Think before you ink

 

2013

"Such good skin you’ve ruined!" — that’s how my grandmother greeted my very first tattoo.
At that moment, I felt like something between a failed taxidermy apprentice and a reckless waster of someone else’s property.
Grandpa muttered something under his breath too — I couldn’t catch it all, but the key words were “nettle,” “ass,” and “whipping.”
All in all, I got off pretty lightly.
I guess my family was just relieved that their 19-year-old kid had crossed the Atlantic twice and come back home — a little dazed, sure, but still in one piece.
And if he returned a little more colorful? Well... so be it. Let him parade around.

And just like that, back in now-distant 2008, I dipped my toes into tattoo culture — a culture that, without realizing it, I would keep chasing for the next ten years with not just unwavering interest, but a passion that only kept growing.
Of course, back then I didn’t know any of that.
I just stared at the winged sword inked into my shoulder, trying to wrap my head around the fact that it would be with me "until death — and even a little bit after."

Today, I honestly can’t remember what exactly that tattoo meant to me at the time.
It was unforgettable — as all firsts in life tend to be — and I'm sure I must’ve spun some kind of mystical nonsense about the idea’s "deep meaning."
Over the years, though, its meaning has settled.
The flowery bullshit and cheap mysticism have been shed like dead skin.
Now, every time I look at it, I see just one thing: overcoming obstacles.
The wings symbolize challenges that can be dodged or conquered easily.
The sword — the real problems you have to sweat over, where the only way forward is to cut yourself a path.

The beauty of an artistic tattoo is that everyone breathes their own meaning into it.
Sure, thanks to the rich history of tattoos, you probably still shouldn’t flaunt an Oni mask inked in traditional Japanese style in front of the Yakuza.
Same goes for showing off prison stars on your knees in the wrong parts of Russia.
But thanks to recent cultural shifts and the worldwide explosion of tattoo popularity, there’s hope that body art will eventually shake off its lingering associations with crime and marginality.

There’s also a curious phenomenon that 99% of tattooed people encounter — the burning desire for just one more.
Even my mom, poor soul, who barely survived getting a tiny sakura blossom on her ankle, swore she'd never set foot in a “den of ink” again.
Yet nowadays, every now and then, she muses about adding another little piece.
She’s holding strong — for now.

In my view, the magnetic pull of tattoos lies in the intoxicating sense of control over your body you get after your first session.
None of us got to choose the body we were born into.
(If you did — message me immediately. I need to know the details.)
Maybe that’s why body modifications like tattoos and piercings are so beloved: they let you decide what to change and how.
A million possibilities, with only your imagination setting the limits.

As for my own desire — it smoldered quietly for years before finally flaring into an unstoppable blaze in 2013.
After a brief quest to find the right tattoo artist, I met Vadim — a man who could first sketch, and then ink, every wild idea that popped into my head.
Did it matter that some of those ideas were about as coherent as a cokehead’s fever dreams?
Not in the slightest.
Vadim always found a way to make the tattoo flow with the body, look organic, and — most importantly — capture the meaning I poured into it.

That time, I wanted to immortalize my love for music.
The thing is, the question "What kind of music do you listen to?" has always thrown me into a stupor — and still does.
My playlist is so wildly eclectic you’ll find everything there: from the sound of rain falling in a forest to full-blown AC/DC riffs.
Music has always been an inseparable part of my life, and I’ve often noticed how certain songs become forever tied to specific moments and phases.
And anytime a trusting guitar accidentally ends up in my hands at a house party, you can bet I'll strum out a couple of tunes from Chaif, Nautilus, or Kino.

It took me a few years — and a long, heated debate with Vadim — to turn all of this into a single sketch.
But the result? It blew even my highest expectations out of the water.

Now, both of my calves are decorated with speaker tattoos.
On one leg, the speaker looks like it’s made of cracked stone, with a plump little bird perched on top, surrounded by musical notes woven from tiny branches and leaves.
On the other, the speaker is painted a solid, deep black, crowned by a hand clutching the neck of a cello.

