I have a co-worker that loves her tattoos. Not all of them equally, but she can appreciate them as pictures of her life. Polaroids of the skin. She talks a bit about how her and her husband have a matching set of a meaningful Radiohead lyric, and how her daughter, high on the independence of early adulthood, is getting them as fast as possible. Her mother tells her to slow down and leave room for days (and years) to come. She doesn't listen. The ink keeps flowing.
My co-worker says I should get a tattoo. My usual counter is that my skin is too screwed up by a lifetime of soft self-mutilation at the sticky hands of eczema. But, she counters, people get tattoos to cover up scars all the time.
Well shit, she's got me there.
Okay, so the window has been propped open a crack to let through my intrigued gaze. And here's where I really get stuck: what the heck would I get a tattoo of? Everything I think of seems so superficial. Everything I like. Does that mean... I'm superficial?
More importantly, why can't I think of anything that I'm passionate enough about to get a permanent bodily record of? Or rather, why am I not passionate about anything? Seems that lately I'm all too aware that everything is temporary and fleeting. But instead of appreciating each moment for what it is, I seem to detach. No need to get invested in anything that won't stick around.
Let's extrapolate further and state the obvious: I'm not feeling inspired with my art. I can appreciate music in the moment, but it hasn't been getting under my skin like it used to. I'm working out because health, but not noticing a difference. I'm paying bills and working. I'm not passionate about the work. I'm saving for a retirement that may or may not come. I don't know what will happen if it does, because right now I can't seem to fathom filling seven days a week with something of my own choosing.
I feel like a passenger in my own life, and it's not even a particularly nice car on an interesting road. I can't shake the sense that I'm slowly giving up and it's all my fault. It's all performative. I'm just doing my best impression of An Actual Person. I worry that eventually I'll be detached like Dr. Manhattan, minus any remarkable traits or large blue dong.
Angst, angst, angst. Detached angst. At least I feel that, I suppose. Maybe that's what I should get tattooed, it seems to be a constant at least.
Ah, now let's take that back to the question at hand. Maybe I need to let go of this notion that a permanent tattoo must carry a constant meaning. Maybe I need to embrace that it, indeed, is a Polaroid of the skin. Then whatever I choose must age as poorly as I do, and exist just as a snapshot of what once was. Flavours do stale with time, so eat now and remember the good meals and company you shared them with.
I find the concept a lot easier to work with if I were to break down the problem into something more rational. What if, say, I were to get one tattoo for every five years of my life? All in a row, like a grid of achievements. Then yes, let's get a trombone in there. Then Boba Fett's helmet. And an FNF logo, a Spitfire, the Abbey Road crosswalk, a Porsche, and a 10mm socket. Well damn, all of the sudden this turns into quite an intriguing assignment that embraces the effervescent nature of being.
It sounds great in theory, but it still doesn't quite change that I don't know what I'm passionate about in this moment to capture. How does one re-engage with the world, and feel, and have an active presence, and care. I know, I'm still obviously still depressed in some capacity. Maybe it's just mid-life denouement setting in. I just miss feeling so passionate and fulfilled by something that I wish it could last forever. That forever could even be a possibility.
-Cril
I filled a plastic bag
With everything I wrote
I threw it off a bridge
And thought that it would float
The water made it sink
The bag was bleeding ink
I wished that I could swim
I wished that I could drink
I wished that it was me
It's bleaker than you think
I'm running out of ink
Give a guy a break
This is what it takes
To drive a man to drink
Barenaked Ladies - Running Out of Ink
