Mari's Prayer, with a Twist of Math

I met Mari in front of Madison Square Garden on a sunny day in October. How could I not stop and ask her about this tattoo?

Mari explained that this is an Ananda prayer, that her friends were meditating on it for a week.

The text, which is attributed to Sri Paramhansa Yogananda, reads:

Make me thy butterfly of eternity.

I burnt my past. I ignored the foreboding seeds of sprouting destiny. I waded through the strewn ashes of past & future fears.

I am the eternal present. I tore to shreds the cocoon of ignorance with the sharpness of my will.

I am thy...butterfly of eternity, sweeping through immeasurable time. The beauty of my nature-wings I spread everywhere, to entertain everything. Suns & stardust are spread on my wings. Behold my beauty! Cut all the silken threads of thy shrouding folly: follow me in my flight to myself.

The butterfly symbolizes transformation, a phase everyone goes through at one point or another in time.

Also among her twenty-two tattoos is this formula at the top of her arm:

Mari explained she loves math and generalized that, with this equation, "you can generate anything in the universe". In theory, at least. Here, it gets a little hazy for me. Part of this tattoo contains "f(z) = z^2 + c" which is described as a complex function. Then there is the part that equates the square root of -1 to the value i. This is a formula for an imaginary number. I'm bowing out here, knowing there's no way I'll be able to explain this part of the tattoo adequately. Readers are welcome to try in the comments section, below.


Mari's work was inked by Kevin at The Tattoo Shop in Lansing, Michigan.

Thanks to Mari for sharing her tattoos with us here on Tattoosday!

Tattoos I Know: Tracy's Tributes (Re-Post)

Let's take a moment and pause from our regularly-scheduled programming this Veteran's Day to remember the men and women who serve our country bravely. I've dug into the archives and reposted a friend's tattoo, which appeared originally here on Tattoosday in January 2008. Be sure to thank a Veteran today, and to appreciate not only our soldiers at home and abroad, but their families who support and inspire them to serve our country courageously.

This post originally appeared January 14, 2008:

Tracy is a friend of mine who lives in Fort Drum, New York. She was in town last weekend, visiting family, and this was the first time I have seen her since Tattoosday was born over the summer.

I knew Tracy had at least one tattoo, because she and my wife have talked ink before. So when I saw her on Saturday, unexpectedly, I was happy that I had a couple of Tattoosday printouts in my pocket.

I explained the blog and asked if she'd like to participate. She was happy to oblige and, as fortune would have it, she was coming to an indoor soccer game the following day. Her nephew plays on the same team as my daughter Shayna.

After the game Sunday, I asked if she was ready. She lifted the back of her shirt to reveal:


I was surprised, honestly. I was not expecting butterflies, but expecting the one above it which, as fate would have it, is later in this post. But I wasn't about to pass up a cool tattoo, so I took a picture of this one as well.

Tracy is a mother of two boys, Matthew and Danny, and these butterflies represent each of them, as they flutter and transform, as ones children are apt to do, growing from infants into people. Tracy had these inked three years ago in Victorville, when she was living at Ft. Irwin. She said that they had been done at "Victorville Designs," which has either changed names or gone out of business, based on this link.

These butterflies are nicely inked and really seem to float over the skin. Definitely a nice tattoo, from design to execution.

Above the butterflies is the tattoo that I had heard about:



A simple, basic script. The arced triad of three pillars of strength in many people's lives: "Faith. Family. Friends."

In order to understand this tattoo, we have to take a little side journey.

Whatever one's politics may be, or however one feels about what we are doing in Asia and the Middle East, one thing must be acknowledged: the men and women in our military are there to do a job, to serve our country, and to fight to not only protect the people there, but here as well. Thousands of American men and women have given their lives and their souls to serve our country.

As one may have guessed by two prior references (Ft. Drum and Ft. Irwin), Tracy is closely tied to the United States Army, as she is married to Pete, who is a soldier with the 10th Mountain Division, Light Infantry.

On October 31, 2006, Pete's friend and fellow soldier, Major Douglas E. Sloan, was killed in the line of duty in the Wygal Valley in Afghanistan, while serving with Company B, 1st Battalion, 32nd Infantry Regiment. You can read more about Doug here at the Arlington National Cemetary website.

As every drop of spilled blood in the line of duty hits home, the loss of Major Sloan was devastating to his family and friends back in the States. The community of Fort Drum mourned Doug's passing and hearts went out to his wife Kerry and their children.

In December 2006, to pay tribute to Doug's memory, Tracy and three friends, including Kerry, went to Tattoos Forever in Evans Mills, NY, and each had the same inscription inked. In hindsight, Tracy recalls how funny it must have appeared, for four moms in minivans to drive up to the shop and collectively get tattooed.

It is a recurring theme on tattoo shows. Memorial tattoos are among the most popular types of body art. People mourn, heal, and remember through the art of the tattoo. And a piece of the loved one lives on, for years, in the flesh of the survivors, who gain strength and hold on to the memory of the departed.

The alliterative mantra of "Faith, Family, and Friends" reminds not only the tattooed, but those around them, of the most important things in life.

