body mods

Since I've killed the feed, this blog has gone back to screaming in the dark- a rather comfortable state of being for me, actually, particularly since I seem to be incapable of making public livejournal entries these days.

I still want to be covered in tattoos- but I find myself with a growing fondness for scars, and artistic scarification. I don't have many scars, which could lead me to the conclusion that I do not have the keloiding problems that run in my family. On the other hand, I also haven't been seriously injured, so I suppose there's no real way of knowing.

Scarification is a bit subtler than a tattoo, and a whole lot more tactile. I kind of like that.

I've been afraid of pain my whole life- seriously, tremblingly afraid of it. It's been the primary motivation of most of the stupid, hurtful shit I do to other people, and that's not exactly something I'm proud of. But pain is temporary, and knowing this intellectually doesn't necessarily equate to being able to put that knowledge to use in my life.

I want these things- these marks on my body- primarily because I think they're beautiful, in a visceral way that few other arts can approach. (If I were a pretentious philosopher, I would say body modification is the most Dionysiac of arts, but that's a tangent for another post.) I also want them because getting them would be a way of telling pain to go fuck itself, and of proving to myself that I can handle it.

Anyway. I'm still leaning towards something on my ribcage, because it's a large expanse of skin and it will never be visible unless I choose to show it to someone. It's also apparently one of the most painfull places to be tattooed, because the skin is so thin. *shrug* I think I'd go for something abstract, since that's not likely to become suddenly inapplicable to the rest of my life, and if it scars unevenly, it won't be rendered illegible.