New Ink

So it's kinda funny how I got these new tattoos. Way back when I lived in Atlanta, I came up with the kanji idea. Actually, I had found a great poster with a kanji of "chaos" and a little blurb about how we sometimes need to go through a lot of chaos in our lives before we can find some order again. I really liked that idea and I liked the kanji design too. I thought it would be great to have "chaos" tattooed on one arm and "harmony" on the other. But just the kanji themselves seemed... too little. I needed something more. A lot of thought and research and drawing and I came up with the two-headed snake I currently have on my back. (Btw, the two-headed snake is a symbol of movement between life and death, dark and light, harmony and chaos.) But when I went to have the snake put on, I couldn't figure out a good way to include the kanjis. So they remained off my skin.

Some years later when I had been in Portland for a year or so, I came across Dan at Atlas Tattoo. I went so far as to give him art work and some description of what I was looking for. I even had a scheduled appointment with him and a $40 deposit to reserve it. Well, that appointment never happened. I never found the money to get the tattoos, and I eventually forfeited my deposit too.

Zoom forward to three months ago: Luis and I went up to Portland to take care of some business. I emailed one of the other artists at Atlas tattoo to see if she had any time to put the ink on me. No go. She was booked up for two more months, and so was everyone else in the shop. No big deal.

This past month when I went up to Portland again, I decided to stop by the shop and say hello. I ended up talking with the receptionist for a while and she said:
"Well, Jennifer is booked up for the next month. Everyone here gets booked pretty far in advance. Let me see if someone else might have time. Sometimes we get cancellations. Nope, no one has time available."
So we kept talking for a few minutes about music or tattoos or whatever. Then the phone rang.
"Yeah... ok.... well, it happens. So your appointment was when?"
Turns out someone had to cancel on Saturday the 3rd, the very day I was leaving Portland (on the midnight flight)! Suddenly Dan, the guy I had originally wanted a tattoo from, had an opening. The receptionist rearranged another appointment on that day and I had an 11.30am tattoo appointment with Dan!

I didn't feel like I had the right to turn that opportunity down. Seems the universe was telling me to go ahead and get the damn things already! So here they are:


Left arm (kanji translates to "harmony")


Right arm (kanji translates to "chaos")

I will eventually get some sort of background behind the flower, kanji and snake head. But that will come later.....