Strange Dreams

I had a really odd dream on the weekend. I dreamt that I had two tattoos on my back.

One was this huge thing that went almost halfway across my back and almost down to my waist depicting the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet. It was done in the style of those old line drawings that used to be really popular in the 1920s - especially for illustrating light novels - and the scenery was building structures from early 20th Century New York, so I guess it was more West Side Story than Romeo and Juliet.

On the opposite side of my back, high up in the corner, was a Japanese kanji. It was one of those things that every Tess, Dee and Harriet have on the back of their shoulder - just a small, simple tattoo of a Japanese character. Really run-of-the-mill in this day and age. Only I didn't know what it meant. In the dream I had this feeling that it was something almost random that I had chosen on a whim, and someone had once told me (or I had once read) what the kanji meant, but I had forgotten.

Everyone (and I mean everyone) asked me what that stupid kanji meant. It was like every single person I met had only one "small talk" question when they met me, and that was "what does your tattoo say", to which I could only reply: "No idea. I did know once, but I've forgotten. I haven't bothered looking it up again". No one (not one person) asked about the huge, honking depiction of the balcony scene I had taking up about a third of my back.

This could have been because it was self-evident, while symbols written in another language need explanation. This could have been because large tattoos on women are still considered a bit odd and no one wanted to draw attention to it. It could have been because it was a dream, and dreams are weird. What I can't figure out is - what the heck was I wearing? I don't make a habit of backless garments...

Seriously, though, I think I know what some of the pieces to that particular puzzle might have been:

1. A friend of mine at work has a small, simple Japanese kanji on her ankle (she actually does know what it means and how to pronounce it), and that type of tattoo is exceptionally common. I see them all the time - it almost seems as though one out of every six twenty-something-year-olds have them. Of course, the first thing you can think of saying to them in "small talk" is "what does your tattoo say"?

2. I was working with another librarian on Friday (a woman born in the first half of the 20th Century, and therefore of a demographic that considers tattoos to be distasteful - especially on women) when she pointed out one of the twenty-something female students had this large, decorative tattoo that took up the outer-half of her calf. This particular librarian thought it was terrible, and made a point of mentioning that the young woman would have to live with it for the rest of her life. More on this later.

3. I've reached this wonderful point in my efforts to learn Estonian where I recognise a word as something I think I should know - but I can't remember what it is. The other day I couldn't remember how to say "goodbye" ("head aega"), and I'm still looking up the same words in the dictionary, even though I know I've looked them up many a time before, and I have previously remembered them without needing to look them up. Very frustrating.

4. Probably some latent fear common to all humans involving people reading something on your back that you can't quite see. Probably stems from that wonderful childhood game that involves putting signs on people's backs that they can't quite see. I've never understood why anyone would want a tattoo on their back. a) You can't see it, and if you were going to go to that much effort to have a piece of art follow you around for the rest of your life, wouldn't you want to be able to see it without a mirror? And, b) Eventually it's gotta be like one of those "honk if you..." bumper stickers. You more or less forget it's there, but people are still honking at you for no apparent reason.