I had a flurry of interest in cover-over tattoo web sites, specialists in transforming one bad symbol into, presumably, a less bad symbol. It underscores something about the tattoo that seems contrary to the intentions behind it. Not only do people change but so do the nature of symbols, which are never strictly personal in any case.

The body is in flux too, and the physical tattoo itself, fading, blurring. Which makes it all seem comic in a way; it’s already so hard to say what you mean, it seems that a tattoo is taken as an opportunity to control meaning by inscribing it on the one thing a person can claim to own for sure. Why doesn’t it work that way?

Also, can I request in my will to receive a full face tattoo after death? It wouldn’t hurt! And it’s a much more pleasant thought for an open casket funeral that down sad waxy “naturalistic”