Maebius gets inked.

I got my first tattoo years and years ago.  So far if fact, that I honestly can not remember exactly when it was.  Sometime after high-school but before I really finished (in a sense) further University schooling (I never actually graduated per-se).

my tattoo

A friend of mine split the bill for it, though we were not really dating or such.  It’s a long sordid complex story for another day perhaps.    Suffice it to say, I got one.  A small triple-spiral on the inside of my left ankle (shown faded in image below).

Before actually getting the tattoo itself, I spent a good month or two drawing the same image onto my ankle with a ball-point pen.  Every morning, or near enough each one, I would wake, shower, etc, and re-draw my tattoo.   The reason was to see if I really liked it, and could handle having something permanent on my skin.  The more I drew it, the more I noticed the days I forgot to draw it, so, it worked.  I then got properly Inked.

It was painful, especially over the bone, but in a good way.    This was before my deeper explorations into the spiritual aspect of my current lifestyle, but looking back I still approached it as a sacred event.

Years later, with a wife and family, I started to finalize my on-going dream of extending that little triskele into something more involved and more symbolic of things.   The final result is pictured below, and was done by an apprentice tattoo artist, which means it is slightly imperfect.  I’ve gotten comments on this from two people already, which somewhat irritates me.  you see, this imperfection and signs of “learning the trade” were very much intentional on my part, and I love it.

It helped the apprentice artist get a lot of confidence being able to do “a real job” instead of tiny/simple things for random people.  For the same reason I don’t mind getting my hair cut at the local beauty-school by half-trained people.  The way I see it, the only way to get better is to learn and practice, so I don’t mind being a practice dummy.  :)

Beyond the original spirals, I had gone through countless variations of a Circle & Triangle design around it.  That much was certain in my head, but unclear beyond what what I wanted.    Luckily, the main artist I worked with spoke at length with me, scribbling probably a hundred different ideas.  I wanted a flame, probably, and something that looked almost tribal but was not the over-done swirly flack-fire stuff you see all over the place, including pre-printed “flash art” on the walls of many Tattoo stores.

I can’t form into words what the final product means, other than:  Me.  It’s different, it’s relatively simple, and it’s full of thoughts that don’t really translate into words.  The triangle matches the triple spiral in number, but I’m not a numerologist.  It’s kinda druidic (being a Three-aspect thing) but not quite.  The fires, are Fire, in the same way Nettle explains Deer in her post.   It just IS, on whatever layer you see Fire at.

Something that burns, sure, but something that transforms,  gives light, inspires, reminds me of pagan drum circles, and helps us get rid of paper-trash that can’t be recycled at home.  All that and more, stuck on my ankle, and thus part of Me.

The flames, I will eventually get highlighted with red and orange, someday, with the original spiral re-done or edged in forest green, or otherwise manipulated and modified slightly.  Time will tell, and right now does not feel “right/necessary” yet.    Though probably by the time I am 40, as part of some inner Rite of Passage to that age-bracket?

Better image hopefully once I get the camera working.

Also,  I re-read this and realize it does a horrid job of conveying the spiritual resonance for when I got this.  My brain;s foggy from night-shift work.   I’ll try to add more Musing-type thoughts on a later post.

Enjoy!

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