Know what you (really) know

A few weeks ago Cara and i were talking and the subject of this blog came up. I really enjoy writing it and I feel like it has helped me to clarify my thoughts at times but there is something that annoys me. Its that I sound like a know-it-all, and not just on this blog but in person too there is some way i present myself that gives people the idea that im smug or think that i know everything. The reality, of course, is the exact opposite. I have learned a few things in my life and a very few of those things im pretty damn sure of, but the vast majority of things in my life are subject to change as i learn new things. And im always learning new things.

Im not sure why I come off that way, but almost everyone in my life who is honest with me has expressed some annoyance at this trait. It bugs me too. So how do i present my thoughts and ideas without sounding like I have all the answers? Im not sure, but its something im working on constantly.

One thing i do know is that this is definitely a family trait, my family is full of folks who are sure of what they know and are not shy about letting you know how sure they are. Perhaps its all a byproduct of being raised the way we were, my folks never ran our lives for us, they supported what we did 100% but they never ordered us to live a certain way or with certain beliefs. When i was younger I took this to mean that they didnt care the way i saw other folks parents trying to plan out every detail of their childrens lives, but as i grew older i saw the wisdom of what they were doing, the Lambert children (all six of em) would be fiercely independent, self-determined, and self-assured and i supposed its the latter that is the source of the annoying “I know that already” trait we all share.

In a lot of the old Buddhist stories I read it seems that the old guy was trying to insure that his listeners were not satisfied with pat answers and rote recital of his words. Over and over he admonished his monks to test his theories and to judge for themselves if they reflected the real world or not. It seems that he wanted us to be sure of our lives based on direct awakened experience and not on what others said reality was like. My problem is that when i have looked into a subject and come to a conclusion I tend to take that conclusion as the gospel, inviolate, unquestionable. The buddha i think wanted us to come to our own conclusions but he also warned about being stuck on your own ideas, in a way its like the scientific method. Nothing in science is ever a “fact”, they are simply the most reasonable solution until a better one comes along, this is what makes science so progressive, once a new theory is provable and demonstrable it becomes the new fact. nothing is ever above questioning.

So my challenge is to examine the world around me and come to my own honest conclusions the way my parents instilled in me but to do so without the cocky sureness that my one-sided view is the Truth with a capital T.

I hope my future posts will sound a little less know-it-all ish.

Beggars cant be choosers

Its 1 am and I really ought to be in bed.

Clearly im not so lets recap the day. i did zero tattoos today and it actually feels pretty good. The first one was something i didnt feel very good about doing and the second the customer didnt really get moved enough by the art to tattoo.

Ive been really trying to be more selective, to take on the kind of work that i will be extra excited about. its funny because there is always this feeling of doing something wrong when i think about this. there is a bit of the old school blue collar tattooist guy in me that says “just do it, its just fucking drawings, stop being such a pansy and do whatever walks in the door.” and that voice has been the way ive done it for my whole tattooing career. Someone comes in and unless its blatantly impossible i say “ok”. If its one of those pieces I know I can do but just doesnt excite me, or if its one of those things that i think will come out “ok but not amazing” I immediately begin worrying and dreading it. Sometimes i end up being wrong and having a really good time with pieces like that, but generally experience has taught me that its just not going to be all that fun to do.

Thats where the dilemma comes in. I realise that I have a pretty good job (ok a fucking amazing job im lucky enough to have stumbled into) but The feeling i get when im working on a really fun piece is even more awesome, so i wonder if I cant dispense with the worst of the “bad” stuff and just focus more on what i really enjoy doing and think I can do my best work on? Its not entirely selfish either, I know that on the kind of bold graphic work i enjoy that I can do my best work. I try to tell myself that turning down stuff i can do at an average level in favor of stuff i can rock out on benefits the customer as well as me, but i just cant shake the feeling that i would be being self-indulgent or “bad” to tell someone i cant do their tattoo just because i dont think it would be very fun.

Ive read some interviews with guys like Uncle Allen, Mike giant, and Steve byrne all of whom basically pick and choose their clients and it does sound attractive to me, but perhaps my low self esteem cant wrap my head around telling someone “nope”. I mean, they are going to want to know why and i just dont lie to people anymore. What kind of reputation would I have if i straight up told people “I dont want to do this tattoo because i dont think its very interesting.”? Does that make me a prick? it feels like it would.

