Word Made Flesh

Could something as messy as my living, breathing identity be captured in a tattoo’s ink?

“I” am a hundred and fifty-odd pounds of warm brain, nerves and crimson blood and sensations running through every inch of me. I am a single pulsing system that is conscious of itself, and of the sunlight, and of the wind hushing and stirring my hair. My body has gut instincts; my emotions live in my lungs, my intestines. My fingertips are the distal ends of my mind.

For years I wanted to celebrate this self by marking my flesh with a tattoo. Its ink would be a declaration of self-possession: “Be warned, world, this body you see is also a mind.”

A tattoo, but of what? Could something as messy as my living, breathing identity have its essence captured in ink?