I had a woman come into the shop the other week. She wanted to get tattooed and wanted to film the entire process, but she wanted no pigment put into the skin. She wanted, in her own words, merely blood lining. Having no tattoos of her own, and having no friends who were tattooists, I was immediately left wondering where she had gotten a hold of what is generally considered tattooists slang.

Now, tattooing is popular enough now to have its specialized language creep into mainstream usage. A tattooist’s language is not esoteric, nor is it a proprietary language. It is not reserved for an exclusive few. That was not, and is not the concern. What was obvious was that she had done some research into the subject, but not enough to gain comprehension of how the process works and why it must be that way.

Tattooing, however, is not our concern at this moment. This site is intended by Mad Dog to be a site for non-fiction writing. This is evidenced by the chastisement given to me by him over the use of conversation in my earlier writing. Dangerously close to fiction were the words that he used. So we offer today to ‘The Hound of Átha Cliath’ a piece entirely free from quotation. We will continue to work on the valuable realization that stories are priceless, but not today.

Today we write about the ideas of a woman who came into get tattooed as an arts project. I don’t like performance art. It’s been hijacked into an opportunity for showboating shock art. The shock artists do genuinely intend to start conversations and ponderances about relevant and important topics, but so often fall into narcissistic exhibitionism. I don’t like it. It all to often turns into the puritanical fifteen minutes of fame with some wanker standing on a soap box pointing fingers and going on about how he’s right and we’re all just a bunch of eejits who don’t understand. Fuck ‘em if they want to play that way. I don’t.

We don’t need a special language to describe and comprehend these universal concepts either. We don’t need to hear about schizo-types, savants, and neo-post-modern avant-industrial-bullshit-ism. We need simple words forged in meaning. We need words smithed into comprehensible statements. We need simply, words, which allow for the exchange of information. During works as well as whilst, and either is as good as the other. Let’s keep that in mind while we work on understanding why each and every breath we have is a good one.

This woman was working on a project whose intent it was to explore and state that it is better to have existence without life. The key premise of the entire argument is that existence is in itself eternal, while life isn’t. The resultant argument goes to the effect that physical manifestation (birth) immediately brings with it inevitable pain. As beings of a physical nature, it is undeniable that we will feel pain. Hunger pains, heartaches of spurned loves, the pangs of broken bones, cuts, scrapes and gouges. Life is one long tortured sequence of one pain after another, and it would be better to do away with the whole lot.

That’s when I explained to her that a fundamental aspect of my earning my monthly salary used to be killing people. I was a government-sponsored triggerman. The fact that I’m still here writing this is testament enough to my abilities. I wasn’t the best, but that’s because I discovered that I really didn’t like killing people. It’s hard work in every way. I told her that from my experience it was much better being alive than dead. That I thanked each and every day since I dodged the last bullet that had come my way for my heartbeat.

She countered by saying that I had missed the point that it would be better to have never been born. It would be better to exist as an entity without ever having to experience life. It would then be possible to have a continued eternal existence and a place in the world without having to suffer the pains and degradation of life.

My response was that I hadn’t heard a shovelful of shite that big in a long while. I hear shite talkers every day, but it had been donkeys since I heard something like that. Even the gods die in their time. Academically it is accepted that the old gods were concepts. They were personifications of ideas, the environment, and concepts that were so vital to existence that the needed to be brought closer, made personal.

Concepts, ideas, existences are not personal. Justice is completely different from Law, even though the two are closely related in the average personal standpoint. But Justice does not give a fuck about Law, nor does Law concern itself overly much with Justice. For more on this I refer you, reader, to Terry Pratchett’s The Hogfather. Death has a wee ramble that puts things into perspective nicely. An existence without meaning is entirely pointless.

So what’s the point? Well, the point is that we’re here. We’re alive so that we can have a reference point from which to observe and interact with the things that matter. Our friends, our family, our passions, our joys and sorrows. Without life, we have no reference point with which we are able to relate to these things that matter to us. No life renders everything meaningless. What is the meaning of justice if we cannot apply it to our daily lives? What is the meaning of an irrelevant existence?

Fuck that, I’ll take life. I’ll take a heartbeat and a hangover any day. I’ll take the worries about feeding myself. I’ll take the worries about being hit by a bus. I’ll take the worry that the book that Oifig um Pleanáil Éigeandála put through my door has nothing covering what to do in the event of a zombie attack. Sure, they’ve given me advice on what to do in the event of flooding, suspect devices and nuclear accidents, but they certainly haven’t thought of everything. I’ll take that worry along with a heartbeat. After all, I know the advice given in the mad (zombie) cow film. I’ve a hurley sitting at the end of the bed. A few slithers and those zombies are fucked.

I’ll take life. I’ll take a heartbeat. A heart’s useless when it’s not beating. I’ll take the scutters in the morning. They’re the final tariff on the night before. I’ll take the worries and the woes and the anxiety. They prove to me that I have something to worry about. My worries aren’t anyone else’s. They’re mine, due to the reference point that is my life. My worries have their own meaning to me. And they’re just a reference point for me, because they let me know that it could be much worse.

I’ll take life. I’ll take all the sorrows and pain that I have already experienced. I’ll keep with me all the situations I have found myself in. The homelessness, the hopelessness. Those experiences are true reminders that it could be much, much worse. Without the deaths and the mayhem and the betrayals by friends I wouldn’t appreciate what I have now nearly as much as I do.

Life is fucking brilliant. Let’s go have a drink and celebrate. Just keep the hurleys nearby in case there are any zombies about.