Tattoo flash design of a red lotus above vertical Tibetan script in black with red accents on a white background.

Lotus above vertical Tibetan script

Lettering · Mixed · Flash

A red lotus flower with a curled stem sits above a vertical column of Tibetan script drawn in black with red accents. The linework is clean and bold, with smooth, even strokes and no shading within the letterforms. The design is shown flat on a white background with a soft grey vignette at the edges.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The ink would not settle in the cold, so I have been warming the reed pen inside my sleeve all morning, and the letters have come out thick where they should be thin. Forgive the blots. Abbot Dorje says a wrong stroke teaches more than a right one, and I have had enough lessons this week to fill a bell.

Keep reading

The sutra we are copying for the boat-builders of Tsomgo is set down top to bottom, as ours always are, each syllable stacked over the last like pebbles on a cairn. Every one must stand upright or the whole column leans. Yesterday I finished the seventh line and then the lotus at the head, which the old scribe insisted on drawing last so the flower would not be spoiled by the rest. I used the red only for the small turns where the breath changes, the way he taught me, so that a reader's eye catches the places where the voice must lift.

The boat-builders' sons leave for the coast at the thaw, to the ships that carry wool and salt down to Calcutta. They will wrap the scroll in oilcloth, and I am told the captain will not allow it below deck, since it might bring the wrong weather. So it will ride in the bow beneath the lantern, where the spray cannot reach. I asked the youngest boy to write to me from the far port and tell me whether the letters stayed dry.

Write to me, Pema, even if you can manage only a line. If the ink has run, I will know the sea was rough, and I will forgive you the blots.

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