Hebrew on the Q Train (Tattoosday Plays the Alphabet Game)

After the N train, next up was the Q train (no O or P in the MTAlphabet).

3:55 P.M. Off of the N train at Canal Street.

3:57 P.M. On a northbound Q train at Canal Street.

4:15 P.M. Doubts creeping in, just about decided that this may be it. Do the Q train and then take the R train all the way home and hope for a tattoo. I would fall short of the last three lettered trains (S, w and Z).

4:18 P.M. Got off the Q at 72nd Street. Will head back on a southbound Q. This is one of the new stations on the Second Avenue subway line and they have charging docks for cell phones. My battery is at 23%.

4:35 P.M. After a brief recharge I am back on a Q headed south toward Brooklyn. I meet Joram, who piqued my interest with this tattoo in Hebrew on his forearm:

Despite my basic rudimentary knowledge of Hebrew, I couldn't quite place what this tattoo says, so I asked.

Joram told me that it means "Jesus is my Saviour," but that he left some elements off.

Had this been any other day, I may have deferred on this tattoo, but it is part of the alphabet game experiment.

It is also a perfect example of why I don't often feature tattoos in other languages. I don't know what this actually says, if anything, in Hebrew, but the name of Jesus, as far as I can tell, doesn't even appear correctly in the tattoo. In fact, this is Jesus' name in Hebrew:

In the tattoo, the closest thing to that is the word on the far left. However, it is missing a letter and, to make matters worse, is written backwards, from left to right, when, in fact Hebrew is read from right to left..

Nonetheless, the tattoo holds the meaning for Joram, and, ultimately, that is what is most important.

Thanks to Joram for sharing his work tattoo with us on Tattoosday.

The full Alphabet game can be revisited in the original post here.

Check out the next post to see if I threw in the towel after the R train, or if I persevered and finished the alphabet!

This entry is ©2017 Tattoosday.

If you are seeing this on another website other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

Anniversary Ink

Back at the beginning of April, when Tattoosday was celebrating National Poetry Month, my wife Melanie and I were celebrating our twentieth wedding anniversary.

After Melanie's birthday tattoo (here), she was eager for another. We decided on something fairly traditional, as Jewish tattoos go, we wanted to get the phrase אני לדודי ודודי לי,which is from the Song of Songs in the Old Testament. It translates to "I am my Beloved's, My Beloved is Mine."

When we got married in April 1995, we decided on matching wedding rings that looked like this:

The phrase is engraved as part of the design circling the ring.

So we knew that this was going to be our tattoo:

Melanie was thinking about wrapping it around her ankle, and I was thinking how I could make it slightly different.

The reason this was so important to Melanie, and why it made such sense as a twentieth anniversary gift, is that her original wedding ring had been lost in the last decade. She had lost a lot of weight and the ring was loose. For our tenth anniversary, I had given her two thin rings to go on either side of the wedding band, which held it in place. However, one of the stones had come loose in one of the smaller rings and when it was being repaired, Melanie's band fell off, somewhere between Chelsea Piers and South Brooklyn. The needle in the haystack story did not end with a miraculous recovery of her ring.

So, we knew what we wanted, the next question was where to go. Who should tattoo us? This wasn't an elaborate tattoo design, but then again, lettering is deceptively challenging, especially if the tattoo is not a straight line on a flat surface.

I put on my Tattoosday thinking cap and reached out to several people, one of whom was Kevin Wilson, shop manager at Sacred Tattoo  in Manhattan. Sacred has top-notch artists and he said he definitely had confidence in whoever would be available on our anniversary.

Melanie met me after work and we headed to Sacred, which was relatively close - another bonus. When we arrived, Kevin greeted us warmly and introduced us to Gunny, who would be our artist.

After some discussion about size and placement, the tattoo was much bigger than I originally imagined and it had moved from her ankle to her right wrist. Melanie went first.

Gunny placing the stencil around Melanie's wrist

Gunny set to work, quickly and efficiently...

Gunny at work on Melanie's wrist

Before you know it, he was done, completing a solid and bold circle of Hebrew lettering around her wrist.

