I have a beautiful, day-old hibiscus quarter sleeve on my
left shoulder. I’ve been coveting this tattoo for a while. I was going to get
it to celebrate my passing of derby minimums. But, I needed to do it now. I
needed it to feel alive and defiantly declare that breaking me will only make
me more beautiful.
The Japanese art of Kintsugi means “to repair with gold.”
When a piece of pottery is broken, people use this ancient art to repair the
piece using gold or silver. The understanding is that something is more
beautiful and more valuable for having been broken.
Kintsugi is probably the closest representation of how I
feel about my tattoos. About my life, really.
The hibiscus flower is incorporated in a tattoo for several
reasons. One of the most common things it symbolizes is devotion. Often, it
represents a love from which you have moved on. In Malaysia, it represents courage and honor.
The most common symbol of a pink hibiscus is rare and delicate
beauty. I like that one, because—while I am tough as hell—I am fragile too. My tattoo meaning is ironic: it represents fragility, but it takes a lot of pain
and endurance to acquire it.
I read an article about tattooing that asked: If it didn’t
hurt, would it mean as much? I think the answer to that is absolutely not.
Enduring pain is something that is common in the human condition. But
voluntarily choosing to endure pain in order to create something beautiful is
brave. And kind of amazing.
Getting a tattoo is a lot like skating derby. You know it is going to hurt. And you do it anyway, because it is worth it. To steal a movie quote: If it was easy, everyone would do it. It's not a coincidence that many derby girls love tattoos.
I have been rewarded with some amazing things by enduring
pain. My incredible kid, for example. I think this is why I put up with so much
pain from the Earthquake. I believed (or at least hoped) that there would be something exceptionally
beautiful and valuable that would be built from the broken pieces.
Well, I can’t always be right…
I have a large tattoo of a lotus on my left thigh. (I told
my dad that I would only adorn and modify the left side of my body so he could
stand on my right and pretend he had a normal daughter.) That beautiful flower
grows by pushing itself through the mud to find the sunshine. I have pushed
through a lot of mud. It keeps raining down on me. And somehow, I manage to
find the sunlight.
I do like to think that my ink symbolizes amazing things.
But for me, it is more than that. It is a way to reclaim myself. It helps make
my world colorful. And it also helps create great beauty from great pain. When I look at my tattoo art, I remember the course
of my life that led me to them. They are my life story.
They also remind me that I am tough enough to endure the
pain and emerge with something quite amazing.
Nice tattoo. The hibiscus has always been one of my favorite flowers. I made sure I took a picture of one in Jamaica because I had never seen one with leaves like this one back in the United States back when I sold plants and flowers in high school.
ReplyDeletehttp://thelifewelllived.net/?attachment_id=395