When things are taut and toned, that inclination comes about for ink. A design, a reminder of something important is etched, burned, cut, blitzed into your mind and flesh. Ah, so wonderful, so edgy, so you.
But then you gets dehydrated, or hell you start shrinking and losing muscle and suddenly that work of art has ‘wrinkles’? My Trout has wrinkles?!?
The other day, I asked my wife to take a photo of me doing a figure 8 retrieve. I figured I would write something about presentation and various retrievals of flies. My wife said, “turn your arm a little bit…make your arm tighter…hmmm?….your arm is wrinkled…you aren’t going to like this…flex your arm somehow”. What?!!!!
My Trout Tattoo had wrinkles…I had wrinkles. Vanity spare me the cruel self reflections. Enough already with this downward slide into atrophy and age spots.
“When you’re 50 you start thinking about things you haven’t thought about before. I used to think getting old was about vanity – but actually it’s about losing people you love. Getting wrinkles is trivial.” (Eugene O’Neill)
Vanity, calculations to impress or self satisfy. I imagined all Last Winter and Spring, posing a beautiful Trout in line with my Trout Tattoo. I imagined the colors, the contrast of the real against the imagined. The time came, but my Trout had wrinkles. No matter! Trout caught/released.
