My Tattoo (A Rabbit Island Introspection)
Over the past few weeks, a number of people have asked me about the meaning behind my most recent tattoo. I always manage to awkwardly drool out some vague, pretentious nonsense about life or dreams or something. I just haven’t been able to find a way to explain it quickly, at least not quickly enough to appeal to just about anyone’s attention span.
Here’s why.
The tattoo that I got in October is a direct result of the intense and drastic changes in my life over the past two years. I want to tell anyone who’s interested, because I’m proud of what is on my arm. I love it, both for what it says and for all that was involved leading up to it. I’ve always said that I’ll never get a tattoo that I couldn’t talk about for at least an hour.
This is my attempt to write it down. I’ll be as concise as possible.
Before I went to Cambodia in 2009, I was on a pretty generic track in my life. I was in college, but only because I felt like I was supposed to be in college. I had no real major, and had already flopped in the education department more than once. Constantly riding the line between graduation and academic suspension can be disheartening to say the least. My jobs had been equally spotty and mindless, from fast food to call centers to commission-based furniture sales, which was what I was doing when I left for Cambodia the first time. My family had moved away from Rochester not long after I graduated high school, which gave me no real reason to stay in this town. Rochester, for me, has an ever-present mix of nostalgia and sickening environmental triggers that point to the kind of life that I just don’t live anymore. Basically, on paper, things were pretty bleak. My one saving grace was my beautiful fiancé, who has been with me through everything and has now been my wife for over a year. I never give her enough credit for seeing me through some pretty bizarre paradigm shifts.
As anyone who has been on the Cambodia trip will tell you, you don’t realize just how deeply your life has changed until you return to the United States. I didn’t fit in the same box that I did when I had left. It’s something that I talk about far too often, but it can be hard to talk about anything else sometimes. I had seen the poverty and the struggles of a deeply scarred country, but also found within it a series of emotions and inspirations that I had never known. They filled and overwhelmed a previously-unnoticed spot in my heart, and did it so strongly and securely that it hurt like hell to separate from them. My previous post touches on this briefly, too, regarding the difficulty of trying to explain this feeling to others. It’s like describing a color that only you can see.
I dropped out of school pretty much immediately after we got back, with only a semester left before I would have graduated. My education just felt cheap, impersonal. I wanted to feel that connection again, to others around me and to the world that we all share. My dropped classes resulted in an academic suspension, which they said was “not eligible for appeal”. My degree program was shut down anyway, a few months later, due to lack of students. I was back to square one.
My furniture sales dropped substantially, and I was pulled in for multiple private meetings about my “downright shitty attitude”. My intentions weren’t malicious. I wasn’t lazy. I just had no way to explain, at least in a way that sounded good, that I just didn’t care anymore. Not in the least. So what if her $3000 sofa doesn’t match the carpet (in that room that nobody uses) as nicely as she thought it would when she specially ordered it? If that brings someone to tears, I can’t wait to see how they react when they have some real problems.
I tried to talk with the furniture store owners about what I had been through. My boss told me I was “living in a fantasy world”. I had clearly had a “nice vacation”, but it was time to get back to reality. Those quotes are real. He also made it clear that he equated making money with growing up, and I told him that I just didn’t see things in that way. I had never heard people actually say things like that. I felt like I was in a horribly scripted cartoon.
A salesman who suddenly despises his products apparently just doesn’t get far in the business world.
I finally convinced the owners to let me transition to the back of the store, and take over as the manager of deliveries. They were baffled, because I would be making less “potential” money, and because they thought I was good for more than “just grunt work”. I told them I wanted hourly pay and the ability to ‘leave work at work’. Dollar signs had been keeping me up at night, which is the nature of commission sales. That just wasn’t conducive to moving forward with my life.
My new job allowed me to keep up on my bills, and freed my mind to explore my life direction. I was still broken, shattered in fact. In all honesty, I had just wanted to see a new country, to step outside myself for a bit. I hadn’t been ready to actually face the things in my life that I didn’t like. Those things had somehow, during the two weeks that I was overseas, mutated from minor but acceptable annoyances into a constant and deafening roar of my own materialistic and otherwise previously wasted time and self-serving intentions. I’m not sure, but I don’t think many experiences can do that to a person in such a short time. I had accidentally destroyed everything I thought I knew about myself.
