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The Word Made Flesh

@tattoolit / tattoolit.tumblr.com

Combining my two loves: writing and reading. It is a tattoo that reminds me to let myself feel the past to inspire my writing. Plus The Great Gatsby is my favorite novel. This is the first of 5 planned literary tattoos.

From "Return of the King", by J.R.R. Tolkien: "Begone, foul dwimmerlaik, lord of carrion! Leave the dead in peace!" A cold voice answered: ‘Come not between the Nazgûl and his prey! Or he will not slay thee in thy turn. He will bear thee away to the houses of lamentation, beyond all darkness, where thy flesh shall be devoured, and thy shriveled mind be left naked to the Lidless Eye.” A sword rang as it was drawn. “Do what you will; but I will hinder it, if I may.” “Hinder me? Thou fool. No living man may hinder me!” Then Merry heard of all sounds in that hour the strangest. It seemed that Dernhelm laughed, and the clear voice was like the ring of steel. “But no living man am I! You look upon a woman. Éowyn I am, Éomund’s daughter. You stand between me and my lord and kin. Begone, if you be not deathless! For living or dark undead, I will smite you, if you touch him.” ---------- The Witch-King of Angmar is the Lord of the Nazgûl, the second most evil character in the LOTR trilogy. When he appears, men tremble and flee. This is probably for the best, because there is a thousand-year-old prophesy about the Witch-King: Far off yet is his doom, and not by the hand of man will he fall. During the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, the Nazgûl attacked and King Théoden was mortally wounded. As usual, the men ran away in terror, leaving a single soldier to challenge the Nazgûl. The Witch-King advanced on the soldier, threatening torture and referring to the prophesy, which he believed made him deathless. The soldier then revealed herself to be a woman, Théoden's niece Éowyn. The Witch-King hesitated but attacked her, and she destroyed him by driving her sword between his crown and mantle. The line reminds me of three things: 1. Never assume a woman can't succeed where many others have lost their courage. 2. When your enemies think they're about to defeat you, sometimes the best course of action is to laugh at them and stab them in the face. 3. Always -- always! -- make sure you know the exact wording of the prophesy.

I say, 

It’s the fire in my eyes,   

And the flash of my teeth,   

The swing in my waist,   

And the joy in my feet.   

I’m a woman 

Phenomenally. 

Phenomenal woman, 

That’s me. 

- Phenomenal Woman by Maya Angelou

  Tattooed by Shona Crawford at Adorn Tattoo in Portland, OR

I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
But who can remember pain, once it’s over? All that remains of it is a shadow, not in the mind even, in the flesh. Pain marks you, but too deep to see. Out of sight, out of mind.

From the novel Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut: "But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human. So she was turned into a pillar of salt. So it goes." Throughout the novel, when he writes about a tragic memory he follows it with the simple phrase "so it goes." After a difficult year of failing to adapt to or make sense of how things in my home life had gotten to where they were, this reoccurring theme from the novel kept ringing in my ears. Finding comfort in its simplicity it made leaving the dysfunction in the past possible for me.

Caring too much for objects can destroy you. Only—if you care for a thing enough, it takes on a life of its own, doesn’t it? And isn’t the whole point of things—beautiful things—that they connect you to some larger beauty?

Hi, could you tell me where the quote that's on the person's arm in your header is from? The one that reads "I want to shiver and sob. I look up. Something's coming."

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So glad you asked! The lines in the tattoo at the top of the page -- “I want to shiver and sob. I look up. Something’s coming.” -- are from the very end of Martin Amis’s novel SUCCESS. The photograph itself, along with a story from the bearer about how he first discovered Amis, appears in the book.

Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring,

Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish,

Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)

Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d,

Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,

Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,

The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?

                                       Answer.

That you are here—that life exists and identity,

That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse. --Walt Whitman

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