Marked Bodies
Every time I close my eyes to descend down into my shaman’s hole, I see that tree in the back yard with its gnarled roots protruding from the dirt and the soil. I remember the climb, and I remember the crash down. The first time I fall is an accident, landing on my back and looking up at the massive trunk shooting up to the sky, the girthy trunk looming over me, as if growing from in between my own legs. A moment on the brink of puberty. I remember the sensation of pain quickly transitioning into rush, an adrenaline high from having fallen, being shocked, being broken open without actually breaking anything, without incurring actual damage. The endorphins, the joy, the celebration of defeat, of physical impossibility. Laying there, looking up and laughing, hysterically, alone, outside in the sunshine, the tree my only witness. The shock. The syncope.
I think about the men in India who become addicted to swallowing knives. How can they do it? What a strange thing…few of us understand. One day he decides to try and swallow the knife, wondering if he will succeed, or perhaps it is much more subconscious than all that, he doesn’t intellectualize it, he just does it, driven, committed to an impossible task. It isn’t suicidal ideation but rather the opposite of that. In that it is an attempt to conquer death rather than invite it in. And so he does it, and to his own surprise he succeeds, he swallows the knife without physical consequence, it makes it through his digestive tract without a hitch. It is a miracle, a success. And this is where the compulsion begins to really gestate. If you can do it once, you can do it again, and better was an aphorism repeated by my first art teacher. He was referring to my collapsed clay structure as I attempted to learn how to throw on the potter’s wheel. I could not help but feel this translating into all manner of less appropriate circumstances. I imagine the knife swallowers had a similar commitment to their craft.
Experimentation with pain was a private act, like reading or napping. It required pause and protection from watchful, judging eyes. Away from the crass guidance counselors who claimed to care but understood nothing about the perfect sensuousness of the body. I found these tiny forms of syncope when I could. From self-electrocution to the staple gun repeatedly going into my finger, my secret rush. The accidental slip of the blade on my brother’s red Swiss army knife to the inside of my palm. First the pain, then, sheer pleasure of owning that pain, reveling in it, watching it unfurl and then feeling it passing.
I get my first body piercing the summer I learn by heart both Story of O and Fight Club. It is Seattle’s Capitol Hill in the late 90’s still a place of marginal culture teaming with gutter punk, vagrancy and alternative lifestyles roaming the streets. People living in the streets, sleeping in the streets. On my way to get pierced, I see a man sleeping outside of Perkins Restaurant & Bakery with his with his head curled into the palm of his hand just like a baby.
Inside the piercing parlor are books about Fakir Musafar, the father of the modern primitive movement. Images of men suspended from nipples and genitals graze the coffee table staring back at me. I meet their gaze with curiosity and courage. The place is Golden Rings, the owner, Kurtis Kirk, a man I find both seductive and frightening. I learn later Kirk has a scandalous history of piercing underage girls to their parent’s disappointment. I am eighteen when I go under the needle, perhaps to Kirk’s disappointment.
I get my first tattoo at age 16, on the Big Island of Hawaii, the same year I take my first yoga class. There is a part of me that intrinsically understands the initiation of being cut open for commemoration. The initiation of opening the body and laying in of words. It is an experience of the educational variety. My first tattoo is below my waist on my back side, tiny and hidden. I tattoo the back of my body for many years, for the eyes of others and God, before I make my way to the front, the visible, to catch my own eye each time I stroke a musical key, a body part, a pose. My marked body, my anatomical architecture, my growing garden, an archive of this epic journey.
Marked Bodies
Every time I close my eyes to descend down into my shaman’s hole, I see that tree in the back yard with its gnarled roots protruding from the dirt and the soil. I remember the climb, and I remember the crash down. The first time I fall is an accident, landing on my back and looking up at the massive trunk shooting up to the sky, the girthy trunk looming over me, as if growing from in between my own legs. A moment on the brink of puberty. I remember the sensation of pain quickly transitioning into rush, an adrenaline high from having fallen, being shocked, being broken open without actually breaking anything, without incurring actual damage. The endorphins, the joy, the celebration of defeat, of physical impossibility. Laying there, looking up and laughing, hysterically, alone, outside in the sunshine, the tree my only witness. The shock. The syncope.
I think about the men in India who become addicted to swallowing knives. How can they do it? What a strange thing…few of us understand. One day he decides to try and swallow the knife, wondering if he will succeed, or perhaps it is much more subconscious than all that, he doesn’t intellectualize it, he just does it, driven, committed to an impossible task. It isn’t suicidal ideation but rather the opposite of that. In that it is an attempt to conquer death rather than invite it in. And so he does it, and to his own surprise he succeeds, he swallows the knife without physical consequence, it makes it through his digestive tract without a hitch. It is a miracle, a success. And this is where the compulsion begins to really gestate. If you can do it once, you can do it again, and better was an aphorism repeated by my first art teacher. He was referring to my collapsed clay structure as I attempted to learn how to throw on the potter’s wheel. I could not help but feel this translating into all manner of less appropriate circumstances. I imagine the knife swallowers had a similar commitment to their craft.
Experimentation with pain was a private act, like reading or napping. It required pause and protection from watchful, judging eyes. Away from the crass guidance counselors who claimed to care but understood nothing about the perfect sensuousness of the body. I found these tiny forms of syncope when I could. From self-electrocution to the staple gun repeatedly going into my finger, my secret rush. The accidental slip of the blade on my brother’s red Swiss army knife to the inside of my palm. First the pain, then, sheer pleasure of owning that pain, reveling in it, watching it unfurl and then feeling it passing.
I get my first body piercing the summer I learn by heart both Story of O and Fight Club. It is Seattle’s Capitol Hill in the late 90’s still a place of marginal culture teaming with gutter punk, vagrancy and alternative lifestyles roaming the streets. People living in the streets, sleeping in the streets. On my way to get pierced, I see a man sleeping outside of Perkins Restaurant & Bakery with his with his head curled into the palm of his hand just like a baby.
Inside the piercing parlor are books about Fakir Musafar, the father of the modern primitive movement. Images of men suspended from nipples and genitals graze the coffee table staring back at me. I meet their gaze with curiosity and courage. The place is Golden Rings, the owner, Kurtis Kirk, a man I find both seductive and frightening. I learn later Kirk has a scandalous history of piercing underage girls to their parent’s disappointment. I am eighteen when I go under the needle, perhaps to Kirk’s disappointment.
I get my first tattoo at age 16, on the Big Island of Hawaii, the same year I take my first yoga class. There is a part of me that intrinsically understands the initiation of being cut open for commemoration. The initiation of opening the body and laying in of words. It is an experience of the educational variety. My first tattoo is below my waist on my back side, tiny and hidden. I tattoo the back of my body for many years, for the eyes of others and God, before I make my way to the front, the visible, to catch my own eye each time I stroke a musical key, a body part, a pose. My marked body, my anatomical architecture, my growing garden, an archive of this epic journey.
EPB
EPB is a writer, visual artist, performer & researcher who plays in the space between theory and practice. In her writing, she parallels her observations of the art world with academic discourse and the politics of sex work.