Tattooed Freaks

People look at us like we were freaks or dirtbags who are going to rob them. Some people are shocked to learn that I own my own home and have four kids and two cats. I have had a few people tell me they thought I lived in a basement apartment somewhere. But most of the people I have met in the tattoo world, the "freaks" as we are called are the most real people in the world. You don't have to be afraid to be yourself, no matter how weird you are. No one will judge you as being to weird or different. It's the weirdness and differences that attract us to one another. Yeah, we might bust each other’s chops sometimes, but always in a joking way. It's the 'normal" people who tend to judge harshly, ignorant of how horribly nasty they are being to the person they are judging. Ignorant, not in the way of not knowing but in the way of not caring. But I guess as long as they go to church and ask the nameless god to erase their sins it's ok to go through life treating people like shit.

The Magic of Seeing

Everyone looks at things, but not everyone really sees what it is they are looking at. With Zen we learn to see things as they are and to see life as it is. When you see something you not only see the object, you also see its magic. Look at something in front of you, a pencil, a plant, a fan, whatever. Really look at it, don’t look at a fan and say “fan”. Pretend you don’t know what it is, this should be easy because you really don’t know what it is, you have never seen a fan before. I’m sure you have looked at a lot of fans, but now you're finally going to see one. Get up close and examine every part of it, the wires, and the motor, turn the blades. You might even be surprised that some things you thought were plastic are actually made from metal. Congratulations, you finally saw a fan.

Now grab a pencil and draw it, don’t worry if the drawing comes out like shit, no one is going to see it. Don’t look at the paper more than the fan, your eyes should be on the fan about 70% of the time, even more. When your done with your drawing throw it away, this exercise wasn’t to draw a picture it was to see the fan. Now you really do know what a fan looks like, now you can see the magic.

Seeing life is a little different, we can’t draw life. We could draw things in life, but not life itself. Seeing life takes a different kind of observation. But seeing the things in life is a starting point to seeing life itself. When we finally start to see things it’s like an awakening, we can feel the magic in the things we see. But sometimes we see past this magic. We start seeing the true heart of things to the point where they lose their magic. And magic is important, if we lose sight of the magic we lose sight of our imaginations.

Kids are lucky because they believe in magic, and this belief keeps their minds flowing. To a child a snowball is a hand grenade, a stick is a sword, a fallen tree is a giant snake. Some of us lose this when we grow up. Well, we don’t really lose it, we forget about it, but it is still there. A lot of adults believe in such things as Ghosts, Fairies and Big Foot. And there is nothing wrong with this. We need these things; we need Big Foot, The Loch Ness Monster, UFO’s and Chupacabra. All these things, whether real or not, inspires our imagination, all these things are magic. Being skeptical towards things like this destroys the imagination along with the magic. Skepticism kills Fairies, Leprechauns, Elves and Dragons. Who really cares if these things are real or not, as long as they live in our minds, they live. The magic is still there.

erick alayon