The whole practice adhered to the ancient shamanistic practice of simultaneously internalizing and externalizing one’s totems. To strengthen vis-à-vis your antagonist you had to accept, welcome, and then transform it. The ex-love was interiorized—injected into the body, and yet at the same time exteriorized—left outside the skin. Once the ex-lover was located in this threshold between inside and outside, and deftly transformed into an animal, the power structure between the dumped and the dumper changed. Now the tattooed lover felt superior, as if the key to the ex-love’s soul was in his or
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