The Girl With The Clipart Tattoo

Mmmmmm….good morning. You wonderful hot cup of coffee. (Loaded with yummy dark chocolate flavored creamer!)

So I downloaded this new show that came on last week. "Off the Map."   I finally got around to watching the first two episodes last night when I got home from work and the first one had me crying by the end. Which probably to anyone who reads my diary thinks "so what? big deal. She’s an emotional wreck all the time!"   Which may of course be the case on here but IRL,  I just don’t cry! Especially because of some pilot TV show. lol Well anyway I am getting off topic. The first episode has this story about one of the new doctors on the island saving a man from a Zipline who got his arm stuck or something and could possibly bleed to death? Well anyway, the purpose of this man’s trip was to scatter his wife’s remains on FireFly lake. They had been there many years before for their honeymoon and she thought this lake was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. (Which, if such a lake does exist, then it probably WOULD be the most beautiful thing you’d ever seen. Like the northern lights…under water.) I guess if you make movement in this lake it activates micronisms that light up or something. And with the movement of the water and the glowing micronisms, it looks like fireflies under water. That’s some kind of fungi! So this new doctor stresses the importance of taking the man to the lake so he can scatter her remains  and finally the clinic gives in and they take him on a stretcher, onto a little boat and row him to a spot….and he lets her go.   What a way to go right? To make your final resting place in a lake that has such beautiful features? You’d never know it just looking at the lake. Before they make movement in the water it looks like an overgrown swamp….but then you put your finger in and it lights up like the night sky. I think that’s a place I’d want to be scattered. To be a part of something so amazing even after I pass on.

  This isn’t forshadowing to my own passing by the way. I was actually thinking that I would love to do something equally amazing with my father’s remains. I have held on to them now for six years and the thought of parting with them just anywhere is just too hard to bare. I know he made a ton  of mistakes with me, and I know he wasn’t the best husband to my mother, but the show got me thinking….it isn’t as if he grew up with love from his parents and siblings that was as pure as something as that lake. He grew up abused, unwanted, unloved by the people he needed it from the most. I even look back and question whether I should have been more forgiving of his mistakes with me. I know he loved me in  the only way he knew how, but I can’t change that. But man, I would love to make him part of something as profound as that lake, or something equally as powerful. I could say it would give his life some meaning, but his life did have meaning. Even after all the heartache, and let downs, and broken promises, I know now he meant something to me. It has taken a lot of years to get passed the anger , hurt, abandonment and daddy issues, to just see him for what he was, what he is, and that is ultimately my father. Although I am still really angry towards him for ending his own life, I know now I need to love him more, he deserved that. Everyone deserves to be loved more than they think they are. I want to find a spot like that lake, something that means something special to me, and share it with him.

I had this done right before Christmas. Actually the everything but the initials and date were already there. The smiley face, wings, and halo were my very first tattoo when I turned 18. Frank always said it was silly clip art, and maybe to some it is. But I didn’t get it for other people. Just me. Everyone called me Smiley, I was still really innocent (thus the halo) and more than anything I struggled with wanting freedom of some sort (the wings.) So when I turned 18 I went to a local artist and this is what he gave me! Anyway, a week before Christmas I was at a pub with some friends when I ran into the guy who did it. I didn’t recognize him  right away but we got to talking and he laid his business card on the table and I had mentioned that that’s where I got my first tat and he became intrigued! He asked if he could take a look at it  so I pulled down my shirt over my shoulder and he was like, "this is my work!"
He told me to come in and he wanted to touch it up, bring the colors back to life…and I asked him how much he’d charge me to put some initials and a date under the wing…(this is something I had been mulling over for some time actually) and he said nothing. So two days later I went in and he touched it up and added my father’s initials and his death date. I guess that is a little morbid, and I am really not one for name tats or anything because usually they look trashy but for some reason I just had to do it. I feel like somehow it makes me feel connected to him even though he isn’t really there.  I like having it. =)  Frank always told me I had a fetish for tattoos because it was something dangerous and I was bored, and other people say it’s permanent (and not in a good way) form of "expression." I don’t know, maybe it’s both? I just think guys don’t like them on girls because it makes them seem "hard" and less "pure."

I finally got some pictures processed with photoshop. It’s such a pain in the ass to go through hundreds of pictures and pick out the best ones and then maybe enhance a little the ones that need them. I have found that my best subjects are nature and children, haha. I would really like to get more creative with the camera, and take "artsier" photos though. I found this book in Barnes and Noble that really gives great tips for SLR settings and how to capture what you see but it was like 40 bucks and I just didn’t have the cash to get it. I am hoping out of next paycheck I can…or maybe if I get to work this Starving Artist convention tomorrow (cash under the table) then maybe I can go pick it up. It’s even for my Rebel XT so it should be pretty insightful.

"Destiny isn’t always like a party at the end of the evening. Sometimes it’s nothing more than struggling through life from day to day."  —-Memoirs of a Geisha.