The Next Tattoo

My daughter has a number of tattoos (and piercings) and is currently searching through websites looking for text examples and possibilities for the next two inked images. She already has the Chanel logo on her ankle (courtesy of an ex-boyfriend's cajolling) and Picasso's peace dove on her left inner wrist which she is thinking of getting re-inked with colour.

When I was 19, my younger brother had himself inked at age 17, much to my mother's horror (you could literally see the blood drain from her face when she discovered what he had done). By the time he was 27, he was talking to me about laser removal or corrective surgery to take the large traditional image (now blurred and fading) off his left bicep. (A cross with multi coloured flowers, swallows and "Mother" - it was the easiest identifying feature at his post-mortem).

I've never taken the plunge, (needles don't worry me) but from time to time do consider the possibility of having a Mondrian or a Rembrandt Self-portrait inked onto my bicep... but I probably won't. Too permanent for someone whose life is constant change and re-adjustment (and I wonder whether a tattooist could do justice to the Great Man's artwork). So if anyone knows of an excellent tattooist in Brisbane Australia, drop me a line... my daughter will be most grateful and so will I.
Burn brightly, Pete

Ink Me In

A literary tattoo from Molly Bloom’s ecstatic, breathless climax in James Joyce's Ulysses:

“…I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.”

more eec (+ show us your tats)

be of love (a little) more careful
than of everything
guard her perhaps only
a trifle less (merely beyond how very)
closely than nothing
remember love by frequent
anguish (imagine
her least never with most
memory)
give entirely each
forever its freedom

(dare until a flower,
understanding ceaselessly sunlight
open what thousandth why and
discover laughing)

             - e. e. cummings

Not Shakespeare

Not Shakespeare, but there is something I like about this tattoo (but I can't put my finger on it).

Burn brightly,Pete

Gilded Butterflies

Megan Fox's Tattoo

O, no, no, no! Come, let's away to prison.    
We two alone will sing like birds i' th' cage.
When thou dost ask me blessing, I'll kneel down
And ask of thee forgiveness. So we'll live,
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh,
At gilded butterflies and hear poor rogues
Talk of court news; and we'll talk with them too-
Who loses and who wins; who's in, who's out-
And take upon 's the mystery of things,
As if we were God's spies; and we'll wear out,
In a wall'd prison, packs and sects of great ones
That ebb and flow by th' moon.
     
         - King Lear to his beloved daughter Cordelia

eec tattoo

Burn brightly, Pete