Here's a collage of what it looks like:

Next, it was my turn.

I didn't want anything circling my wrist or ankle, and I wanted something slightly different, yet the same.A little research resulted in the discovery of a design that comprised of the same words, but in a slightly different font and shape. I opted for it over my heart:

This has a more tribal look to it, but I'm pleased immensely. It's also in a circle, which recalls a ring in its shape. And, of course, it's over my heart.

Melanie jokes that she can't lose this ring. Neither can I. The two tattoos were the perfect anniversary gift for the likes of us!

Thanks to Kevin and Gunny at Sacred Tattoo for making this all happen! And thanks to Melanie for twenty years of marriage and patiently waiting for this post to appear on Tattoosday!

Be sure to visit Gunny on his web page here, as well as on Instagram here, and check out the photography Kevin has been doing here. Visit Sacred Tattoo and Gallery here. Talent abounds!

This entry is ©2015 Tattoosday.

If you are seeing this on another website other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

Evan J. Peterson's Truth on the Tattooed Poets Project

Our next tattooed poet is Evan J. Peterson, whose tattoo resonates with the one we posted earlier today, and with the solemnity of this Day of Remembrance:

Evan tells us:

"This tattoo is my first and only tattoo so far. It's Hebrew for 'Truth.' It's Emet, read from wrist to elbow. This is also one version of the Kabbalah spell that brings a golem to life. Golems are Jewish protector spirits created by animating clay, imbuing lifeless matter with divine energy. Adam of Eden was the first golem, according to some legends. I designed the art nouveau font myself, and it was perfected and transferred to my body by Roni Falgout at Hidden Hand Tattoo in Seattle, Washington. This tattoo is a prayer for Truth, to be truthful to myself and to others. I got it to commemorate 10 years being best friends with my main man Mykol, to celebrate my MFA and first finished manuscript (which has a lot to do with golems), and to mark my entry into recovery from addiction. It's somewhat ironic that I have Jewish ancestry, which is supposed to make tattoos unacceptable, but my tattoo is in Hebrew as a way of reminding me of those very ancestors. No regrets."

Evan also shared this poem with us:

The Wunderkammer (Frankenstein's Monster Taking Inventory)

My body museum, haunted by its own curiosities—

            a cabinet of wonders: tumescent chest,

            a cavity of breakthroughs, bursting;

this torso, cage of ribs, the bird inside grown wan

            since the clipping, stuffed now with batting,

            displayed like the Ashmole dodo,

the double heart clenching, bifid, a wounded

            gypsy moth pumping asymmetrical wings,

            the halves joined not by love but wire;

all of this, and yet no name;

that abdomen, distended by marvels, organs in pairs,

            trios, like the shared trunk of joined twins,

            straining the stitches to hold it all in;

           

three children’s livers, pristine, unmarked by absinthe,

            unsoured by laudanum, three milk-fed

            miracles, drawing poisons from this well;

the extra pancreas, spleens, three kidneys,

            the small intestine shortened to make room

            and allow for quick excretion;

all of this, and yet no name;

this auxiliary breast, fat lurker beneath the pectoral,

            leathery nipple, hot as a witch’s tit in a copper

            brazier, to suckle infernal familiars;

an extra lung, sponge for oxygen, drawing plenty,

            fuel for the flames at the core, goblin forge,

            a forest fire struck by one lucky bolt of light;

this skull inscribed, Hebrew scratched on the inside,

            illuminated by the flash: ת מ א , Emet, Truth,

            to crack open and rub off one glyph for Death;

all of this, and yet no name;

the brain in its cradle, swollen, backed up to the wall,

            the caul pinched together, cauterized, a barrier

            between tissue and fluid, envelope of genius;

whole corpus a jar of captured lightning, ultraviolet,

            the nerves like taut wires, humming

            seven feet from brain to heels–

here is my body, my rarae aves, my cartography.

            Here is called only Terra Incognita. Here

            be monsters.

