The Tattooed Poets Project: kathryn l. pringle

Our next tattooed poet is kathryn l. pringle, who sent us this tattoo on her left arm::

kathryn offered up this background of the piece:

"when i was 18 years old, i decided to get a tattoo of a spider on a purple web on my right shoulder. only, it never really looked like a spider on a web. it looked more like a peacock. so, at 26, very sick of people asking me about the wimpy peacock on my shoulder, i went into Monkey Wrench tattoo shop in Santa Rosa, CA and talked to Billy the Pope about my options. he said only two things would do the trick: a panther or a dragon. intrigued more by the dragon option, i asked him to draw up some ideas and o, by the way, can you tattoo these chinese characters for wu wei [from Taoism] on my arm before i go home? and so he did. 

two weeks later i go back in, and there's my dragon - carefully drawn out on very thin paper. we started work: it took 9 2-hour sessions. Billy was so excited, he was beside himself. he got to do something more creative than the usual rose or sailor. and i got to cover up that ridiculous peacock."

kathryn sent us this poem:

from civil engineering

what do you know
of my lungs

what of my breathing
my expansiveness
or pulmonary life

in the pockets of yr lungs
the tiniest fragments
penetrating
careful not to puncture

a stick in the ribs

that’s what it feels like

a stick in the ribs

to care about humans

~ ~ ~

kathryn l. pringle lives in Oakland, CA. She is the author of fault tree (winner of Omindawn’s 1st/2nd book prize selected by C.D. Wright), RIGHT NEW BIOLOGY (Heretical Texts/Factory School), The Stills (Duration Press), and Temper and Felicity are Lovers.(TAXT). Poems can be found in Denver Quarterly, Epiphany, Fence, Mrs. Maybe, Phoebe, and fiction can be found in Manor House Quarterly and Horse Less Review. Her work can also be found in the anthologies Conversations at the Wartime Cafe: A Decade of War (WODV Press), I’ll Drown My Book: Conceptual Writing by Women (Les Figues), and The Sonnets: Translating and Rewriting Shakespeare (Nightboat Books). In 2013, she was a very grateful recipient of a gift from the Fund for Poetry.

Thanks to kathryn for sharing her poem and tattoo with us here on Tattoosday's Tattooed Poets Project!

This entry is ©2013 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoo are reprinted with the poet's permission.

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A Grandmother's Vision, Inked in China

Last winter, the cold weather drove me inside, into the nearby Manhattan Mall food court, when I had time at lunch to go inkspotting. The food court has since closed and the mall is undergoing a massive J.C.Pennification, rendering it near useless for people-watching. I bring this up in the
waning days of summer, as last week I had some lunch time to spare and it was raining.

So I plodded off into nearby Penn Station to see if any commuters were in the ink-sharing mood. Near the Amtrak portion of the subterranean hub, I spotted the tattoo above and approached its owner to see what it was all about.

Eva, to whom this piece belongs, explained that it is a variation on the symbol for infinity. The arrows pointing off it represent directions moving off of the symbol.

The design originated, according to Eva, in a vision that her grandmother had. Her grandmother was a fortune-teller and the significance of the symbol carried great weight in her family.

Eva had this inked about two years ago, while visiting China. The tattoo was done by a local artist in Xinjiang Province.

Thanks to Eva for sharing this cool tattoo with us here at Tattoosday!

Buddhist Regret: A Follow-Up

This is a follow-up to this post regarding Vicki's tattoo:

Vicki was under the impression that this meant "the Path to Enlightenment". She also told me that the tattoo meant nothing to her and that she was considering having it removed.

If she reads this post, her feelings may become even stronger.

I hesitated before posting this, but because she was so down on this piece, I figured, if anything, I'd be doing her a favor.

This Chinese characters do not reflect what she understands the tattoo to mean. From the top down, the first element is the triad of dashes on the upper right. These three strokes represent the number three. The large character at the top of the tattoo caused some consternation among my co-workers who are fluent in Chinese that I showed this to. One couldn't identify it at all and the other said that it most closely resembles the kanji meaning "look" or "see".

The bottom character was easily identified by those I showed the picture to.

The character on the right in the illustration above matches the bottom character in the tattoo. It is the character for "cow". I am now theorizing that the top character is a distortion of the word "year" and that Vicki's tattoo represents the astrological year of the cow, or the ox, denoting people born in 1997, 1985, 1973, 1961, 1949, 1937, 1925, 1913, or 1901. Although she mentioned she was 27, which would have put her birthday in 1980. Hmmm.

The alternative, that it is just gibberish, "three look cow," is also a possibility. She did say that she found the kanji in a cartoon in a philosophy textbook.

Regardless, it certainly makes the tattoo more interesting. Vicki, if you wish me to remove this post, please e-mail me. I did not create this follow-up mean-spiritedly, but merely as a further exploration of your tattoo.

There's a whole site called Hanzi Smatter that analyzes "the misuse of Chinese characters in Western culture." They display some tattoo examples that illustrate that bad ink happens quite often, especially when tattooing using foreign words and characters.

My advice, when getting a tattoo of this nature, would be to go to at least two, if not three, opinions from independent, unrelated authorities of the language, before permanently inking a non-English piece. Hell, some people have a hard time with English! Check out this story from earlier this year in Chicago. Or this story from 6 years ago.

Buddhist Regret

The next piece featured here is a first for Tattoosday: a tattoo that its owner no longer wants.

I spotted this nifty tattoo on the back of the neck of Vicki at our local Rite-Aid store:


When I first approached her, she thought I was going to give her information on tattoo removal.

Vicki got this piece about 7 years ago when she was 20, at Butch's Tattoo Studio in Keyport, NJ.

She indicated that the symbols were part of a cartoon in a philosophy book and represented "the path to enlightenment". Vicki, however, stated that she is a Christian and has come to dislike the tattoo to the point of wanting to have it removed. It doesn't mean anything to her anymore.

She added that she probably would have started the process, but for the cost.

I mentioned to her the story of Tracy's tattoo, and suggested that she check with different tattoo artists to see if they would be able to design and ink a cover-up piece. That would be a) cheaper and b) more meaningful if a cover up could be designed to more accurately reflect who she is today. She nodded and said she had considered that, as the bottom of the symbols closely resembled a cross.

I was initially surprised that Vicki was willing to participate, considering how she felt about the tattoo, but she was a great sport about it and I wish her the best of luck with the piece, whether it be removal or transformation.

I know that some artists don't like to do cover ups as a professional and/or artistic courtesy, but that is in my opinion a better option and, from what I've heard, a cheaper and less painful one as well.

Here are some other Buddhism-inspired tattoos.

Thanks Vicki, I truly appreciated your contribution to Tattoosday!

p.s. On an unrelated, yet similar note, read what Charlie Sheen is considering doing with his 13 tattoos here.