I’ve been a Bukowski fan ever since my pop got me started on his writing (at what was probably too early an age for such booze filled tales of debauchery). I used to have this poem printed out and stuck to my fridge to remind me that, all things considered, things are pretty ok. I thought and thought and thought about getting my first (and so far only) tattoo for years and when the time came there was really only one option.

there’s no other way:
8 or ten poems a
night.
in the sink
behind me are dishes
that haven’t been
washed in 2
weeks.
the sheets need
changing
and the bed is
unmade.
half the lights are
burned-out here.
it gets darker
and darker
(I have replacement
bulbs but can’t get them
out of their cardboard
wrapper.) Despite my
dirty shorts in the
bathtub
and the rest of my dirty
laundry on the
bedroom floor,
they haven’t
come for me yet
with their badges and their rules and their
numb ears. oh, them
and their caprice!
like the fox
I run with the hunted and
if I’m not the happiest
man on earth I’m surely the
luckiest man
alive.

- “my doom smiles at me” by Charles Bukowski, from the book The Flash of Lightning Behind the Mountain.

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This is Slithy Toves’ Jabberwocky tattoo:

I’ve been an Alice fan since my grandmother bought me the complete works of Carroll when I was 11. Something from Alice seemed like a natural choice for my tat, and being a voracious reader, I loved the idea of using a line of text rather than an image.

‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

- Excerpt from the nonsense poem ‘Jabberwocky‘ from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There.

Have a great weekend!

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This quote specifically holds a place in my heart because I think it represents the constant struggle to find yourself, and to hold on to it when you do. I’ve been asking myself this question my whole life and I don’t know if I’ll ever have a full answer.

“Dear, dear! How queer everything is to-day! And yesterday things went on just as usual. I wonder if I’ve been changed in the night? Let me think: was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I’m not the same, the next question is, Who in the world am I? Ah, THAT’S the great puzzle!”

And she began thinking over all the children she knew that were of the same age as herself, to see if she could have been changed for any of them.

- Chapter 2 of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.

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Twinkle, twinkle, little bat!
How I wonder what you’re at!
Up above the world you fly,
Like a teatray in the sky.
Twinkle, twinkle little bat!
How I wonder what you’re at!

- “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Bat” as recited by the Mad Hatter in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

This is Katie’s tattoo:

Why did I pick that line?  I knew I wanted some sort of bat tattoo that wasn’t too goth and I knew I wanted to get an Alice in Wonderland quote on my two feet so voila.  Since Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is one of my absolute all time favorites I’m ashamed to say that I didn’t think of this for months and months!

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This is Eva’s Alice in Wonderland tattoo.

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My tattoo is of the Cheshire Cat from Lewis Carol’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (original art by John Tenniel 1865). The Cheshire Cat is the only creature in Wonderland who uses logic. Though his words often seem mocking and bizarre, his process is always logical. To me the Cheshire Cat symbolizes the fragility of the border between genius and insanity.

Alice: Would you please tell me which way I ought to walk from here?
Cat: That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.
Alice: I don’t much care where –
Cat: Then it doesn’t matter which way you walk.
Alice: — so long as I get somewhere.
Cat: Oh, you’re sure to do that, if you only walk long enough.

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“The chief difficulty Alice found at first was in managing her flamingo.”

- From “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” by Lewis Carroll, illustrated by John Tenniel.

This is Jennifer C.’s tattoo:

When I was young, I would lose myself in “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”. It was the most imaginative story I had ever heard. This illustration comes from the amazing John Tenniel – his images were always my favorite.

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“But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked.
“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the cat: “We’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”
“How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice.
“You must be,” said the cat, “Or you wouldn’t have come here.”

This is Jessica’s tattoo.  She says:

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This is Morgan’s tattoo:

The idea for this tattoo came from a quote out of Chuck Palahniuk’s book, Fight Club. The quote says, “It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we are free to do anything.”

I was faced with the decision of whether or not to use you’ve/you or we’ve/we. I came to the conclusion that I wanted this tattoo to represent not only myself but also my view on society. It didn’t feel right to use the word “you” because I felt as though it would then become about the person reading it and not about what I have overcome. I also felt that by saying “we” it would stay faithful to my cynicism towards society and how I believe that people do not truly understand what it means to be free inside their own minds, which is what the book is about in the first place.

This tattoo represents having strength and independence and losing all fear no matter what situations we are dealt in life. Most importantly it’s about learning to face your pain full on with your head held high instead of denying that it affects you in the first place.

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“‘I’ll drop my final anchor with the wind howling in my ears above and the swish of bilge below me,’  he declared, ‘and that way I’ll go content.’ And when the time came, I’m sure he went content.”

- From Cradle of the Deep, the fabricated autobiography by Joan Lowell.

