[writing] lo, it is written
Back from the tattoo artist. Loving the new ink. Pics soon, when it stops oozing and starts to look more like itself. The only place that really hurt was when she was working on the middle of the piece, which is right over my spine. The general rule of tattooing is that the more flesh and skin and fat between the needle and your bones, the less it hurts. When she was working over my sacrum, I could feel these hot, sparkly flashes of pain all the way up my spine to the base of my skull.
I think that I like the actual experience of getting tattooed almost as much as having the thing on me afterward. It hurts, yes, but it is also a conduit to an incredible, visceral connection with my body that I experience otherwise only in sex. Which is not to say that getting tattooed turns me on, only that it makes me very aware of myself as a thing of flesh and nerve endings and breath... It's intense.
When I got the tiny green leaf on my left ankle at the age of eighteen, I certainly didn't know why I was doing it, other than that I was young and newly independant and my parents couldn't say no. I'm glad I was conservative and went with something small and relatively inobtrusive. The friend who went with me got a fairly large and gaudy dagger and rose combo all up her calf. I did my best to talk her out of it, but she was adamant. I wonder sometimes what she thinks of it now. I'm still quite fond of my little green leaf - now joined by four more, trailing down the top of my foot - and I understand a bit better the impulse that drove me to it. I was marking my body as my own. I was stating that I controlled it now, that it was up to me what happened to it and what didn't, and a tattoo was the best and most permanent way to declare that to the world. I still like my leaf, but more as a piece of decoration than for what it means to me.
The set I'm slowly building on my back are rather more. What I felt as the artist drew fire across my flesh was a deep and abiding contentment. My back, white skin and stark black ink, is my testiment to what writing means to me.
I think that I like the actual experience of getting tattooed almost as much as having the thing on me afterward. It hurts, yes, but it is also a conduit to an incredible, visceral connection with my body that I experience otherwise only in sex. Which is not to say that getting tattooed turns me on, only that it makes me very aware of myself as a thing of flesh and nerve endings and breath... It's intense.
When I got the tiny green leaf on my left ankle at the age of eighteen, I certainly didn't know why I was doing it, other than that I was young and newly independant and my parents couldn't say no. I'm glad I was conservative and went with something small and relatively inobtrusive. The friend who went with me got a fairly large and gaudy dagger and rose combo all up her calf. I did my best to talk her out of it, but she was adamant. I wonder sometimes what she thinks of it now. I'm still quite fond of my little green leaf - now joined by four more, trailing down the top of my foot - and I understand a bit better the impulse that drove me to it. I was marking my body as my own. I was stating that I controlled it now, that it was up to me what happened to it and what didn't, and a tattoo was the best and most permanent way to declare that to the world. I still like my leaf, but more as a piece of decoration than for what it means to me.
The set I'm slowly building on my back are rather more. What I felt as the artist drew fire across my flesh was a deep and abiding contentment. My back, white skin and stark black ink, is my testiment to what writing means to me.
posted by Karla Andrich at
6:34 PM
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