A Declaration
So, last month I turned fifty, and this month I did something that had been hovering in my head for the last year. My daughter gave me the money for it as a birthday present, and this week I decided to go ahead and do it. I got a tattoo.
To some, it may not seem a big deal, but to me it is. It's a marking on my body that will last the rest of my life. That requires it to be something of great importance to me that will not change as I change. Something that is a part of my belief system that will remain constant throughout the rest of my life. At this point, I won't change in the basics from now until thirty or forty years from now. I will not begin to venerate a swastika in ten years, nor will I change as much as a young person changes at the beginning of their life, when they are yet finding their way and themselves.
I tattooed the outline of a bird on my wrist. To me it symbolizes freedom. Freedom has always been important to me, and it becomes more important every year. Not just the freedom to do what I want or say what I want, but the freedom to be who I want. The democratic freedoms are important, but perhaps more important are the moral freedoms. None of us are ever really free. In one way or another, we are tied to something. Perhaps we're hobbled economically. Perhaps peer pressure forces us to keep quiet or laugh with the rest when we feel like crying. Perhaps we sometimes feel trapped in a dull life.
I broke with the usual village conventions the year I dyed my hair blue. I decided I would do what I liked. I now talk openly of my political convictions. I dress how I like, though I don't stray far from the conventions at funerals and anniversary Masses (clothes are still a way to express grief and respect, and those moments do exist). I don't care if people will criticize me, call me weird, or a left-wing nut. I am me, and I value the freedom to be me. That is what the bird represents.
There is a mentality of conforming in these villages that can be stultifying. What most people consider important, to me, is secondary. I was recently in a conversation with someone, and that person was talking about housing. I had explained to me all the reasons for buying a flat in a new building block that a co-worker of the person had stated. How that flat was new and different from others, how it was energy efficient, how the mortgage worked, etc. There was further discussion of another person and how they had bought a flat in Santiago while they had a house in the village, and how they had justified it, and how they would eventually make money in their old age after they had paid the mortgage off. How boring and unimportant.
Then there are others who will discuss the television shows, and the gossip shows. I still remember how nuts some people were over the Spanish version of Big Brother when it was first aired. It still has iron-core followers whose lives must be enormously boring to be interested in that cheap gossip. Others will discuss crops, and invading insects, and products to use on the potatoes, and whether there will be enough corn this year. But outside those subjects of housing, money-making, gossip, television, and crops, there's not much variance. I have spoken about truly interesting subjects with only one or two people in my years here. If any of these other people I have spoken with during this time have other, singular interests, they have never mentioned them. Because they would probably be met with ridicule, and the most important, unwritten law for many, is to not let the neighbors think you are different.
I suppose in Spain that comes from so many years of repression, and of watching the tongue, just in case the grises, the heavy-handed political police of Franco, were sent to your house. Forty years of democratic freedoms have not liberated the villages from the prison of thought mediocrity. That is a prison I have no intention of visiting, hence the tattoo. I will not imprison my thoughts nor my expression because everyone else does it, just in case. At least, not at this point in my life. I want to be as free as a bird, and be my own person.
To some, it may not seem a big deal, but to me it is. It's a marking on my body that will last the rest of my life. That requires it to be something of great importance to me that will not change as I change. Something that is a part of my belief system that will remain constant throughout the rest of my life. At this point, I won't change in the basics from now until thirty or forty years from now. I will not begin to venerate a swastika in ten years, nor will I change as much as a young person changes at the beginning of their life, when they are yet finding their way and themselves.
I tattooed the outline of a bird on my wrist. To me it symbolizes freedom. Freedom has always been important to me, and it becomes more important every year. Not just the freedom to do what I want or say what I want, but the freedom to be who I want. The democratic freedoms are important, but perhaps more important are the moral freedoms. None of us are ever really free. In one way or another, we are tied to something. Perhaps we're hobbled economically. Perhaps peer pressure forces us to keep quiet or laugh with the rest when we feel like crying. Perhaps we sometimes feel trapped in a dull life.
I broke with the usual village conventions the year I dyed my hair blue. I decided I would do what I liked. I now talk openly of my political convictions. I dress how I like, though I don't stray far from the conventions at funerals and anniversary Masses (clothes are still a way to express grief and respect, and those moments do exist). I don't care if people will criticize me, call me weird, or a left-wing nut. I am me, and I value the freedom to be me. That is what the bird represents.
There is a mentality of conforming in these villages that can be stultifying. What most people consider important, to me, is secondary. I was recently in a conversation with someone, and that person was talking about housing. I had explained to me all the reasons for buying a flat in a new building block that a co-worker of the person had stated. How that flat was new and different from others, how it was energy efficient, how the mortgage worked, etc. There was further discussion of another person and how they had bought a flat in Santiago while they had a house in the village, and how they had justified it, and how they would eventually make money in their old age after they had paid the mortgage off. How boring and unimportant.
Then there are others who will discuss the television shows, and the gossip shows. I still remember how nuts some people were over the Spanish version of Big Brother when it was first aired. It still has iron-core followers whose lives must be enormously boring to be interested in that cheap gossip. Others will discuss crops, and invading insects, and products to use on the potatoes, and whether there will be enough corn this year. But outside those subjects of housing, money-making, gossip, television, and crops, there's not much variance. I have spoken about truly interesting subjects with only one or two people in my years here. If any of these other people I have spoken with during this time have other, singular interests, they have never mentioned them. Because they would probably be met with ridicule, and the most important, unwritten law for many, is to not let the neighbors think you are different.
I suppose in Spain that comes from so many years of repression, and of watching the tongue, just in case the grises, the heavy-handed political police of Franco, were sent to your house. Forty years of democratic freedoms have not liberated the villages from the prison of thought mediocrity. That is a prison I have no intention of visiting, hence the tattoo. I will not imprison my thoughts nor my expression because everyone else does it, just in case. At least, not at this point in my life. I want to be as free as a bird, and be my own person.
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