affirmation

Kind readers,

I had some new ink done this week, and I am ecstatically happy about it. The piece symbolizes my vocation: it is two crossed quills with an ink bottle above, upon which is a label with the word “Love” inscribed on it. Beneath the quills is the word “Professor” written in blood red ink.

I am a renegade and cosmic love vagabond.

Here I am in my jammies, the day after Tiffany did the chest piece. She was wonderful, as always, and her art exquisite. My new piece looked even more beautiful than I had envisioned it.

And here it is, closer up:

It hurt, goodness! But it was bearable (only just!). I was so happy after I removed the bandage the next morning… The tattoo was everything I had hoped it would be.

I love my ink manifesto: Hope, Love, Freedom.

I also had a wonderful time celebrating Professor Snape’s birthday again this year (chocolate cake with buttercream icing!). I added a new element to my personal altar, a marvelous and wondrously fragrant handmade candle that was a gift from my dear friend Rik Potter, whom I shall be seeing again in a few months at MISTI-Con.

And now, much writing will be taking place in the coming months! I am ready and prepared: I am inspired, joyful, and grateful.

Oh, in other news, I have added these links on my website, under a new category called “Identity & Affirmation”: Genderfork and Tomboy Tailors; also, information about being an INFJ. I am an asexual and genderfluid kaleidoscope, and a happy one at that.

As I wrote in comments to my latest Livejournal post,

My ink has been one of the means through which I have been expressing how I have been coming into my own, and what is most important to me. What I have found to be most healing and affirming about getting inked is that the pieces and what they represent cannot be removed from me like jewelry… They are embedded in my very flesh. It is magickal, definitely. It is like taking a stand; I have been taking a stand. When I entered my forties, I felt a shift and so much came together for me; not only that, but I knew I was now unapologetic about who I was and what I believed. It was so freeing, in a sort of jumping-out-of-an-airplane way… A breathless joy.

When I got my first piece, Harlock’s skull and crossbones, it was to protest against a certain form of oppression, and all my subsequent pieces have, in part, that quality, which is why I call my ink a manifesto.

2013 is beginning very well!

Your devoted

Logospilgrim, the quiet professor

Tagged: Genderfork, MISTI-Con, Planet Ink, Professor Snape, Rik Potter, Tiffany Thornton, Tomboy Tailors