Imagine Peace

I had some vague plans for today's post, but I forgot about Peace Day. When this day came last year, I had only been blogging for a few months, and it was one of my first glimpses of the blogging community. I was surprised to see that many of my favorite blogs, which were so different from each other, had gathered together to think about peace: how to achieve it, what it meant, how it made them feel, and so on. Later that day, when my new friend CEO sent me my own personalized "Dona Nobis Pacem" banner, I felt the connection of blogging. I was amazed that a stranger, hundreds of miles away, would take the time to make something for me. CEO went from being a stranger to being a friend, and blogging went from being a solitary passtime to a community activity that was never far from my mind.

A lot of bloggers are writing about peace today, and their eloquence is inspiring, but I don't really have anything profound to say. I'm not an optimist about peace. There was a time, years ago, when I thought that humans might, one day, be able to live together. I could imagine a time when there might not be any wars in the world. Right now, though, I find it hard to even imagine a time when the United States won't be shipping its children overseas to kill people.

When I was a teacher, I would often have my students read George Orwell's 1984. One of the hardest things for them to deal with was the idea that "War is Peace," and they tended to dismiss this famous quote as empty rhetoric about totalitarian governments. Looking deeper, though, we noticed that war does, indeed, lead to peace. It inspires cohesion, nationalism, and a setting-aside of all the meaningless little things like free speech and the right to assemble. In fact, one could argue that the shortest route to internal peace and security is external conflict.

I wonder, though, if we could claim the converse of Orwell's statement. If War is Peace, might not Peace be War? Maybe, if we really want peace, we will need to approach it as a real war. It's a battle between those who financially benefit from war and those who physically suffer. It's also a battle between those who believe in America's beautiful rhetoric and ideals and those who can't see past its global primacy. In other words, the search for peace is a conflict between the path that our Constitution, Bill of Rights, and Declaration of Independence promise and the path that our government has chosen to follow.

The gap between these two extremes is so wide that I wonder if it can ever be bridged. I think that, if we hope to find a way across it, we must begin by abolishing the exceptions that we are so inclined to make. There should be no exceptions to our freedom of speech, or our freedom to assemble. There should be no exceptions to our defense of habeas corpus or our prohibitions against torture. Every exception we make is a deterioration of the very freedoms that we claim to honor and a step away from peace. At the end of the day, we cannot protect who we are by destroying the things that make us unique.

And we can't achieve peace by fomenting war.

My First Tattoo

A little while ago, I was reading a meme on Boondoggled , a blog that I really enjoy. Reading through the list of items, I agreed with most of Just D's responses. However, in one of the categories, "Things I Would Never Do," she wrote that she would never have a tattoo. I was a little surprised, in part because I know so many people with tattoos, but also because I got my first tattoo this year.

For years, I'd thought about getting some skin art. My original idea was to get "Made in Korea" on the back of my calf. My reasons for this were two-fold. First of all, I was, in fact, made in Korea by an American Navy officer and a U.S. staff worker in the embassy. My second reason was that, well, tattoos are cool. And edgy. And I wanted to be cool. And edgy.

Not surprisingly, these reasons weren't enough to get me into a chair, particularly when I realized that the tattoo I had in mind would probably cost about $150. Of course, I always blamed my decision on timing, or poverty, or some other excuse. Deep down inside, though, I knew the true reason: it wasn't the right tattoo.

Almost two years ago, my wife told me that she was pregnant. After I got over my initial terror, we began thinking about names for the little tyke. When we found out that we were going to have a little girl, we decided to name her Georgia. We had three reasons for this. First, my wife is also named after a state, and the whole state thing struck us as a total riot. Second, my wife's father was named George. George was in the process of dying, and we decided that naming his granddaughter after him was a particularly cool way to memorialize him. Finally, between George Trayne (Nancy Drew's best buddy), George Eliot, and George Sands, we had a huge number of great female Georges for our daughter to look up to. Even then, we knew that we were going to call her George.

George was born in October, and her grandfather died in April. In the months in between, she and he were able to meet, and they really hit it off. That summer, as Father's day got nearer, I started thinking about fatherhood, mortality, and being a grown-up. I decided that, at the advanced age of 34, I had reached the point where I probably didn't have to worry about outgrowing my tattoos. I was pretty sure that I would never regret the tattoo I had in mind. Besides, it was something that I really wanted to do. Best of all, between my daughter, my father-in-law, and my favorite writer, I knew exactly what to get on my arm.

George Orwell.

First off, I picked out the perfect picture of Orwell. Half his face was in shadow, giving him an intense, mysterious aura:



My next move was figuring out what I wanted the tattoo to look like. I finally decided on this as a tentative design:


When it came to finding an artist, I didn't want to screw around. After all, I knew that I would be wearing this for the rest of my life. I went to Ancient Art, the best tattoo studio in town. Once I got there, I talked to Richie, one of the artists. We finalized the design and set up an appointment for a few days later. When the day rolled around, I was a little scared, but I decided that I needed to do this because I was scared. I wanted to overcome this one.

Anyway, I went in, sat down and started reading the book that I had brought along. However, I soon found myself getting involved in the tattooing process, discussing details of Orwell's hair and smile, and generally collaborating with Richie. To be honest, the two and a half hours went really quickly. Now, I'm not going to pretend that the tattoo didn't hurt, but it wasn't unbearable. To be precise, it felt like I had skinned my arm and someone was rubbing it with a vibrator. Here's what George looked like when I got out of the parlor:


He was a little too intense at first. However, Richie assured me that George's bright white eyes and demon-red skin tone would fade considerably by the time he healed.

Of course, the healing process was interesting, too. Especially when George scabbed over:


This picture doesn't quite convey the total skin-rot realities of George at this time. To put it bluntly, it looked like I'd gotten the world's most artistic case of leprosy. However, within a month or so, George had healed. This is what he looks like today:


While I'm not totally pleased with the tattoo, I like it a lot. Richie went with a photo-realistic technique that didn't come out perfectly, and I will probably go to a major urban center for my next tattoo, but I'm generally happy with George. As is my daughter, who sometimes talks to him when she thinks I'm not looking.

For my other arm, I'm thinking about Franz Kafka:


No, I'm not naming the next kid "Franz."