Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained

July 10, 2008 at 6:31 am (art, culture, poetry, story, Uncategorized)

It feels a tad wrong not to begin with my own personal stories about scars and tattoos, but atlas, I need an underwater camera, and the light needs to be right, so all in good time. Meanwhile, Dan Gudgel, a member of my writing group, told me a story this evening. Here is the first of two stories about his his tattoos.
“I got this one right before I graduated from college, a quote from William Blake’s Marriage of Heaven and Hell. I ran across the book when I first began college. I had been talking and talking about getting a tattoo, and some friends of mine woke me on the day before graduation and said, we got you a tattoo for graduation, c’mon lets go.” We were in Kent Ohio.

“Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained.”

I got it because it was one of the first pieces of poetry that spontaneously stayed in my head. I remembered it perfectly from the first time I ever read it, It was hard core sieze the moment, live in excess. My understanding of this piece of poetry has been shifting ever since. I used to think that it was telling me that I really needed to live right at the edge, and that I constantly needed to be about to burn out from going after every whim, as I’ve aged with this thing it’s much more than I am trying to listen to myself and see what I actually want, and go after that.”