Tattoosday (A Tattoo Blog): Resurrection Tattoo

Today's tattooed poet is <a href="http://www.lauragoode.com/">Laura Goode</a>. I had the distinct pleasure of recommending a shop to Laura back in January when she was planning on getting a new tattoo in Los Angeles. Knowing she was going to be near Pasadena, a lovely city I once called home, I suggested <a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Resurrection-Tattoo-Body-Piercing/117923024934106">Resurrection Tattoo</a> and she was very happy with the experience. This is what she got:  <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga_4_5NGep5XhXlMfmjDD7fUvJy_ONR2he5JQRFukTkdGtlmLB1QVQRtXokDaFOfx4uuHgyRLojCO2zMPfwOh7OlOlP8rwYNcSJj-soqI25TfEM2C3Y4eRzD2fRLQM0DsTZBv9WeSLktY/s1600/goode.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga_4_5NGep5XhXlMfmjDD7fUvJy_ONR2he5JQRFukTkdGtlmLB1QVQRtXokDaFOfx4uuHgyRLojCO2zMPfwOh7OlOlP8rwYNcSJj-soqI25TfEM2C3Y4eRzD2fRLQM0DsTZBv9WeSLktY/s640/goode.jpg" width="382" /></a></div> <blockquote class="tr_bq">"My newest tattoo, a peacock feather, is an homage of sorts to my friend Jon, who died of cancer on January 20, 2011. Jon’s middle name was Skanda; <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murugan">Skanda</a> is a Hindu god associated with the sword, symbolizing his protection, and the peacock, symbolizing his destruction of the ego. Skanda is often depicted riding around on a magic peacock, and I like to picture Jon doing that now.</blockquote><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/81/Murugan_by_Raja_Ravi_Varma.jpg/439px-Murugan_by_Raja_Ravi_Varma.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/81/Murugan_by_Raja_Ravi_Varma.jpg/439px-Murugan_by_Raja_Ravi_Varma.jpg" width="468" /></a></div> <blockquote class="tr_bq">The particularity of Jon, and the shape and singularity of the hole his absence leaves in my life, was that he was not just friend to me, but more than that, sometimes transcendently, he was collaborator. Our relationship was marked by fervent bursts of art. He starred in, and photographed, the first play I ever wrote. He art-directed my second. He took the author photo for the jacket of my first novel. He was my colleague, my interlocutor, in innumerable conversations about queer theory and Chinese propaganda art and writing and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphex_Twin">Aphex Twin</a> and, eventually, cancer. He called the Facebook album of my author photos 'Portrait of An Author As A Young Author’s Portrait.' He told me that if there were ever a Lifetime movie made about my life, it would be titled 'Laura Goode: Heart of Gold, Womb of Steel.' During a period of time in our lives marked by wild, leaping growth, Jon wove so many fibers into the fabric of my initiation as an artist. I hope I did the same in his, but I don’t have the luxury of asking him.</blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq">For all these reasons, it felt appropriate to mark Jon’s impact on my life, as well as the impact of his departure from it, with a work of art. I got the feather at <a href="http://www.yelp.com/biz/resurrection-tattoo-and-body-piercing-pasadena">Resurrection</a> in Pasadena with one of my and Jon’s best friends, <a href="http://meeramenon.com/">Meera Menon</a>, who got her own feather for Jon. Afterwards, Meera and I talked about how we experienced the pain of paying homage to him in a skin-abrading way: it doesn’t hurt as much as losing him, I told her I had been thinking. We confided that we both thought the pain brought us somehow closer to Jon, closer to how much pain he had experienced himself.