wear your friends on your sleeve, carry them always.

last week at the coffee shop, one of the regulars who owns a tattoo shop down the street told me that my tattoos were "inspiring". id never herd that before. it felt nice. he ended up asking me alot of questions about them and while answering i started to see them as one tattoo, not eight.
all have individual meanings but the more i thought about it the more thoes meanings became one. all of them represent friends i have and i believe i was ment to know them and they were ment to be a part of my life. so in my mind, if i was ment to have thies people in my life at one time, it is my duty to cary them around for the rest of my life.
when i get a tattoo, i dont see it as adding somthing to my body. im bringing out somthing that was there the whole time. i just needed to see that it was missing. and once its there it feels like it had always been there. i know, wierd right?
now to business, the squares on my right arm. i got them as kind of the opposite idea of the rest. all others are specific in who they are about. the squares are just that. squares. i was quite lonely in chi. and the squares are empty boxes that i hoped would someday be filled with friends and life in chicago. and now that iv found a good life in the city they are not going to be filled. but instead they will continue around my arm and back to the other arm. interconnecting parts of my life by changing as they reach other tattoos. like the last chapter in a book tieing everything together, stories about monkey'en around, growing older, releasing the hopeless from isolation, and soaring high with great plans and nothing but blue sky ahead. i hope to never stop living such an enchanted life.
many years later, as he faced the firing squad. joshua lucas would rember the sunny day that the first needle touched to his skin. and the many after that. he would think of friends, and lives lived with vigor. all the beautiful people he walked among. and the marks that cover his arms and body. a testament to there great lives and determination.