Decorate Yourself

 

An excerpt from Big Magic...

 

.... I have a neighbour who gets tattoos all the time.

Her name is Eileen. She acquires new tattoos the way I might acquire a new pair of cheap earrings - just for the heck of it, just on a whim. She wakes up some mornings in a funk and announces, "I think I'll go get a new tattoo today." If you ask Eileen what kind of tattoo she's planning on getting, she'll say, "Oh, I dunno. I'll figure it out when I get to the tattoo shop. Or I'll let the artist surprise me."

 

Now, this woman is not a teenager with impulse-control issues. She's a grown woman, with adult children, who runs a successful business. She's also very cool, uniquely gorgeous, and one of the most free spirits I've ever met. When I asked her once how she could allow her body to be marked up so casually with permanent ink, she said, "Oh, but you misunderstood! It's not permanent. It's just temporary."

 

Confused, I asked, "you mean, all your tattoos are temporary?"

 

She smiled and said, "No, Liz. My tattoos are permanent; it's just my body that's temporary. So is yours. we're only here on earth for a short while, so I decided a long time ago that I wanted to decorate myself as playfully as I can, while I still have time."........

.....And so goes the book.