Tat on inside of right wrist is one of the many images of Quetzacoatl — Feathered Serpent, Flying Dragon, God of the Morning Star — as rendered by the legendary woman tattoo artist Ruth Marten in the late 1970s in NYC. It's all fine-line work that took many hours and, by intention, hurt like living, breathing hell. Ms. Marten only worked on areas of skin where the tattoo couldn't be covered and where there were lots and lots of nerve endings.
I once ran into a Hopi shaman out in the desert, and he grabbed my wrist n a vise-like grib and said, "You wear the image of a God." That god, I replied, is presently out of work. "No God," the shaman told me, "is ever out of work. You disrespect the God at the risk of your soul." Last time I was on a pyramid in Mexico on a solstice (the great pyramid in Chulula) I dropped a silver dime touched with a bit of blood, although Quetzacoatl wasn't a blood god, into a deep crack in the stones in honor of the Feathered Serpent. On cue, a huge blast of smoke blew out of Popocatepetl volcano about 50 miles away. "Don't ever do that again," hissed my Sweetie, who was not impressed.
The second tat on the top of my left forearm is from Melrose Tattoo in LA. I had a business meeting cancel and was eating at some trendy LA bisto on Melrose reading a tat mag someone left behind. The mag said Melrose Tattoo rocked, and I looked up and the place was practically next door. So I hiked up the step and was, parenthetically, the only guy in the room in a suit. They asked if I had any other ink and I showed them the Feather Serpent...the main guys goes, in a hushed voice, "It's a Ruth Marten, isn't it?" I said yeppers. "Did she work from a design or freehand it?" Freehand, I said. So they shut down the shop to study the tat, take pictures, show me a picture of my tat in an art book, etc. They did a freehand design of a Northwest Indian shaman juju thingie that was "appropriate to the power" of the other tat...spend ages lining it up just right with the nerve lines of my arm. I started going all Jeremiah Johnson..."Some say you're a dead man, cause of this; some say you can never die, cause of this..."
So hey, you didn't think I got drunk in San Diego, passed out, and woke up with ink, didja?
Michael B
MBTV
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