A long journey

The tattoo symbolizes the mans family history in the line of the forefathers. Irrespective of the actual timeline it is designed in the style of scandinavian carvings of the 10th century, beeing somewhat broadminded in taking in motives of other ages.

Concerning the family history, there are no evidences for the time before 1800, but the linguistic analysis of the last name suggests, that the man's ancestors originated from a hill in the southwestern region of today Germany, an area that was populated by the Alamanns during the Migration period.

Most likely the ancestors of the man where peasants, but that is just a guess, so the first character, the eponymous forebear, living on the hill – symbolized by the man's breast – could be a stock farmer, but also a butcher, a hunter or even a priest, making sacrifice - or just cutting the horns of an aurochs, as well.

The next figure symbolizes an armed man moving to (East-)Prussia, the region allegorised by the (post-medieval) prussian coat-of arms-eagle on the shoulder. To stay within the chosen iconographic context, the character is designed as an alamanic warrior.

In East-Prussia the documented part of the history begins: the oldest assured ancestor was a farmer and presbyter.

 One of his sons moved to Westfalen, pictured by the old symbol of that region in the western part of today Germany, the rampant horse, and became a metal worker, represented by the smith-figure. Two generations of metal workers followed him.

The bearer of the actual tattoo eventually choose a different profession and became an archivist. Translating this vocation into the chosen iconographic system, he choose the myth of Mimir and his well. The horn, beeing of importance in different ways to the bearer of the tattoo, completes the circuit.

 

 Allover view of a very complex design, an inkmark of a long journey, of being rooted in land and family, of following the ancient tradition of "carving the skin in memory of the forefathers" (notice double- spiral in the design, symbolizing the flow of life here)

Thanks for visiting me, wherever i was, for the nice sessions, nice food n drinks ;)

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The Tattooed Poets Project: Izzy Oneiric

Today's tattooed poet is Izzy Oneiric, who sends us this amazing shot of her sleeve:

I'll let Izzy take it from here:

"My sleeve took 11 years to complete. The figure in the center is Dream from the Sandman graphic novel. I first saw it when I was 14, and knew instantly I wanted it tattooed. I got it a few months after I turned 18 by Steve at the Lion's Den in Salem, New Hampshire. Eight years later I was living in San Francisco, and wanted to add to it. I knew it needed some sort of dream imagery, but it was difficult to narrow that down. I began interrogating the basic elements of dreams, and thought one day: 'If DNA is the basis for all human life, could it also be the basis of dream life? What would a strand of dream DNA look like?' Using the work of Patrica Garfield, a clinical psychologist who's identified 12 universal dream themes that transcend age, location, gender, etc. I started designing the double helix; quickly realizing not all 12 would fit on my arm. On my shoulder is a blue moon; in a double-helix pattern around my arm are Royal typewriter keys with hobo symbols (representing communication/ miscommunication), weaving into a peacock from the Russian Tarot of St Petersburg (representing mythical creatures/animal friends). This was done by Natalie Chandler, at the time working at Black and Blue Tattoo. 

I wanted to fill in the background, but didn't want to disrupt the double-helix shape. I couldn't figure out how to do that, so I left it alone. A few years later, I was working at Cold Steel Tattoo & Piercing. On a whim one evening I googled 'double helix,' and one of the results was the image of a nebula in the shape of a DNA strand!

The colors and the shape were perfect. I brought it to my friend Vincent Weiner who was tattooing there, and we worked on it in bits and pieces. I tried to pay him, but he refused my money. I asked how I could compensate him for several thousand dollars worth of work. He was waiting for his wife to get her green card, so he said 'Nobody's baking for me right now. I'd really love some chocolate-chip cookies.' For every session I brought cookies, banana bread, cranberry muffins, some weird chocolate-coconut drops... 

I'd always dreamed of having stars on the piece, and in Morpheus' eyes. I'd tried surface piercings with PTFE bars, but they all rejected, so I was greatly excited when people began experimenting with dermal anchors and reporting success. About a year later I was living in New Orleans and learned that Adam at Electric Ladyland (now at Slave to the Needle in Seattle) was doing them. 

We 'bedazzled' my arm with six Swarovski crystals. They healed nicely until I moved to Chicago, when they suddenly all rejected. Now that I'm back in New Orleans, I'd like to get them reinstalled."

This is definitely the first time we've highlighted body art which included dermal anchors. Very cool!