I do know that Ive been on a bit of a plateau lately and would like to push myself a little further, maybe thats the benefit of doing anything that comes in, its more likely to be a challenge if I dont always pick stuff to tattoo thats in my comfort zone.

Bleh.

Short and very sweet

After work today Cara and i rode our bikes home. We joked and laughed a lot as we enjoyed the cool night and the city seemed somehow more comfortable than ever before. Cars passed quickly and safely, the lights all seemed to go our way, the hills seemed a little less steep it was like the world decided to give us a little pus on the bum as we cruised along chatting and talking about what we would make for dinner.

I cant  remember a better time in my life than right at this moment.

Look ma I’m tech (or the new bike plus rain)

So I’m typing this at Starbucks on Caras i-Pod touch while waiting for her to get done. My giant thumbs are bumbling around this teeny screen like Andre the giant trying to build a faberge egg with oven mitts on.

It is kind of like a cool little laptop though,if you dont mind a teensy tiny screen. It’s like deciding to ride in the tour e france but with a dahon folding bike. I have no doubt that it could be done, but it would take a long ass time. Im a big fan of new toys and techy stuff, but trying to do anything more important than texting your friend on something this size is ridiculous.

In the interest of full disclosure I must now confess that the rest of this entry is being written on my home computer with a human being sized keyboard.

After my much beloved Trek Soho S was stolen a few weeks back I was suddenly (and involuntarily) in the market for some new wheels. Some folks believe that God has a plan for their lives and while I would never assume that the great universe has a specific map of exactly how my life is going to go I do believe that the man upstairs does have certain bullet points on the heavenly to-do list with my name at the top. Certain things seem to happen with such stunning regularity that it stretches the limits of credibility to deny that they can be the result of anything less than Gods sense of irony

One of these things is the fact that it will rain on the day I am buying a bike. You can bank on it. And trust me Ive bought a lot of bikes this year alone and It has rained on every single day i rode the new one home. In fact at this point Id like to hire myself out to desert communities struck by drought, all they need to do is pay me to fly out to Arizona, lets say, walk into a bike shop and the second I hand my money over to the cashier the heavens will erupt in biblical levels of rain.

Which is a long-winded way of saying it rained when I was shopping for bikes the other day. Once again i hit 3 or 4 bike shops but this time I had a much firmer idea of what I wanted. I looked at SE’s lager and premium brew bikes, and a fuji track bike at Thick Bikes, then I checked out the KHS urban soul (which should be the label for a section of Keith Sweat records NOT a bike name) and the Surly Steamroller at Iron City bikes, I was damn close to a Felt Dispatch or jamis beatnik at BikeTek in Squirrel hill, but i was finally sold on my new bike at Pittsburgh pro bikes.

See, this time I knew I wanted to stick to a light frame, which meant aluminum for my price range. I wanted it to be single speed, to have some V to the rims (for my fat ass) and to have front and rear brakes. I wanted straight bars and I wanted to spend less than $600.  unlike the Soho S i also wanted it in my size, i had settled for a 47cm frame and now i knew I needed at least a 50 or 52 . The result is this little guy:

It’s a Giant Bowery/mashup. and so far i love the shit out of it! My Trek was a great bike and really let me hit when i wanted to go fast, but this guy really wants to go fast on its own! the frame fits perfectly, on my previous bike i was forever messing with the seat height and saddle position to try and get comfortable, however on this bad boy I just set it up and its been perfectly comfortable from day one. The only downside is the presta valves on the tires, which has more to do with the fact that Ive never used that type before and I dont want to fuck the tubes up pumping them up with that tiny delicate looking stem.

I still store it in the lobby of my building but these days there is a giant kryptonite cable lock lashed to a 5000 pound radiator bolted to the floor that I lock it to. If the thieves get it off of that monstrosity then im giving up and riding a unicycle to work.

This Tuesday I will be tattooing a crazy cool Ganesh on a good friend of ours so pictures soon!

Updateless

canttalkplayingfallout 3.

ohandiboughtanewbikeitsagiantbowerymashupmoresoon. . . .

Birthday #39

so its quite literally the 39th time ive had a birthday today. Theres a lot of ways I can think about that. For one, I can imagine that ive taken 39 rides on earth around the sun, a very long and enormous trip! Or i can consider the milestones in my life, the scars on my body, the progress of my spiritual and mental facilities. I can catalog the victories or defeats of my life, I can tally the number of hours spent accomplishing great things (great to me, anyways) or the hours wasted on sillieness.

