Let go the string.

My new tattoo. I originally wanted to get this placed back in June but I missed the small window of time that felt "right" to get it done. That feeling came around very strongly again recently, so this past Saturday I put everything aside and just went for it, even though my day was already packed. I managed to slide it in between a Minty Fresh job, outlet shopping in Gilroy, dinner at Arcadia and the Borat movie. It was bizarre, but I don't regret it for a single minute. For personal reasons, this tattoo was extremely important to me, not just a whim or something I thought might be cool. It turned out wonderfully, and though it's currently scab-acious and itchy as all get out, I am content.

It took 45 minutes to ink this. Forty five endless minutes of intense pain, and I have an extraordinary tolerance for pain. The artist asked me to tell a little bit about my design. So I explained that it was the image on the back cover of my favorite book of poems: Galway Kinnell's The Book of Nightmares. The first week I had this book I read it six times straight through, until it was a blur of strange and grievous beauty. And I knew that it would take the rest of my life to really understand it. In the years since then I've returned to this volume again and again. There are strophes in it that almost allow me to grasp what it means to be alive. As I explained to my Reading Triad three years ago, there is a piece in here that is the poem I want to read to my children one day. Sometimes I feel like these seventy-five pages with its red covers has all I know, and all I need to know.

The artist did not respond to this for a few minutes. He was busy filling in the solid circle, coloring like a child would with a crayon. Only forever. Then he asked if I would be able to read some of the poetry while he worked. I said I could try. So there I was, sitting on the tattoo bed next to a man getting a flaming Superman insignia inked onto his arm. And I was reading Galway Kinnell's masterpiece out loud, in a voice that skipped depending on the pressure of hot needle points tearing mercilessly into my back. There I sat, leaning lightly into the pain, my whole heart, my whole body, radiating with everything I had lost. And in that moment I knew exactly why I had needed to do this.

The witness trees heal
their scars at the flesh fire,
the flame
rises off the bones,
the hunger
to be new lifts off
my soul, an eerie blue light blooms
on all the ridges of the world.

Comments

[jkinsella]

MaKi! Wanted to tell you that I really enjoyed reading this. Well fuck, I always enjoy your writing, but this especially. And gorgeous tat, by the way.

[miracle max]

Didn't you have another tattoo on your back? Am I mistaken?

[bt]

jk--Thank you. On all counts. Max--You aren't mistaken. It's also on my back. The only picture of it is here: http://flickr.com/photos/moviesofmyself/176028362/