runlikejoy

Displaced Stay At Home Californian in rural N. Carolina

The Many Faces of Joy

The Many Faces of Joy

Sunday, January 30, 2011

Ink


I have a good friend who has gotten several new tattoo's recently. I went with her to go get one so I could watch and to be moral support and I suppose I also went with her to see if a tattoo was in my future as well. The parlor was exactly what I expected, lots of pictures of vampires, dia de los muertos and Mexican art, biker stuff and much more. There were books of tattoo pictures as well as posters hanging on the wall to flip through of body sized tattoos. And then there were the artists, they were covered in tats so you could see what they were sporting and whether or not you liked it. Everyone was very nice and personable, they are after all sales people and artists combined.

I started wondering why people feel the need to paint their bodies? I always used to joke around that someday when my body washed up on a beach, the police would be able to identify it if I put my name on it, so I did. It has been a few years now that my life has settled down and that really is more of a joke than a reality. But the question remains, what makes people want to cover their entire body in ink or make them want to put their husbands name on their butt. Whatever the urge is, it is very popular and very addicting - like catching a virus.

I got the bug - so I went back last week and got inked. It has been 20 years since my last tattoo so I actually got nervous, butterflies in the stomach and all that. The physical feeling or sensation of getting a tattoo hasn't changed at all, it was exactly the same and surprisingly about the same price as it was 20 years ago. Mid life crisis? Definitely mid life but not so much a crisis as a whim.

My tattoo is a Tibetan prayer wheel with the mantra Om Mani Padmi Hum in Sanskrit on the inside of my left leg above my ankle. Hail the jewel in the lotus.

Namaste

1 comment:

Christine said...

Like it! And you didn't even get your man's name on your butt or some biker thing like that. If my name were joy I think I might consider putting it on my body too