Summer of Ink

Tomorrow, Monday, at 7 pm, I'm meeting up with the man who will do my tattoo work. Can't wait to get started. I think it's gonna be cool.

What I envision are chains. Chains of love. Snaking up my leg, around my butt and torso, and down my arm. I have in mind Ebenezer Scrooge's partner, Jacob Marley, who wears in death the chains he forged in life, the chains of his miserliness.

When I was very very young, I remember being keenly aware that love brings with it obligation. Love is the opposite of freedom. Love means giving up a part of yourself. My adolescent self decided that I would harden my heart. When I read Tillie Olsen's piece, "I Stand Here Ironing," when I read the words, "She decided that she would never give up her solitude, never again move to the rhythms of others," I said 'Yes yes YES!' outloud.

But it doesn't work out that way. I have loved. And I will love again. I am burdened with chains of love. So ensnared in those chains will be symbols of the things and the people that I have loved.

I'm wondering how long it will take? Hours and hours, no doubt.

Joe, my tattoo artist, works in heavy blacks and reds. His stuff reminds me of things that girlfag has said about brushstrokes, speaking to her, as they do, of passion, conviction, and that drivenness.

I've talked about it to the guys around the sanding table at work. They get wide-eyed with awe hearing about it. Which is affirming.

Of course, it's gonna hurt. Especially the less muscley parts where he works over bone. And there's all that business with the neosporin or whatever, keeping it slick. It'll be an ordeal. A scene. A long, long scene.

I'll see about getting my digital camera up and running so I can post pics showing the progress.

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