Time is the only thing we don’t get more of

I’m obsessed with time. I think it’s the only thing we don’t get more of, our most precious resource. It’s the currency of caring. I live my life by my calendar to the point friends have had interventions with me. I had gcal pins made both to celebrate this love and also to subtly flag for polyamory. One of my favorite books is Latitude, about the race between astronomers and horologists to help people sail the sea. So at some point, I realized I wanted to get a tattoo about time.

This is part of a series on my Santa Perpetua tattoos. You can read the rest in the tattoo category on this blog.

Placement

I had this chest piece that was a reaction at the time to always being in a position of enacting other people’s visions but never my own. I sent some water color pieces to my lettering-skilled tattoo artist, who said he could pull it off. I loved it for awhile, but after I encountered Santa Perpetua, I couldn’t get over mine being American Traditional style. I asked SP a couple times early on if she’d be willing to do a cover up, but she’s not really into cover ups and said no. After our relationship had deepened, I asked a third and final time, and she said yes! I then underwent about 12 laser removal sessions that were SO painful but managed to get rid of the blacks, greys, and reds; and to lighten the purples. The blues stayed set.

Given how close to the bone and the heart Time is for me, the best location I could think of for this topic was the coverup. This was especially resonant with the thinking about the passage of time, because if I had waited to get my chest piece done until I had a clearer idea of what my own visions were in life, I wouldn’t have had to go through all that extra pain and cost. So time isn’t just about urgency, it’s also about patience.

Inspiration

Here’s what I sent to SP to scope her artistic vision:

The tracking and usage of time. I think the connection to the 39:40 of liminal space on the left arm could be neat.

• There’s this excellent book called Longitude about how latitude is something determined by the equator, and is therefore based on hard geography and determined by angle of the sun, but how longitude is a political thing. Ships used to get lost because while they could determine their latitude, there was no way to determine longitude. There was a race between astronomers and clock makers to see who could track longitude first — the astronomers mapped the movement of heavenly bodies (which now means we can have things like GPS, and this is how our clocks now generally get set), and clock makers tried to find mechanisms that would hold up for sea travel (motion of the waves messed up pendulums, other mechanisms were messed up by changes in temperature, etc). The clock makers won at that time, after centuries of this fighting and many countries putting up awards for whoever could solve it. Our ability to travel the globe successfully is because we can tell time.
• The most moving art piece I’ve yet seen is Untitled (Perfect Lovers) by Felix Gonzalez Torres. Anyone can create this piece by getting two analog clocks and putting batteries from the same pack in them, setting them to the same time to start, and then letting them run their course. They will eventually come out of sync, and one will stop before the other. It’s about partners living with AIDS.
• There’s an idea in the book I’m reading right now about a death clock which doesn’t have a chime. “Time passes unpunctuated, but passes nonetheless.”

To relate to the earlier idea – giving things the time they need. Patience. All the above things being true, but meaning to cherish time rather than rush things. 

• The Luddites weren’t against technology, they were deeply concerned about what having a unifying understanding of time would do to the working class. That’s why they went around smashing clock towers and other equipment — they saw what the Industrial Revolution would bring, and wanted to stop it. Luddites were also worried about centralization of labor control leading to wealth disparity, but used smashing clocktowers as the indicator of that.
• I have this phrase I use to guide my actions: “time is the currency of caring.” I don’t think it comes from anywhere, it’s a thing I made up.
• Time is also the only thing we don’t get more of. There are always other jobs, other people, other opportunities, other pains. Best to use it wisely.

Quote to include: “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” – taking the second sentence, it’ll be 54 68 65 20 73 65 63 6f 6e 64 20 62 65 73 74 20 74 69 6d 65 20 69 73 20 6e 6f 77 2e.

SP: I’d make another correction: i think “walking forwards and see what the microscope show us” is more accurate. our eyesight is sooo limited by now that planning day by day is a blessing and total wisdom. despite that, and as we need some sort of reference for the tattoo, we can keep that long term appointment and see what happens!

Me: This reminds me of a mentor of mine pointing out that huge leaps forward in human development have come when we could magnify our perception in some way – the microscope, the telescope, and now also our ability to look at the detail and vastness of social interaction.

If you want a quick introduction to the history of time from a coding perspective, this site is really fun.

The weight of the second hand

We worked on the chest piece across 3 trips, each of which had 2 days’ worth of tattooing (finishing the upper right arm + starting and finishing right lower arm and chest piece). During the second trip, the minute and hour hand went onto the clock, but we debated what color to make the second hand. In clock making, second hands are usually one of three colors:

• Red for stop watches. In this context, a sense of urgency and time-is-running-out.
• Black would be a normal clock or watch, with the seconds mattering as much as the minutes and hours.
• Gold is an older pendulum style clock.

Clearly, gold was out. Not aesthetically or conceptually what I was going for. SP really wanted red conceptually (and also she loves red in her art), but it didn’t sit quite right with me — both aesthetically and I didn’t want to wear my anxiety on my sleeve as something I was invested in. Black would be accurate for long-term planning (linking to the multigenerational planning of The Maze of Existence), but would blend in too much with the rest of the tattoo. So a different color, then. I considered orange for aesthetics, but it didn’t pack any meaning with it. Finally — purple. It’s Locke’s favorite color, so to me it indicates being present in the moment and cherishing time, which is the person I want to be. And it looks good with all the blues.

Feeling complete

I’m SO pleased to have this done. I think it’s beautiful, and it carries such meaning for me. And I can see it! I don’t get to see all my SP tattoos very easily.