The Poster

So, I wake up at one-thirty in the morning and all I can think about for the next two hours is a poster I�ve had since I was 18 years-old. I believe the obsession originated from watching �L.A. Ink� with Kat von D., and being completely amazed with the portrait tattoos she creates. The entire experience of watching this show has made me want more tattoos and that somehow led me to the poster.

This was never �just� another poster to me, it was �THE� poster and as for the meaning behind it, I never really analyzed it. The only thing I knew for sure was that it truly was the coolest poster I had ever seen in my life. How to explain the poster entitled, �Conflict.� The background is in shades of blue-gray with grayish-white and pink clouds. There is a naked man looking very depressed and the only thing he�s wearing is a belt with a sword attached. You can�t see his woo-hoo because his arm is in the way, but you can see some pubes. He�s holding a chain that leads to a collar attached to an eagle. This eagle appears to be alive, but also mechanical with holes in its wings and metal rods showing through. The man and bird are standing on quite possibly the highest rock formation for miles and it seems obvious there is no way to get down.

It may not be the best description ever given, but you get the gist of it and this was what woke me up in the middle of the night. I imagined how this could quite possibly be one of the coolest full back tattoos ever put onto skin, but that was where my mind began moving everything around and the man became this gorgeous woman with long black hair and some shredded red clothing. The bird became a man on his knees looking lost and ashamed with bits and pieces of shredded humanity lying around him. I pictured a Phoenix in the distance, flying to take the woman away so she could attempt to save humanity. Possibly she would already be pregnant and maybe in the background there would be other men chained to high rocky areas. Maybe these males would have food delivered to them and yet keeping them out of the way so they wouldn�t be able to screw up what was left of the world.

After a time it occurred to me that I was investing entirely too much time on my thoughts since it seemed unreasonable to even consider spending the amount of money on whatever a tattoo such as this would cost and I dropped it as I nodded off to sleep.

When I woke up at five in the morning, that damned poster was on my mind again and I headed onto a new train of thought. I have all these picture frames from my sister and also from my oil painting stage so I needed to see if I could find the poster again, hopefully fitting it into one of these frames. It wouldn�t have so much tape on it if I had actually thought of doing that a long time ago, but that�s definitely a �me� thing.

You must understand that this poster had moved with me a total of 19 times between the ages of 18 and 26, but after not moving again for a number of years I had to figure out what I had done with it. By this time I really wasn�t going to be able to stop thinking about it until I could see it, but the last place I remembered it being, was on top of an old electricity sucking fridge that had been thrown out some time ago. That was when I started going through all three bedrooms, the living room, the kitchen and even the bathroom. I went through closets and drawers, on top of things, underneath and behind things. I found dollhouse doors from back when I built a dollhouse diorama and was remodeling a dollhouse. Tools from the woodworking silhouettes I had created and the toilet paper holder I made and the furniture I had refinished. There was wax from my candle-making days, glycerin from making soap. I looked through drawers that had pictures from taking the film developing class in high school and containers from back when I thought I�d be a great tattoo artist. I found nails from rebuilding the bathroom floor, rags that I tucked away because there would no doubt be a time when I would most definitely need to use them; I think that was about seven years ago. I found paints from my paint by number kits and my model making days. There were even jigsaw blades from my hand-carved woodcutting replicas I used to glue to smooth lake stones. There were report cards from school, paystubs from jobs I hadn�t worked in years. My storage of perfectly cut, round toothpicks from the time I built a replica of �Little House on the Prairie� for my nephew because he loved the show. The damned thing even had a working windmill I made out of the bottom of a soda can. I found everything in the damned universe, but I couldn�t find the poster!

I stood in the middle of the kitchen, wondering what in the hell I had done with that damned thing. My mind was racing and attempting to figure out where the safest place to keep it would be and then out of the corner of my eye I caught sight of the poster as I rolled my eyes at myself. Apparently I had taken it off the top of the fridge and leaned it against a wall behind the kitchen table. The whole thing was ridiculous and still I couldn�t have been happier because I found my poster and it was still just as awesome as it was the first time I had ever laid eyes on it.

Needless to say, I�m happy to announce that after some nipping and tucking, my most valued possession, (keep in mind I said possession), is hanging on the wall where I can lean back in my desk chair to see it any time I feel the need.

As for the dizzying collection of my artistic adventures, even though I truly enjoyed every single one of them, they always reached a point where it would wind up costing entirely too much money and eventually I needed to find an outlet that wouldn�t. I�m hoping I have, but who knows. It�s pretty obvious I don�t, but at least I found my poster!