A Tattoo Story

I got a new tattoo. People have been asking about it, so I figured I'd explain. It's on my forearm and it looks like this:

I'd have flexed or something, but honestly, this is as attractive as a forearm can be. 

Yes, that's my handwriting. I couldn't find a font that I liked that got the spacing right without weird letter size manipulations and, anyway, if you know the story of the quote, it makes sense that it's handwritten. The tattoo artist asked me if it was something I wrote, actually, and I had to tell him no, it's from V for Vendetta.

Have you seen V for Vendetta? If yes, you can skip this paragraph. If no, either go watch it and come back or read this paragraph and call it day, because I don't want to spoil the movie for you. Basically, there's a character in the movie that could have chosen bitterness and despair but instead focuses on the goodness in life. And I liked that a lot. My tattoo is a reminder to me to believe in goodness. Thanks for reading! I hope you get some goodness in your day today, like getting to pet a puppy, if petting a puppy is a thing you like doing!

gif found here

Okay, now that it's just us movie buffs here, let's talk V. I think V's vendetta hangs on Valerie's story. These scenes are the real turning point of the movie, or at the very least, what leads to it. If it's been a while, Valerie is the actress who was next door to V when V was imprisoned at Larkhill who wrote her life story down on the toilet paper in her cell and passed it over to V. Most of Valerie's story is told in flashback while Evey (Natalie Portman's character) is being fake-imprisoned by V. V has a picture of Valerie and her roses in a kind of shrine at his place that he shows Evey to prove to her that Valerie's story was real.

The full quote comes at the end of Valerie's flashback and goes like this:

It seems strange that my life should end in such a terrible place, but for three years I had roses and apologized to no one. I shall die here. Every inch of me shall perish. Every inch, but one. An inch. It is small and it is fragile and it is the only thing in the world worth having. We must never lose it or give it away. We must NEVER let them take it from us. I hope that whoever you are, you escape this place. I hope that the worlds turns, and that things get better. But what I hope most of all is that you understand what I mean when I tell you that, even though I do not know you, and even though I may never meet you, laugh with you, cry with you, or kiss you, I love you. With all my heart, I love you. Valerie. 

So to me, "But for three years I had roses" is acceptance of circumstances outside of one's control wrapped up in an unassailable belief in the goodness in our lives, no matter how small that goodness might seem when the world takes from us. Goodness is the part of the human spirit that endures. These words, the words in my tattoo, they're the words of someone who lost so much and remained capable of love- directionless, unearned love. V might not win the day through patient, nonviolent methods like we'd ostensibly want our heroes to, but the story of a person who could cling to that inch, to the hope for goodness for others and the remembrance of the goodness given to them, that story confirmed a revolution, a fight for freedom, and a trust in people, even the small scared people who let evil grow in the first place. In V's messy fictional world, the thing that brought about change for the better was one person's belief in the existence of goodness.

When I was in high school and college, I used to write grace on my left wrist, right below a freckle I have there, because I liked the idea of needing a reminder of God throughout the day and grace felt like the right reminder. I'm going to say it again: I liked the idea of needing a reminder. I liked the idea of the attention it'd get me, how deep I'd seem, how inspiring it would be that out of all the things I could have picked to put on my body, I picked grace, a concept with, just, so much theological and personal depth. I liked the idea of being that person, the kind of person who needed a reminder, someone with depth and experiences.

Look, I believe that we can see the goodness of creation everywhere, that even though humans fell, the goodness we were given when we were made still finds its way through. We shine and there's only so much life can do to dampen that. We get these ideas in our heads, these thoughts telling us all sorts of things: that we're not worthy, that other people aren't worthy, that our glow is worth more than theirs, that it's worth less, that it's not worth saving. I personally have this idea that if my glow isn't muted enough, I won't be taken seriously and I know that's wrong, but listen, despite everything else that I may think, I believe in love. I believe in goodness. I believe that there's goodness in the world and in my life.

I just need a reminder of that sometimes.

Sometimes daily.

And I've been thinking about this for a while now, about what mantra I needed to have emblazoned onto my skin to remind me of who I want to be and what I want to believe is true. And I've thought about grace, but that no longer has the same appeal. Grace should be evidenced in my actions and my heart, not on my skin. But when I saw this part of V for Vendetta this year, it clicked. It was faith and love and grace and goodness active in a messy world and I knew that this was what I had been looking for. I repeated it to myself through the rest of the movie. It rang in my head for days. It's as true as anything I've ever heard in a sanctuary. Not to say that those sanctuary words aren't true or are less true or anything like that. It's not a negative comparison. It's just that I don't think that God limits God's goodness to church people. It wouldn't get very far if God did.

So yeah, I think that covers it. I got this tattoo so I could remind myself of goodness, human and otherwise.

Maybe I should just start saying that.