so if I fell I would fall right in

i realized just now, (as coincidence would have it, though i'd been thinking of it last week) that my tattoo is six years old as of a handful of hours ago. it's a wednesday this year. i think at this point, i'm counting in fridays though. which puts a good stretch between me and the original year of tuesdays. it's good. this place where i am.

i love the ink sewn into my skin. for everything it's meant, and brought me through, and how that changes year to year, day to day. the words i've laid out here in previous years still mean something important, but it's like seeing words through water, or with the sun in your eyes. everything we touch... that touches us, changes us in tiny ways we're incapable of comprehending. i'm thankful for every single one of those, that's brought me to who and where i am right now.

everything i type tonight feels cheesy and mediocre... not saying what it is i'm trying to get at.

it's the time of year where i think too much. i only mind that sometimes, and mostly only when i should. but i'm not over thinking this, it's not something i've ever had to think about. direction, surety of purpose. i still say 'live soulfully.'

today marked four years that i've had my tattoo.
it was actually four whole years ago that i sat there in the baltimore tattoo museum while george (he's the one in the front holding the... pig?) inked onto the small of my back the design we'd come up with together.
last year, in the memoir class i took, i wrote about getting my tattoo. it ended up as a central piece of my large work for the course, which i don't think anyone but jane ever read the whole of... but tonight there's something i want to say about all this. about the ink under my skin, about the way time passes. the way our memories work. that year was full of tuesdays. this year is full of days. really, i'm not sure that i can find the words tonight--still somewhat sick with whatever i have that's been morphing day to day, i'm drained to say the least. and so, though i might change my mind and lock it or move it later, here's the section from that memoir, and my tattoo to go with it.




( read on if you wish, but be warned if you should. )

( because it isn't every day i get to look at it. )