My opinion on the two title matters has been a thing of variance since high school. I used to be super not into the idea of anything of the sort, and this was for a few reasons that will surely lead up to some cool moral at the end of this journal.
Back in high school, people with any kind of body mods were dead ringers for deadbeats. People with very anti-social interests would commonly get them as a form of rebellion rather than a demonstration or expression. Things seem so easy as putting it on like a t-shirt when they stick and poke Greek letters on their ankles in the bathroom. But what does it mean?
I’ll begin with the criteria I have for myself, if I so wish to get a tattoo.
Number one: no languages. No English, no Japanese, nothing that is in a written dialect whatsoever. Relying on minimalistic shapes to convey the message in a symbol. I got this idea from the Voyager Golden Record and toxic disposal practices involving things with an incredibly long half-life. Where we need to communicate to people possibly of different, complex future civilizations that it is toxic if this civilization ends and rises as something completely different. I want it to be somewhat timeless in that respect.
Number two: it had to mean something intrinsic and deep within me. No band logos or any bullshit like that. No single symbols on their own. No sleeves. Nothing terribly complex. Something that was simple, but so fucking symbolic that explaining it would take an entire journal to explain.
Number three: I had to make it myself.
So that’s where my difficulty lay. Designing a symbol that was easy to draw, complex in meaning, and had to be something deeply inherent to myself seemed like something difficult until a moment or two ago. I got to drawing in class the other day and came up with something great.
Imagine the arrow of time, with a cube in the center of the arrow’s shaft, five prongs forming the arrowhead, and the feathers being the 4th shell position in a quantum diagram for electron locations: vertical and horizontal infinity.
Where the quantum positioning is the formation and recollection of memories, the cube is reality that branches into paths of different choices, and the arrowhead of time is the anterograde amnesia that causes someone to recall the quantum superpositions of strong memory. I’m very much a fan of immortality, yes.
So I think that’ll be what I get on my inner right wrist. Aiming toward my palm because memory makes me live. So if I shall live, so will I be ever more powerful. Or something. Still working out the kinks.
Back to the rant about people who get tattoos and all that willy-nilly, I can’t believe that people just take it as a culture! I’m so terrified of its permanence because it costs a lot, gets injected into your skin, and is quite a thing to have on display at all times.
Like piercings, they become a part of you, so you better damn well know what it means when you get it. Otherwise, it’s vapid and rather pointless. Art for art’s sake, and that has zero real meaning.
This excerpt will be from “Calcified Fragments”:
“Your TV is blankly on
Window is open
Letting the winter air in
Don’t want to move
Disturb your rest
So I enjoy the moments
Until I calcify again”
And there’s some sweeter poems on the way!
My girlfriend was the one who posed the tattoo question, which I haven’t thought of in a while. She’s afraid that if she’s interested in that culture that I would find her less attractive, but that’s not at all the case.
It just has to mean something. It’s an art, so it MUST mean something. Can’t just pen it on there and walk away happy. Or you shouldn’t.
It should be an expression of you. A very basic one. And it should be beautiful.
So that’s my take on piercings and tattoos, not that anyone asked. I’m writing off the heels of having 3 doubles in a row at work, an awful housesitting weekend where I had adverse health effects and grew quite sad, and also off of some pretty heavy social bullshit because one of my friends is being constantly harassed.
It’ll feel good to sleep in my own bed tonight.
So have a good night, from Radio Reality City!
Consume Reality! 