Permanance of Change

12/2018

I feel the most like myself when I’m changing. The color of my hair, my home address, my style, and the words and symbols etched in permanent ink on my body. To live is to change. The act of getting a tattoo should not be an emphasis on its permanence but rather a commemoration of the impermanence of a moment, a thought, an idea, a self, that has come and gone. There is safety in the irregularity of how I define myself. There is consistency in the change, I rely on it to happen. I breathe in, the machine buzzes, the hot needle drags across my skin, I breathe out, and I am changed.

I have tattoos. I don’t love them all, and I don’t care that I don’t love them all. The value for me does not rely on the perfection of the placement, the artistry of the lettering, the precision of the lines, and especially not the relatability of the meaning behind the tattoo. I don’t care if you don’t get it. The value lies in the fact that the meaning cannot last. We change, we have to. And we should not be guilted out of the act of celebrating our journey in this particular way. The permanence of a tattoo should not cause fear or trepidation. To get a tattoo is to commemorate our lives and to wear those memories proudly on our bodies as part of our human experience. They are stories of us. By us. On us. I use my tattoos to track my life as a physical journey as well as an internal one. I get a tattoo every place I go to. My first tattoo was in Washington D.C where I was attending my freshman year of college. I was 18 years old and confident I wanted a tattoo. I had thought of what I wanted for at least two years, emailing my indifferent mother about the idea of getting a triangle on my inner arm. I had done extensive research to construct a four-paragraph long email to her (we started emailing when I went off to boarding school and we both couldn’t seem to answer each other’s calls) only to have her never respond. That was the first and last time I sought her approval before getting a tattoo, or embarking on many other adventures.

The first tattoo I got is actually two tattoos, neither of which are a triangle (maybe I did need my mother’s approval on that one after all). I have a small crescent moon on my inner left wrist and a star on my inner right wrist to commemorate the secret traditions of my all girls high school, Dana Hall. The moon and star has been a very important theme that symbolizes the importance of sisterhood since the school’s founding in 1881. Just as my Dana sisters and I carved moons and stars onto the bottom of the mahogany tables in the library, inscribed them in sharpie on the desks in study hall, scribbled them all over our textbooks in glittery gel pen, a moon and star has been etched upon my skin, permanently. If it sounds cult-y, it should. The dedication to that community was so undeniably, indisputably important to everyone who was a part of it. From the dorm mother responsible for 20 teenage girls living away from home, to the lacrosse athlete ranked third in the state who sat next to her in the cafeteria. Tradition was so important because it connected us, it gave us common roots. The tattoo took about 15 minutes and I remember thinking that it felt exactly how it sounded, the pain pulsated on my thin skin but halfway through the first one I got used to the buzzing sensation. I paid $80 for my little tattoos, a price my already tattooed friend warned me was absurd, and she was right. They’re shitty. It didn’t take long for the ink to bleed, the lines to blur. The arch of the crescent is not what I wanted and the star is a little bigger than the moon. But they are my first tattoos, they are four unbelievable years of high school, they are a bizarre first year of college, they are mistakes and achievements, they are my story and I love them.

My second tattoo is admittedly my favorite, and it is truly a work of art. It is a quote by some bleak old German guy named Friedrich Nietzsche (world famous philosopher and poet). "And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music." I don’t know where I heard it first but whenever I did I wrote it down and never forgot it. I got this tattoo in the summer between my freshman year in D.C and the beginning of sophomore year at a new school (The New School) back in New York City. I was having margaritas with my best friends from middle school and when the check came I decided it was the night for this tattoo to find its way from my phone to my skin. As we roamed through the streets towards Astor Place I searched for a font on my phone. At a tattoo shop I don't remember the name of, I talked to Pedro about my tattoo. He pulled up a font on his laptop, adjusted the size, we debated on the addition of a period at the end, debated on where the line breaks should be, and pressed print. I showed him my sister’s 21+ ID and signed her name on the waiver (the legal age to get a tattoo is 18 and I was 19 at the time, but as a non-driver I did not have an ID except for my passport, plus I only really needed an ID to drink so it was just easier to be my sister all the time). Pedro showed me to my seat and brought around two chairs for my friends. I put my feet up, my right arm out, and let him get to work. The needle felt the same, except it lingered on my skin longer than before. Pedro explained that creating letters this small was not an easy feat, but luckily, he had been practicing on pig cadaver ears since he was my age (pig skin is closest in texture to human skin). Laughing with my friends made my arm jiggle, Pedro warned me to stay still and take slower breaths, he was concentrating, this was no joke for him. I took a deep inhale and let myself live in the moment. I watched Pedro stain my skin with Nietzsche’s words and beamed from the rush of astonishment that washed over me, feeling in my heart that I would never be the same again.

I’ve worn a silver horseshoe necklace from Tiffany’s around my neck every day since I graduated high school. My aunt gave it to me as a gift. It is my constant and it is my good luck charm. It rests deliberately, delicately above my collarbone. I play with it when I’m uncomfortable. I rub it between my fingers when I need some positive energy. The summer after my first year at the New School, my style was going through a heavy hippie phase and my hair an experimental bleach blonde phase. I did not feel at home, I was throwing myself into motion any chance I could get. An outing with my best friends from high school pulled me back into sanity. We encouraged each other to follow our paths, and not to mind the winding journey they take. These girls are my constant, my good luck charm. After brunch, we skipped hand in hand through the Village to a tattoo shop next to a movie theater. I took their hands and led them in. I needed my horseshoe somewhere it would always remain. I needed to feel the luck on my skin. I craved the heat of permanence. Brand me. And he did.

