Ink Me!
I got another tattoo last week, to commemorate both my 60th birthday and the 35th anniversary of Jim’s death.
It’s a phoenix, meaning, appropriately enough, rebirth, marriage, loyalty, creativity. A sort of knotwork-looking phoenix, actually, in red and gold, soooo pretty. On my right front ankle, with its wings extending around the sides of my leg. Order of the Phoenix!
It is welcomed by its new friends and neighbors:
A Pisces symbol on my left wrist, my first tat, from the great Lyle Tuttle (who did Janis Joplin’s ink). I got it in San Francisco in December 1970, when I was out there at the invitation of Creedence Clearwater Revival, part of a group of about forty critics they asked out to show off their “new music” to. They put us up at the Claremont, this fabulous old Berkeley hotel, and bused us over to their rehearsal/office/warehouse, Cosmo’s Factory, in Oakland.
So it seemed the time to get my first tattoo. Jim saw it for the first time a couple days later and was fascinated, though not to the point of getting inked himself, being afraid of needles (wuss!).
The tat's photo appeared in Life magazine a couple of years later, in a piece they did on the new resurgence of tattooing.
A J and a P in fancy script, over my heart. For our wedding.
A crowned lizard on my inside right forearm. Four inches long; lizard green, crown red and gold, initial M down its back looking like a ridged spine. To counteract the evil fu of That Damn Movie.
A Pictish symbol on my inside left ankle. A rather mysterious thing known as the crescent and V-rod, in blue, green and black. I use it in my Keltiad books as the symbol of the magical order called the Ban-draoi, and consider it a symbol of shamanic female power. As a lunar symbol, it balances the sun phoenix.
A Keltic knot on my outside left ankle. To commemorate my Celticness and my Kelticness.
A secret one, to commemorate Jim and Dionysus.
Not done yet, actually. Some runes would be nice, and another monogram I designed, JPKM all entwined...maybe a Celtic wolf's head for my family name...but running out of places to put them, since, apart from the secret ones, I want to see them myself. It really is addictive...and like all addicts, I'm trying to convince friends to get into it, at least the friends who don't already have ink of their own...
It’s a phoenix, meaning, appropriately enough, rebirth, marriage, loyalty, creativity. A sort of knotwork-looking phoenix, actually, in red and gold, soooo pretty. On my right front ankle, with its wings extending around the sides of my leg. Order of the Phoenix!
It is welcomed by its new friends and neighbors:
A Pisces symbol on my left wrist, my first tat, from the great Lyle Tuttle (who did Janis Joplin’s ink). I got it in San Francisco in December 1970, when I was out there at the invitation of Creedence Clearwater Revival, part of a group of about forty critics they asked out to show off their “new music” to. They put us up at the Claremont, this fabulous old Berkeley hotel, and bused us over to their rehearsal/office/warehouse, Cosmo’s Factory, in Oakland.
So it seemed the time to get my first tattoo. Jim saw it for the first time a couple days later and was fascinated, though not to the point of getting inked himself, being afraid of needles (wuss!).
The tat's photo appeared in Life magazine a couple of years later, in a piece they did on the new resurgence of tattooing.
A J and a P in fancy script, over my heart. For our wedding.
A crowned lizard on my inside right forearm. Four inches long; lizard green, crown red and gold, initial M down its back looking like a ridged spine. To counteract the evil fu of That Damn Movie.
A Pictish symbol on my inside left ankle. A rather mysterious thing known as the crescent and V-rod, in blue, green and black. I use it in my Keltiad books as the symbol of the magical order called the Ban-draoi, and consider it a symbol of shamanic female power. As a lunar symbol, it balances the sun phoenix.
A Keltic knot on my outside left ankle. To commemorate my Celticness and my Kelticness.
A secret one, to commemorate Jim and Dionysus.
Not done yet, actually. Some runes would be nice, and another monogram I designed, JPKM all entwined...maybe a Celtic wolf's head for my family name...but running out of places to put them, since, apart from the secret ones, I want to see them myself. It really is addictive...and like all addicts, I'm trying to convince friends to get into it, at least the friends who don't already have ink of their own...
posted by Patricia Kennealy Morrison | 2:30 PM
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