To this day, Vadim says that when someone asks him about his weirdest project, this tattoo is the first thing that pops into his head.
Which, honestly, feels pretty damn flattering.

Somewhere between the healing sessions and the touch-ups of this musical tribute, a realization hit me:
there was no way my skin was going to make it to old age pure and untouched.
Another sketch had already started brewing in my head.

2014

This time, I wanted to ink a sort of personal growth onto my skin.
Back when I was young and clueless… well, even younger and more clueless than I am now, I was dead sure the world could be cleanly split into "good" and "bad."
A popular rookie mistake.
Then, after collecting a decent set of scars and watching a few ideals shatter, it finally hit me:
things aren't just black and white.
Those very concepts are shaky to begin with, and the lines between them? Blurry as hell.
Somewhere at that messy crossroads lies the infamous "grey area" — the understanding that everything in life has both a good and a bad side.
And even more: one simply can't exist without the other.

Pixar captured this beautifully in their masterpiece Inside Out — you know, the part toward the end, where the emotions realize that just because a memory is tinged with sadness doesn’t mean it won’t be seasoned with joy later on.
The thought itself is as old as time.
It's been sung, written, and filmed into existence a million times over.
But we humans seem cursed to verify even the most obvious truths on our own hides.

Eventually, the idea for a new tattoo was born: a spin on the yin-yang symbol.
But instead of the classic black and white swirls, two zodiac signs dance an endless waltz — a ram and a fish — the markers of my own birthdate, tangled at the cusp between Aries and Pisces.
For a while, I used to blame the constant chaos and heartbreaks in my life on their so-called "ambivalence."
Yeah, I’ll admit it:
I once bought into the notion that the arrangement of celestial bodies millions of miles away at the moment of your birth could somehow dictate your personality and outlook.
Later, I would learn the truth — that the only two things shaping who we are:  genetics and environment.
But back then... well, what can I say — I was young. Fiery. Reckless.

Now, striding briskly and springily toward my thirties, I understand something even deeper:
even the concepts of "good" and "bad" don’t really exist.
There’s just life — neutral, indifferent — and our personal judgment slapped onto it.
And whether that judgment turns sour or sweet is entirely up to us.
The strongest — and at the same time, the most dangerous — tool every human being has is choice.
Not many realize it, but we all get to choose how we feel about every single thing in our lives.

When Russian Pinocchio found a wood burning kit

How to cram all of that into a tattoo?
I don't know yet.
But hey — there’s still plenty of blank canvas left on me.
No shortage of room for creativity.

2015

Just like Shane had suggested back in 2008, seven years later it was time for a touch-up.
By then, I knew it wouldn’t be as simple as just sharpening the outlines — too much had changed.
Not just the tattoo — I had changed too.
And so, the winged sword got a new companion: a book at the bottom, and a new inscription above it — “Knowledge is power. Guard it well.”

The book was there to reflect my lifelong love of reading — and my stubborn, slightly old-fashioned loyalty to paper books, even as e-books kept conquering the world at full speed.
You know that feeling — when you open a new book at random, lean in close, half-close your eyes, and breathe it in?
Fantasy smells like searing metal from clashing swords and the crackle of wild magic in the air.
Science fiction — like the endless skies of distant planets, laced with the musky scent of alien races.
Popular science? It teases your nose with the dry, papery aroma of library shelves, the stubbornness of researchers, and a slight peppery tang from the sarcastic jabs of critics.

As for the inscription — it serves as a permanent reminder: keep your bloody mouth shut.
Way back in my school days, I had this nasty habit of occasionally spilling a secret I was trusted with.
Lost a few friends because of it, too.
I like to think I’ve learned from my mistakes:
it’s been many years now, and not a single relapse.
Safe to say, the secrets people entrust me with these days stay locked up tighter than Fort Knox.

