(Cross-posted from the Witchy Chicks blog.)
I am probably the wrong person to have doing an Adopt-A-Fox day, given that I have no visual memory, don’t go to movies and don’t have particularly favorite celebrities.
See? I’m a lost cause!
So instead I’ll share with you one of my longtime fascinations - tattoos. I’m completely fascinated by people’s tattoos. Well, as long as they seem to have personal meaning. I’m not so much into things people get on a drunken whim and regret as soon as they are sober.
I see a tattoo and my imagination kicks in. What is it? What could it mean? Why did this person get that particular tattoo? Whose initials are those? Why would someone tattoo bees on their shoulder?
I have a lot of tattoos myself and each one means something to me. Each is a symbol of something else. I have a few new ones planned but the time isn’t quite right yet. Quite a few of the other Witchy Chicks have tattoos as well.
Sometimes I get a chance to ask about someone’s tattoos and sometimes I don’t, but the stories are usually fascinating because of the glimpse into someone’s life that they give me.
I’m really fascinated by ethnic tattoos - I have a character in a new book that is part Samoan and has a pe’a, a Samoan tribal tattoo. There’s a huge amount of signifigance to it, both personally for him and culturally. It’s not something you just decide to do one day. I admit to being a bit jealous - I’d love to throw myself on the mercies of a Samoan or Maori tribal artist and see what they see in me on my skin. Maybe someday, when I can afford the trip, especially :)
While trolling around to look at different pe’a examples and found a terrific modern day example of this ancient rite of passage. Loma Fa’atau is a professional rugby player and comes from Samoa. His pe’a took up to 8 hours a day for 9 days to complete and was done by hand-tapping with a sharpened pig’s tooth in a drumstick.
Just floats my boat :)
What do you think of tattoos? How about Loma? Any favorite tattooed hunks?
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I have a celtic tatoo that’s very personal to me. I joke about it being done in my “wild days” but there was nothing wild or spur of the moment about my decicison. My dad once asked me if I was drunk when I got it. I wasn’t amused and I told he we all got drunk after (which was true).
I don’t know about tatooed hunks. But I have a few tatooed characters. My favorite has one of a dragon, where the flames start at her left elbow and go to her sholuder, the dragon covers her back and shouldersn and curves around her hip and the tail wraps around her right leg with the point ending at her right ankle. it was all done in black in, japanese style, with a bamboo needle, by her boyfriend the tatoo artist, and took a very long time. It has many layers of signifigance for her and her own journey to discover herself as a person. Okay, there’s my cover art, right there, lol.
by suzanne lazear August 16th, 2008 at 2:27 pm