Black line drawing of an infinity symbol with the word glee in cursive script at the right loop, shown on a white background as a tattoo design.

Infinity symbol with script 'glee'

Fine line · Black and grey · Flash

A single continuous black line forms an infinity symbol, with the word glee written in thin cursive script over the right-hand loop. A quotation fragment in small grey text sits beneath the design. The linework is bold and even, and the design is centred on a plain white background.

Fine line Lettering Infinity symbol Script Line drawing

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Brother Osric, you will think me mad, but the abbot has finally stopped asking me to scrape sheepskin for the Psalter, and I have been given the lamp-room instead. It is where the ink is mixed and where a man can think without the bell. I am writing this at the bench with the window open, because the smell of oak gall makes my eyes water.

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Yesterday I tried again to copy the initial for the Easter gospel without lifting the pen. Brother Wilfrid says it cannot be done, that every letter must be its own act of faith. But a line that loops back on itself has no beginning to hold on to, and I found that if I let the stroke cross over at the waist, like two bows tied at a knot, the hand wanted to go on forever. On the third attempt the ink ran out at the far turn and I laughed aloud, which earned me a look from the cellarer.

Gleo is the old word for what the gleemen were before the abbot drove them off the road. It meant merriment and music, anything that made a crowd stop and listen. I have written it small beside the knot, in the thin hand my father taught me, so that the loop has a name to return to.

When the abbot came to see it, he traced the line with one finger, following it round twice, and said nothing for so long that I thought I had offended him. Then he asked where the pen had stopped. I told him it had not. He nodded and went out humming something no one has sung in this house for forty years.

Brother Anselm