6.01.2010

This is only a rant, let me do no harm.

This post would be so much better if I had a camera with me….sorry about that.

Ok I love this place; it has been two weeks since I have been in this coffee house. Last time I was here I wrote about the Brazilian girl and the Chinese lady. I did walk back into this place with expectations, but not really, it is just a coffee house.

As I stand in line – I think to myself how lonely life must me, how unnoticeable this person must feel. To be “seen’ is a hard thing to understand. From a distance, we are all seen or are all too self- absorbed to bother with what goes seen or unseen in our life.

To be outwardly self-expressive, using one's own body as a place of self-fascination. Not the body as a piece of art, but the body a canvas for art.

I stand in line waiting to order. The young lady in front of me has a full back tattoo that depicts a scene form Lord of the Rings…Seriously, truly a full cinematic-clip-in-all-of-its-glory tattoo on her back. She had a bikini top on showing off the full of her back. Two things go through my mind; one - damn this is good work (please Lord God never let my daughter do this). Two - when did she begin to feel invisible?

I have been running into extraordinary tattoos lately. There was the man with the Steelers logo (HERE) on his is head, the wedding guest with an Irish toast on her back (HERE) and last night after telling this story to a man at the pub he showed me his tattoo of a Dr Suess story that has taken up the better part of his left arm.

Don’t get me wrong - the pursuit of the unconventional is OK with me; all of life is a canvas as far as I am concerned.

The idea or subject matter of being noticed has stayed with me after seeing the back tattoo of the Lord of the Rings. What is it that would bring a person to place art/tattoo on their body in a place that everybody but themselves can see?

How unnoticeable must she feel? I could be completely wrong – self-expression is not for other people to judge, it is for the individual to express.

This is only a rant, let me do no harm.