June 13, 2010

29 7/12: The Taoist

10

I got these tat­toos to remind myself to stay on the path. A reminder like this is some­thing of a para­dox; to be on the path is to be unaware of the path.

Even though I strongly believed in the tenets of Taoism, I still found myself off the path more often than on it. There was a point where I began to ques­tion whether I was truly a Taoist or just a Tao-enthusiast, because my under­stand­ing of the ideas didn’t nec­es­sar­ily mean an abil­ity to apply them to my life.

Self portrait at 29 7/12

 

But over time, I for­got about my tat­toos. Or, should I say, I stopped think­ing about them, the way one may be so accus­tomed to the nose on one’s face as to never dwell on the idea of it’s existence.

In the same way, I’ve for­got­ten about the path too, even though I know I’m on it. I don’t seek coun­cil from the Tao Te Ching nowa­days, because there’s noth­ing left that I don’t under­stand. I found the feel­ing of seren­ity I’d been seek­ing for so long.

I turn 30 in five months, and I finally believe I’m a Taoist.

The Turning 30 Series

Tagged as
Filed under
Photos Thoughts
December 28, 2009

Tattoo Interview

1

Lydia Skinner inter­views me for her dis­ser­ta­tion, enti­tled, “Why words? An Analysis into Typographic Tattoos as a form Communication, and Projection of Identity.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Tagged as
Filed under
Random
May 27, 2008

Tattwo

15

Part of The Tao Tattoo Series

  1. The Meaning
  2. The Experience
  3. The Background
  4. Tattwo

The tao tattoo

Concept

Some peo­ple ask me whether I feel more Chinese or Canadian. While some first-generation Canadians say that they’re nei­ther, I feel like I’m both, because I appre­ci­ate and under­stand things from both cul­tures. I have the best of both worlds.

I already have a the hanzi char­ac­ter for “tao” on my right wrist, so I got the word “tao” on my left in English. This tat­too serves two pur­poses: as an expres­sion of this dual her­itage, and as another reminder for me to fol­low the tao.

The Operation

I went back to Jay at New Moon, who did an awe­some job on my first tat­too. When I walked in, he had the lat­est Mars Volta album on, which I didn’t even know was out until that day. Most of the time was passed com­par­ing them to Tool, two of our favourite bands1.

Can you tell when he’s going over my artery? (Hint: I start to swear)

Typography

tao typography

The three-letter word is writ­ten in Avenir. As the Humanist, sans-serif type­face designed by Adrian Fruitiger (also used for the title and menu of this site), it’s my favourite font. Clean, sharp, min­i­mal­ist, and leg­i­ble. The most dis­tin­guish­ing part, as with most good fonts, is the double-story “a”, which increases legibility.

I had over a dozen vari­a­tions, at dif­fer­ent point sizes, kern­ing val­ues, and weights. I wanted the weight, size, and posi­tion to bal­ance with the one on my right wrist. In the end, I went with one that was 63.78 points, and the 35 “light” weight.

Read the rest of this entry »

  1. Tool was a favourite until Lateralus came out, and I dis­cov­ered Dream Theater. Ænima remains one of my top albums though. [↑]
Tagged as
Filed under
Photos Random Video
August 22, 2007

Background on the Tao Tattoo

6

Part of The Tao Tattoo Series

  1. The Meaning
  2. The Experience
  3. The Background
  4. Tattwo
Thumbnail: Various ways to write Tao
Thumbnail: Cover of Tao of Pooh

Asian char­ac­ter tat­toos have become some­what of a cliché, but not doing some­thing because it’s trendy is as bad as doing it because it’s trendy. I chose to get a tat­too for myself, which is why I it’s on the inside of my wrist, fac­ing me when I see it. Unfortunately, for­eign lan­guage tat­toos are often wrong and hilar­i­ously bad as well, as if a child had drawn them.

Thumbnail: Laozi getting off his ox
Thumbnail: A painting of the character Tao

So I did my research, and found as many draw­ings of the Tao char­ac­ter as pos­si­ble. At one point I went as far as track­ing down peo­ple who had pur­chased a cer­tain paint­ing with Tao in the title, and call­ing them to ask if they would take a pic­ture and send it to me1. I’m a per­fec­tion­ist in my every­day life, so I was going to be sure about some­thing that would last for the rest of my life.

Read the rest of this entry »

  1. I felt ter­ri­ble when one guy said that the paint­ing was with his ex-girlfriend [↑]
Tagged as
Filed under
Random
August 16, 2007

The Tao Tattoo Experience

8

Part of The Tao Tattoo Series

  1. The Meaning
  2. The Experience
  3. The Background
  4. Tattwo

I decided to get my Tao tat­too about a month before I actu­ally had it done. Choosing an artist wasn’t hard. Tiana, who’s awe­some bro­ken argyle tat­too reminds me of insou­ciant kites against a sky, had hers done by Jay at New Moon. After see­ing some more of his work, which fea­tures finely detailed lines sim­i­lar to what I had in mind, I decided to go with him as well.

The appoint­ment was short. A quick check to make sure the posi­tion­ing close to the wrist joint was accept­able, and to leave a deposit.

The recep­tion­ist asked me, “What does the kanji mean?”.

