Basta Ancora
[No. 57]
WHY DOES IT OFTEN FEEL SO GOOD TO FLIRT WITH DANGER, FLUTTERING THROUGH LIFE WITH WINGS SLIGHTLY SINGED BUT STILL ABLE TO FLY, LIKE ICARUS INCHING EVER CLOSER TO THE SUN?
“The things you do
Aren’t good for my health”
Depeche Mode
I got my first ink at Black Wave Tattoo on La Brea in LA. I was 19 years old and made out with the [notably older] tattoo artist. The piece is a dark green, abstract coupling of a Gemini sign and an eye that was placed on my lower back. Let’s just say today I am happy that it’s placed where I rarely see it.
I kept this from my parents.
Growing up, I was told that Jews don’t get tattoos. [You can’t be buried in a Jewish cemetery if you get tattooed] was a popular opinion, as well as [Marking your skin is disrespectful to our ancestors who were tattooed against their will in the Holocaust.] Yet, I was drawn to this body art. My itch to explore it burned holes in my thoughts.
My mom discovered it two years later during my recovery from thyroid cancer surgery. [What, are you hiding a tattoo?] she joked. INSERT LONG PAUSE. My dad’s reckoning came one day when he caught a glimpse as I was stepping out of his car.
Years later, my second tattoo came about on State Street in Santa Barbara. I’d had a baby and a double mastectomy within a year. Out with friends, we gave the Thai restaurant our names. Then we strolled into the tattoo place next door, and Jess and Betsy watched a scraggly-haired stoner scribble [BASTA ANCORA] across my back while we waited for our table. I had experienced crippling migraines and panic attacks at age 21, after cancer had rattled my sense of independence and trust in my bright young life. [Basta] means [enough] in Italian. [Ancora] means [more]. I wished to honor a decade during which I had far too often wanted to throw in the towel with a resounding enough! and instead had proven to myself that we humans have more capacity to survive than we think.
When I got home that night, my partner was shocked by the size of my new ink and the act of marking my skin without much thought or discussion. I, on the other hand, felt a renewed connection to my body, as I digested all that we together had endured.
I later had a full hysterectomy and an explant surgery to remove the breast implants that had felt like two meteorites dropped onto the planet of my chest. With each operation, I had given my body up to someone else’s hand. The scars and scar tissue made me feel, at times, like a stranger in my own vessel. Today, I have more tattoos than I can count. I am my own storybook. Each new piece offers a sense of reclamation. Yet, my chest and abdomen scars have remained uncovered, revered in their transparency. 
I have often joked with my longtime artist-friend, Ruby, that I would happily erase my first two tattoos. She always shrieks in her adorable British accent, “Noooooooo! They mark a moment.” And it’s true. To knowingly do something dangerous [hike up a mountain, go out with the wrong guy] is to take command of your life, to look death in the face and choose life anyway. Plus, what may appear to be danger to some may actually be bliss to others, and that’s the most beautiful thing: the sun shines indiscriminately on her children. Pain and pleasure alchemize into one whole big life. Does it feel good to burn? Maybe it just feels good to fly.