For the past few years I have been filled with this desire for a tattoo but I have never been able to settle on a single thing that I want on my skin for the rest of my life.For a while this desire just simply disappeared and I thought that perhaps my going to school in Richmond and constantly being surrounded by tattooed friends had made me subconsciously want a tattoo, but that it was only an empty need.
Here in France there are very few people who show visible tattoos and those that do, in the words of one of my French friends, are generally people that you want to avoid. So I was very surprised to find that desire for a tattoo has been reawakened in me here in France. It is stronger now, too, possibly made so by the noticeable absence.
Oh I can't tell you how many days I wake up hoping just to see a peek of colorful flesh, an orange fish scale or a pink flower petal. In Richmond I could always count on having at least one person in each class showing a tattoo for me to look at and take comfort in. Some of these I still remember to this day even though the faces of their bearers have faded from my mind.
I feel that it is now time for me to finally settle down and get a piece of my own - a memorial to mark the change this experience in France has brought about in me. I have even settled on what I want tattooed onto my body: a squid.
For the past few years I have doodled the same image on all the corners of my notebooks. I don't know where the squids came from in my mind or why I started drawing them, but now they seem so much a part of me after having drawn so many and having so many people comment upon them. Even here they have been noticed by teacher and peer alike. While I do not want any of the squids I draw to be put on my own skin, I do want a simple image.
I never really considered it before but the squid is the perfect image. Intelligent, creative, flexible and mysterious, these qualities of squids have also been used to describe me by various people on various occasions. I do not know if they are true of me or not, but the idea has stuck and I feel the image already beginning to brand itself into my mind.
So now begins the process.
Here in France there are very few people who show visible tattoos and those that do, in the words of one of my French friends, are generally people that you want to avoid. So I was very surprised to find that desire for a tattoo has been reawakened in me here in France. It is stronger now, too, possibly made so by the noticeable absence.
Oh I can't tell you how many days I wake up hoping just to see a peek of colorful flesh, an orange fish scale or a pink flower petal. In Richmond I could always count on having at least one person in each class showing a tattoo for me to look at and take comfort in. Some of these I still remember to this day even though the faces of their bearers have faded from my mind.
I feel that it is now time for me to finally settle down and get a piece of my own - a memorial to mark the change this experience in France has brought about in me. I have even settled on what I want tattooed onto my body: a squid.
For the past few years I have doodled the same image on all the corners of my notebooks. I don't know where the squids came from in my mind or why I started drawing them, but now they seem so much a part of me after having drawn so many and having so many people comment upon them. Even here they have been noticed by teacher and peer alike. While I do not want any of the squids I draw to be put on my own skin, I do want a simple image.
I never really considered it before but the squid is the perfect image. Intelligent, creative, flexible and mysterious, these qualities of squids have also been used to describe me by various people on various occasions. I do not know if they are true of me or not, but the idea has stuck and I feel the image already beginning to brand itself into my mind.
So now begins the process.
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