I was at the rec centre pool the other day, when a guy walked past in some very tight trunks. I wasn’t looking at his trunks, believe it or not, but his tattoos, which held all the old familiar phrases and bands of my youth, etched across his slender frame.
He’s my age, I thought, recognizing some of my album-cover favorites. Beneath his shoulders, in large black script : Carpe Diem.
I’m not sure when “Carpe Diem” became en vogue, but we were all saying it, or trying to live it at some point, because we were on student loans and thought we were invincible and generally behaved like idiots. I should speak for myself. I was an idiot. But many of the best stories of my youth can be summed up by that “devil may care” attitude we have shrugged off in favor of realistic and responsible roles. It’s true, when you think about it. Your stories, your very good ones, usually involve some level of just going for it, just seizing it.
Which is why I thank Jesus each day that YouTube came after my “time”.
Actually, not every day. Just when I remember, as in, when someone sends me a link to some idiotic antic on YouTube.
Still, I probably wouldn’t have written “Carpe Diem” largely, in script, right across my torso like a billboard. I’m all for seizing the day, if you think it through a little. Sure, seize the day, as long as you won’t get arrested. Guys who end up on alligator farms late at night, wasted? Rethink before seizing the day (or the alligator-see drunk alligator dude) Seize the day if you aren’t going to end up getting a Darwin award. Small swimming trunk man seized the day and got a big ass tattoo that said seize the day. That is seizing it, in a way.
I almost got a tattoo. I was trying to seize the day. I had a design picked out off a hippie tarot card that I liked, an intricate “tree of life” colorful swirl that would have ended up looking like a Rorschach’s inkblot. As I sat down in the chair, a very inked man gearing up to put needle to flesh, I noticed out of the corner of my eye…my car being towed away. Car tow=$100, tattoo=$125. I needed my car more than I needed a tattoo. I took it as a sign. “Wait,” I stated. “I’m not ready.”
I am still waiting to be ready.
I will get a tatoo, when the time is right, or I see a design that I want to look at forever on my body, even when I get all flabby and wrinkly.
Correction, more flabby and wrinkly. If I’m really clever I’ll design something that works WITH the rolls, like a pirate sea-shanty that discusses where the booty is. Or was, rather. Or a skier on some moguls, or directions, if I am getting surgery,
Cut here, remove this bit, etc.
I’ll have to think about it, before seizing.