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This is Benjamin’s tattoo:

My tattoo is from Walt Whitman.  The first printing of Leaves of Grass (and none of the subsequent printings) had a preface with the following quote:

“This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.”

I got this tattoo because the quote sums up my ethics very well, and I wanted to make those ethics a part of my body, plus the hope that it helps make my flesh a great poem.

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This is April Steele’s tattoo:

The story goes that this phrase was shouted at young Ray Bradbury by a magician named Mr. Electrico at a carnival in 1932. Each night at the end of his show this magician would be “electrocuted” in front of the crowd and, using a sword, would knight all the children on the front row. In his own words: “When he reached me, he pointed his sword at my head and touched my brow. The electricity rushed down the sword, inside my skull, made my hair stand up and sparks fly out of my ears. He then shouted at me, ‘Live forever!’ I thought that was a wonderful idea, but how did you do it?”

It is difficult to do the rest of the story any justice–it gets so much better–so I urge anyone to go read it here. He claims that he started writing a few days later and has written every day of his life since.

I wanted a Bradbury tattoo for a long time but could never find the one image that I felt encompassed all the energy, wonder, and nostalgia of his work. When I read those two words for the first time it was like they were electric. They gave me goosebumps. To me, it encompassed both the individual desire to make some kind of permanent mark on the world as well as the universal imperative to always push forward. Whatever the thing is that drives humankind to keep experimenting, keep creating, keep going further into space (for better or for worse), is what Bradbury’s work has always meant to me. All of it was wrapped in this amazing two-word command. Plus, I think it would be pretty incredible to literally live forever, or at least long enough to see the end of the world!

Tattoo by Vanessa Waites at Underground Art in Memphis, TN.
Photo by Joey Miller of Memphis, TN.”

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It’s basically a reminder to live life and to experience it and spend time with those I love, and to spend time doing what I love.

“Hershel did not possess a family of his own. He was not such a special person. He loved to read very much, and also to write. He was a poet, and he exhibited me many of his poems. I remember many of them. They were silly, you could say, and about love. He was always in his room writing those things, and never with people. I used to tell him, What good is all that love doing on paper? I said, Let love write on you for a little. But he was so stubborn. Or perhaps he was only timid.”

- Excerpt from Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer.

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“I decided that I wanted to make a very clear statement about my love and dedication to my family…specifically my mother, my father and my brother. For the first 25 years of my life it was just the four of us and this tattoo is a tribute to that very special time.”

“Other things may change us, but we start and end with family.”

- Anthony Brandt

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This is Sarah’s tattoo:

I fell in love with Ulysses by James Joyce when I was in college studying literature, identifying with the bumbling, conflicted Leopold Bloom.

When my life was recently turned upside down by heartache, I was reminded of this line from the “Hades” chapter, spoken by Bloom: “Plenty to see and hear and feel yet.”

I modified the line to bring out the main points, and had it done in white ink on the inside of my wrist. Most artists don’t like to do white ink tattoos, but I wanted this tattoo to be for me and not immediately visible to anyone else. It’s my daily reminder that no matter what unexpected turns that life can take, there’s always something new around the corner.

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This is Nick’s tattoo:

Attached is a photograph of my own V.F.D. tattoo, located on the inside of my left ankle, from Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. It’s different from most you’ll see in that it’s based on Bret Helquist’s drawing in the ninth book, The Carnivorous Carnival (A Series of Unfortunate Events, Book 9). I chose this design over the other one because it was more obviously an eye, and less obviously the letters V.F.D.

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Any new idea, Mahound, is asked two questions.
The first is asked when it’s weak:
WHAT KIND OF AN IDEA ARE YOU?
Are you the kind that compromises, does deals, accommodates itself to society, aims to find a niche, to survive;
or are you the cursed, bloody-minded ramrod-backed type of damnfool notion that would rather break than sway with the breeze?
- the kind that will almost certainly, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, be smashed to bits;
but the hundredth time, will change the world?

What’s the second question? Gibreel asked.

Answer the first one first.

- The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie

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The reason I got it was because I can really relate to having many paths in my life I might take, and I want to remind myself that if I wait around for the perfect, right one, eventually all my choices will be gone.

- Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar, Chapter 7

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This is Emily’s tattoo of the Ancient Greek aphorism “Know Thyself” (nosce te ipsum):

It means that to know and understand yourself if to be able to understand others. It also can be very literal in that it is just important to know who you are inside and out. I learned about this in my political philosophy class in college… I read Plato’s Republic and my professor gave a lecture on the quote “know thyself” and I loved it!

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i love the poem – the sentiment (ie- the contradiction that is love or that is ecstatic love).  the voice here can only be chaste when ravished.  and what does it mean to be ravished by god?  this picture was taken the night i had it done.

- Batter My Heart, Three Person’d God (Holy Sonnet XIV) by John Donne

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