I find the ideas have behind boundaries between to living and the dead to be fascinating. Its such a physical manifestation of the intangible … such an emotional expression of the human existence and the frailty and persistence of the web of life. Ideas surrounding the boundaries between the living and the dead are so personal and yet universal, death is such an obvious form of how the human infinite potential imagination conceptualizes something like death – boundaries are necessary to construct and thus attempt to understand death…
On that note, moving onto one of my favourite topics, TATTOOS! What an awesome example of death boundaries! I was thinking about what Pearson (2009) has to say about the tattooed bodies found; his ideas about the "winged or mythical" creatures seperating the unknown "chaotic" death from the known creatures (known life) (66-67).
Aside from my fascination with tattoos in general, I LOVE how concrete they are in that they mean so much to that person or society, they carry such heavy symbolism, yet they are multi-interpretive.
I'm also fascinated by the ideas about Spirit Villages...check out the link for more info on this:
http://keepingthedeadalive.weebly.com/papua-new-guinea.html
I researched the Lusi-Kaliai, and loved the way I understood them to conceptualize death and the role of death in life. I thought the spirit village was a beautiful idea and way to show respect to ancestors. The well kept graves surrounded by shells and beer bottle caps were also interesting and like tattooes, captivated my attention span at once. I mean, both are so strong in their communication between the planes of the living and what one may call the afterlife. Cool to learn about, especially because i felt I could strongly relate to the symbolism of the tattoes and what they may convey.
