纹身:他们是我的个人艺术收藏

My tattoos: They’re my personal art collection

纹身：他们是我的个人艺术收藏

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.

纹身最近非常常见。大多数足球运动员都有纹身，而且我想不到我的哪个朋友没有在身上的某个部分留下某种永久性的标志。但是完整的纹身，比如安妮的，还仍是一个讨论话题。至少他们最初是这样的。奇怪的是他们消失的非常快。你五分钟后就不再注意他们，之后你就再也不能真的见到他们了。

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.

不变的是，安妮的纹身很大：设计得引人注目。当纹身占据了那么大的空间时，他们通常是编织起更小更旧的纹身。把分散的，随机的变成一个整体。这似乎是纹身的人想要让过去变得有意义，将那些一开始导致他们纹身的情感聚集在一起。把所有曾经的自己变成一个一体的人。

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.

安妮的纹身并不时尚。它们被认为是后90年代的，但是它们并不是那个时候的。它们不是属于Instagram。Instagram的纹身小而黑，而且是有灵感的文字或是重要的日期，箭头和极小的点。颓废派的纹身很潦草，让人想起我们在学校里用圆规和墨水画的东西。

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——美丽的东西——再加上一只凤凰和一艘航行中的船。这些是传统的象征：浪漫，人生，重生，自由，一个宏大的世界，一份想要享受生活和其自然元素的渴望。他们不会使人联想到死亡或前任。它们是关于安妮和她现在的生活的。从她的描述来看，她很喜欢自己现在的生活。另外我们应当关注她的笑容。纹身的人是情感化的。他们的纹身只是一个自我介绍，是他们讲述自己的方式。除了他们的装饰，纹身的人想让我们看到的是深层的东西。

译文属原创，未经允许，不得转载。