It’s time for another fantastic upcoming-movie-release theme week!  Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are comes out on October 16th.

This is Elana Max’s Max tattoo from Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are:

This is Max shipping off to the land of the wild things. Plus a Japanese wave, just for fun.
Where the Wild Things Are was my very favorite book.  And still is, really. Max and I share a name, and a very special bond.
I hope Spike Jonze doesn’t mess that up.

(44 votes, average: 4.11 out of 5)

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This is Sarah Shay’s tattoo:

Yep. It’s a semicolon. I’m a grammar and punctuation nerd by nature, and I love the semicolon in particular because, as many semicolon-haters will eagerly point out, you don’t “need” them. Unlike the more utilitarian period or comma, a semicolon never really needs to be used. It’s a stylistic choice; you can create really elegant sentences with them if you know what you are doing. I’m considering an interrobang on the other wrist.

(55 votes, average: 4.42 out of 5)

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This is Stacey’s tattoo:

I originally came across the poem in one of my most beloved books, Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott, so I have extra affection for it.

Dream Dust
Gather out of star-dust,
Earth-dust,
Cloud-dust,
Storm-dust,
And splinters of hail,
One handful of dream-dust,
Not for sale.

- By Langston Hughes

(33 votes, average: 4.39 out of 5)

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Isadora explains her tattoo:

my tattoo has multiple meanings.. ‘Until I Find You‘ is the title of a book by John Irving, a book that made me understand a lot of things about myself, and it basically is a physical manifestation/visual representation of my broken heart (how sad!), I am not one to talk about things so I think my tattoo says all that i don’t say. ‘Clair de Lune’ is there because it is to me the most beautiful piece of music in the world (Debussy), and the dove is the holy spirit, taken from the main stained glass window in St. Peters (rome) and designed by Bernini. All three of my tattoos make me remember that there is and will be beauty in life.

(32 votes, average: 3.28 out of 5)

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This is Minty’s tattoo.

All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

- Excerpt from A Dream Within A Dream by Edgar Allan Poe

(52 votes, average: 3.00 out of 5)

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This tattoo is on Samm from Chicago:

Vonnegut is easily my favorite author.  I chose this tattoo for the same reason everyone else has; I’m a worrier and it reminds me that not everything is in my control.

This was posted as a part of “So it Goes” Saturdays. The phrase “so it goes” appears in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five 116 times. Can you help me collect 116 “so it goes” tattoos? 15 down, 101 to go.

(37 votes, average: 3.81 out of 5)

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This is Hannah’s tattoo:

It’s from a Peter, Paul & Mary song that we sing at the camp I went to for 10 years, which meant a lot by itself, but I also love the word ‘if’ and its possibilities.

“If I had wings no one would ask me should I fly
The bird sings, no one asks why.
I can see in myself wings as I feel them
If you see something else, keep your thoughts to yourself,
I’ll fly free then.

Yesterday’s eyes see their colors fading away
They see their sun turning to grey
You can’t share in a dream, that you don’t believe in
If you say that you see and pretend to be me
You won’t be then.

How can you ask if I’m happy goin’ my way?
You might as well ask a child at play!
There’s no need to discuss or understand me
I won’t ask of myself to become something else
I’ll just be me!

If I had wings no one would ask me should I fly
The bird sings, and no one asks her why.
I can see in myself wings as I feel them
If you see something else, keep your thoughts to yourself,
I’ll fly free then.”

- “If I Had Wings” by Peter, Paul & Mary

(30 votes, average: 4.03 out of 5)

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This is Mackenzie Sky’s tattoo:

I encountered this poem when I was 17 in my literary class during my junior year of high school. I was going through a really rocky period in my life, and I found a calm in reading Robert Frost’s poetry, especially when I read this poem. It is my favorite. I had originally wanted to get the entire last stanza, but I realized that A) it would be really huge, and B) it wasn’t necessary. Although at first when I walked into the tattoo shop (The Parlour Tattoo, Eugene, OR) and the jolly/cynical desk man and the very attractive tattoo artist (the man who ended up DOING my tattoo) told me how large it would be, I was kind of crushed. In fact, I was really upset. But the more I thought about it, and the more research on my tattoo I did (fonts, sizes, spread, etc.) the more I realized I didn’t need the entire stanza: I just needed “miles to go”.

What the tattoo is for me is a reminder. It is my nine letter stamp that tells me I got through the rough times, and that I can keep going–I have to keep going. And that where ever I get to in life, be it another down-hill slide or something extremely rewarding, not to stay there too long, because I have to move on, and I have to keep moving on until I die.

I am very proud of my tattoo. I loved it before he put the stencil on me.

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sounds the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

- “Stopping By The Woods On A Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost

(53 votes, average: 4.55 out of 5)

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This is Peregrine’s tattoo of the White Tree of Gondor from The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien.  It was done at About Time Tattoo in Nashua, NH.

(58 votes, average: 4.33 out of 5)

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The meaning of life.

This is Penny’s tattoo from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.

(50 votes, average: 4.10 out of 5)

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