I'm thinking ink...

One of my regular customers owns the tattoo place down the street. This is bad news for me, because I like tattoos. I only have the one, though, because I find it very hard to justify pretty pictures for my body when there are other bills to pay.

That, and I don't have good skin for tattoos. Even though I am fishbelly white (or Celtic pale), which you'd think would be a good canvas, it's not good because I also have dry, dry skin that's sensitive to everything, so I'm often red and blotchy and everything leaves marks on me. And you can clearly see much of my venous circulatory system burbling away underneath my skin, too. Oh, and when I get cold, I turn purple. It's very attractive.

And even though my immune system stinks in many ways it's over active enough to absorb the tattoo ink pretty well. See? (and it's not a seagull-it's a tern.)



This is my almost 19 year old tattoo. It's on my leg, a couple of inches up from the ankle and I know that it's a crappy picture-but you try and get a good picture of the outside of your own lower leg, OK? Then you can criticize. :D

So you can see why I'm thinking of at least getting it re-inked. The sun used to be yellow. You can see the little tiny bit left now. And all the lines were crisp, the colours were sharp, there was so much detail in it...kind of sad. Seems my immune system wanted to absorb it.

The tattoo lady looked at it, and she said it's easy to recolour it. I guess that they have to do that fairly often. Tattoos aren't quite as permanent as all of the "Why did you do that?!? You know you'll have it for the rest of your life, don't you?" people would like to have us believe. At least, not in their pristine state.

Hmmm, but she said something about "improving" it. The sun should have more than just yellow in it, and she prefers designs to sort of wrap around themselves, not just end like mine does. And she would have added a crescent moon, too. Yikes! Will it really be my tattoo after that? I need to mull this over.

But here's the real problem. If I go and get it re-inked, it will be so tempting to add on to it. And now would be the perfect time, really, having just gone through so much and ending up married. Feels like a chapter of my life has ended and a new one is starting.

I could get the waves wrapped around my whole leg (which I've always wanted to do). Maybe have moon-lit water on the other side, to match the sun. An island? A rock? LOL! It's air, fire and water right now-no earth. But I'm feeling more grounded than I ever have. So maybe now is time to reflect that. A shoreline? and do I put something on the shore, like a starfish or a shell? Will it look weird, being an entire piece from different artists?

Ah, well, in the end, I probably can't afford to do it anyways. But it's an intriguing notion, all the same.