Many years ago I got my first tattoo. It took me almost six months before deciding that I was going to do it - I wavered, I vacillated, I see-saw’d. I went back and forth on whether I wanted some type of permanent decoration on my body.

It’s not like a piercing which can easily be removed. My left ear is pierced in two places: the normal spot, and in the cartilage at the top of the ear. The normal spot no longer has anything in it, and unless you’re close up, you can’t tell it’s even pierced.

The one at the top still has a hoop in it, and probably will for a long time. If I remove that one it will be much more noticeable since that one punched a hole through the ear. But still, relatively easy to remove with a simple twist.

Tats, not so much. Unless you want to go through laser surgery, you’re pretty much with them for life. If you are of the Christian persuasion, you’ve probably heard “the body is a temple” - and while that’s interesting, take a look at the multitude of cultures in the world who decorate their bodies. They are defiling them, they are celebrating them. So now that I had decided it was perfectly acceptable to my personal morals to get tat’d, I was still deciding what to get.

I’ve long been interested in Egyptian culture. I find affinity with such an ancient civilization, especially given that many of their beliefs and societal values were the framework for cultures of today (and yet somehow we think we are unique). So when it came to choice, the natural one was that I wanted to have tats that were Egyptian in nature, yet had meaning for me.

I finally decided on the design/characters, and Rachelle and I went to the tat shop (she was getting some work done at the same time).

It was pretty intense…I actually went into mild shock and went into a cold sweat, blood sugar dropped, all that good stuff until they gave me some M&M’s and all was well. Within an hour or so I had my first two tats just under my neckline.

The symbol represents the god Ra (done in Hieratic) - which is the god of creation / sun. You could think of this as the positive force. Well I couldn’t stop at that. If you’re going to decorate your temple, you can’t just put up one curtain, you’ve got to put them up on all the windows.

But I didn’t want to go nuts. So about 6 months later I got my next set of tats, this time on my right calf, and instead of representing the creation force they represent the destructive force. This one represents Set - chaos and destruction. You could think of this as the yang to the yin creating a balance on my body.

I haven’t decided what my next tat will be, but it’s going to happen soon - I can feel it. I’m waiting for the inspiration to hit.

Do you have any tats?

You may have read/heard lately about the new black - the darkest material every created, so far.

Here I present to you - the new black. Enjoy!

By popular demand, the third, and hopefully final, installment of LOLHEATH.

David and I spent most of the afternoon out in the cabana listening to the rain falling around us. Well, more so, David listened to me reading him the latest draft of the book.

In case you’ve been hiding in a box for the last year (har har har), I’m referring to novel #2, Box of Hair, a fairy tale. (tag cloud for the book)

This was the first time that anyone has heard the entire story. I sent a pre-copy to the cover artist, just to give him a sense of where I was going, but that was several iterations ago, and it was up to him to read it and interpret the emotion. Today, however, I actually read the entire story aloud, complete with feeling, emotion, and perhaps just a bit of accent in my voice. For some reason I envision an e-book for this story being read by someone with a glorious British accent.

Anyway…David provided a lot of good feedback - he is often 14 years old in his mind, so he can offer an objective viewpoint. I made yet another round of mega-edits, and I’m probably a week or two away from submitting it to the publisher.

But I want to give everyone a preview of the book cover, or at least the front of it. This comes to us from a marvelous artist that I found some time back, Bob Thomas. There is also a link to more of his fantastic artwork after the image. Enjoy.

More Bob Thomas artwork.