Amy (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
such_heights) wrote2014-05-22 01:34 pm
such_heights) wrote2014-05-22 01:34 pm
tattoo show and tell!
Going through one of my phases of gleefully looking through tattoo blogs and admiring lots of people's awesome ink. I know many of you have some great tattoos, so share in the comments if you'd like! Pictures or descriptions, background about why you got them if you like, or just link to your favourite tattoo work elsewhere.
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The full text is "what the ocean can know of a body", from the Dar Williams song, "The Ocean". For me, that's lovely: that means, the occupation of space by something more than bones and skin. I'm kind of invested in the idea of bodies as homelands, and I like that the tattoo both in substance and form reflects that idea. I'm the only person who can read the tattoo in its entirety; I'm the only person who lives here. I finally got the tattoo, after years of wanting it, in January this year as a kind of birthday present to myself, and six weeks after that, I finally heard the song live.
I'm wondering if I want another tattoo at some point: I'm considering, round the other ankle, "इस देश में काफी भाषाए बोली जाती हैं।", which means, "in this land many languages are spoken".
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Oh that is a wonderful way of putting that.
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Hubby designed it, and I had it done in Toronto when we were there for our tenth anniversary.
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I am on my iPad which makes linking pics a BITCH, so hopefully these work:
- Newest, right wrist; for my grandfather, for survival, for blood, for the human sacrifices we participate in whether we like it or not by being part of what we are, for the voice of [God] to humankind.
- One before that, right hip; for my [gods] and me, teacher-mother-brother-self. This is the one where I discovered that the ability to tune out of pain GOES AWAY the minute the pain gets near one's viscera and that actually it's really hard for me not to attack someone when they're hurting me there. :P
- First two, done within a year of one another. The black dragon was first, as a mark of survival and literally a way to remove my body-memory of someone in particular touching me there with pain and ink - effectively a spell in my skin. The other is based on the Evenstar pendant from the movies, but altered so that the imitation vines and flower are a real one, and with the M from Daeron's runes (made by Thingol's minstrel and adopted most often by the Dwarves, so there's the idea of transmission and change) in the centre.
(Second two pics mildly NSFW, as while one sees nothing, I am technically clothesless and shirtless in each respectively.)
Both of my next two planned are words: on my wrist, a particular set of lyrics as a love-mark to my brother, and on my left collar-bone the line "When in doubt, choose to live." from Thief of Time.
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[Image description: a person smiling broadly. They are wearing a green dress, holding pink flowers. They have a pink scarf draped around their shoulders, pink flowers in their hair, and a pink necklace. There is a semicolon tattoo on their chest.]
(This is when I was a bridesmaid. I do not frequently dress with such awesomeness.)
I love semicolons. I got this tattoo for a number of reasons: partly to celebrate getting accepted to university to study Linguistics; partly because I love semicolons; and partly because of my internal symbolism connected with it. I wanted something to commemorate coming out of one of the worst periods of mental health in my life, and a semicolon reminded me that I could always pause and change direction. There was always something different in the future, something to look forward to. That's what it meant to me at the time, anyway.
And this is my Pinterest board with tattoos I admire. I'm planning something more colourful and big. For my next tattoo I would like a hare on one of my calves, and at some point I would like
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I'd also like: a strawberry on my arm over my strawberry-shaped scar; the Avatar four elements; a plain circle; a small twittery bird; a Hufflepuff badger; and a little owl in memory of a friend.
Now it is time for you to tell us all your tattoo plans (if you want)! :D
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It says Doctor 11.
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(I'm trying to get to the perfect DW tattoo design atm. It's hard!
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I love it a lot, even if it's not a particularly original one.
Lately I have been thinking about getting a lizard on my right shoulder -- something like this: http://www.busbones.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/tribal-lizard-tattoo-on-shoulder-208x300.jpg -- except I'd want one climbing up over the top of my shoulder. I'm not sure why I want this -- I've never felt a huge affinity with lizards or anything, but I just love the way that lizard tattoos look, and something about it feels right. Maybe for my 35th birthday...
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This is the first tattoo I ever got, and the reasons get... effusive and hard to explain. There's a lot of stuff- the value of reason, my past in Christianity (John always was my favorite book, and I wanted to go into apologetics), etc etc.
I really couldn't decide whether it was better to write logos, which had more resonance for me, or λόγος, which is more accurate. Constrained writing was clearly the answer! So the way I designed it, it's meant to be read in either language.
So this is both a memorial tattoo for my advisor, who was murdered right when I got to grad school, and a way to reject a lot of the things and people in my life who didn't deserve my energy or time. It took about ten minutes all told to get done, and the guy who did it said it was the most eloquent fuck you tattoo he'd ever seen- which really is exactly what I wanted.
This is a quote from Donna Haraway's essay "The Promises of Monsters"; the full sentence is,
In this part she's talking about reading science fiction as a woman, and that moment when you stop being able to take it passively and have to start defending yourself. And when I read it, it clicked with me immediately, just hit something. Because that's not just media, that's life- you have to fight.
I designed this one too; the text is Day Roman, and the capital is made out of a couple different letters that I found and Photoshopped together. I can remember as a kid having books with this kind of writing in it, and it resonates with me still.
