Having a tattoo, as anyone who has one knows, somehow makes you want to get another one. I have heard it said that tattoos are "addictive" and I'm not sure what that means. I do think that having one -- or more -- means different things to different people. I, for one, cannot understand the attraction of having a tattoo that you cannot see yourself, like on your back. That doesn't mean that I don't get how this is cool to the people who have them there, or want them. Just that it would not be a meaningful part of my own personal tattoo experience.
Part of it, for me, is that I am this suburban, Jewish, 50-something high school librarian with two tattoos, and relatively recent ones. I have said before, and to other people, that these will at least make it possible for me to be easily identified someday in the old folks' home. Not that there won't be plenty of others like me there then; we are, after all, the baby boomers. I think what I like about this aspect of the tattoos is that I did it, despite any concerns I may have had -- I didn't have any by that time, anyway -- and that it was something I did completely and solely for myself because I wanted to. I didn't so much feel that I was denying a convention of society, or flouting one, as I recognized that what defines society's conventions are pretty much a matter of personal comfort level at this point.
And I like them. I like what my tattoos are and what they look like. They are both very small, no more than an inch square each. They are both purple (the same purple, despite the fresh color of the second one when this picture was taken), the first one, of course, the actual purple chai famed in song and story.
The other one is a peace sign, so as to mark me as a baby boomer wherever I shall go in life.
And for number three ...?
Here's the thing: tattoos are, to me anyway, very personal. Before R got her first tattoo, which was before I got mine, we both agreed hypothetically that the best place for a tattoo would be on the inside of the wrist. We both said that if we ever got one, we would get them there. Even so, I couldn't help but feel that I was being a copycat when I got mine there sometime after she'd gotten hers.
That said, I have long thought that I would like to get a word tattooed somewhere. Exactly where and exactly what word, I don't know. I've considered this passage that begins the last chapter in Ayn Rand's Anthem:
I am. I think. I will.
I've even gone so far as to play with it on a computer, trying different typefaces and sizes. But then R got some similarly phrased passage from t.s. eliot tattooed on her hip. Bummer. Not that I wouldn't still get this if I felt that I was really sure, and I knew where I really wanted it.
Somehow the topic of my tattoos came up when I was talking to the Sibs on the phone last night, and I said that I would get a word, or words, if I could be sure of just what I wanted and where. I said that I couldn't think of a word that I was sure I would want.
She said, That's easy.
Sam.
Sam is Grandpa of sainted memory. The spiritual source from which we have all sprung.
Hmmm.
Sam. Very small, I'm thinking, just black, just the word, in a simple, typewriter-like font. I'm thinking curved over the round bone on the inside of my left ankle.
Gotta think on this one for awhile. It has promise.
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I'm watching Seinfeld
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Sweet Sorrow - 06.12.2007
So ... - 12.19.2006
Christmastime Is Near - 12.18.2006
Fifteen Years - 12.17.2006
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