2016

The fastest tattoo decision I ever made — and the only one sparked by something I stumbled across online.
For a while, I’d been wanting to somehow mark my passion for the English language.
Out of all the languages I studied — or tried to study — English had always been, and still is, my favorite.
Movies, songs, stories, articles, poetry — whenever I run into English in any form, I just want to dive right in and dissolve into it.
Become a part of it.
The wordplay, the metaphors, the idioms, the timeless expressions — all of it resonates so deeply with how I feel and how I wish I could express myself, that sometimes it hits me with painful clarity:
I was bloody well born in the wrong country.
To say what I really want to say, it feels like I need a passport — just to cross the border into my own thoughts.

And so, on the inside of my right bicep, a new tattoo appeared: an open case, with the word “just” tucked inside.
In English, there's the phrase “just in case.”
It usually means something like "just to be safe" or "just because."
But there’s a little wordplay hidden there:
"case" can mean both a situation and a literal suitcase or box — and here, it’s quite literally "just" inside a case.
If that doesn’t seem funny to you — that’s perfectly fine.
Normal people, who aren't hopelessly addicted to the language of Shakespeare and Charlotte Brontë, aren't supposed to find it funny anyway.

2017

Lady Luck was smiling on me.
And the results didn’t take long to show: unexpected and pleasant new acquaintances, buses that arrived right on time, planes that took off without a hitch, problems that found sudden and elegant solutions — just a few examples of the blessings that seemed to rain down on me.

Of course, there’s a very rational explanation behind such “mystical” events:
The more you believe you’re lucky, the more your brain starts to tune itself to notice exactly the kind of events you perceive as lucky.
And then, paradoxically but inevitably, luck actually does seem to follow you around.
It’s a kind of emotional placebo — like oscillococcinum, but for the soul.
Some call it a "success mindset" or "positive thinking."
For me, it’s just the mischief of Lady Luck herself.
And with that logic, getting a tattoo to symbolize luck felt like a pretty fitting idea.

That’s how a red-haired mademoiselle in a billowing green dress ended up on my right thigh.
She wears a four-leaf clover in her hair and another around her wrist — the classic symbols of luck.
Her eyes are covered with a blindfold, because, as the saying goes, “luck is blind.”
But my lady keeps an eye on me:
In the tattoo, she’s lifting the blindfold slightly, and you can see one brilliant emerald-green eye peeking out.
She’s captured in the moment of throwing dice.
The dice are still spinning in the air, but the faces showing two sixes are already visible — a little reminder that while you can just sit around and wait for good fortune to fall into your lap,
it’s a hell of a lot better to actually do something about it.
And maybe — just maybe — the dice will land the way you want.

The irony?
This was the first tattoo where I planned to use numbing cream.
The lower part of the tattoo was way too close to my knee, and even during the outlining phase, I realized there was no way I’d survive the shading without help.
I got myself a popular numbing cream from the city on the Neva River, slathered it on thick, and marched proudly to my session.
The thing is, this cream isn’t exactly welcomed with open arms in my country — apparently because of its high lidocaine content, which, besides being a local anesthetic, also acts as a cardiac depressant.
Still, it does its job, freezing the skin to perfection.
You see where this is going, right?
I tried to cheat.
Tried to snag Lady Luck through trickery, avoiding all the unpleasantness.
Pity you can’t kick your own ass.

During the session, I felt nothing.
Three hours — not a single wince of pain.
By the end, even Vadim, my tattoo artist, was eyeing me suspiciously, saying the freezing should have worn off by now.

Leaving the salon, I noticed something strange:
There was none of that usual post-session "high" — that endorphin buzz your brain gifts you after surviving hours of needlework.
Our brains are pragmatic little beasts:
They don’t care if you cut yourself shaving or get a full sleeve of trash polka — pain is pain, and it has to be eased.
So, during long tattoo sessions, the brain ramps up endorphin production to help you cope.
Once the ordeal’s over, the pain leaves but the endorphins stick around for a while, making you feel a little euphoric.
Thanks to the numbing cream, I missed out on the whole experience.

