you were the same as me, but you wised up,

to bloom, to decay (the reasons for the whys),

i am getting a tattoo, and this is mostly an argument to convince my mother that it is not 1. stupid, 2. meaningless, 3. regrettable.

there are a few things that tattoos represent: they represent a moment in time, a period in your life when you deemed this particular thing important to you enough to have it permanently embedded in your skin. they then represent the thing in which you are getting tattooed- and all its variations and interpretations. and lastly, it represents a tattoo. an alternation. a piece of your mind on display always, a spectacle, a confession, a means of artistic expression. and sometimes it also represents a mistake, one in which you hopefully learn from. 

to be more specific, the tattoo in which i am getting, “to bloom, to decay,” represents the life cycle of all things- be them living creatures or mere extensions of technological developments. all things are born, and all things will die, and then other things will be born again. this is one of the most beautiful and terrifying realities of all. i think a life, or a relationship, or a career, or a friendship, or an emotion, or a period of time can be lived in two ways, the beginning of it can be the bloom- the birth, the beauty, and then the rest of it can be the slow and kind of silent decay, or you can look at most of it (from the beginning right to the end) as one long season of bloomage until the very end when it is over and the aftermath is decay. i’d like to think the latter is more appealing. or you could consider the many seasonal blooms and monthly decays- the constant flux of things, flux of happiness and elation, and sadness and dissolution. and in order for there to be one there must be the other. and lastly it represents loosely the philosophy of eternal recurrence, the idea that time plays out in a cyclical motion rather than a continuum going straight forward always. life laps around, what starts as soil and grows and lives then returns to the earth again rotting, decomposing, nourishing new growth.

ultimately, it is my way of interpreting life, and preparing myself for death. a tattoo may be “‘permanent” but life is so very not.