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The thing about Getting Tattoos is only the *idea* of it is truly spontaneous. The march to the shop, assuming you get that far, is still pretty genuinely impulsive. But the space between idea and completion – and there’s usually a lot – is not leak-proof, and the energy will inevitably drain right out. By the end of it you will be tired and feel some remorse, even if the tattoo itself turned out great. There’s something wistful about the whole thing, as we’ll see in the next few pages. |
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A lot of the comic commentaries are like
"Happiness is thin and brittle, like the shell of an egg. Except, instead ofprotecting a baby bird, it simply holds back inevitable despair. Also Valerie did an AMAZING job with this page! I can thank her enough!"
Overall, this has been really fun!
theres something about a crowd of friends cheering your name as you march toward the tattoo parlor in the middle of the night that i really want and im gonna work my ass off to get it until i realize i dont have to work that hard and then i'll naturally achieve this.
hopefully before im 30, but who knows ¯_(?)_/¯
Someone asked me once what it was like to be in your 30's. I can only speak for being in my early thirties, but I responded something to the effect of:
"There were so many epic moments in my twenties – epic achievements (graduating school, living abroad, my first job), epic parties (telling all your friends you love them so much for the first time)…Being older, I try to recreate those moments and they just feel hollow."
This is one of those epic moments – I've been where Larry is and it's hard to try and recreate that. But a tattoo is a nice memento. All I have are some scrapbook entries and digital photos I have no idea what to do with or how to organize.
It's kind of sad, but I'm getting used to it and trying my best to seize the opportunities I have rather than focus on trying to recreate what it USED to be like. I'm laughing now at Larry's friends calling him old multiple times. ^^; How silly when you think about it!
The things that made you happy back in the day are important – at the very least they are, if they're still things that make you happy now.
i think the introspection of growing older for me was, in a big part, figuring out what exactly "things that make me happy" were. It wasn't the *entire* trapping of having a big party, or going out and drinking, or the whole process of getting laid. The conclusion I ended up coming to was that there was a nugget in all that awkward and hasty stuff that I was chasing, and to find ways to create that nugget again in ways that match my current, evolved values. (evolved for the better? for the worse?)
Love. Accomplishment. Friendship. Feeling wanted. Feeling connected. In the end it was such things – things that I'm still really trying to figure out fully. But if we can figure it out – hell it feels like we'll be well on the road to keeping happy in the way we used to be, without destroying ourselves by walking down irrelevant roads to get there.
May we all be so lucky, at least!
I love that Larry's expression is existentially, unflinchingly, a man who immediately regrets this decision.
Hey, it's a Cody cameo! I guess it's a good sign for Will that the cameo is largely uneventful
I figured you just have to drink enough to exist outwith time (see Ernst Junger) and then the drunk tattoo happens all at once. Relatively.