domestic diva on the range wants a buffalo tatoo

I love the buffalo in its gentle-giant strength, its American flavor. Its species history is entwined with that of America. The intertwined relationship between the Buffalo and the Indigenous Americans is a beautiful one of respect. I love being American in a very basic way. "Freedom" is a loaded pop-politics catch word in our media. Freedom can very easily be just a word politics use to get a crowd aroused, and yet very easy to not notice. Despite that, it remains a vital part of our domestic lives.

So many people on Earth, now, and throughout history, can't be reverent towards their god. They can't be irreverent towards another man or woman's god either. Not without threat from their government or lack thereof. I usually enjoy a unique blend of reverence and irreverence each day I spend here, home on this range. I discuss the governments failings peacefully without reproach. I also freely fantasize about the seemingly glorious benefits of other governments without fearing accusation of treason and without resonable need to exile myself to determined seemingly glorious location as free health care seems great but its all relative and it would mean giving up my American freedom, which I adore. In even somewhat "westernized" countries, there remains a constant battle for freedom and scars from past battles, issues occupying the lives of its citizens which I have never even contemplated having. In Iran, they must wear the headscarf. In universities in Turkey, women cannot. I wear my scarves however I please and the only police I worry about are the fashion police. And they aren't even real.

As messed up as our economy is, as blood-curdlingly awful as decisions to blow places up are, as freaky as right-wing fundamentalist conservatives are or as lunatically amped the lefty liberals get, our grievances we openly voice, without fear. We actively pursue equality, and compared to the rest of human history, we have the luxury to deeply contemplate our very concept of freedom. I'm "proud to be an American" because I'm jazzed about the great social experiment our ways of doing things originated from. I'm so stoked that we stood up to the monarchy and made our own way with our own ideas. It is a path we can now take as individuals. We have a government system that recognizes our innate right to ever attempt to make sense of our own life. I am proud to freely wear the buffalo in ink.

When you mix Native American ways of life, respect for nature, and their style and fashion with our founding father's ideals, you get something worth carving into the skin. I'm not proud of what "white man" did to our land's indigenous people, and also our indigenous buffalo (though our attempts through reservations and an "American Serenghetti" are being created to restore them) and I'm also not proud of the Jersey Shore and Snooki as American icons, but my freedom to choose to not be that way is golden.

Because I'm free to adopt the practice of tatooing from other cultures tribes into my own, and because I'm free to love my American identity or hate it, and because Bison are Boss, maybe I just will get the image of one injected into my skin. Our skin is temporary, and our nationality is too. I believe, though, that everyone's soul can be free.