</blockquote><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgT3rd32WYHjibYKhdvJvEEBa4sKdQ2okPHwy9ipFT9PAKIHQs1r3awkDC6KFrHqlF2GDylS-stGAqNxdYnqiN_fKE-8cmT3KrKtE5VFpviUkTjJGdw0oyJVT3EghyphenhyphenkXZTR-Zg3Dg5wFTs/s1600/goode+detail.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgT3rd32WYHjibYKhdvJvEEBa4sKdQ2okPHwy9ipFT9PAKIHQs1r3awkDC6KFrHqlF2GDylS-stGAqNxdYnqiN_fKE-8cmT3KrKtE5VFpviUkTjJGdw0oyJVT3EghyphenhyphenkXZTR-Zg3Dg5wFTs/s640/goode+detail.jpg" width="490" /></a></div><blockquote class="tr_bq">I look at Jon’s feather now, knowing it will walk with me always, and its splashes of wild color, its heady plumage, bring me some of the joy that Jon himself once brought me. As Skanda’s paradoxical peacock illuminates, death destroys the ego, and both the pain of losing Jon and the more literal pain of memorializing him physically have humbled me. In life Jon raised me up to the rafters of the imagination, and in death he brought me back down to earth. The below poem, I think, celebrates both contributions."</blockquote> What The Body Becomes  Look up in wonder: the recluse & the moors have come in. The garden’s elegant logic, a mystic event, greening. A return, if one is willing, to the fine dark clay earth. A channel somehow open; another closed irrevocably. I have so much still to say. The rite of production is one, too, of consumption— the coal, wood, even peat of day. Of life. Renewable resources. The fact of heat. We, miners exhorting the earth to give us back the dead. This is what the body becomes: the sustenance of another. <div style="text-align: center;">~ ~ ~</div><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><a href="http://www.lauragoode.com/">Laura Goode's</a> interracial gay hip-hop love story for teens, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Sister-Mischief-Laura-Goode/dp/0763646407">Sister Mischief</a><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=bill03-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0763646407" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" />, was released by <a href="http://www.candlewick.com/">Candlewick Press</a> in 2011. Her poems and essays have appeared in <a href="http://therumpus.net/author/laura-goode/">The Rumpus</a>, <a href="http://lareviewofbooks.org/">The Los Angeles Review of Books</a>, <a href="http://feministing.com/">Feministing</a>, <a href="http://www.thefastertimes.com/about/?u=lauragoode">The Faster Times</a>, <a href="http://www.bostonreview.net/">Boston Review</a>, <a href="http://www.denverquarterly.com/">Denver Quarterly</a>, <a href="http://dossierjournal.com/read/uncategorized/dossier-asks-tell-us-about-your-first-time/">Dossier</a>, <a href="http://www.slope.org/">Slope</a>, <a href="http://www.fawltmag.com/four/">Fawlt</a>, and other publications. She is currently producing her first feature film, <a href="http://www.farahgoesbang.com/">FARAH GOES BANG</a>, co-written with the filmmaker <a href="http://meeramenon.com/">Meera Menon</a>. Laura was raised outside Minneapolis, received her BA and MFA from <a href="http://www.columbia.edu/">Columbia University</a>, and now lives in San Francisco; you can follow her on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/#!/lauragoode">@lauragoode</a>. Thanks to Laura for sharing her tattoo and poem with us here on Tattoosday! This entry is ©2012 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoo are reprinted with the poet's permission.  If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement. <div style="text-align: center;"><iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=bill03-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=0763646407" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe></div>