I ran away to Spain after that summer. I was on a mission of self-indulgence, self-determination, and self-reflection. aka I was not giving a fuck and really happy about it. I wrote this quote down in English on my phone after seeing it on an Instagram post: “Don’t fight the madness.” It was a personal reminder to follow that stirring in my soul that pulls me away from home every couple of years and implores me to leave my comfort zone. Be impulsive. Be unprepared. Be strange. Don’t fight it. Having arrived in Spain after finding programs to apply to, classes to take, and where to live; having arrived in Spain with half my head shaved and the other half in long blonde braids; having arrived in Spain with only an app on my phone to brush up on my high school Spanish, I figured madness was pretty much my current personal brand. My first week in Barcelona I took a bike tour to explore the city and met two girls who were from London by way of Africa and we bonded over our similar life stories. By the time we hit the tour’s halfway point, a tiki bar on the beach, we were laughing like we’d been friends for years. Fired up by our new friendship and this new city, we returned to the bike shop yearning for an adventure. A flyer advertising Beautiful Lady Tattoo shop laid on a café table. I knew what I needed. I followed the madness and they came to watch.

I knew it would have to be in Spanish. To commemorate this time and place. We found the shop, located in what used to be a foundry. I roughly translated the quote on a napkin and handed it to the beautiful lady, who handed it back to her colleague, “he is the writer” she said. He would be the one to write on me. He flipped over the napkin, wrote the phrase out in his native Spanish phrasing, “this is what you mean to say”, and slid the napkin back across the table. I could feel my heartbeat in the tips of my fingers. His handwriting was perfect. They told me a price, I didn’t hear it, I didn’t think about it, I stared at the napkin and said ok. My friends sat in front of a glass case of skulls and metalwork with their phones plugged into the outlet below. I showed them the napkin and tried to express its absolute perfection, how it was everything I wanted to say about myself at this point in my life, how I felt so at peace in this very moment, how everything was finally finding its place. They were excited to watch. We went into a room that was like a big glass booth. He wrote on me in grand, ornate letters. "No luches contra la locura." It was a decree. Upon my arm. I declared to myself to never fight the madness! He pressed the words into me, they sizzled on my skin, glowing with a fiery passion.

Again, I took myself away. After Spain, it was Hawaii. My hippie phase took a new life on a farm on the Big Island. I was in search of light, peace, calm, to quell the turbulent waters rushing beneath my surface. Madness didn’t work in Spain, I wound up depressed and afraid. I wouldn’t fight it, but I would calm it, put it to work, give it an outlet, find its core. I worked on that farm for three months, but it wasn’t the work that changed me, it was the people. Hawaii is a home for everybody. There are people from every walk of life, dealing with everything, dealing with nothing. There aren’t hippies, because everyone is one. Some days you are a tourist and you walk around with a camera around your neck, taking pictures of every wave, flower, and sunset. Other days you sleep on the beach and take a bath in a freshwater river in the morning, and tourists take pictures of you. One day you eat Oreos for breakfast and chips for lunch, the next day someone hands you a box of fresh papayas and lychees and that’s all you eat for the day. You can’t look at someone and know their story, and better yet, you don’t want to. I gained a kind of understanding about how people truly work, that it’s not just that people can’t be assigned to one box or another, it’s that those boxes don’t even exist. One day I sat on the beach and looked over the ocean, watched as the waves tumbled and then subsided, murky and then crystal clear, bright blue and then turquoise. The water’s appearance and characteristics were constantly in motion, full of boundless surprises. I realized that the lesson the island had taught me was not to calm my madness but to understand the multiplicity and depth of character that I hold. I can be all the different, conflicting, confusing contradictions that I am and not only is it ok, but it is beautiful. I don’t have to choose one word to define myself and fight off every other word. I am kind and harsh and scared and childish and selfish and weird and brave and weak and social and stylish and generous and mature and unhealthy and smart and lonely and loving. They aren’t mutually exclusive, they are all me.

In keeping with tradition, before I even arrived, I vowed that I would a get tattoo while I was in Hawaii. My best friend at the farm said she wanted one too, months passed and we kept saying “this weekend!” but then that weekend went by and no tattoos. In the last week before we both left the island we’d call home for the rest of our lives, we came together one afternoon and knew it was time. As if the universe was waiting for us to receive real lessons to memorialize, we had been in Hawaii for almost 6 months, but in the span of a couple of days we finally realized why we needed to come there and we wanted the experience to live forever on our bodies. Both artists, we could have chosen to write or paint about our experience, and we did that too. But what better canvas than our very bodies? The same bodies that always smelled like sand, ached after a day of planting avocado trees, snuggled next to our boyfriends in sleeping bags, glistened with sweat under the sweltering sun, tumbled down hiking trails, and consumed 8-10 bananas a day. Our bodies were saturated with adventure. My friend commemorated her journey with “stay present” and “be mindful” imprinted onto her delicate wrists. I chose the ampersand symbol, commemorating my journey of identity. The tattoo feels like me. And even if it doesn’t one day, it will remain. It is a stain left behind from this life I am living. I am stained by my journey.

I never fear regret. Regret lacks perspective. I look at myself now and I am nothing like who I was 5 years ago, but at the same time I’m exactly the same. I’m still just breathing and searching. We are never exactly who we are because who we are never stands still long enough for us to name it, recognize it, tie it down. And that’s nothing to fear, change is not something to regret, it is something to live and learn by. The self, like the ocean, is full of boundless surprises. Everyone should have a tattoo because it forces us to remember. It is a force, an act, a declaration. Commemorating our changing body and mind allows bits and pieces of our soul’s truth to fly out. The truth being that we can only ever be ourselves. Whatever that means.