“A
fool dreams of what he can be. The wise man becomes it.”
Daily I prayed for the Lord to give me the Mormon woman back. “She is
mine!” He said, and took her from me. As He did, He revealed her to be the Prophetess Sahara, a Prophetess of the Dead.
I had been prepared for the Baptism of the Dead.
I began to walk my other dog, Flaka, to the Castle Fromunda each day, the Castle
Formosa of Elizabet Ney. She was an artist from Westphalia, Bavaria, a classically trained sculptor of the nobility of upper class Europe.
She and her husband moved to Austin in the mid eighteen hundreds, and built her castle studio on what was once the edge of town,
but now in the heart of Austin - the Hyde Park artist’s district. Daily I prayed in her garden for healing from this
dreadful brokenness. I began to examine her art and read her writings.
“Religion
can do no more than conscientiously, fervently, indomitably, sustain the sublime super individual significance of our living
personality - with all of its deeply grounded relations to the rest of life and the world at large. Such
religious sentiment, how divinely would it sanctify the great facts of human life - the mystery of love; fathomless on the
wide living sea of buoyed existence. Buoyed with lofty hope and eternal trust, life meets mutual love trembling
joyously persistent of higher and higher world fulfillment.” - Elizabet Ney
“To transform this life of ours and the
world we are living in to the actual semblance of the beauty we religiously aspire to become heirs to in Heaven is the task
impressed upon us by our ethical institutions, and the moral injunctions imposed upon us from on high.” - Elizabet Ney
There it is!
My calling as an artist! To share the vision of divine society! The Lord had answered
my plea and my bearing returned, at least somewhat. He had promised me the writing I hoped for, but
had asked me to begin by writing the story of my journey as a citizen from my youth to present.
Words began to pour from my
heart, expressing what I had talked with God about for the last year. I one month, I wrote “Life
On A Shoestring - The American Dream”. It was an artistic book of my thoughts on the changes in American
society since the sixties, and focused on the concepts of the Calling of America and materialism. It was
the story of my journey back to the sixties, to find the lost spirit of America, and I found it, buried in the past.
I wrote a poem
about the Prophet Daniel in Babylon, as compared to America’s involvement in the Middle East. The main character had
many tattoos. The next day I saw a vision of the Lord of the Harvest riding a White Horse with “King
of Kings and Lord of Lords” written on His thigh, and so I decided to get the tattoos. I was going
to go out among the youth culture, and I wanted to identify with them.
I found a place in South Austin to get them.
On April 5th, after I received my fifth tattoo, I began to look at receipts and compare dates.
I noticed that it was the thirteen year anniversary of Maria’s death, and the seven year anniversary of my first
night with Emma. I began to see amazing patterns of 13 across the years and the dates.
At 1313 South Congress I got my heart tattooed with a heart and a cross by a girl wearing apron 13. It
was thirteen year anniversary of my return from Desert Storm! Eight days later I got
Antidisestablishmentarianism
and
Supercalifragilisticexpialidotious
tattooed on my left and right arms, and an Egyptian cross called and ankh, or
key of life, tattooed on my right little finger. The two words represented the generation gap in
America,
and the two extremes of our society. The heart represented my Christian heart, and the set symbolized being
crucified by the generation gap. The ankh was the hope for my soul mate.
Thirteen days later I had
my penis tattooed by the owner of Southside Tattoo, a man named Bart who was born on my eighth birthday, March eighth.
It was the thirteen year anniversary of Maria’s death, and was symbolic of sexual sin, the male sex drive, and
my repentance. It was a
Humuhumunukunukuapuaa’
- a Hawaiian
blunt nosed tiger fish. This is the smallest fish with the biggest name, symbolizing the male tendency
to think based on the reasoning of the little guy.
I got the last tattoo, a four leaf clover, a copy of an actual leaf which my
dad carried in his wallet for two years while in combat in Korea. I waited until it felt right to get the tattoo, for I had
become aware of the synchronicity. The four leaf clover is an Irish good luck symbol, and I did not want
to offend the Irish, or the Koreans. That night my little sister passed away. She finally
lost a life long struggle with juvenile diabetes, and I knew it what she was saying.
“Good luck. You’ll
need it.”
Karen’s laughter tattooed my heart
Got my meat tattooed
By a guy named Bart
I’ve
been laughing ever since
Now that’s art!
The next day my mother called, and told me of Stephanie’s death.
I wrote a Reggae song called Beautiful Attitude, and sang it all day long. I sent it up to heaven
with her.
That night, I went to see the Rasta Man, whom I had just met, and I began to laugh like a madman through this tragedy.
