Why Yes, I DID Write All Over Myself

As I’ve said before, I have tattoos. One of the pitfalls of being fascinated with symbols is that I sometimes incorporate them into my identity – oh wait, did I say ‘pitfall?’ I meant ‘upshot.’ My tattoos are not just pretty designs: they are complex bundles of meaning saturated with things I wanted to express. Plus they’re pretty.

I got my first tattoo when I was 19, essentially on a whim when I’d gone to get my belly button pierced. I told my piercer that I thought a mouse tattoo would be really cool, and she hooked me up with an appointment on the same day (which I think is actually pretty rare). I picked a mouse out of the mice he’d drawn for me, and away I went. I have to admit, I got it mostly because it was funny and not so much for its deep philosophical meaning. The mouse, of course, is my antithesis (hahaha), but also a thing that is desired. Etched into my skin...it’s funny how the things we desire and the things we think are so different from ourselves are really a part of us. At the same time, if we caught and possessed them, consumed them, they would not becomes us, and we would not become them; if we separated ourselves from them, they would not leave us alone. Hence the tension remains, and so we are what we are. Also, the mouse is really cute. Awwww!

My next body art project was the summer I was 20, when my amazing tattoo artist tattooed a phoenix flying around a crescent moon. The image of the bird is pretty obvious: the flaming bird is born from its own ashes in an unending cycle. This death-rebirth process can be experienced as something violent, sudden and jarring, an unmistakable burning flame. A kind of cycle of sudden stops and turns, beginnings and endings. Fire is evocative of the sun, a masculine energy whose importance is easily visible and whose presence is impossible to ignore. It is passion, burning desire. The image of the moon represents smooth and flowing change; an also unending cycle, but one without breaks, sudden departure. The moon is stable, predictable, gentle. It evokes water, oceans whose motions it directs. While it may reflect the light of the sun, it pulls the oceans by its own power – strength and importance less noticeable perhaps, but no less crucial. Though it may borrow its light from the sun, it is the moon that stabilizes the orbit of the earth, necessary for life. The moon is a female energy, recalling the goddesses. The two energies are only potent when they come together. Kind of like how both kinds of change, gentle and violent, are parts of life. So the phoenix and the moon are my sort of construction of a yin-yang symbol. Basically.

I fell asleep during this tattoo. They nicknamed me sleeping beauty. I’m pretty sure the name has worn off.

My third tattoo is a tiger jumping over a box, and was done by the same artist. I took the symbol of the tiger primarily from the novel Life of Pi. In the novel, the question as to whether the tiger is real drives the ending, since it might in fact be a mnemonic creation covering up the protagonist’s horrific experience wherein he kills or consumes his boatmate. They choose tiger. It is the flexibility of memory that interests me, the mind’s ability to create a new reality. To bring beauty out of chaos. The tiger is dynamic. Also I just really like tigers. The box is actually a Necker cube, an optical illusion that can pop out two ways; basically, it’s two cubes at the same time. Of course, you can’t see both at once, but intellectually you know they’re both there. The mind can reason that which it cannot see, and the imagination can see what is not there. The cube is static, though the experience of it can be dynamic. I also like the cube because it took me forever to figure out how the freaking thing worked. The tiger (imagination / memory) is jumping over the cube (intellect / knowledge) because it is triumphant: it surmounts the cube. This is because I have made a choice. Notice, however, that the tiger is not stomping the cube into little pieces. The tiger, after all, needs something to jump over.

Well, there are others, but if you want to know about them you’ll just have to ask!

I hope the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob doesn’t strike me down if I tattoo a bible verse, ‘cause the Book is awesome!