“Kanji?”. I ques­tioned her assump­tion, and she quickly cor­rected her­self. “Sorry, is it Chinese or Japanese or Korean…?”. I explained the char­ac­ter, and how it’s writ­ten the same way in Chinese and Japanese, the cal­lig­ra­phy being in a Chinese style.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tagged as
Filed under
Daily Life
August 13, 2007

The Tao Tattoo

11

Part of The Tao Tattoo Series

  1. The Meaning
  2. The Experience
  3. The Background
  4. Tattwo

Thumbnail: The Tao tattoo

Thumbnail: The Tao tattoo macro 

To remind me to keep my chin up.

To remind me not to sweat the small stuff.

To remind me to live in accor­dance with the nature of things.

To remind me to stay balanced.

To remind me to decrease my wants.

To remind me to indulge myself every now and then.

To remind me that every­thing is as it should be.

To remind me to stop com­par­ing myself to others.

To remind me not to use force against the world, and embrace the way of the universe.

To remind me to fol­low my own nature, and not the trap­pings of life.

To remind me that noth­ing really matters.

To remind me to have no claims to life.

To remind me to be spon­ta­neous, delib­er­ate, watch­ful, rev­er­ent, hum­ble, pure, and accepting.

To remind me that heaven is found on earth.

Tagged as
Filed under
Favourites Photos Random
June 13, 2007

Rockstar Jeff

6
Thumbnail: Muted colours
Thumbnail: Sun shot
Thumbnail: Soft focus
Thumbnail: The chest tattoo
Thumbnail: Two star tattoos
Thumbnail: Blackness

I asked Rockstar Jeff, an old source of envy, if I could take a few por­traits of him.

Jeff’s very pho­to­genic, but he doesn’t agree. I’m 75% prep and 25% bad-ass, whereas he’s 75% bad-ass and 25% prep. Sometimes we joke about trad­ing styles because there’s a mix in each of us, and we always like where the other ones goes with it. The truth of the mat­ter is that I could never pull off his style. Anyone can do prep, but he’s got the right face, the right clothes, the right atti­tude for hardcore.

This was his hit single.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

He’s the gui­tarist and screamer. The band broke up, but he’s cur­rently explor­ing other musi­cal oppor­tu­ni­ties. It’s inter­est­ing to hear his other projects; he’s always the front­man, but he adjusts his singing style to the band while adding his own edge.

Tattoos:

Stars on wrist

This was a mutual tat­too done with a friend (his “right hand” per­son), which is why there are two of them. His friend has the same tat­toos on her wrist.

Crows on right arm

As the crow is the uni­ver­sal sym­bol of bad luck, Jeff got each crow to remind him of a hard time in his life. Each one of them sig­nify a moment. There’s one red one with a nail going through it, as a sym­bol that his bad luck is hope­fully behind him (but he says it isn’t yet).

Daisy on right arm

The daisy is his mom’s flower. It’s not really wilted or bro­ken (which is what I thought at first), it’s sim­ply miss­ing petals. He got this at a time when he was really angry at her, which is why it’s red. He had drawn two years ear­lier, but only decided to get it inked when she kicked him out of the house, to remind him of the hard love of family.

Stars on elbows

There’s actu­ally one larger star on each elbow, with the ini­tials of peo­ple com­ing out of them. They’re the first tat­toos he ever got, to remind him of the tough lessons that he’s gone through with or from these people.

Heart on chest

This one was inspired by his mom. He was mak­ing mak­ing some fool­ish deci­sions around 18, and his mom reminded him that he should be happy with him­self when he looks in the mir­ror, that there should be no hid­ing from the truth, and he should always be true to himself.

The word “truth” is sur­rounded by peri­ods to empha­size that it’s a strong fact in itself. The word “self” doesn’t start with a period because the heart is a part of the sentence.

The only change he would make is to have it drawn back­wards, so he could read it when he looks in the mirror.

Tagged as
Filed under
Photos Random
May 30, 2007

A Weekend with Darren

5

I had Darren over from Toronto for the week­end. We were going to do a movie marathon at the the­atre — three in a day — but the movies all sucked. Disturbia? Georgia Rule? Please. Instead, I bought the first sea­son of Six Feet Under, and we fin­ished the roughly 11 hour sea­son over two days. Now I can re-watch it with Bronwen and lend it to Pat. To be hon­est, I’d seen up to the sec­ond sea­son before, but I was too stoned to remem­ber most of it.

Thumbnail: Air-tight tea container

Thumbnail: Chai tea

Darren also gave me a nice tea con­tainer. It’s rather large, since I buy my tea 50mg at a time, but bet­ter too big than too small. He also got me some chai tea, con­sid­ered a well­ness blend. When I asked him what for, he couldn’t give me a rea­son. I love gifts for no reason.

We shared our tat­too ideas, and his was the Chinese char­ac­ter for love on his back. Darren and Bronwen are the some of the few peo­ple I can talk openly with about love. We’re such hope­less roman­tics. We tell each other that we’ll never be mar­ried, not to be self-depracating, but to be hon­est with our­selves. We have our ideals, and we’ll never set­tle for any­thing less. It’s com­fort­ing to know that we’re not alone in our quixotic beliefs.

Tagged as
Filed under
Daily Life Photos
Pages (1):1