Tattoos

Summer is here and the tattoos are out. Our eyes meet in the metro and there’s a recognition, a recognition of something more. People who are searchers, adventurers, free. People who don’t want to conform to the system, people who don’t want to part of a herd of sheep, people who want to become something more. We recognise life for what it is, short, unpredictable and beautiful – so, so beautiful. We are unique and we are the same, we are each merely a speck of dust but together we can create a sandstorm big enough to move mountains. Mountains of people, mountains of problems, mountains of minds. We are the ones who look at people in the eyes and see, truly see the sparks flying at the centre of all the spinning rings, we are the ones who see the sparks, igniting fires, burning everything to ashes reigniting it all with the birth of the phoenixes. We are everything and nothing at the same time and no one recognises us. Everything can be wrong and nothing can feel right, but we let the darkness in, flooding our bodies, our hearts, like the black waters of the river Mavroneri, like the white waters of the Lethe, both able to hurt us more than one can imagine, until it feels unbearable but nothing isn’t bearable. We don’t try to build a boat to flee the flood, to save ourselves, to save humanity, because we know that the only way to stay alive, not to survive, but to remain living, is to embrace the waters, let them flow over us, and trust. We see all of that and more, in the flash of a spark in the eye of stranger across from us. We smile, knowingly, and are content, with the knowledge that our ink is telling the stories that words could never do, letting minds wander and wonder and sharing the beauty of our world when it seems like there’s none to be had.