Duality
Given the infinitesimally small reader base of this weblog, and the fact
that most, if not all, of those readers know me personally, there's a
good chance that you know I've fairly recently gotten a pair of tattoos.
The first tattoo, on my right arm, is a "26.2" in a giraffe print. That
number, of course, is the distance of a Marathon in miles. Approximately
one tenth of one percent of the population has ever completed a
Marathon. I am one of those individuals and it is because of the
Giraffes, the running team my friends started and pulled me into, that I
was able to accomplish this feat.
The second tattoo, on my left arm, is a 6x8 grid of binary digits which
spell out my first initial and last name in ASCII. Beneath the binary
grid is a "v3.1" in a more stylized font. I was named after my father
who had been named after his father, making me the third, version 3.0 if
you will. In the last few years I've "upgraded." I'm smaller, faster,
stronger, kinder, more extroverted and more optimistic than I was, but I
am not an entirely new person. Hence v3.1.
There's more to the meaning of these tattoos than the explanations
above. They represent the duality of myself. One represents the
decidedly geeky nature that has been a part of me for almost my entire
life. The other represents a newer aspect of myself, the endurance
athlete.
It has been difficult for me to resolve these aspects. You were a nerd
or a jock. There was a perceived inherent conflict between the two. You
could be one or the other, not both. I was a nerd. I was never a jock.
Now I'm both.
And I can be both. There is no reason can't, because this is what I've
become; this is what I am.
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