I have one tattoo. It is a small faded red apple on my shoulder, in the same place where my partner has a tattoo. I got it from a local tattoo artist In Vancouver and he was obviously not that good at it because the red has faded away to nothing. I only wanted the one tattoo.
And I thought I was being very smart and careful to consider a symbol that would not annoy me when I was older. That apple could be seen as meaningless, or incredibly meaningful. It as either an innocuous piece of fruit or the fruit that once you eat it opens your eyes to the truth. You see your own nakedness!
I am older now and the apple still does not annoy me, so job well done, younger self!
But, I didn’t tell the tattoo artist that I was picturing a Macintosh apple and I was disappointed to find that he was engraving a Delicious apple forever more on my body. That was a lesson learnt; you need to see what they are going to draw.
And, because he was basically a stranger who did not know me at all, he assumed that I was going to want more tattoos and asked me if I would be getting more fruit in a sort of cornucopia trailing down my arm.
I didn’t think I would ever get another tattoo but ‘never say never’, as the saying goes. Or, let’s say, ‘it is what it is’, or more specifically, ‘it could be what it could be’.
Today if I had extra cash I would tattoo some cool hand and arm jewelry. It would be in the design of one of those beaded piece I like so much that slip over a finger or a toe, and then travels up to a few circles of beads around your wrist or your ankle.
And maybe a high arm tattoo that look like the snake I used to wear when I had young film upper arms. I would get some permanent jewelry, that’s for sure.
And what about a ring, on my right hand middle finger where no ring sits right now, to sister tattoo with my daughter? She’s got a cog but I would get an ancient women’s symbol.
OK, I think that’s enough tattoos for now. That’s it.
Notes from a Sinking Isthmus 