Leo Lament: narcissistic assemblages

Leo Horoscope for week of February 21, 2008

My friend Ronnie, the tattoo artist, told me that people who come in to get their first tattoo are sometimes unprepared for how much it hurts. Most are able to endure the razor-sharp ripping of their flesh for the time it takes, though. There are some sissies who can't, and they tend to be the biggest, baddest macho dudes. Ronnie says she personally knows 15 rough, tough guys walking around San Francisco with a fragment of a tattoo, having abandoned the process in agony before it was done. Here's my question for you, Leo: Is there any situation in your life that resembles a half-completed initiation? Have you ever left midway through a rite of passage? Now is a good time to make plans to go back and finish what you started.

MANY THINGS LOOK HALF-completed. The thing that was never started and should have been completed: dissertation in literary minority representations in the twentieth century. WTF. Yah, that was going to get written

I have a high tolerance for pain. I got my first tattoo this August past. Arabic calligraphy that says MA'SHA' LA or "what God wills." I am a failed and hypocritical ethnic Catholic who talks to the Virgin Mary, worries about saints and superstitions but never attends church and hates 95% of what the Pope and his peeps have to say. I feel married to my religion because it feels, to me anyway and how i bind myself to constructs, that i cannnot extricate Catholicism from Chaldean-ness.

Anyway, the needles felt like good pain and i needed to have some cuts of my own doing/making and not ones imposed on me. It' s kind of addicting and I want one on my neck, across my neck and down my throat. I know, I will think that one through.

I have a presentation on Intersectionality (six writers, seven pieces, crenshaw's standford law review is one of them!) and i feel like i have to 'stand in for/speak for' and i know i cannot. I felt like I sent a fucking ramble instead of a cohesive paper. My professor is going to think I am an ass and then that will end my journey toward academic enclosure. OK, i am feeling ocd/impulsive /anxious and need to go to KINKOS and make copies for class. I should write more, re-read articles but instead, i will head out to WILSHIRE/miracle mile and ensure i get a small amount of sleep before the presentation.

rest and stay warm
nayj