Getting a Tattoo from a One-Legged Tattoo Artist in Amsterdam
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From England, I took a ferry to Holland. On board, I met a young British woman who offered me some 'real' English tea on the upper deck of the ferry. We spent the next couple of weeks in the swirl of beautiful, intriguing Amsterdam with its burgeoning, multicolored sub-cultures. It was there that I got a tattoo from a one-legged tattoo artist in a tattoo shop in the famous and infamous Red Light District. Tattoos are very common today, but in 1977, they were still quite rarely seen and, because of an ancient biblical proscription, a very un-Jewish, un-Israeli to do.
A splattering of color
A mosaic of sorts
Painted on my skin
Reminding me of the trip
To Amsterdam
A postcard on my arm
Sent from a faraway place
A memory sewn onto my skin.