Me? im taking the day off to hang out with the most wonderful girl in the world, the orneriest dog in pittsburgh and a beautiful cool september day. The last few years of my life on my birthday have filled me with such gratitude and wonderful realization of how fucking lucky I have been.

The real gift I get on my birthday is that I was born into this little chunk of the universe and given the chance to experience it the way I have, its a wonderful beautiful ride.

Oh God!

Of all the things that gave me trouble with buddhism, the number one was the idea of God. I have lived the majority of my life as a staunch atheist and humanist. I didnt believe in God because I saw it as the fairy tale-esque construction of Pre-millennial tribes, as something that can and was used to justify all sorts of murder and persecution, and as something that required its believers to surrender their personal responsibility.

And if we are talking about the Judeo-Christian version of god i still believe those things.

As I began exploring Buddhism, however the idea of god kept cropping up. Every teaching i heard or read from otherwise amazingly rational people talked about a belief in god as matter of factly as you talk about the weather. i just didnt get it. how could you be so dedicated to reality and Truth and still believe int his fantasy santa in the sky? Eventually I came to an impasse, I was either going to give up on buddhism or give up on my rationalism, I simply couldnt reconcile the one with  the other. At that moment a great realization came to me, and it resolved not only my confusion about god, but a lot of my other confusions about buddhism as well.

I had always had trouble understanding what buddhists meant by saying “we are all one” or ” we are all aspects of the universe”. I had spent so long believing that I was “me” and you were “them” that i really thought all this talk of unity was jargon or metaphor for some kind of giant love hug or another way of saying “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. But if I have learned anything from my practice its that Buiddhists usually mean exactly what they say, it want a metaphor any more than saying Buddhists believe in god is a metaphor. it is quite literally the truth as we see it. But how?

It turns out that the average conception of god is too small, too based on our own little experience, on our. . .conceptions basically to be understood in reality. To a Buddhist god isnt some other being (because there arent “other beings”, get it?) it’s simply another word for “everything”. And i dont mean everything in the sense of “everything in this room is covered with chihuahua hair” I mean it in the sense of everything that is anywhere at anytime is god. the universe is god, the totality of all that is and isnt is god. God is limitless and unlimited in a way that makes BOTh atheism and religion ridiculously inadequate to the task of trying to put it into a conceptual framework. God, in short is because everything is god. You, me, dog poop, the pope, the dalai lama, hitler, pol pot, the starving turtle in a drying pond and the mud its resting in, the stars and the dust inside the stars, the space between the stars is , for lack of a better word, god.

The problem i had was that the word god carried so many christian connotations that I just started calling it ‘the universe’ and i think in a way that describes the totality of the thing better than such a loaded word. Some religious folk will say that a definition fo god like this broadens the term to the point that its meaningless and in a way they are correct, because to try to make god/universe “have meaning’ is to try to capture the sea in a thimble. It’s like looking at one atom of an elephant and trying to decide what the whole creature looks like. Many people want god to be easy to understand because they want him to be on their team, but god doesnt have a team, he is the team and all the members (on both sides).

Which leads me to how understanding this helped me understand the ‘we are all one’ thing that i kept hearing over and over. Because where we usually see individual people and things, I began to see simply aspects of the universe. As Brad Warner pointed out in “Hardcore Zen’ the universe wants to see itself through the eyes of Jason and so Jason is formed in the same way that the universe wanted to experience itself as a rock and so the rock was formed. To conceive of god as somehow separate and above everything wasnt just doing a disservice to god, it was doing a disservice to everything int he universe. We are here as part of the whole and every atom is as important as a galaxy.

I mean that. Even a dog turd is as important the sun. The worst person on earth is as important as my mother. The fact that the vast majority of us do not understand this is the very reason there is intolerance, hate, war, and violence. No one can be on the side of ‘god’ if they hold something separate and apart from that whole.  The universe isnt hiding this fact either, its very clear that the moment we accept this fact that suffering ceases, we do god will be treating all of the universe as sacred.

So now i believe in god because I see it everywhere.

the almighty punk band FEAR once wrote

I love livin’ in the city

Spent my whole life in the city
Where junk is king and the air smells shitty
People pukin’ everywhere
Piles of blood, scabs and hair
Bodies wasted in the street
People dyin’ on the street
But the suburban scumbags, they don’t care
Just get fat and dye their hair

I love livin’ in the city

well at this particular moment I dont love living in the city quite so much. My beloved Trek Soho S was stolen along with the daughty but faithful KHS Urban X right out of the apartment building we live in. In a way it is my fault since I didnt lock the bike up, but supposedly we have a “security” door. it wasnt very. Secure that is. So we’ve had Caras mom car with a break in last month ans two bikes stolen this month. Im not terribly upset or even angry, im more disappointed than anything.