Izzy sent along this prose poem to accompany her contribution:

Blue Roses are Blooming in Safeway

Oracle asses were tickled by gas plumes. We know now—what of it? Ethylene case closed diminished returned to sender . . . send her Erato Echo Glossalalia babble bury shovel stop. I. I. I. Decline. To state. To play. So there. Repeat. Blue roses are blooming in Safeway. Champagne ruby is slang for magnum. Artaud’s black crucifix pupils ablaze in golden eyes I plagiarized because I want to see so badly but I gotta walk past flooded lottos, plainclothes Cutlasses, Dinner, Linner, 4th meal, Dunch—neologisms like I am a woman, half eaten mosquitoes and Teardrop Mike wanting guilty date, a guilty beer, because all American women drink and don’t have any Mexican friends.

Animist, manimal, my keys do not break. There are escalators in my head watering flowerbeds with ropes of crystal spit, burping readymade Rubbermaid green baby coffins, smoking Christmas in a jaundiced sky. 

Over beef tea and sheepish mirrors, defective alexandrines tell me it gets easier with practice, hurts a little less each time. Like so much decapitated obsidian, we know not now how high the ledge is very high, this crisis not of poetry but concrete and well, since Pythia choked on the geyser she’s gone now, my hair caught on fire, please tune my viola, I know a few songs from when I was a child. Stardust Memories—yes, I can play that piece quite well.

~ ~ ~

Izzy Oneiric's writing has appeared in publications such as Wheelhouse Magazine, Source Material, and Phantom Limb.  A series of visual collages were published in Plath Profiles. She is the author of the chapbooks Dabbling in Babylon, and From the Bombshell Shelter.  For several years she was the poetry editor of other magazine. She holds a BA in Interdisciplinary Studies from the California Institute of Integral Studies and an MFA in Poetry from Columbia College Chicago. She currently lives in New Orleans with her loving partner and their spazzy black cat.

Thanks to Izzy for her contribution to the Tattooed Poets Project on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2012 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoo are reprinted with the poet's permission.

If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

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The Tattooed Poets Project: Bianca Stone

Today's poet is Bianca Stone, who I met last year at the Best American Poetry 2011 launch reading. I spoke to her about contributing then and, true to her word, she was the first poet to confirm her participation this year.

Bianca sent me this photo:

She explains:

"At first this was just a tattoo of Pinocchio and Jiminy Cricket. The drawings was based on the original drawings from the book by Carlo Collodi. I was 20 years old and at Antioch College at the time. There was an aspiring tattoo artist who studied there and had a tattoo gun and a make-shift studio and he did it for me as practice...(NOT one of my brightest ideas, since it's poorly done. People always ask me 'what is that supposed to be?') The idea had been in homage to my twin brother, Walter, whose nickname is Jiminy/Jimmy, and my mother used to read us the book when we were young. 

The 'Ex Libris' was added three years ago when I was studying poetry at NYU's MFA program, to honor my love of books and antique book-plates. It means 'In the Library Of' and in theory should have my name under it. It was done at Fineline Tattoo in the East Village, by a very nice guy who I guess doesn't work there anymore...I can't remember his name. I do remember he went by one word."

By way of a poem, Bianca shared this poem, which originally appeared in Post Road Magazine:

Someone Will Have to Tell You

Someday soon you will let your hair grow
and look like everyone else. And let there be a kingdom
alongside the kingdom and a forsythia alongside you.
Your mother has walked out of all her pictures


into the ether. There is hair in envelopes and the hair
in lockets and the hair growing
in graves. Saints are kneeling over your portrait.
The stratocumulus clouds are forming
in your chest. Fog around your feet.


You’ll have to listen to the bananas peeling.
Listen to your books on tape. Little by little
your face will float away
from your other face.


Someday you won’t know what to eat. Someone
will have to tell you. Someone will have to carry you
into the back yard so you can hear the Canadian geese
rise hysterically from the river.

~ ~ ~

Bianca Stone is the author of several chapbooks, most recently Someone Else's Wedding Vows (Argos Books), and I Want To Open The Mouth God Gave You, Beautiful Mutant (Factory Hollow Press). Her poems have appeared in The Best American Poetry 2011, Conduit, and Crazyhorse. Her collaboration with Anne Carson, Antigonick, a new kind of comic book and translation, will be published in spring of 2012 by New Directions. She lives in Brooklyn.

Thanks so much to Bianca for sharing her tattoo and poem with us here on the Tattooed Poets Project!

 This entry is ©2012 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoo are reprinted with the poet's permission. 

 If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

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