~ ~ ~

Evan J. Peterson is author of Skin Job (Minor Arcana Press, 2012) and The Midnight Channel (Babel/Salvage Press, 2013) and volume editor of the Lambda Literary Award-nominated Gay City 5: Ghosts in Gaslight, Monsters in Steam (Minor Arcana Press & Gay City Health Project, 2013). His poetry, fiction, journalism, and criticism have appeared in Weird Tales, The Stranger, The Rumpus, Assaracus, Nailed, Court Green, and Aim for the Head: An Anthology of Zombie Poetry, from which his poetry was excerpted in The New York Times.

Thanks to Evan for sharing his tattoo and poem with us on The Tattooed Poets Project on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2014 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoo are reprinted with the poet's permission.

If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

Tattoos I Love: Melanie's Tribute to Our Family

How is it possible that my lovely wife Melanie, who celebrates her birthday today, has a tattoo that hasn't graced these pages? It just is, I guess, but in celebration of her special day, let's all look at my favorite tattoo of her collection:

This photo was taken shortly after it was inked by the awesome Peter Cavorsi, owner of Body Art Studios in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, many five or six years ago.

The center of the piece is a Star of David with the Hebrew word חי (Chai) in the center. The design is inspired by this necklace Melanie has:

The Hebrew words encircling the center design element are the Hebrew names of our family members: Melanie's, mine, and those of our two daughters.

When Melanie came up with the concept of the whole piece, she wanted to make sure she got the Hebrew correct, so she met with a friend of ours who is a rabbi. He agreed, in a very rabbinical way, to provide her with the Hebrew lettering on the condition that Melanie would meet with him and study why tattooing is considered by many to be forbidden in Judaism. She agreed, of course, and the lesson proves valuable whenever she feels like challenging those who challenge her on why Jews shouldn't get inked. Note this 2008 piece from the New York Times about Jews and Tattoos.

One technical note: I was in charge of proofreading the final design before the stencil was made, and I missed the fact that, in one of our daughter's Hebrew names, which is comprised of three names, the second and third names run together, a detail missed by many, but proof that, even when you think you know something's perfect, you should triple-check. This small technical error doesn't make the tattoo any less awesome, in my opinion.

Then again, I'm biased, because it's a beautiful tattoo on the woman I love and, well, she chose to ink my Hebrew name on her flesh, along with our awesome children, as well.

So, on this, Melanie's birthday, I want to share her tattoo and wish her a wonderful day.

I love you Melanie, and I love your tattoos!

This entry is ©2014 Tattoosday.

If you are seeing this on another website other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

The Tattooed Poets Project: Michael Henry Lee

Our next tattooed poet is Michael Henry Lee.

We have been fortunate to be able to share Michael's work in two previous years, so this post makes him our first three-time contributor. This is the photo he sent:

Photo by Chris Bodor

Michael sent along this explanation of the tattoo:

"...[This] latest addition to a thirty plus year work in progress is in Hebrew and translates: Jehovah Jireh or the Lord sees, also translated, the Lord is my provider. Jehovah Jireh is the first personal name of God that appears in the Torah and the Old Testament. Flames representing God’s first appearance to Moses in a burning bush, and Romans 6:23 a key verse from the New Testament ties the whole piece together.

The most compelling element of the story is the artist who has done all Mr. Lee’s work since he moved to Florida nine years ago. Tattoo Mike; sole owner and operator of The Tattoo Garden in St. Augustine Beach Fl., was involved in a bad motorcycle accident in Sept. 2012 just a few months after completing Michael’s tattoo. As a result of the accident he lost his left leg from the knee down and required resuscitation three separate times that night. He miraculously survived, is back to work and will [have] most likely completed an awesome three piece koi design for Michael Henry Lee about the time this is posted on Tattoosday."

Personally, I always look forward to seeing what Michael will send, and this year, he did not disappoint, sending along the following haiku:

Leonid showers-
the sky continues to fall
on star at a time

night fall-
in my dreams
there’s still time

winter solstice
snowy egrets
knee deep in the moon

so so moon
the right moment
passes between two stones

climate change
another sweater
goes to good will

The preceding poems in order of appearance: 1st place in the 2012 Haiku Foundation’s Haiku Now Contest in the traditional category, and runner up in the modern category, first appeared in The Mainichi Daily News, Mu Haiku Journal IV, and Haiku News respectively.

