My First Tattoo
The thing is: like most people in school, I used to doodle incessently. Crap mostly, it was, I'm afraid. But two symbols plagued me, that fish, that cross. These symbols of my faith, so incongruous, yet they were everywhere. My notebooks were filled with crosses sticking through fishes, fishes carrying crosses clasped between their fins. Balancing one on its nose. On automobiles, the fish sprouted feet and joined soccar leagues of their own. The footless fish on the cars left behind seemed so burdened down; their crosses carving them neatly into 4 sections. The two symbols would not twine nicely together in all my drawing efforts; there were always sharp unexpected bits sticking out when you were through. How about we let the poor fish outside of the cross, let the cross do the carrying perhaps. That's what it's meant to do after all...still a bit unweildy though, to make it look okay there had to be more fish than cross - I mean, we haven't just stapled a carp to a plank of wood, there must be more than that, mustn't lose the symbols as we rearrange them. It was in 1994 that I settled on what would be my permanent solution to the question and had the above image carved into my ankle.
Get me outta here!
Here is the "crappy freehand drawing" I had on this page before I got around to photographing the tat' with a digital camera. Nice, isn't it?
