'No hay camino, se hace camino al andar - There is no path, you make the path by walking'
- Antonio Machado
I have a tattoo. Not vast and complex - half a page of Finnegans Wake, but large enough to be noticed. Which of course is the point.
Sitting proudly on my left shoulder, a Botticelli shell tells the curious that “to walk is to gather treasure” which looks and sounds rather less prosaic in Spanish.
But why a tattoo, and why in so public a place?
The relationship we have with our bodies has never been and never will be balanced. Just as we seem to have reached a point of equilibrium the body lobs in a small incendiary device. Adolescence: a maelstrom of rage, desire, bad fashion choices and even worse poetry. Pregnancy: an El Nino of confusion, body morphing, elastic clothing and helpful advice. The Menopause: (and why ‘The’? Ah yes, rather like The Kraken) a monster of myriad tentacles, of roaring heat and plunging cold, of sentimental tears and outraged irritations.
And so, we carry the marks of our life: those imposed and those we impose. It’s an unequal contest and having a tattoo is but a small incendiary device lobbed back at my body. A little stand of defiance in the rising tide of change that is ageing.
How we see ourselves and how we are seen. How do we cope with that changing which is ageing?
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