Know Thyself?

I used to have an intense urge to tatoo the word paradoxos on my lower left arm. I found that all of my beliefs and perceptions could be found within the word paradox, and I still do to a great extent. However, I have come to see the folly involved in such an action. To think that any word, even a word which admits ignorance and implies a disbelief in dogmatism, should be set perminantly in stone, or skin in this case, is folly. It is folly because it does not allow for progress in different directions. What if I come to disbelieve my prevailing assumptions? What if I no longer want to identify with a set of beliefs? Of course you can always add to a tatoo and draw it out all over your body, but at some point that developing picture would have to be completed because you are only working with a finite amount of flesh.

I do not need to encode my understanding on my skin, I do not need to express myself visably, or even through language, it is a mere bagatelle as compared to the secret understanding that I could be chiseling. Chiseling into the flesh of some infinite part of me. Carving with deft ability the shapes, textures, aromas, sounds or flavours that cannot be seen, felt, smelt, heard or tasted. I must allow them to be written in a secret chamber, carved on the walls of an out of the way ruin, splashed on the shores of an empty beach and echoed through the hallways of an abandoned prison. There is nothing in the finite world that can do justice to true understanding, all there is to do, is sit and stare at the clouds.

I will not put any constraints on my development. I will be a hypocrite, I will re-neg, I will contradict myself and I will not convince anyone of anything.

A truth will be written on my intangible skin in the dead of night, when neither me nor anyone else will be able to see the words. In that dark night I will hear my secret name, but comprehend it not, I shall have attained understanding, in the cool darkness of night, consumed in flames that will burn both hot and cold, and I will lose myself amongst the ever increasingly complex mosaic of my skin, which will be drawn for eternity, as I lay on the grass and dream...