Ink, part III – 72 hours later
In keeping with the trend from the first two parts, 72 hours later, or as of last night:
As usual, clickable thumbnail.
The shininess is from A&D ointment. At the suggestion of my artist, new ink gets covered with A&D for the first three days or so to help healing. Now that I’m into the fourth day, I’ve switched to plain (e.g., unscented, etc.; I used a Lubriderm variety because my Eucerin managed to end up at work during my recent office shuffle) lotion, which is easier to apply and doesn’t leave the sheen. I can still feel the outline when I put lotion on – it’s rougher and raised slightly – but that’s normal and part of the healing. There was still some tenderness yesterday in spots, but so far today there doesn’t seem to be any left. I expect it will be fully healed in a week or so.
From the northwest corner of a brand new crescent moon..
In my early 20’s, I was a Dead Head. This isn’t necessarily something I’ve tried to keep secret, but it also doesn’t come up much these days. I have boxes and boxes of bootlegs; they’ve been packed in those boxes for years.. possibly close to a decade now, and I doubt I’ll start listening to them again now. But I also have a third to half of the Dead’s studio albums, plus a smattering of their live CDs and as they’ve managed to come up on random in my iTunes, I remember just why I like them. In particular, it’s the songs written by Robert Hunter that tend to grab me most.
Terrapin Station has now popped twice today – once at home and once at work – so something out there appears to be trying to push a message through. For those unfamiliar with the song, the lyrics are available here, annotated. (For what it’s worth, Help->Slip->Franklin from Without a Net seems to have become a favorite of my work iTunes, which I find a little amusing.)
And because it jogged some brain cells, I also took pictures of my ink this morning. Mostly, this is for my own gratification, but I thought it might also be interesting for those of you who might be curious to see how the ink has settled now that everything’s fully healed.
(Clickable thumbnails, as usual.)
I couldn’t get a good picture of all the phases in one, and the picture of the ones on the right are blurry, but I think it’s good enough for now. You can’t tell where the touch-up in the full was done anymore, and while the later four phases still seem a little crisper to my eye, it’s no longer nearly as noticeable as it was when they were first done.
Ink, Part II – 72 hours later
And, as with last time, 72 hours after inking (clickable thumbnail.. apologies for the errant hair).
This one also shows a little better how much the ink fades as it heals; you can see the spot that was touched up in the full moon (the shading in the bar to the top right of the pentacle) because it’s still so much darker than the rest. Eventually, it will all fade out evenly and you won’t be able to tell that the full was done first. I’m told that some colors will fade with time much faster than others – reds are apparently fairly notorious, especially in skin that get exposed to sunlight frequently – but that the black stands up to time the best.
A number of people, after seeing either the full moon or the other four the day after they were completed commented on how good they looked and how they didn’t look brand new. This may be in part due to my healing ability, but I doubt it. 
I’d credit it more to the skill of the artist; I had an extraordinarily good artist – he works confidently and efficiently – and I’m pretty sure that all four of the partial moons were completed in about or a little over an hour. I can’t speak to any other artist, but I do believe that a good artist can do a lot to keep trauma to the skin, and thereby swelling and pain, to a minimum. It will still hurt – the four are still somewhat tender to rough touch, but are also now starting to itch as they heal – but a good artist will take care of your skin as they work and make sure you know how to care for it once you leave. That being said, everyone’s body will react differently, so your mileage may vary.
I’ve also had more than one person comment on the size of these in a “I could never do that” way. If we’d try to do all five in one sitting, I’d have agreed – the first one was hardest, but only because I wasn’t sure what to expect. The other four still hurt, but I was much calmer, so it wasn’t as scary and I think that for a lot of people getting a first tattoo, it’s the fear more than the actual pain that freaks them out. If you’re contemplating a larger or multi-piece tattoo and you’ve never had one, I would strongly advise you to find a good, reputable artist and pick one element that can stand alone to do first. That way, you get the unknown taken care of and still have a piece that won’t look incomplete if you decide you don’t want to get the rest.
As for me.. *smile* Watch this space in a few months for the next installment.
