Skin deep

No pain, no gain. Philosophically, I guess that's true. You hold dear what you've had to work for, struggle for. Things that are given to you without effort (or money) are easy come, easy go. I spent a total of four hours – two hours each session – enduring an odd discomfort verging on pain so that I could gain a gorgeous, full-color feather wrapped around my right arm. The buzzy whine of the ink applicator morphed from background noise to grating annoyance by the end, and my arm burned, as though branded. One wall of Sink the Ink studio is covered with a giant National Geographic map of the world; after spending all that time staring at the South Pacific – the area of the globe nearest where I was seated - I think I have memorized the name of every island in Polynesia. Rikitea? Suwarrow? Serendipity led me to gentle Ben Harris, the ink artist who loves nature. He liked the challenge of creating a peacock feather armband even though his true passion is insects: He has a centipede crawling around one shoulder and a black widow spider on one arm, plus a gnarly raven and a kneecap skull, among other, visible tattoos. When I was vocal about the discomfort, Ben was amused. Yes, he acknowledged, the inner arm is a tender place, but the chest, he said, "hurts like hell." I can think of other body parts that would also make me wince when the needles dig in. For my next bit of ink, I just might go with an insect. How about a scarab beetle? I'm thinking of the bug in the Poe tale, the golden beetle that looked remarkably like a human skull...