Tattoo

On a New Jersey Transit bus ride from Manhattan to Ft. Lee a few weeks ago, the man in the seat next to me – Asian, mid-twenties, sloppily dressed in ill-fitting jeans and a t-shirt, but otherwise clean-cut -- was idly paging through an issue of Tattoo magazine. I couldn’t help looking over. One two-page spread somewhere around the middle of the magazine featured images of tattoo designs, chosen presumably for their distinctiveness or skillfull execution. The image in the upper left-hand corner immediately caught my attention. It was a picture of a young woman from the waist up, dressed in a white tank top, leaning slightly to one side. Her stylishly bobbed hair was rendered in a convincing punky green, her nails raven-black. She was covering her mouth with her left hand. The image, at least as it appeared on the page, showed a stunning precision, but what caught my attention the most was the unbelievable expressiveness of the woman’s eyes and face. Her eyes – blue – were obviously on the verge of tears, and her faced registered an unmistakable shock. I could easily picture her mouth, behind that hand, to be partially open in a quiet gasp. She had a clear look of instant but major devastation. This wasn’t just a great tattoo, it was excellent art. Obviously someone’s private, and very deeply felt, tragedy, depicted on an unusual choice of canvas.