And then night came — and the reckoning began.
It started with mild cramping and a strange twisting sensation around the tattoo.
Then, without so much as a warning shot, the full-on assault hit.
It felt like someone was scraping broken glass over my leg while drenching it in salted lemon juice.
Meanwhile, the thawing capillaries decided they hadn’t bled enough during the session — and enthusiastically made up for lost time:
Blood, mixed with lymph, poured from every pore.
It refused to stop.

- IT HURTS SO MUCH!! WHY, DUDE, WHY?!!
- I DON'T KNOW, DUDE! I DON'T KNOW!! 

At one point, my room started to look like the set of a mad surgeon’s horror flick:
Blood stains everywhere, piles of bloody tissues, and in the center of it all — a guy staggering around with a leg that looked like it had lost a knife fight.
The whole performance was accompanied by a symphony of curses aimed at the numbing cream manufacturers — and my own poor judgment.

It took a cocktail of painkillers to finally knock me out by morning.

Waking up brought its own special brand of suffering:
Thanks to the blood and lymph, the bandage had fused to my leg like industrial-grade glue.
Being the genius I am, I first tried to rip it off dry, Rambo-style.
After the first yank, I immediately realized I was no action hero and limped to the bathroom to soak it off properly.

Without getting too graphic, let’s just say it was the worst healing process I’ve ever gone through.
Despite drowning the tattoo in healing ointments, scabs formed, pigment faded in several places, and the pain dragged on for far longer than usual — so bad that I had to hobble around for days, shuffling sideways down staircases like some beaten-up street urchin.

The touch-up?
Done without any numbing cream.
Didn’t much care for it after that little adventure.

2018

A contradictory year. On the one hand, pure chaos. On the other—surprisingly not bad at all. Still, I’m grateful to it, because all the hardships it threw at me turned out to be an excellent foundation for my future self-awareness.

Diving headfirst into self-analysis, I somehow ended up sketching a full-body portrait of my alter ego: a bookworm, who also happened to be a dandy and a gentleman. I also wanted to weave in my growing fascination with neurophysiology. Rough preliminary drafts looked like something straight out of Bosch’s nightmares. Gaudí would’ve squeezed his eyes shut, refusing to believe the monstrosity he saw. Hundertwasser would’ve gasped in horror. Van Gogh would've cut off his second ear—out of despair this time.

And yet, as always, Vadim didn’t even flinch under the torrent of my consciousness stream. He listened patiently, like a good-natured psychiatrist humoring one of his more harmless patients and told me to come back in a month.

The result? The most glorious bookworm the world has ever seen: segmented and coiled, holding an open book with a beautifully detailed human brain illustration inside. On his head sits a tall top hat, complete with a flamboyant feather tucked into the band. A monocle and a pair of rakish hussar mustaches round out the look perfectly. (The mustaches were Vadim’s idea—and that's exactly why I value him so much: he always takes the initial idea, processes it through his creative mind, and makes it ten times better.)

Thus, my inner left bicep earned its seventh and definitely not final piece of art.

In American tattoo shows, people getting tattooed are often called “canvases.” Some, upon hearing this term, find it offensive — “I'm no piece of blank canvas! I'm a person, goddammit, an individual!”
Individual — shmindividual.

But before throwing a hissy fit, it’s sometimes worth pausing and looking at the idea from all sides.
As for me, I actually think “canvas” is an incredibly accurate way to describe our bodies.

Think about it: when we first start dreaming about a tattoo, our skin is just as blank as a fresh canvas.
We make the first mark — carefully, nervously. We want it to be meaningful, something memorable.
Time passes. We look closer at what we’ve created. Not bad, we think.
Then we get bold enough to add something more.
And then more.
Big elements, little ones. Something private, understood only by ourselves.
Something universal, recognized by everyone.

Sometimes a person might regret a hastily made addition to their canvas. They try to erase it, but it doesn’t quite work.
The marks are still there.
So they come to terms with it — and cover the old scar with a new design.
Some people work in broad, sweeping strokes, filling their canvas quickly.
Others add little touches bit by bit, spending a lifetime painting their story until, by old age, their canvas holds — without exaggeration — the story of their entire life.

