DVD at the same time.

Well, with the boom in fancy car toys over the last few years, including things like in-car DVD players, the inevitable has finally happened: two people in Alaska were killed by a driver watching a movie on a dash-mounted DVD player.

In what may be the first trial of its kind in the nation, prosecutors have accused the pickup truck’s driver of second-degree murder for watching a movie instead of the road when he crashed head-on into the Jeep.

The pickup’s driver, Erwin J. Petterson Jr., denies using the DVD player as he drove north on October 12, 2002 and contends he was only listening to music from a compact disc, said his attorney, Chuck Robinson.

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After the crash, Petterson and his passenger, roommate Jonathan Douglas, were transported to an Anchorage hospital. Within hours, Douglas called his ex-wife and told her he was not sure how the collision occurred because he was “spacing out on a movie they were watching,” according to prosecutors. The woman is scheduled to testify.

David Weiser, 34, the son of the slain couple, said only two people know what happened in the cab of the truck. But equipping a truck with entertainment options that can be used while driving goes beyond a momentary distraction of putting on makeup or using a cell phone, he said.

“This takes forethought, this takes methodical steps,” David Weiser said. \”You have to go to the store, plop over money, install it, and install it so it can be used without a brake employed.

“I view it as no different than walking into a bar, having five beers within an hour and getting behind the wheel,” said Weiser, who quit an eight-year career as a loan originator in Boston to attend the trial.

It’s very simple, people. If you’re driving a car, then drive the damn car. Don’t jabber on a phone (I don’t care how many times you tell me it doesn’t affect your driving — studies show that cell phone usage while driving is at least as dangerous as driving under the influence of alcohol, and if I know that you’re calling me from a cell phone while on the road, I will hang up on you), don’t watch a damn movie, and for God’s sake, pay attention to driving!

(via /.)

iTunes: “Entrada and Shootout” by Goldenthal, Elliot from the album Heat (1995, 1:45).