The Khmer Sobriety Project was born in April 2010, as my idea of how to stay connected to the country that had initiated my psychological collapse. My interest in substance abuse counseling finally had an outlet, in the form of introducing a new, naturopathic, humane, and culturally viable method of treatment for those who are struggling with chemical use. At the very least, it gave me something to do and talk about while I picked up the rest of the pieces of my being.
As the months went on, time began to erode the direction of my energy and my longing. I was losing that reference point. I desperately wanted to feel that connection again, but the only way I could chase that feeling was to reminisce with others from my group who would understand. Even that began to lose its luster, as the “real world” agendas crept in once again, and fewer and fewer people attended the gatherings.
In early fall 2010, Bedouin Soundclash, a relatively unknown reggae band from Canada, finished their newest album and it leaked out onto the internet. I had been a big fan of the group since I saw them playing in a tent at the Warped Tour when I was in high school. Throughout my teenage and young adult life, their music has always seemed to find me whenever I need it most. That’s a weird thing to say, but it’s the only way I can articulate my connection to them. It’s as if we existed in a spiritual parallel, as they were searching in the same way that I was but could express it in a different way. I don’t think I’ve ever connected with the entire library of an artist in this way.
From the very first listen, their new album rocketed me back to Cambodia faster than anything I had ever heard. I was floored. Somehow they had evolved into a world music band, with a sensibility and a desperation that felt straight out of the jungles and rainforests of Asia and Africa. The music understood me, and embraced my heart in a way that picked me up and brushed me off. This is one of the best albums I’ve ever owned, and I don’t give that award often. This music saved me.
The fifth track of the album, “Elongo”, takes me back to Koh Tonsay (Rabbit Island). Every time I hear that song, I’m back on the shores of the Gulf of Thailand, with big thoughts and emotions to match. I got the wonderful opportunity to play that song for myself and a few others when we were back on the island a few weeks ago. It was a very powerful, personal moment.
One line in that song, near the end, states that “We draw maps in the sand”. They don’t dwell on this lyric, and there’s never really any explanation as to what this song is about, but that saying immediately held a great meaning for me. It’s exactly what I had been doing with my life. I thought I knew what I was doing, where I was going. Then Cambodia came along and, just like a wave on the beach, swept away the plans that I had so carelessly sketched out for myself.
“We draw maps in the sand”.
That’s what it says in Khmer script on my arm. The sand and the water are representative of Koh Tonsay, which is where I was when I first realized that my life was no longer going to be the same.
That feeling carried me back to the college, where I told my story and my plans for the future to the few people in positions of power who actually took the time to listen. I was granted the ability to appeal academically, was approved to return, and have since completed the coursework for the new Alcohol and Drug Counseling program that started the very first semester that I returned. I have great people on my side, both on and off campus, who have allowed me to actually shape the direction of my future. I will be starting my practicum field work as a substance abuse counselor in just a few weeks.
The Khmer Sobriety Project has been incorporated with the state of Minnesota as a non-profit organization, and a large portion of my future will be built around my work in Cambodia. My degree is actually meant to be for credibility as it relates to the organization.
When we hosted our first benefit in August of 2011, we were organizing a silent auction. A tattoo artist immediately donated multiple sessions of his time to the cause, though we had never met before. His willingness to help, with no questions asked, was deeply touching, though I’m sure it was more startling and profound for me than for him. It was a serendipitous encounter, though, as I had finally learned my favorite saying in Khmer and wanted to turn it into a concept piece on my arm. I had found the perfect person to do that work for me. It is all that much more meaningful, having the artwork created out of good nature and a giving heart.
So yes, I did draw a map in the sand some time ago. It had stayed so long that I hadn’t the heart to amend it, though it likely didn’t lead anywhere I desired to go.
The wave that allowed me to start fresh was the most influential thing that has ever happened to me.
I wasn’t sure at first, but I now know that I’m on that boat. People have asked me where it is going. I honestly don’t know, but I imagine I’ll have more tattoos by the time I get there.
