紋身:他們是我的個人藝術收藏
My tattoos: They’re my personal art collection
紋身：他們是我的個人藝術收藏
Tattoos are fairly common these days. Most footballers are living needle-art and I can’t think of many of my friends who don’t have some form of permanent marker stamped somewhere on their body. But full-on tats, like Annie’s, are still a talking point. At least they are when they’re first encountered. The strange thing about them is that they disappear very quickly. You stop noticing them after five minutes and then you never really see them again.
紋身最近非常常見。大多數足球運動員都有紋身，而且我想不到我的哪個朋友沒有在身上的某個部分留下某種永久性的標誌。但是完整的紋身，比如安妮的，還仍是一個討論話題。至少他們最初是這樣的。奇怪的是他們消失的非常快。你五分鐘後就不再注意他們，之後你就再也不能真的見到他們了。
Still, Annie’s tattoos are big: designed to be noticed. When tattoos take up that amount of space they’re often about knitting together smaller, older tattoos. Making the disparate, the random, into one whole. It’s as though the tattooed person wants to make sense of their past, to draw together the emotions that caused them to have the separate tattoos in the first place. To make all their previous selves into one united person.
不變的是，安妮的紋身很大：設計得引人注目。當紋身佔據了那麼大的空間時，他們通常是編織起更小更舊的紋身。把分散的，隨機的變成一個整體。這似乎是紋身的人想要讓過去變得有意義，將那些一開始導致他們紋身的情感聚集在一起。把所有曾經的自己變成一個一體的人。
Annie’s tattoos are not fashionable. They’re recognisably post-1990s, but they’re not of the moment. They’re not Instagram tats. Instagram tattoos are small and black, inspirational words or significant dates. Arrows and teeny dots. Hipster tattoos are scratchy, badly drawn things that recall the ones we made in school with a compass and ink.
安妮的紋身並不時尚。它們被認爲是後90年代的，但是它們並不是那個時候的。它們不是屬於Instagram。Instagram的紋身小而黑，而且是有靈感的文字或是重要的日期，箭頭和極小的點。頹廢派的紋身很潦草，讓人想起我們在學校裏用圓規和墨水畫的東西。
But Annie’s are mostly flowers – pretty things – plus a phoenix and a ship in full sail. These are classic symbols: romance, life, rebirth, freedom, a big world, a desire to enjoy life and its natural elements. They don’t reference death or past loves. They’re about Annie and her life now. Judging by her expression, she likes her life. And we should look at her smile. They’re emotional people, the tattooed. Their tattoos are just an introduction, their way of telling us about themselves. Despite their decoration, what most tattooed people want us to see is the person underneath.
但是安妮的大多都是花——美麗的東西——再加上一隻鳳凰和一艘航行中的船。這些是傳統的象徵：浪漫，人生，重生，自由，一個宏大的世界，一份想要享受生活和其自然元素的渴望。他們不會使人聯想到死亡或前任。它們是關於安妮和她現在的生活的。從她的描述來看，她很喜歡自己現在的生活。另外我們應當關注她的笑容。紋身的人是情感化的。他們的紋身只是一個自我介紹，是他們講述自己的方式。除了他們的裝飾，紋身的人想讓我們看到的是深層的東西。
譯文屬原創，未經允許，不得轉載。