I want to thank Tracy for sharing her tattoos, and the stories behind them. I would add a special nod of gratitude to the memory of Major Douglas Sloan, who I never knew. Yet, by virtue of this tattoo, helped remind me of the sacrifice that our soldiers make day in, day out, and their families they leave behind.

Some related links:

A touching tribute to Major Sloan from YouTube:



Also of note, Occidental College professor Mary Beth Heffernan's "The Soldier's Skin," currently on exhibit at Pasadena City College.

****


Tracy's husband Pete subsequently returned from Afghanistan, but has since returned to duty overseas. On behalf of all of our Tattoosday readers, I want to thank Tracy and Pete, for their commitment and sacrifice, and for sharing this one story among thousands, with us here at Tattoosday.

Rebecca's Memorial Butterfly

I met Rebecca a couple months ago in Penn Station and asked her about her tattoos.

Of the eleven, she shared this one from her leg:

This beautiful, yet battered, butterfly is a memorial to her unborn child. She lost the baby when she was just nineteen. The cherry blossoms are often symbolic of the fleeting nature of life.

The tattoo was completed on October 13, 2007 by Nate Hudson when he was at Virginia Beach Ink. He now tattoos at Folk City Tattoo in Suffolk, Virginia. As today is October 13, I've been hanging on to this post, not only to correspond with the day the tattoo was finished, but also the due date of the baby that was lost.

We here at Tattoosday truly thank Rebecca for sharing, not only this poignant tattoo, but also for allowing us to relate the emotional story behind this butterfly.

When bad tattoos come full circle and become awesome

I bring you the most amazing collection of terrible tattoos that you could ever imagine. This fine young gentleman has agreed to let me post his awful tattoos and stories for your reading pleasure. Behold, the best bad tattoos in the world. They are so bad they are now officially AWESOME. I will let him explain in his own words:

My friend came down from Toronto to visit for a week or two. My roommate Tyson came home one night with about 3 friends, 2 cases of beer, a bottle of whiskey, a bottle of vodka, a tattoo machine, needles and ink. We all start drinking and hanging out and having a really good time, then one of his friends suggests we get the gun out and start setting it up.

Not a single person before this had ever held a tattoo gun.

We get the thing running, set the needles in place, put on gloves etc etc and begin to tattoo each other. (different needles, gloves, etc for each person, not totally sanitary but not extremely dirty) after about hour 3 of tattooing the absolute most ridiculous shit on each other we end up falling asleep. Wake up the next morning and most people had no recollection of what had happened and will forever be reminded about the night they forgot they got tattooed.

Here are mine:


I think in the corner there we have a straightedge pyramid with an eye, like on the dollar bill?


The guy with the muscle arms at the top was supposed to be a CUPCAKE, by the way. There is also a cat with butterfly eyes and a mustache dreaming of... something?

But wait... there's more!!!


I had just gotten to a friends house kind of late at night, she was watching an episode of that Housewives of Orange County and i walked in on the part of the show where one of their daughters had told the parents she had gotten a tattoo. They started flipping out wanting to know WHAT and WHERE it was. She finally shows them this butterfly about the size of a dime on her foot.

So... i asked "i wonder how pissed they would've been if she wouldve came home with a bunch of random bugs all over her feet?".




Getting tattoos based on an awful reality tv show is possibly the worst idea in the world, especially if they are weird stickerbook bugs on your FEET, but this is just so funny and bad that I think it's pure genius.

This guy is my new hero.

When bad tattoos come full circle and become awesome

I bring you the most amazing collection of terrible tattoos that you could ever imagine. This fine young gentleman has agreed to let me post his awful tattoos and stories for your reading pleasure. Behold, the best bad tattoos in the world. They are so bad they are now officially AWESOME. I will let him explain in his own words:

My friend came down from Toronto to visit for a week or two. My roommate Tyson came home one night with about 3 friends, 2 cases of beer, a bottle of whiskey, a bottle of vodka, a tattoo machine, needles and ink. We all start drinking and hanging out and having a really good time, then one of his friends suggests we get the gun out and start setting it up.

Not a single person before this had ever held a tattoo gun.

We get the thing running, set the needles in place, put on gloves etc etc and begin to tattoo each other. (different needles, gloves, etc for each person, not totally sanitary but not extremely dirty) after about hour 3 of tattooing the absolute most ridiculous shit on each other we end up falling asleep. Wake up the next morning and most people had no recollection of what had happened and will forever be reminded about the night they forgot they got tattooed.

Here are mine:


I think in the corner there we have a straightedge pyramid with an eye, like on the dollar bill?


The guy with the muscle arms at the top was supposed to be a CUPCAKE, by the way. There is also a cat with butterfly eyes and a mustache dreaming of... something?

But wait... there's more!!!


I had just gotten to a friends house kind of late at night, she was watching an episode of that Housewives of Orange County and i walked in on the part of the show where one of their daughters had told the parents she had gotten a tattoo. They started flipping out wanting to know WHAT and WHERE it was. She finally shows them this butterfly about the size of a dime on her foot.

So... i asked "i wonder how pissed they would've been if she wouldve came home with a bunch of random bugs all over her feet?".




Getting tattoos based on an awful reality tv show is possibly the worst idea in the world, especially if they are weird stickerbook bugs on your FEET, but this is just so funny and bad that I think it's pure genius.

This guy is my new hero.