Behold, Quadrapus!

I met Colleen on Penn Plaza and her ankle tattoo jumped out at me from a distance. It was so unusual, I just had to stop and ask her about it.

Behold: Quadrapus!


If this four-limbed octopus-like creature looks fanciful, it's because it is based on a child's beach toy used to mold sand shapes.

Colleen explains that she and about twenty of her friends all got this same tattoo, but in different colors, to commemorate their summer where a majority of time was spent at the beach. There was a house involved, which was the epicenter of activity, and the plastic octopus beach toys were on the walls, used as decor. "Quadrapus" became a symbol and mascot for a memorable season.

This was inked by Josh at Broken Heart Tattoo in Keyport, New Jersey. Coincidentally, a tattoo from Broken Heart appeared just this past Saturday here on Tattoosday.

Incidentally, Collen has seven other tattoos, and I couldn't resist snapping a shot of this literary ink:


The quote "You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake " is from the seminal first novel Chuck Palahniuk novel Fight Club. Tyler Durden's character states:

"You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everyone else, and we are all a part of the same compost pile."

Palahniuk is her favorite author and she loves the meaning behind this quote, from a passage where the speaker is questioning the notion of individuality. Deep down, Collen explained, he's saying we're all the same, that no one is as special as they think they are. Juxtaposed with the snowflake, the symbol of uniqueness, this tattoo makes a bold statement.

Check out a couple other Palahniuk literary tattoos here over on the awesome site dedicated to literary ink, Contrariwise.

This was inked at Silk City Tattoo in Hawthorne, New Jersey by Chi Chi Gunz. Work from Silk City is New Jersey has appeared previously on Tattoosday here.

Thanks to Colleen for sharing her fun and interesting tattoos with us here on Tattoosday!

The Tattooed Poets Project: Rebecca Loudon's Bee Tattoo

The following tattoo was submitted by the poet Rebecca Loudon:

The tattoo was inspired by her favorite poem, "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" by William Butler Yeats:

The Lake Isle of Innisfree

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a-glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear the water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

Rebecca adds that she will include the last two lines of the first stanza will be added "one of these days". The tattoo is on her right calf.

Rebecca added:

This tattoo was done by Tracy Zumwalt in Seattle, in December of 2008, shortly after my book Cadaver Dogs was published. Tracy used to work at Anchor Tattoo in Seattle, but now works privately by appointment only.

I have other tattoos, but I had been talking about the bee tattoo for 20 years. I was waiting for something, something to celebrated, something to mark. Bees have always been my totem animal and they are prominent in all my writing. Once the book was complete, I knew it was time. I wanted the tattoo to be a scientific rendering but I let Tracy do the artwork. The bee is on the outside of my right calf. The photo isn’t very good because it isn’t really a photo. I just put my leg on my scanner because I don’t own a camera. You can still see Tracy’s fine work in the scan though."

Rebecca Loudon lives and writes in Seattle. She is the author of 4 books of poetry, the latest being Cadaver Dogs from No Tell Books, several lyrics for songs for chamber orchestra and choir, and the libretto of a full length opera, Red Queen. She is a professional violinist and teaches violin to children. She has more than 6 and less than 10 tattoos. She practices writing at http://radishking.blogspot.com/

Head over to BillyBlog to read one of her poems.

Thanks to Rebecca for her participation in the Tattooed Poet's Project!

A Bonus: click here to listen to William Butler Yeats reading the poem that inspired this tattoo!

The Literary Tattoo

I didn't spot a shred of ink today, so let's look elsewhere for a moment.

A great site that I love to visit regularly is Contrariwise, an awesome blog devoted to literary tattoos.

On a related matter, a friend sent me the link to the following article about literary tattoos that I thought I'd share with everyone here at Tattoosday.

In 2003, the author Shelley Jackson announced that she would publish a 2,095-word short story called “Skin” on participants who agree to be tattooed with randomly assigned words from her text. The tattooees alone will read the story, which will be complete when the last commissioned word is inscribed on its bearer, sometime in the next few years. It will not be published on paper. Jackson asks applicants (she has many more than she can use) to read her novel, The Melancholy of Anatomy, to ensure that they like her writing before committing to a word, because “Skin” is what she calls a “hidden track” (in the pop-music sense) of the book; both explore the relationship between words and the body.

Read the rest of the article here.

Kurt Vonnegut Remembered. So it goes.

At the Seventh Avenue Street Fair in Park Slope on Sunday, there was plenty of ink. Amazing ink too. But I only stopped one person, Samantha.

Samantha had this simple quote from the late Kurt Vonnegut on her back. This simple refrain (used 106 times in Slaughterhouse-Five, according to Wikipedia), came to be synonymous with the Vonnegut philosophy.

Samantha had this inked on her birthday at Hypnotic Designs in Sunset Park by Dru. Her boyfriend Igor also had a Vonnegut quote inked, but on his left leg:


or, from a different view:


This quote is from God Bless You Dr. Kevorkian...

My epitaph in any case? "Everything was beautiful. Nothing hurt." I will have gotten off so light, whatever the heck it is that was going on.

Thanks to Samantha and Igor for sharing their Vonnegutian ink here on Tattoosday!