scribbled secret notebooks
This belongs to "kinko88".
This is my first tattoo, done by Matt at Evolved in Columbus, OH. The quote is from Jack Kerouac; it's his first on a list of thirty tips for "spontaneous prose" (what he called his own writing style). I chose this quote because I've been fascinated by the Beat Generation--their literature, poems, the relationships between different members of the circle, ideas in general--since I first read On the Road
and "Howl" in high school. I write poetry and stories casually (using an old typewriter of course!), and am always jotting down little phrases that come to my head, so I thought this quote was especially appropriate. And no, the "yr" is not a typo, it's how Kerouac wrote it.
"scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy"
- Jack Kerouac
To hell with luck.
This tattoo belongs to Tom.
The tattoo is a quote from the end of Hemingway's "Old Man and the Sea" and a quote that I have always loved. My friend Ryan is a tattoo artist, and when I approached him with the idea of surrounding the quote with a rendering of Hemingway's beard he understood exactly what I was looking for and knocked it out of the park. Obviously the font is a simple typewriter font.
“To hell with luck. I’ll bring the luck with me.”
Real Courage
This tattoo belongs to Sally from Minneapolis, and was done by Cole at Dinkytown Tattoo.
"I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do."
- Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
Something has been suffered.
This tattoo belongs to Megan and is from House of Leaves
The line is "Something has been suffered." And it's a tiny excerpt from a really big paragraph:
“Who has never killed an hour? Not casually or without thought, but carefully: a premeditated murder of minutes. The violence comes from a combination of giving up, not caring, and a resignation that getting past it is all you can hope to accomplish. So you kill the hour. You do not work, you do not read, you do not daydream. If you sleep it is not because you need to sleep. And when at last it is over, there is no evidence: no weapon, no blood, and no body. The only clue might be the shadows beneath your eyes or a terribly thin line near the corner of your mouth indicating something has been suffered, that in the privacy of your life you have lost something and the loss is too empty to share.”
It's a constant reminder to myself to not waste my time, to use every minute of my life to my advantage.
You get a lifetime.
This belongs to Kelly Cruttenden.
This tattoo was inspired by a quote by Death in Volume 7 of Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman
.
“But I did okay, didn’t I? I mean I got, what, fifteen thousand years. That’s pretty good. Isn’t it? I lived a pretty long time.” - Bernie
“You lived what anybody gets, Bernie. You got a lifetime. No more. No less.” - Death
I love the simplicity of it... our time here is not for us to determine or to control. We all get the same thing—we all get a lifetime.
Little Gidding
This belongs to Hayden.
The quotation is from the final movement of "Little Gidding
" by T.S. Eliot. "A Condition of Complete Simplicity Costing Not Less Than Everything."
I have been thinking of this tattoo for two years or so. The previous three years have been the most difficult of my entire life; I have experienced an overturning of many of my most-secure beliefs. I have experienced tremendous grief, and yet in the midst of it I have acquired something very rare: self-knowledge. Things are still hard; I am not through it yet. It is for this reason that I selected this passage. At this point in my life, I am confident that the condition of complete simplicity, that arduous path to self-knowledge and wholeness of soul, costs everything. What I am not yet sure of, what I am still trying to believe, is that "all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well." Someday, perhaps, I will be able to add those words to those inscribed in my soul and now my body.
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half heard, in the stillness
Between the two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always--
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of things shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.
-Little Gidding V, Four Quartets
So it goes #66, 67, 68
This belongs to Joe Varisco.
This belongs to Kathryn.
This belongs to Jess.
I think it's a good philosophy. I got it from Jason Tooth at Yankee Tattoo in Burlington, VT.
This was posted as a part of “So it Goes” Saturdays. The phrase “so it goes” appears in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five 106 times. Can you help me collect 106 “so it goes” tattoos? 68 down, 38 to go.
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