Michael lives with his wife Sarah of over thirty years, two cats, and numerous bonsai trees in the nation's oldest city. His work has appeared in The Heron's Nest, Frogpond, Haiku News, Icebox, Berry Blue Haiku, One Hundred Gourds, Mainichi Daily News, Haiku Ramblings, and the anthology, Dreams Wander On: Contemporary Poems of Death Awareness [edited by Robert Epstein] (Modern English Tanka Press, 2011).

Thanks to Michael for his continuing contributions to and support of the Tattooed Poets Project on Tattoosday. You can see his previous entries here: 2012 and 2011.

This entry is ©2013 Tattoosday. The poems and tattoo are reprinted with the poet's permission.

If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

The Tattooed Poets Project - Heather Truett

Up next on the Tattooed Poets Project is Heather Truett, who sent us this photo:

along with a shot of the tattooist at work:

These may appear as three seemingly simple Hebrew letters, but there is more to this piece than just a Hebrew word, as Heather elaborates:

“The tattoo was a 27th birthday gift from a girlfriend I have known since I was 6 and she was 3. We went together. She got a Latin phrase in a beautiful script and I chose this. I had been planning a tattoo to somehow commemorate a friend who died and my own battle with depression. The verse in scripture that speaks most to me is Isaiah 61:3, which includes the phrase ‘beauty for ashes.’ The girl I wanted to commemorate, Natalie, also loved the verse. On a whim, I looked the verse up in Hebrew. I always love following a verse back to its origin and trying to understand what the words actually meant to the writer, rather than placing all trust in modern translation. When I realized the Hebrew word used to mean beauty in that verse actually means, ‘a crown of beauty,’ as in, a young girl being crowned queen and given honor and status in society, I knew I had my tattoo.

You see, every year, on the anniversary of the day Natalie died, her friends around the world don tiaras and wear them wherever they go. We paint our toenails purple, as she loved to do, and we drink a Diet Coke in her honor. There are other rituals, but these are the big three. To find the word ‘crown’ hidden there in my verse left me in tears, good tears, the kind of crying you do when someone at last understands exactly who you are and what you mean to them. I printed and double-checked the Hebrew lettering and took it with me to Devine Street Tattoo on a visit to Columbia, SC. It's not fancy, just three letters. But those three letters say so much to me every time I look at them. I placed the word on the inside of my left ankle, so when I look down or cross my legs, I see the tattoo. I don't mind showing it to other people, and I love telling how I chose it and why I got it, but it is, ultimately, for me and me alone, so I wanted it in a place easy for me to see."

By way of a poem, Heather submitted this:

My Brother is the Poem

My brother is the poem that exists,
still busily writing itself
in the hills of my hometown.
He leaves for work, welding
in leather and heat and without
a single complaint, because, hell!
He needs the job.
He strings out verse and stanza,
tripping over the meter
on seventy acres of God's creation.
Don't let them mine you too,
Big Brother.

It's with rhythm and flow that
he pays the bills and loves the wife and
suffers the pain of parenthood that stabs
with its cliche sword, double-edged.
Who knew? Who predicted
snowflakes and razorblades?
My brother, cigarette lit and smoke circling,
is the poetry falling
to earth, right there,
in Eastern Kentucky, while I
only call myself a poet, writing
in the air conditioned suburb, pretending
I got out, when I never did,

not really, anyhow.

Years pass and miles unroll like
so much butcher paper
down the holler, but my body still grows roots
back home, there, in Nat's Creek,
Daniel's Creek, Homer's trailer,
white house with black shutters,
minnow fishing, snake killing,
coal mining with the black lung,
family and the most Primitive of
Baptist churches, where
my soul gets fed, and only then
can the poem
grow branches.

