Inka Dinka Don't

I have been thinking about tattoos recently. Not so much getting one as why not to get one. Sure, I could invoke some rabbinic understanding of the biblical text about marking skin but that relies on faith and also depends on one’s exegetical schema when confronted with vague biblical enactments. So if that’s not it, then what keeps me (or, many people) from getting a tattoo?

I think it has to do with what should be accepted as a required aspect of humanity – we grow and change. I would be so bold as to say that to get a tattoo is to proclaim that one will not change and that’s an untenable position to take. Please note – I am not talking about the unfortunate tattoos which are poorly drawn, become factually inaccurate or which are full of other errors (like mistranslations). Those point to another reason to avoid tattoos, but those are never attractive so I’m excluding those as too obvious. I’m talking about the ones that seem like a good idea at the time. Thing is, times change.

Throughout my life, I have been struck by phrases, words and ideas. I usually jot them down and put them in a box to stew. Usually things don’t stew in boxes but words do, very nicely. Sometimes I just leave them sitting out to age in the harsh light of day. Either way, I get the words or somesuch out and then allow myself to forget about them for some period of time. Then I go back and I see if what I scribbled down still appeals to me and my creative sensibilities. Sometimes, I know that something “works” rather quickly. Sometimes, the bit of brain juice has to sit around for much longer before it ripens into anything. And often, the idea gets dropped. It ceases to inspire me, amuse me or tease forth anything else. Because I change. Because what struck me as interestingly alliterative, thematically engaging or stylistically stimulating gets stale. I move on. And if it does encapsulate who I am, and I create with it, that creation, a frozen moment, gets filed away as part of a continuum of my maturation. It catalogues who I was and is a record against which I can compare myself at other times to chart the various versions of myself which I have been.

I saw a tattoo on some guy’s arm recently. It read “Born Bored.” I am sure that at one time, point or moment, that sensibility really stirred that man’s soul. I have no doubt that that phrase resonated and made that person feel whole, even if just for a minute. But what happens when he gains a few more years and a different perspective on life? What happens when that cynicism melts in the face of his first child who seems engaged and excited about everything, even from day 1? And, again, let’s forget about the physical changes which make the use of our bodies, when young and taut, as canvas, short sighted considering the inevitable sagging and stretching that years of wear and tear will provide. That screaming hot devil way up high between the shoulders at 19 will look silly on the stooped and overweight, balding accountant who just wants to do his laps at the local pool to avoid heart attack number 2 at the age of 56.

We need to change. We need to reinvent ourselves and continue to explore what makes us “us” and how that is a flowing river, never the same twice. The tattoo is a snapshot but not one that we can put away in a drawer – one that we emblazon across our foreheads and have to live with long after it has lost its power of innovation. Are some tattoos so harmless that, despite age, political feelings or other changeable aspects of self, they will never go out of style? Maybe – maybe that rose on your ankle will be as classy when you are using a walker as it was when you were 18, and maybe it will still look like a flower and not a melted Mr. Potato Head. Maybe. Or maybe you will have moved beyond being impressed by tattoos and, no matter the aesthetic of appearance, it will no longer represent who you are in relation to getting inked on the whole. I guess you can always choose the laser route and hope that after you pay the money and deal with the resultant scarring, you will have a tabula mostly erasad.

I want to go out and be excited everyday to discover who I have become. I want to note the small changes. Yes, more hurts and less works, but I also learn things, see things in new ways, feel about things differently. If I am constantly the culmination of all events which came before, then I am constantly becoming something new and that’s amazing. To get a tattoo is to hang out a sign saying “stunted at ____ when I thought that this captured the essence of all I could ever be.” And that’s sad.