Magic Markers Tattoo You

Currently, I have two tattoos. My first in an outline of a heart on my inner left wrist. The other is a swallow flying from a cage on the back of my right shoulder. Meanings of tattoos are silly, but well: the heart is an outline to remind me to keep my heart open and the bird and cage have to do with my thoughts on the soul/ body dilemma. Deeeeeep, I know. 

I would like some ear piercings before I get more tattoos, but here is what I am thinking of. 
This is an original drawing of Harriet the Spy done by author Louise Fitzhugh. I loved Harriet the Spy when I was younger and I still relate greatly to her. Plus we're both writers! I would want this done about that size with a very thin needle and on my ribs. 

little anchor on the top of my foot.
-the word 'bloom' in typewriter font. it's my favorite word. i would get it somewhere on my right hand. 

-if i were ever to get an inner lip tattoo, i would have it say something like 'booo, i'm sad' because the only time people see my inner lip is when i fold it downward in mock sadness. 
Other tattoos I like, mostly because of the font. 

Check out:
http://sfchroniclemarketplace.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/09/07/LV3R12BBQD.DTL
(an article on script tattoos)
Contrariwise.org
(Literary tattoos)
And http://fuckyeahtattoos.tumblr.com/

I first loved you when the world was

blooming like words on lips

and the sun shone so bright

that we would read the morning paper

until eight at night, beneath the oak.

 

by the time we had slipped

into our summertime skin

I’m sure you loved me too

though you never said it

(and I didn’t tell you either).

 

when the leaves changed

you wore your autumn sweater

and I was a cotton-white ghost

who fed you bowls of pasta and bruised apples

on the rooftop terrace.

 

everything was grey in january,

our words froze in midair

before they froze in our throats

maybe because that’s just what happens

maybe because we were waiting for the thaw. 

"Live, travel, adventure, bless, and don't be sorry."

"What is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing?- it's the too-huge world vaulting us, and it's good-by. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies."

Where I've Been:
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Dublin, Ireland
Interlaken, Switzerland
Maastricht, Venlo & Venray, Netherlands
Brussels, Bruge & Antwerp, Belgium
Prague, Cezch Republic
Venice, Florence & Rome, Italy
Barcelona, Spain
Paris, France
Berlin & Marburg, Germany
London, England

"I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn't know who I was - I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I'd never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn't know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. I wasn't scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost."

I have three days before I am back in America. It is insane and weird, and happy and sad. All at once (but what isn't everything all at once?). This was the most incredible thing I could ever have done. The importance it has played in my life hasn't even hit me yet. Maybe I'm not allowing it to-- I've spent the past two days sleeping too much and eating too often. I want to hug my best friends here, and I want to hug everyone here, all the time. It is endlessly odd to me that all of this will soon be a memory, and even odder and sadder that I one day will not remember the memories. I will only have my journal and my pictures to remind me. And there is no way they can cover even a fraction of how great this was.

For the first three days of being here, I was a wreck. At home my family's old ghosts had come back and I had flown out of the country, leaving them in shambles. I was so nervous that whole first week, I barely ate. I kept telling myself, only 90 days. I was thinking I would leave early, even. Oh course that changed. I've never had three solid months of happiness and constant adventure like I've had here. My biggest fear is that I will never have that again. I can't worry about that though. I am going home to, and coming back with, amazing people whom I love dearly.

I don't know when I will get the chance to come back to Europe again. Maybe for my honeymoon, but if I marry a comedian or a poet, or someone I love, that may not happen. I want to revisit Berlin. I just loved the music and art scene. And it is my dream to retire to a villa outside of Florence, get a vespa and a leather jacket, and wear wildflowers in my hair everyday.

Where I Want to Travel:
Stockholm, Sweden
Oslo, Norway
Copenhagen, Denmark
Warsaw, Poland
Vienna, Austria
Budapest, Hungary
Anywhere in Greece
Croatia
Istanbul, Turkey
Moscow, Russia
Portugal
One Day: Japan, Australian, South America, Africa

I don't know what the future will bring. I don't even know what the summer will bring. I have lived in a castle with 81 other college sophomores and visited ten countries. I've stood with my face inches from works of art I thought I would only ever see in books, I've ended up in Irish pubs no matter how hard I've tried not to, I've sledded on a Swiss Alp, I've kissed Oscar Wilde's grave, I've slept through the club scene in Spain and I've wished at the Trevi Fountain. And I have made life long friends with the funniest, nicest girls one could hope to meet.

And so...
"There was nowhere to go but everywhere, so just keep on rolling under the stars."

Chelsea Dirck

Chelsea is an art student in Boston. She uploads pages from her journal onto her flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cdirck/
They are really simple, but I adore them. I wish I wrote in all caps and could say everything I wanted to in less than five words like she does. I want to meet her and be her friend.

I feel like we are writing the same journal but with different words. 







Her Journal