For me, tattoos are captured stories. Like little flies trapped in amber.
In the movie Australia, Hugh Jackman's character says that stories are the most important thing we truly own.
Photos fade.
Things wear out, break, or get lost — just like people.
But stories — everything that has happened to us, all the experiences, emotions, and memories — those are ours to keep forever.

And so, a carefully thought-out, beautifully executed tattoo becomes a powerful way to preserve your stories and memories.

So, take care of your canvas, folks.
But not too carefully — or you might just miss all the fun!

Years keep rolling by.
And just like some Ami du Chambertin cheese grows a noble white mold, I, too, have been gradually covering myself with tattoos that reflect all sorts of aspects of my life and worldview.
In 2019, there was still plenty of free space left (well, at least more than now), and the next area to be inked was my left thigh.

2019

Everybody nowadays knows about the whole "striving for serious life changes and stepping out of your comfort zone" thing.
At some point, we’ve all binged on pop-philosophers of varying degrees of ridiculousness, treating their "truths" like some distilled essence of wisdom.
Some even dared to dive into stacks of Voltaire, Kierkegaard, and Camus — only to quote them left and right, feeling oh-so-superior to the mere mortals around.

But the moment real change knocks at your door — bam! — five million excuses spring up instantly, not to mention acts of God that just happen to prevent us from growing and blossoming.
Still, if you do manage to step onto that yellow brick road, there might be an unimaginable prize waiting at the end.
And along the way, you’re almost guaranteed to pick up a heap of knowledge and skills — some useful, some... less so.

But enough theory.
Let’s get back to me.

I spent a solid chunk of my life fully convinced that I was a humanities guy.
I loved foreign languages, literature, history.
Hard sciences, though? Total disaster. Barely scraping by with pity-passed grades.
Then, thanks to a twist of fate — and a particularly crafty HR department — I suddenly found myself thrown into a world where understanding the inner workings of complex household appliances was crucial.
And let me tell you: without a basic grasp of electromechanics, you can royally humiliate yourself in front of an audience.

The whole learning process — studying, forcing my brain to adapt to a new professional world — has been (and still is) tricky and full of pitfalls.
But with every mastered topic and every thermodynamics law I wrap my head around, life and work get a little bit easier.
Slowly but surely, I’m beginning to feel less like a floundering humanities fish washed up on the unforgiving shores of structural mechanics.

To immortalize this curious transition on my skin, I decided to depict something radically new — made up of two things that, ideally, should be as different from each other as possible.
Thus, the design was born:
an old, battered Russian-Japanese dictionary (because tackling the Japanese language feels like the ultimate linguistic adventure in terms of difficulty and effort) —
hooked up with two multimeter probes (no idea why, but for some reason, working with that device always makes me think of diagnosing equipment).
And crowning the whole composition: a piece of parchment, carefully inscribed with the phrase "Where there’s a will, there’s a way."

It’s a solid motto, if you ask me — and it captures my whole little odyssey from the humanities camp into the brutal world of tech just as sharply as the Matterhorn reflects in an alpine lake.
(Yes, the Matterhorn. That iconic mountain you see on a Toblerone wrapper.)

2020

Ah, 2020...
The year a global pandemic came crashing in and gave the “gray routine of days” one hell of a shake-up.
A lot of things we used to take for granted suddenly became almost unreachable — like going for a walk, catching a movie, or grabbing a coffee at a café.

While the world, like blueberries sinking into semolina porridge, slowly and solemnly slid into lockdown, I was diving ever deeper into a fresh new passion: coffee.
All my life, I’d been pretty indifferent to it. At best, I might throw together a cup of instant Nescafé.
As for 3-in-1 mixes — yeah, that never worked out.
Just a couple of sips of that mysterious blend (which the manufacturer has the audacity to call “coffee + cream + sugar”) were enough to send me sprinting desperately toward the nearest restroom, lest the consequences turn excrementialy catastrophic.
And no, that's not a typo.