Of course when you decide to live in a city you are tacitly agreeing to take the bad with the good, in this case an increased chance for petty theft is the price I pay for living withing walking distance of work, art stores, 10,000 restaruants, 20 cofee shops, 3 supermarkets, 10 book stores, and a vibrant art and musical scene. Frankly its totally worth it. I have lived in the burbs and it is slow death to me.

On the bright side I do get to get a new bike now and with my birthday right around the corner it will be like a little present to myself. So Im off to look at whats out there!

An open letter to tattooers on the internet.

This appeared on my favorite tattoo forum recently in a thread about ‘biting’, its a stupid topic where tattooers all cluck like hens over the evils of a tattooer copying someone elses work.

“Searching old antique stores for books almost doesn’t happen anymore with tatters.”

this is a great example of making the “evil them”. its a dangerous and stupid thing for us tattooers to do but we do it all the time.  We create a legion of made-up lousy tattooers who dont do things the way “we” (in our infinite superiority) think is right. Once we have this mythical straw man ‘bad’ tattooer we can assign him all sorts of bad behaviour and habits (like his unwillingness to work as hard as we do for reference) and then we can all sit in a big circle and pat ourselves on our back for how superior and blue collar we are for our workmanlike habits.

There isnt a single one of us tattooers who doesnt need improvement because there isnt a single human on earth who doesnt need improvement. The fact this that ever single second we spend worrying about what a mythical “them” is doing is valuable, essential, priceless seconds we could be working on the ONE person in the whole world we can fix.  Ourselves.

Its a lot easier to decry junkies, bad tattooers, races we dont feel comfortable around, political stripes that scare us and people who dont agree with us than it is to sit down, look inward for even a second and take an honest inventory of what we see. How many times have you gone a whole day without a single bad thing to say about anyone else? have you ever done it? I havent and Im making a special fucking effort not to do that shit! Its hard. Its hard because its clear to US what everyone else ought to do and nearly impossible to put ANY of it into practice for ourselves.

There is no bottom to the moral superiority spiral. ANYONE can find something about a another that makes them feel superior and that person can do the same. No one perfect in mind and action so the effort to decide what “They” are doing wrong is stupid and pointless. Every single one of us on here has done or is doing something that everyone else would find fault with.  Talking tough about what someone else does is like talking about punching the moon, it doesnt mean shit in reality. The only thing that does is what you actually do.

I like internet tattoo forums a lot, I have (and continue to ) learn amazing things daily and the knowledge that is shared is priceless. however Im having to wade through more and more chest thumping, cool club bullshit to get to it and its sickening to watch a bunch of people I admire and learn from flush themselves down a toilet of self-righteous negativity. True strength is doing what you do without needing to judge what someone else is doing. its not talking tough, its being tough enough to look at the real problem, us.

Update line

Lest you think I quit doing tattoos, heres some stuff I have been doing lately. . .

We based the tattoo on that their art piece by Jeremy Fish. I did redraw it to put my fingerprints on it a little bit, but the customer did request that we keep the sepia type look. i was a little nervous, I wanted to give it a shot but you never know how translatable this kind of thing is til you try it. We tried it.

the chef piece was a memorial of sorts for the clients bother who was also in the chef biz and was a fan of the band that the quote is from. there is the added layer of meaning to the quote when you remember that saturday night is when restaurants get slammed with customers and you better have a damn good reason if you cant show up for work. . .

these were also memorial tattoos. in this case the clients father had been a collector of firearms. I much prefer to do memorial tattoos like this instead of the more typical “rest in peace”. I fully respect why those kind of tattoos are important and how they can help the wearer to move on, but a tattoo like these leaves you with a piece of art not just a sad reminder.

Finally, we finished this dragon 1/2 sleeve in only 3 sessions. For me doing Japanese work that is really fast, but with only two colors it was pretty simply and straight forward. Also the client wanted to keep the piece pretty high on the arm so its not really a shoulder to elbow half sleeve.

Ive got a PILE of cool big stuff in the process fo being finished and more on the horizon. Updates soon!