The Tattooed Poets Project: Laura Goode

Today's tattooed poet is Laura Goode . I had the distinct pleasure of recommending a shop to Laura back in January when she was planning...

<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvpEPlKMjOsq-joPEWKixQMT-FkR4sxS2IARyhPmdN5GY5HCzsvq3ETf5a-IRTTdmXM7psOvFSNL-GC6dK7Yl5RTrE3Vy6hFbcxlpOORY0kjg_rRAPGKgK5ocRbB6HfZ4pBtQy8rySj6w/s1600-h/organic3.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5338557509093595250" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvpEPlKMjOsq-joPEWKixQMT-FkR4sxS2IARyhPmdN5GY5HCzsvq3ETf5a-IRTTdmXM7psOvFSNL-GC6dK7Yl5RTrE3Vy6hFbcxlpOORY0kjg_rRAPGKgK5ocRbB6HfZ4pBtQy8rySj6w/s400/organic3.jpg" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 327px; height: 400px;" /></a> It's always interesting when you meet people with a lot of tattoos. Unless someone volunteers to catalog their entire collection (case I point <a href="http://tattoosday.blogspot.com/2008/09/introducing-ninas-ink-part-1.html">here</a>), I generally ask folks to share just one with us here on Tattoosday. The problem there is that asking someone to pick one tattoo to offer up is often like asking someone to select their favorite child among their brood of kids. They're all special in their own way and most generally equally-loved. So when I ran into Sean, who has eleven tattoos, there was some debate. We were going to do his right leg piece, but it wrapped around the majority of the calf, and I didn't think it would come out well because of the multiple angles. This is why you don't see a lot of sleevework on Tattoosday. The "OUCH" tattooed inside his lower lip was funny, but it's just a word in a strange spot, and not very artistic. We considered for a moment the lipstick imprint of a kiss. But that one was on his butt, and it just didn't seem right to be photographing someone's posterior on Seventh Avenue. So we went with a tattoo on his right forearm which doesn't totally wrap around the arm: <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYRRxVrmlwzJ-ujyW1jbB7_aFx6Xxjyj2w8BVC4zDS-SxnHQ84qbLdGUGN3JJQvAVl2xoOJsACW-wmhcpq9QYkTvdU3Z7yF5lLxMU_NgLXwg4cbwOXQ5B0NROl7KB8iX-Q7morHxx-00E/s1600-h/organic1.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5338556787962395442" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYRRxVrmlwzJ-ujyW1jbB7_aFx6Xxjyj2w8BVC4zDS-SxnHQ84qbLdGUGN3JJQvAVl2xoOJsACW-wmhcpq9QYkTvdU3Z7yF5lLxMU_NgLXwg4cbwOXQ5B0NROl7KB8iX-Q7morHxx-00E/s320/organic1.jpg" style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 118px; height: 320px;" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgoufg30ew3UG7r-cbu8LpyKqQVA8EI5De-6illO3i8B3I_YUHAeGxkBgg6gYviCIASjmBFTX6eFNMnNu-_PB_G8Indbwnz2EEr5U0_P62TWQxK2uChi6IqTmnqWZ3qDlLtYiEzXvL4Rw/s1600-h/organic2.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5338557031787185426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgoufg30ew3UG7r-cbu8LpyKqQVA8EI5De-6illO3i8B3I_YUHAeGxkBgg6gYviCIASjmBFTX6eFNMnNu-_PB_G8Indbwnz2EEr5U0_P62TWQxK2uChi6IqTmnqWZ3qDlLtYiEzXvL4Rw/s320/organic2.jpg" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 124px; height: 320px;" /></a> This was Sean's first tattoo that was drawn on free-hand. He liked the organic colors in the design and just let the artist do her thing. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGGpVngcKadKghSch4jnVGo5WaEwGl8ytzCdoPTgf3-bEkcdt1Z1Pc3MLRMS77PWyaFzzOzLXXys9qB3UaHIynZBKJWX8isYODXjPMwYK8mBtuKsAiMruxGEvhnChb6dZnb22O5KEb0gU/s1600-h/organic2.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5338558918888638626" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGGpVngcKadKghSch4jnVGo5WaEwGl8ytzCdoPTgf3-bEkcdt1Z1Pc3MLRMS77PWyaFzzOzLXXys9qB3UaHIynZBKJWX8isYODXjPMwYK8mBtuKsAiMruxGEvhnChb6dZnb22O5KEb0gU/s400/organic2.jpg" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 155px; height: 400px;" /></a> It took about four hours for <a href="http://www.tattoohost.com/interviews/tina.htm">Tina Forever</a> at <a href="http://www.reztattoo.com/">Resurrection Tattoo</a> in Austin, Texas, to complete the piece. Thanks to Sean for sharing his tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

Sean's Organic Tattoo

It's always interesting when you meet people with a lot of tattoos. Unless someone volunteers to catalog their entire collection (case I...

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Sean's Organic Tattoo

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