Then came the moment when even in our humble homeland, so-called “third wave coffee shops” began popping up everywhere, proudly offering Ethiopia Yirgacheffe, Guatemala Fuego, Colombia Huila, and Brazil Cerrado.
Turns out, coffee isn’t just some bitter poison with a side of broken dreams that you chug like medicine just to borrow a little energy.
No — by all appearances, coffee is a lot closer to wine.
It has its own flavor nuances, terroir secrets, and mysterious processing methods.

I have this trait: whenever I get seriously into something, I turn into a knowledge-hungry maniac.
And so it happened here too.
I dove headfirst into dozens of books, waded through piles of online articles, spent hundreds of hours haunting various coffee shops, and drank thousands of cups.
Like a madman, I devoured anything even remotely related to coffee.

The baristas I got to know started asking me — only half-jokingly — when I was planning to open my own café.
But I wasn’t in it for the business.
I was just fascinated by the world itself — and by the drink that had flipped my own self-image upside down practically overnight.

As an unexpected bonus, my skills in describing taste and aroma leveled up big time.
In everyday life, we don’t usually have to get very creative when explaining how something tastes.
Sweet, sour, bitter, salty — that's about the whole arsenal.
Okay, maybe someone somewhere has heard of “umami,” aka "the taste of protein."
But that’s it.

Try explaining a dish’s flavor with only that toolkit, and you’ll end up sounding suspiciously like Tony Vallelonga in Green Book.
Remember that scene where he’s eating in a diner with Dr. Shirley?
At one point, their conversation goes something like this:

• "How’s the food?"
• "Salty."
• "Ever thought about becoming a food critic?"

That’s about the level I operated at when it came to describing what I ate.
I’ll never forget my first visit to a specialty coffee shop.
I was planning to buy some beans to grind and brew at home.
At that point, my knowledge could barely fill a cat’s forehead — but I was too embarrassed to admit it.
So I tried my best not to show that, to me, all coffee smelled exactly the same.

The barista (hi, Julia!) politely and patiently opened bag after bag for me, offering running commentary like:
"Here, smell this Ethiopian. You’ll pick up floral notes and a light, tea-like body.”
“This one’s a Kenyan. Bright acidity — and as it cools, you might even catch a hint of tomatoes.”
“Or here’s an Indian coffee. The sacks are stored on the coast, and over time, the salty sea winds give the beans a flavor that’s kind of like the crust of rye bread with a sprinkle of salt.”

I nodded sagely, mumbled approvingly, and did my best to fake that I caught all the flavor descriptors she was mentioning.
Meanwhile, inside my head, it was pure, ringing emptiness, with one frantic thought flapping around like a panicked fly:
"WhErE aRe ThEsE aRoMaS? All I smell is COFFEE! NOTHING ELSE!"

It took many, many months for my olfactory perception to develop enough that I could finally describe a dish or drink without feeling ashamed.

Pretty hefty introduction just to explain the inspiration behind my next tattoo, huh?
Well, here we go.

Once I realized that C₈H₁₀N₄O₂ (aka caffeine) had moved permanently into my heart, I decided to commemorate it.
The space between my shoulder and elbow on my left arm was still vacant — and its time had come.

The centerpiece would be a heart, half-filled with coffee.
Above and below it, little branches with coffee cherries, just starting to ripen.
Attached to the back of the heart, the handle of a moka pot; at the front, its spout.
And the finishing touch — a tiny black silhouette of a snowboarder, riding the coffee waves inside the heart.

That’s how, in a way that could almost pass for a mini-Hieronymus Bosch painting, I decided to immortalize two of my biggest passions.

2021

I was facing a dilemma — what should I fill that thin strip of untouched skin on my left arm with?
Who, or what, could keep company with my coffee-heart and my gentleman bookworm?
By that time, I hadn’t written anything for a while and wasn’t sure if I’d ever return to writing as a hobby.
But I thought it would be amusing to get a tattoo of a fountain pen — it looks devilishly classy and, to me, is tied to the craft of writing — twisted into a knot, symbolizing my occasionally tangled storytelling style.

