I got a tattoo on my wrist at the beginning of 2020 on the last day of January, when I don’t think I’d even heard yet the words “pandemic” or “Covid.” I had no idea that within the year, I would find myself in lockdown, or that the virus would take my mother’s life.
But I did know that the symbol of my tattoo was deeply meaningful to me in ways I couldn’t even talk about, because I didn’t have words. In fact, I’d discovered too many meanings behind it, way more than I’d anticipated. The more I learned, the more stunned and breathless it left me, like I’d stumbled upon a sign or a message that was there all along just waiting for me to notice, to offer it my attention so its mysteries could be revealed.
“It’s a Celtic design,” I told the tattoo artist, a young woman named Alex, which was partly true. And with my Scotch-Irish-English ancestry, (my Scottish grandfather immigrated from Glasgow), I figured I could claim it for my own.
But before my research revealed the stuff that got all deep and woo-woo and mystical, my obsession started with a simple geometric shape. Which is almost funny, because I’ve never had a math mind, and Geometry is a class I nearly failed in high school, along with Algebra. (Ugh.) Yet there it is.
My geometric haunting started with the election in 2016. The more I thought about how divided our country had become, the more I thought about this geometric shape, the more it invaded my night dreams and daydreams. The shape?
A Venn diagram.
Definition (from Wikipedia): “A Venn diagram, also called primary diagram, set diagram or logic diagram, is a diagram that shows all possible logical relations between a finite collection of different sets.”
That’s it, I thought. In a simple two-circle Venn, both circles are exactly the same size. They intersect at the radius of each, creating a center that perfectly represents both circles. Most simplistically in terms of our country, one could imagine the Republicans as one circle, the Democrats as the other.
The place in the middle—which is called the mandorla, meaning “almond” in Italian—is where, theoretically, we can create a place to figure this whole thing out. The center of the Venn is where we connect, a place to remember how much we have in common, how much we share as humans and Americans who live in the here and now sharing the same time and space.
But how does one get to the center, the mandorla? What would that even look like? The desire to figure out this puzzle has consumed me and led me down further paths, deeper and deeper into mystery and realization, like I’m tramping through some sort of ancient, primordial forest that bears a cache of clues.
I’ll take you there with me if you’re interested, even though I’m anxious about it. What will you think of me if I reveal this very personal journey? I’ve kept it a secret for so long. But the heartbreaking events of January 6, 2021 have inspired me to share it.
Pack up some trail mix and extra water, we’re going in…
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cal armistead 