~ ~ ~

 Heather Truett describes herself as “Hill-born, a coal miner's granddaughter, a brilliant spark of brain with a wee bit of crazy thrown in for good measure, a writer, a poet, a wife in the bizarre world of the church, wearer of silver tiaras and painter of purple toenails, I am me. I have published poetry, essays and articles in the past. My credits include: The Mom Egg, The Paintsville Herald, Jackson Free Press, Slugfest Ltd, Abundance Press, The Invitation Tupelo, Busy Parents Online, Mommy Tales, Just For Mom and other publications (more info available on my website, www.madamerubies.com). I am currently a homeschooling Mom to a special needs child and the wife of a youth minister in Tupelo, Mississippi. I have taught poetry workshops in schools and for the homeschool co-op we participate in each semester.” You can also check out her website, madamerubieswrites.blogspot.com.

Thanks to Heather for her contribution to the Tattooed Poets Project!

This entry is ©2012 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoo are reprinted with the poet's permission. 


If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

The Tattooed Poets Project: Sue Swartz

Today's tattooed poet, Sue Swartz, hails from Bloomington, Indiana, and offers up her forearm for all the world to see:

Photo by John Narmontas

Sue explains:

This is a 2-part tattoo story. On my 54^th birthday, I had the Hebrew word for truth (emet) imprinted on my right (i.e., writing) forearm in traditional black Torah script. I wanted a useful reminder for my art; also the word contains one letter that is a stand-in for life/God and two others that spell out the word “dead”. Okay, it was a little heavy. Two years later, this past November, when I couldn’t take looking at the damn truth anymore, Dina Verplank of Voluta Tattoo in Indianapolis beautified the baldness of the lone word with a branch from the Tree of Life and a spiral/root system.

Photo by John Narmontas

 And Sue offers up this poem:

MID-LIFE

Damn. Another 3 a.m. flying dream.

This time I’m on a cement slab hurtling toward over-grown lawns

covered with large plastic pigs and spiked coat hangers.

This is not what normal people dream.

Awake, I tilt (normal, not normal) on a giant seesaw of guilt

by association and realize:

I might not really know what normal is—

My dead – crazy bastards every one – left far too many clues,

though not one legible note of navigational instruction.

Minds overtaken by spirals and whirligigs, Greek letters

and the rising price of toilet paper, they wore the warp & weave

of their affliction stoically.

Seamlessly, one might say, and with understated finesse.

Running off to Florida on a Tuesday-morning whim:

In the realm of normal.

Snapped-on pills for breakfast:

Mildly normal.

Washing, washing again, again, again. Refusing to shake

the hand of strangers:

Undeniably normal (well, yeah – you never know

who’s got what).

With garments torn & heads made bare, they bob in and out

of traffic, sit close to me in restaurants, carefully chewing

with their electrode mouths.

My dead have secrets. That much is abundantly clear.

I listen for whispers of their generous madness, find

they’ve come while I’m asleep. Bad timing is all I’ve got.

That, and fingerprints left on the towels.

No, I don’t shush them away: then I’d lose the true nature

of everything. If I don’t know what normal is, why not

claim these people as kin?

How else to name my own impurities and small derangements?

~ ~ ~

Sue Swartz is a poet, hired-gun-political writer, amateur ballroom dancer, favored grandparent, social justice activist, occasional yogini, and creator of alternative Jewish ritual. Her work has been published in Cutthroat Magazine, Lilith, 5 a.m., SmartishPace, and elsewhere. She wishes she had a book you could buy. You can find her blog Awkward Offerings at http://swartzsue.wordpress.com/. She makes her home in Bloomington, Indiana and believes that Leviticus (You are not to make gashes in your flesh for the dead nor incise marks on yourself.) goes a bit overboard.

Thanks to Sue for sharing her truthful tattoo with us here on Tattoosday! 

This entry is ©2011 Tattoosday. The poem is reprinted here with the permission of the author.

If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

 

Celina's Tattoo Gives Her Strength and Courage

Last month, I received a phone call when I was walking through the Borders at 2 Penn Plaza. I sat down in one of those comfy chairs and noticed, once I had finished speaking on the phone, that the young lady sitting next to me had an interesting tattoo on her right wrist. I asked her about it and Celina kindly shared it with us here:

Celina explained that she had originally hoped to have this done in Aramaic, but that she and her artist couldn't find the proper script, so she chose this one instead. It's an old Hebrew script, which I can recognize a significant part of, thanks to my many years of Hebrew school in Hawai'i.

