Stephanie's Serpentine Strength

Under normal circumstances, I may not have stopped to chat with Stephanie about her wrist tattoo. However, she was playing with her new corn snake, which is not something you see everyday when passing through Pennsylvania Station.

Stephanie introduced me to her new friend Muñeca (the Spanish word for "doll")

and then elaborated on one of her three tattoos, the word "Strength" on her inner left wrist:

She had this done at a time in her life when she was depressed, so she put the word on her wrist to remind her to always be strong.

What's truly interesting about this tattoo and the juxtaposition of the snake is the serpentine nature of the letter "S". My friend and co-worker Maida also pointed out, when I showed her the photo, that muñeca also has the anatomical meaning of "wrist" in Spanish.

The tattoo was done at Progressive Tattoo in Lindenhurst, New York.

Thanks to Stephanie for sharing her tattoo and Muñeca with us here at Tattoosday!

Tattoos from the Blogosphere: The Back of Nathan's Legs

My recent affiliation with Nathan over at KnuckleTattoos.com has been fairly sparse with the cold weather seizing the Northeast. However once he added me as a contributing writer, I queried about him sending me photos of some of his ink to put up over here on Tattoosday. This post reflects a couple of leg pieces he sports.

First a pre-color peek:

And then, with some color, in its completed form:


A little limb isolation (click to enlarge):



These pieces were inked by Jason Brooks ("he is incredible") at Rock of Ages Tattooing in Austin, Texas.

The following is an excerpt from Nathan's blog, which begins to explain "bitter strength" and "Quixotic honor":

So I went under the gun again. First time in almost six years. I was just supposed to get the outlines done, but then his appointment after me canceled and I got a four hour session. The crook behind the knee and the area around the Achilles tendon were miserably painful, but the rest was pretty tolerable.



The theme behind the piece is a warning about virtues bordering on being vices. Values that can bite you back. Just because I am strong enough to endure hardship does not make it any less hard. Sometimes not bearing the load is better than having the strength. Honor is good up to the point that it becomes pride or self delusion. Of course it also works backwards. I am strong enough to persevere. Sometimes the windmills are dragons in disguise.

Thanks to Nathan for sharing his ink here on Tattoosday. Be sure to check out his ink blog here. Who knows, may be you'll see a post by yours truly over there one of these days...