The tattoo attracts and also repels precisely because it is different

It was a hard choice for a title today, I like these quotes too:

The world is divided into two kinds of people:  those who have tattoos, and those who are afraid of people with tattoos  ~Author Unknown

Ink to paper is thoughtful
Ink to flesh, hard-core.
If Shakespeare were a tattooist
We'd appreciate body art more ~Carrie Latet

Your body is a temple, but how long can you live in the same house before you redecorate?  ~Author Unknown
Not one great country can be named, from the polar regions in the north to New Zealand in the south, in which the aborigines do not tattoo themselves.  ~Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man

When the designs are chosen with care, tattoos have a power and magic all their own.  They decorate the body but they also enhance the soul.  ~Michelle Delio

Okay, no more tattoo quotes...for now.

I've been doing homework for one of my tafe subject, desktop publishing, and for a few of the assessments, you had to pick a subject and make into a newsletter, write articles about, blah blah blah.

So, I picked tattooing. 

For me, I've never seen tattooing as something dirty, I'm not using tattoos to 'fill the emptiness' of my life. I don't see it as something against 'God' or religion, for me tattooing is kind of like a religion.

When most people think about body art and getting saggy and old and wrinkly, they seem...I don't know, disgusted with the thought of tattoos fading, stretching, become something other than they were. I like the idea of it. I look forward to seeing what colour my skin will be, what shapes and countours the pictures on me will take in ten, twenty, fifty years time.

I know that people still think of them as dirty, associated with bikers and gangs and unclean back rooms in bars and seedy parlours.

I just find it ridiculous that some people think that tattoos are just...used to fill a hole, that someone's not comfortable with themselves, that they don't have any self esteem - and that's why they get tattoos.

I think that is a load of shit.

My tattoos give me a self-confidence boost. They make me feel better about myself, because now I have something of beauty on me. Now I have something worthy of being seen on my skin. Now I have something that represents me and my personality more than my 'normal' body ever has.

Now I have an excuse to show myself off a bit. Because I wouldn't do it normally.

I can picture hypothetical tattoos on myself, where they'll sit, what colours they'll be, what would look good next to it, surrounding it with other pictures. Makes me want another one even more now, 4 weeks and 2 days to go. 

Tattoos aren't permanent. They really aren't, because we don't live forever. They fade, they can be removed, they can be cut out. We die and we don't take our bodies with us. How can your soul take something with you that's attached to your body?