outside the thunderstorm came down over the city..dark clouds balled up across the sky and occassional lightning and flashes teared the silence of the night apart ...her eyes wandered along the narrow streets of amsterdam and the canals beneath her window...rain poured down and washed away every sound of the streets ..of the cars and people outside...she turned around and looked at him...dark skin against the white of the hotel linen...a mess of curly hair between pillows...his long muscular legs tangled into the blankets just as he were when he felt asleep...she thought about the words he had said while he was all over her..in her...the words he had whispered into her hair..the words he had spoken into her mouth while he kissed her...words...words had also brought her here..the words he had written to her during the long weeks ...why not meet in amsterdam..why not runaway from what was at home..why not escape and meet halfway ...so many words he had used to discribe the things they would do...to make pictures rise in her mind..to make her heart bloom again...she looked at him once more..reached out to touch the words under his skin...the words written across him..she knew he still wasnt hers..the words....the ghosts of his past...maybe he´d never be hers at all...i love tattoos..i really do...years ago when i tried to live a normal life and to have a normal job i worked in my best friends tattoo shop ...thats so long ago i almost can not believe its true..if there werent still people in my life who wear my ink in their skin like for example mini-santiagos mom or a close friend of mine who has a line from a poem of mine across his back...
tattoos are wonderfull...especially word tattoos..when i meet our friend shanna she reached for my wrist and told me she d love to have a word tattoo too...i like that..everyone should wear words..everyone should become a story...a living book...because for me a tattoo isnt something what you put on your skin from outside..for me a tattoo is something which comes from inside to the outside..like oxygen underwater flies upwards toward the surface...thats how tattoos should appear on you...everybody tells a story..but some bodies tell whole books...
i wrote about my tattoos in poems..in essays...in stories...and often people ask me about their meaning...like here in a tiny snipped from "subkutan"
" if i was in a relationship she asked me. no, i dont believe in relationships anymore i answered and liftet my wrist so she could see the black letters shinning through my skin. "XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX*, i translatet and took another sipp of my beer. thats heavy stuff she answered and smiled sad. yes, i nodded. i was smiling sad too "
so i m very pleased to tell you that one of my tattoos is included in a wonderful book about tattoos edited by eva talmadge and justin taylor who had the great idea to put together a book titled " THE WORD MADE FLESH" which will be published by HarperPerennial this fall...so the book will include "all kinds of literary tattoo work: quotations from your favorite writer, opening lines of novels, lines of verse, literary portraits or illustrations. From Shakespeare to Bukowski to The Little Prince in a Baobab tree"..and also my own fav tattoo and its biography..the story behind the tattoo...
*of course there isnt xxxx on my wrist but i dont wanna tell too much about it:-)
17 comments:
http://fuckyeahtattoos.tumblr.com/
Hours of fun! The words seem so much more meaningful, on skin, even when you think about it and realise some of them aren't...
but the words, the art! The Mucha ones are incredible,the banksy ones look great, and I LOVE the kids' illustration ones the best.
@ jo
wow..some of them tattoos are really beautiful..some silly..some brave..what really surprises me is the quality of some of the photographs...
for childrens art..you know what mine will be...the handprint turned into a tattoo
Beautiful post, Danielle. I am not tattooed but I understand the craving for it. Many of my friends are and some of my children, too.
So wonderful about the book!
I am fascinated by tattoos. I'm too fickle to have one myself, though. I would regret it within the year. I'd love to see yours, and hear its story.
You are a big ole tease!
How can you throw something that intriguing out there and then not finish the story!!? *sigh.
I'm sort of enamored with the commitment side of getting a tattoo, and also, of course with really cool artsy ones or ones that have a story.
@ ms moon...
i cant imagine you with a tattoo...but you wear your signs...like angels tattoos across your soul...like i do..invisible marks...still there...
@ mwa...
maybe you would finde something you wouldnt get tired off
it took me years until i got my own tattoos...because they developed underneath..like i had to be sure i wnated them forever...i waited until i felt the time was right
@ petit fleur
hehe..a tease..thats not a bad thing i guess..:-)
i will tell all of you more..maybe i ll translate a part of a story about tattoos..:-))))
Congratulations on your tattoo's publication!
for me a tattoo isnt something what you put on your skin from outside..for me a tattoo is something which comes from inside to the outside..like oxygen underwater flies upwards toward the surface
That's so poetic and profound! (And I'm not even a tattoo wearer.)
Please do.
I sure I speak for many readers when I say... we are waiting. :-)
I love tattoos although I keep thinking of getting one and never found the right artist. A yin-yang in the middle of a flaming sun. I know I will know when I find the right person, and I will have it done on the inside of my left wrist, direct line to the heart.
So, I told you what my tattoo will be, fair is fair so spill, boy. What are all those xxxxxs all about? Nothing do to with love, I imagine?
I just thought of something funny about tattoos, but it's also a bit sad. A friend of mine who is a construction contractor, had a buddy (also in construction) Big guy, who had a heart shaped brick wall tattoo (I think on his shoulder), and underneath it said
"Break this bitch"
I don't know why I laugh at that, I know it's sad... but also so very very humorously so!
I'm with Allegra, spill it!
For your eyes only
Hey, Danielle.
I left you a note in AT's blog, in a post called 'I heart Georgia'.
Cheers,
Tessa
It's nice here. I like the vibe in your posts and the way you seem whole in them.
@ jeremy
thank you!!! coming from you thats a real compliment :-) actually made my day..:-)
@ allegra
thats great because when i was young the first tattoo i wanted was a flaming sun..on my right foot..i went to the tattoo place..made an apointment..and two nights later the place burned down...so i never had that tattoo because i thaught it was a sign!
i ll make another post about my tattoos soon..i promise..:-)
@ petit fleur..sad but humours as well...
@ tessa
welcome..:-) i m glad you like it..come and visit me anytime:-)
i was off to check your not but its not there yet...:-)
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