Monday, November 5, 2012

Pressing Questions

On this, the eve of election day, there are many things to ponder. I do not plan to discuss anything serious at the moment, however. My life has been full of seriousness lately. Today will be something between frivolous and light.

The Girls have been encouraging me for a while to get a tattoo. Boy-child votes strongly against. There has been some tradition amongst people we know to get tattoos to commemorate moments of great transition. That makes sense to me, and would make it very appropriate for me at the moment.

I don't have anything against tattoos per se, it's just that I grew up in a world in which it was uncommon. Unless you were a merchant marine, a navy man or a loose woman. Then it was common. Nowadays, of course, it is common for all. I have seen a lot of amazing tattoos. Most of them are on young people, but I know women my age who have them too. Women who are perfectly ordinary. Respectable, even.*

Anyway, it feels like it's time to make a decision. I was leaning away from it mostly, but now I'm having second thoughts, meaning I'm considering it a possibility. At some point, I decided that if I got one I would go with an owl.  An owl is a good avatar for a librarian. Plus the Egyptian hieroglyph for the letter M is an owl, so my kids would be tangentially represented if it were something fashioned after that "letter" (see above).

Or it could be something else, I suppose, but I can't say I've had a better idea than the owl (yet).

I'm not sure where I'm going with this.  Just thinking aloud, I suppose.  My old boss used to say that bloggers are just a bunch of people talking to themselves on TheWeb.

She's right, of course.  But who cares?

 *My mother had weird ideas about respectability, but that's another post.

5 comments:

Silvernfire said...

Well, if you do get a tattoo, show us. Unless you get one on a part of your body that should not be publicly exhibited in a Starbucks.

Speaking of hieroglyphs, check out "Seshat's emblem" on Wikipedia. It's the hieroglyph for Seshat, the Egyptian goddess of wisdom, knowledge, and writing, and "Mistress of the House of Books" (which sounds pretty much like a goddess of libraries to me).

soxanne said...

Hahaha - I was thinking ankle ... probably the last place to sag ... so I would be able to show you all at Starbuck's!

I like the idea behind Seshat's emblem, but not so much the hieroglyph itself.

kmkat said...

I hear that tattoos placed where there is no muscle or fat over the bone, like the ankle, are rather more painful than ones on, say, the biceps or shoulder. Just a thought. Tattoos fascinate me, although I have no intention of getting one. I do like your owl/hieroglyph a lot, though.

soxanne said...

Yes, as I already discussed with Silvernfire, as well as with The Girls, I'm willing to trade off the pain for the fact that all fleshy parts are starting to go South.

;-)

Chelsea said...

I think a tattoo is a great way to mark significant events and life changes.

My tattoo hurt like all of the available profanities, but my sister got hers in the same place and she barely flinched.