I don’t know if I’m going to have enough time to get a story down, but let’s give it a whack. I have been wanting to write about my tattoo for quite a while now.

Crap. Peter Gabriel just started singing a song called Biko and it is one of those pieces of music that stops me in my tracks. I know very little of Steven Biko’s story, but I find something God like in people, who give their lives for what they believe in. I am not thinking Disney either, I am thinking about these human beings enduring unimaginable suffering, the worst that Satan can do. How unbelievable we are? I am getting a feeling that the young kids of today are on the hero’s journey to save our planet, but it still feels like a hunch.

I always think I am repeating myself when I mention something from prior stories, which is slightly egotistical on my part. It’s funny, I am always writing as if at least one person is reading everything and I don’t like to repeat myself. Listen, I want people to read everything I write, otherwise i would just shove these notes into a metal box under the floorboard.

I brought up the whole repetition business because of the sudden departure on a musical via duct in the middle of a damn story. I grew up in New York City and started listening and loving sounds back in the Fifties with The Platters and Chuck Berry and even Pat Boone. Living through the music of the Sixties and Seventies as it was actually happening live was heaven on earth. I saw the damn Beatles in Shea Stadium. The Stones were a new band I’d listen to in jukeboxes in the Upper Eastside bars of Manhattan. The music was important and people were passionate about it. I have never lost my love and it always accompanies my writing, which is why it sometimes totally screws up my direction, but just for a song or two.

I guess you could say there is something unavoidably theatrical about writing. Seriously, just between us, it is really quite fucked up for me to think you want to read what I write. No, this is not some self-deprecating malaise I am burping up. I can’t seem to take it for granted that just because I have written something, someone wants to read it. Every time I write any of these things, I think if I do a really shitty job, no one will ever read anything of mine again. This writing is the most important thing I do. There is a permanence about the written word.

Can I tell you just one more music thing? I was never into Chris Cornell until after his suicide. Please, if you want to hear rock ’n roll like it was meant to sound, listen to this guy. To me, music goes with everything, the heart beat of our souls. I’ll bet you that back in the days of the loin cloth, music was how our hairy ancestors spoke to God. Please listen to anything by Chris Cornell.

In the mid-Eighties, I left NYC for Santa Fe, NM, but that has nothing to do with my tattoo story either. I started getting ever so slightly more free spirited before leaving the broadcast advertising business all the way back in the mid-Eighties. I actually let my hair grow over my shirt collar and I shit you not. How is that for bravery? There were days when I wore a sport jacket and not a suit. Before I left, I got my ear pierced and put in a hoop earring, which has stayed with me since ’87.

I spent fifteen remarkable years crafting a very rich life for myself in the high desert country. I never for one minute doubted that my precipitous move to Kauai would be any less for me. Listen, I’m the last one to set myself up as someone who has any idea how the world works. I know that when I left NYC, it was because i believed that a good heart is embraced by those who live above the clouds. While it was painful on too many levels, I was positive that I needed to live the life that had been written for me.

My tattoo story has its roots in Santa Fe. My Texas, lady friend, out there in the Cerrillos Flats, kind of forced me to meet the Buddha, somewhat against my will. Man, she nailed it, because we became good friends very quickly. I decided I was going to take exactly what I wanted from him and not give it a name. I don’t remember the damn circumstance, but my friend gifted me with a sterling silver pendant, an etching of a Tibetan Buddhist symbol called the Eternal Knot.

I can’t remember how long ago I started wearing something around my neck. I know I wore my dog tags during the Korean War, in case they needed to use them to identify corpses and I kid you not. It always seemed I would put something important on a chain and had it hang over my heart. I never remember choosing, because life did that for me and I can’t remember when there wasn’t something deeply personal resting on my chest.

I knew that the symbol had great power, partially because of its simplicity. I did some reading back then and understood that that design was actually the Buddha, without beginning, without end. Everything about this knot was perfect, a roadmap to the infinite.

Finally, the damn tattoo story. When I decided to move from Santa Fe to Kauai, I committed myself to getting a motorcycle, a kayak and a tattoo, which I did very quickly. Of the three, the tattoo was the most complicated, because of the supposed implications. Yes, a motorcycle can kill you and a kayak can capsize and sink in the Pacific, but tattoos precluded me from being buried in a Jewish cemetery. There is some stuff in the religion about not defiling the body, but I don’t know where circumcision comes into the equation. As a young boy, I remember seeing the blue numbers branded on people’s wrists and I wondered about the prohibition, but there are just some things that transcend the rules of religion and it is called compassion. If ever there was a Jew in the world it is someone who survived Auschwitz.

The motorcycle and the kayak were easy choices for Kauai, but the idea of a tattoo came into my mind, because I thought I was supposed to have one if I intended to be a part of this place. I actually had this idea that I needed to have a tattoo, because Hawaiians have tattoos all over their bodies. I am sharing this to show you how very little I knew about a place I was about to call home, another well intentioned haole having no idea what he was getting himself into.

Yes, I did have the Eternal Knot tattooed on my right shoulder blade. It is an immaculate design and need not by very large. I am a skinny guy and there was no way I was going to have a three masted Yankee Clipper across my chest, as it wrestled with huge ocean waves tattooed on my bulging belly. I love having that tattoo following me wherever I go. I never felt for one second I was denying my heritage, because this Jewish business is forever for me. Frankly, Hitler wouldn’t have given a shit if I had a tattoo or not and neither do i.