The words translate to "Be strong and courageous," from Deuteronomy 31:6:

"Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the LORD your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you."

The Hebrew phrase,     
 חִזְקוּ וְאִמְצוּ
is spoken by Moses, on behalf of God, addressing the Israelites after they have fled Egypt and are about to embark on the journey that takes forty years and eventually leads them to the Promised Land.

This phrase resonated with Celina, who had this tattoo done before she moved to New York from the San Francisco Bay area, and was about to embark on a journey into the unknown.

She credited the artist Chris Evans, in Santa Cruz, California, with inking this tattoo.

Thanks to Celina for sharing this tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

Tehila's Amazing Tattoos Rest Deep in Her Faith

After my wife got her "13" tattoo (story here), we had some time to kill before our dinner reservations at 7:00 pm. So, we headed to Chelsea, then walked down 23rd Street to the Housing Works Thrift Shop.

It was there, while browsing, that I met Tehila, who was visiting from Washington, D.C. It was this tattoo that jumped out at me:


Quite an elaborate neck tattoo, which was in part designed by her mother, from her birth announcement. The quote, "Do justly, walk humbly, love mercy," is from the book of Micah (Chapter 6, Verse 8) in the Old Testament.

The complete passage from the King James Version is

He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?

Tehila, however, had another tattoo to show me. She took off her jacket and rolled up her right sleeve.

On her inner forearm was this amazing hamsa tattoo:


Unfortunately, the photo doesn't do the piece justice, as the prayers, in Hebrew, circle the arm completely. One of the prayers is from the Amidah. I generally shy away from taking pictures of pieces that wrap around the arms, for fear of not being able to capture the full spirit of the tattoo. But in this case, the work was so lovely, I couldn't resist.



Tattoos with Hebrew writing have appeared previously on Tattoosday here. I have featured a hamsa tattoo previously here.

The pieces are credited to Imaani K. Brown and Chris Menhah at Pinz-N-Needlez in D.C. Chris inked the Hamsah and Imaani is responsible for the neck piece and the Hebrew text the wraps around the forearm.


Wondrous thanks to Tehila for sharing these beautiful tattoos here on Tattoosday!

What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Stronger

I ran into Enrique in front of the Borders at Penn Plaza, a prime tattoo-spotting location, as regular readers of Tattoosday know.

He sported three tattoos, including this fresh replica of his wings from the Air Force, where he was an E3 Airman 1st Class:


Here's a sample of what this tattoo is based upon:
This piece, along with the others, was inked by Sandy at Body Art in Manhattan. When the picture was taken, the ink was still drying, having been tattooed only a few days earlier.

Most interesting to me was the line of Hebrew on the back of Enrique's bicep (seen at the beginning of the post)

מה שלא הורג מכשל

A nod to his father, who was in the Israel Defense Forces, the Hebrew translates to "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger". Interesting, there's a whole discussion of this phrase in Hebrew here.

Enrique's third piece is still a work in progress, so is not pictured here, but the central element seems to be a traditional naval anchor in the middle of his left forearm.

Thanks to Enrique for taking the time to talk to me about his ink, and sharing it here on Tattoosday!

The Return of Danielle's Ink

I first ran into Danielle here, back in the Fall of '07.

Her upper arm tattoo jumped out at me then, as it isn't often you see Hawaiian words in Broolyn, and it jumped out the other day, when I had just come off the subway.

Last time I saw her, she had a burn on her right forearm, close to her other tattoo. So I took a rain check and cashed it 7 months later.

What looks initially like a few squiggles is actually a more complex piece she designed herself.

Danielle is the feminine form of the name Daniel. She appreciates the meaning of her name, in Hebrew, which is "God is my Judge." She elaborated on her name by transforming it in a stylized fusing of the Hebrew and Aramaic script. One familiar with either language can see, deep down, the daled, nun, yud, lamed.

Very cool design.

This piece, like the Hawaiian inscription, was inked at Funcity Tattoo in the East Village. The artist was Joe.

Thanks again to Danielle for sharing her ink here on Tattoosday!