Ink, part I – 72 hours later
72 hours after inking.. (clickable thumbnail)
And playing with photo effects. *smile*
I kind of like the blue.. *grin*
Celebrating beauty.
This will be the last week I wear my skin as I was born in it. No, I’m not doing anything drastic; just a tattoo. At first, even just a smallish one – a celtic knotwork full moon (inspiration, though with a pentagram in the center) in the upper middle of my back – but with plans eventually for the phases of the moon (5 in total) across the top of my back and a celtic knotwork tree of life underneath. In this day and age, ink is nothing unusual, but it is still a permanent dyeing of the skin and as such, it’s taken me several years to commit to both whether I wanted that, what I wanted.. and where.
The where is sort of the start of this little spiral, mostly because I’m rather firmly in my mid-30s now and it’s not like I walk around regularly baring my full back, so the idea of a tattoo that not only would I never be able to see directly myself, but that would go unseen (mostly – I wear enough tank tops that the center full moon will be seen fairly regularly) by most everyone else, might seem a little bit of a waste. Except that.. it’s my body and how I choose to celebrate it is really my choice. There are reasons for each element in the design that are personal and meaningful and having them indelibly inked into my flesh has a depth and symbolism of meaning. Which, by all accounts, ought to be reason enough.
But.. this wouldn’t be a spiral if it were. *smile* The promotional materials for the movie The Red Violin included a woman’s bare back with the markings of a violin; that picture is so sensual and beautiful and it really does exemplify the beauty I see in my own body. When I was younger – and lighter by at least 2 stone, though I’ve never been particularly lithe or slender – I had the good fortune of having fewer body image issues. I lived in a somewhat open dorm in college where bodies and nakedness were simply parts of life, not status symbols or objects of power (not always, but generally) and that got me a long ways toward not only accepting my body, but loving it. Yes, I was still self-conscious – I really don’t believe there’s a woman who makes it through junior high school that isn’t on some level for the rest of her life* – but I also knew my body was beautiful (and now have the benefit of hindsight.. I’m sure then I wouldn’t have agreed as easily).
And then I got older.. and got sedentary and stopped taking as good care of myself. And gained weight. And while I still see the beauty in my body, I see it masked. I no longer see without intentional focus the arch of my throat, the curve of my hip, the slope of my shoulder, or the fall of my hair down my back. While I will never see what others see – for better or for worse – I now seem to only be able to see what, by my own definition, mars the beauty of my body. That’s a psychological shift in my head from a dozen years ago and it’s one I’m working to combat – not by necessarily changing my body (though I am working to take better care of my health**), but changing how I see it, or maybe just what I see about it.
Will this tattoo be a miraculous event that will suddenly reset my brain? No, of course not. But it is a conscious recognition of the fact that my body is beautiful and healthy and strong and that I *should* be celebrating it. It will be a reminder to take care of my physical self, as well as my mental and emotional selves. Even though I won’t be able to see it unaided, it will always be there, a part of me, a visual manifestation of a part of me. It will be a purposeful reminder of those things that ground me, that form the basis of what I’ll call my soul for lack of a better word***.
And in the end.. that is definitely worth celebrating.
* Pre-teen and teen-aged girls are terribly, horribly cruel to each other (I’d imagine boys are, too, but I have no direct experience with that). If there were one thing I would choose to spare girls from that I think had the potential to move society forward as a whole, it would be the hell we put each other through during adolescence. Those are growing pains we would all be better for not having to endure.
** There’s a history of degenerative joints in my family, so making sure I get enough calcium and take care of my bones is important and something I’ve not been good about doing. By the same token, there are histories of both diabetes and heart disease, and I’ve gotten out of the habit of eating vegetables regularly and am far too good at coming up with excuses not to exercise. These aren’t things I need to do to meet some societally imposed ideal of beauty, but rather to keep myself healthy.
*** Atheist. I don’t have a soul (you might.. that’s up to you to decide). Do have a consciousness, though, that is independent of any subset of thoughts or actions or emotions, but there’s no good secular nomenclature for the totality of one’s self, so I’ll use the convenient, though technically incorrect for me, theological word.
