Stories Living in Ink

These are not just stories told. They’re stories lived. And they are mine.

These tattoos are not decoration. They’re chapters. Not illustrations, not designs. Just proof. They mark the moments I was sure I had to remember something, even if I didn’t know what. They were drawn in heat, in salt, in places I might never return to—but carry anyway. They’re not trophies. They’re scars with intent.

The first was inked in American Samoa. I didn’t plan it. I was halfway between jobs, halfway between selves, drifting in that post-boat, pre-sense limbo. The shop was called Off Da Rock Tattoos—across the road from a tsunami warning sign and a beach that looked like it could disappear if it got moody enough. It didn’t even look like a shop. Just a house with something breathing inside. I went in. No consultation, no stencils. Just a huge, quiet man who picked up a marker and started drawing straight onto my skin like the story was already there and he just needed to reveal it. The patterns were pulled from spearheads and woven pathways—tradition wrapped in movement. Strength, protection, identity. It holds the chest and shoulder like armour. It’s not pretty, but it stays. It stayed.

The second one came later, in Bora Bora. It’s different. Softer. More certain. It grows instead of guarding—rising from the middle of my back like a sail catching wind. The lines are based on the adult fern, a symbol of maturity and motion. It carries signs: the koru for new beginnings, the lizard for luck, waves for change, the sun for joy, the turtle for family. It points somewhere I haven’t been yet—a personal island I can’t quite see, but still feel pulling like gravity. It feels less like ink and more like prophecy. Or maybe just hope, in a form I could carry.

On my ribs there’s a ship. Classic Sailor Jerry. Fully rigged. Stylised clouds, empty sea, the whole cliché on purpose. Beneath it: Homeward Bound—stitched like an oath. It’s salt. It’s longing. It’s the ache and the return. It sails not just across oceans but across every version of me that’s tried to come home. That ship knows how to drift and still look deliberate.

Just forward of the ship is a swallow. Traditional. Simple. It’s the oldest promise in sailor ink—survive, return, remember. In the old days it meant miles travelled. In me, it means never settling, but always knowing where the centre is. I’ve never stopped moving. Just learned what parts of the world to carry, and which to let wash away.

And then there are the others. The small ones. The ones I give myself. Scribbled in late light, poked dot by dot with no machine, no audience. Just me, a needle, and whatever thought refused to leave. A fern. A wave. A symbol no one would understand unless they’ve seen how I think when I haven’t slept and the salt’s still drying on my skin. These aren’t tattoos. They’re spells. Quiet declarations. Emotional footnotes I didn’t want to forget. Quick etchings on legs I rarely show—honest, unfinished, necessary. Because sometimes you don’t need ceremony. You just need the sting. You just need a mark that says: I was here. I was feeling something. And I still am.

Together, they’re not a collection. They’re a stitched-up map. A myth. A mistake I’d make again. They’re the waypoints of a man shaped by wind, by salt, by silence. A man who sees art not just in the ink, but in the lines of a sail, the hush of a darkroom, the buzz of a ferry port at 3am, the quiet of a hive, the violence of a good wave. These are not just stories told. They’re stories lived. And they are mine.

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If this rattled your ribs or made you whisper weird things to your tripod, you can feed the machine:

Buy me a beer – fuel for edits, sea confessions, and Bob’s increasingly cursed crafts.
Buy a print – light trapped on paper, wrapped in ritual, sealed with salt and one inexplicable moth.

No pressure. Just know this: the sea’s trying to take the shop.
We fight back with duct tape, caffeine, and whatever’s left in the swear jar.

Stay weird. Stay dry(ish). Don’t let Bob near the router.