This is an old picture, because it's on my hip, and there's no way to take a picture of your own hip that doesn't look like a picture of your ass. But when I was a kid, I used to watch a lot of documentaries about tattoos and body art. And of course- because I was a Good Kid and because I was Southern Baptist (contains Biblical prohibitions against tattooing)- I didn't want a tattoo, because that would be ridiculous. But obviously, every time I said something like that, it was followed with "But here's what I would get if I did."
When I decided to quit grad school, I decided it was just time. There's intended to be more- I plan to have it say "no try" underneath it (because I like to mix metaphors), but 1) money 2) indecision about font choice.
But those are my tattoos!
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- I can do alone if I want to do alone, and just because of societal norms I don't have to feel judged for it
- if I'm feeling alone in a bad way it's something I'm doing to myself, and all I have to do is pick up a phone or send an email to end it, so stop being silly
- doing alone is sometimes incredibly necessary for my state of mind, so it's a reminder of that, too.
Also, the first time I came across the concept it was in a due South fic, so it's a fandom tattoo, too. :D
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That's a white-crowned sparrow. My "nature name" at my job teaching environmental education is Sparrow, so it represents my work connecting young people to nature. I chose Sparrow as a name in the first place because to me sparrows symbolize being seemingly insignificant but still having an existence that matters, and that's something that I need to remember. Also, birds in general mean freedom and rising above.
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I got my second tattoo a couple of months ago, and it turned out very differently than I expected. I'm still getting used to it. But I'm glad I finally got the words in my skin - "forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit," a line from the Aeneid that I've loved since I studied it in high school. "And someday this too may be a joy to be remembered." Keep going, and someday you'll look back on these troubles fondly. A good personal reminder.
Future tattoos I have planned:
- this Mucha lady on my right shoulder
- an enormous-ass octopus on my left shoulder/arm
- something incorporating my family's zodiac symbols (we're all in a row from Gemini to Libra), but I need to find an artist to make this look actually good because I'm not a visual thinker
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And all the others are super great too, especially a huge octopus, yesss. :D
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The first tattoo I got:
It's the skeleton of an angel, on the outside of my right leg, and I got it to celebrate surviving the worst summer of my entire life, a summer I didn't think I would get to the end of. I got the skeletal angel because of the religious resonances, partly; angels turn up and have to say 'Be not afraid' because they are scary, but they deliver news, which is often good (at least eventually).
The second (in three parts because it runs around my leg):
It reads [i sing of times-transshifting] and is from a Robert Herrick poem entitled The Argument of His Book, and I got it to celebrate finishing my MA in Renaissance Lit. I shifted the punctuation around a bit, because the original line is 'I sing of times trans-shifting' and I wanted the meaning of it being times that shift to be slightly more explicit and I think the hyphen looks awkward in the middle of 'trans-shifting'.
And then my third:
It's a tree, with bare branches in the middle of winter on my upper left arm. I got it for no reason other than that I wanted to.
Tattoos in the pipeline:
~ a plague doctor, in mask and gown, probably on my right thigh
~ {erudition: pedantry}
~ something as a memorial for a friend who died last year; either a piece of her line drawing artwork, or a line-drawing of a city skyline
The first two are fairly well designed and cemented in my mind, and it's just a case of coming up with the funds and the time. The third is much more less defined in my mind, but that's okay, there's no time limit on it.
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It's transliterated Gallifreyan that I designed using this nifty fanmade transliterator tool that I found...somewhere on the internet. It says "This is your story; make it a good one." I was kind of in the middle of a really bad life place when I got it and I just...wanted something that made me feel better and more in control of my life and that sentiment was pretty perfectly suited for that. Eventually (hopefully soon, my artist moved and I need to chase down a new one, sigh) this will be a larger artwork and incorporate a few other lines from here and there that have a lot of personal significance for me. I think the next one will say, "No one conquers who does not fight," and after that it's "Punch holes in the sky," and then "Love, and be silent." I'm toying with the idea of the last one being "Mischief managed," but idk at present...alternately, "There are no men like me" is deeply hilarious to me and the design the transliterator spat out at me was awesome soooo??? It's a thing in progress. :D
My other (and first!) tattoo is on the inside of my left wrist; it's an unfinished triquetra-- if they're finished they can be (among many other things) a symbol for completion, and mine isn't finished, because I'm not, either. I got it as a nice reminder to myself that a) I am not perfect and b) that is okay because c) there's always something new to learn and d) that is one of the delightful parts of being alive.
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i wrote a whole overwrought post about it at the time; this is its current appearance after three years of never remembering to use sunscreen. i want to get another one soon if i can, probably this line from Antigone, but i haven't quite decided where to put it; i really want all my tattoos to work together as a composition. also i live alone so i have to be able to reach it to do the aftercare, which rules out most of the rest of my back, alas.
but i waaaaant it. i want so many tattoos. all the tattoos. i basically want to become a book.
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But I do have a link that might amuse you:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/rosap/50-fantastic-doctor-who-tattoos-p98
Also, I come bearing birthday greetings: Happy birthday, and many happy returns!
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