The sketch I picked was sort of a down payment and a promise to myself: I hadn't yet told all the stories I wanted to share.
It blended perfectly with the tattoos I already had.
At the time, though, I had no idea that my next story would end up being nothing less than the tale of my wedding trip!

And so, my left half-sleeve was complete.
But just the artfully twisted pen felt... a little lonely.
And my ink-clouded gaze drifted over to my right arm...

My heart started racing like a rotary tattoo machine, and whole freight trains packed with ideas clanged their couplings and started to roll...

They say that the tattoo style known as trash polka was born in Germany at the very beginning of the 2000s.
It stormed tattoo studios around the world, thanks to its wild color contrasts and chaotic-yet-thoughtful compositions.
Metaphorically speaking, the tide of its popularity eventually ebbed — but it left plenty of ink-shells, pebbles, and seaweed scattered along the shores of many bodies.

Mine included.

I already had a few pieces in that signature black-and-red style, so I decided to push forward and finish a half-sleeve on my right arm.
The shoulder, and both the inner and outer sides of the bicep, were already occupied, so there wasn’t much room left to maneuver.

I didn’t want to just slap on random abstractions.
After much thought (and probably more coffee than advisable), I ended up getting a small bee buzzing toward a black-and-red gift box, tucked near my elbow.
Two simple little images — but they carried a hidden meaning that still brings a grin to my face.

You see, I got a little clever with it: a tiny linguistic riddle.
The word for the insect - Bee.
The verb - Be.
One of the English words for "gift" is present.
And to the state? Bingo — to be present.

So, at first glance, this tattoo looks nonsensical: bee, present.
A bee-gift? A present for a bee?
But dig just a little deeper, and you get be present — a mantra that's become pretty widespread in recent years, carrying an amazing message:
Stay here. Live in this moment. Choose the now — don't rot away in the past or float aimlessly in the future.

The second phrase, own it, nestled itself next to the crook of my arm.
It’s a more compact version of another favorite motto: let your freak flag fly.

If you were to put that into reasonably polite Russian, it would sound something like: "let your weirdness proudly wave in the wind."

I think about this a lot — and even more often, I watch how people around me try to conform to some unwritten standard of "normal."
And honestly, anything can be labeled "not normal":
Laughing too loudly — not normal.
Not wanting kids — not normal.
Packing up and moving to the other side of the world in your thirties to start fresh — definitely not normal.
I’m sure you could add plenty to this list yourself.

But seriously — who decided this?
Did I miss the memo?
Was there some handbook being handed out while I was standing in the wrong line — the one for freedom from stereotypes?

Some of us had it hammered into our heads by parents, friends, coworkers.
Somewhere in the collective consciousness, this stale wisdom of "stay in your lane" still floats around, and people keep lapping it up without a second thought.

When you’re young and inexperienced, you forget to ask: Wait, who decides what my "lane" is? And why should I stay in it?

Those who’ve known me a while know that one phrase keeps coming out of my mouth:
"The strongest and scariest tool ever given to humankind is choice."

And I mean it in the broadest sense possible:
From choosing which dessert to pair with your coffee... to choosing what kind of person you want to be.

And whenever you find yourself standing at a crossroads — choose yourself.
Choose your own happiness, comfort, and well-being.
Even if you’re just a coffee-obsessed, story-writing, Italy-crazed, glasses-wearing nerd —
Let your freak flag fly, brother!

2022

If you compare the enthusiasm for covering yourself in tattoos to nuclear physics (and why the hell not? If we’re doing this, we’re doing it big!), then by this year, I had accumulated a certain critical mass of ideas and visions about what kind of tattoos belonged on my skin.
Quotes as deep as the Mariana Trench and thoughts as heavy as osmium no longer stirred my soul.
I craved something wild, ironic, and, of course, coffee-related.
My newly acquired hobby refused to let go of me — it had gifted me a whole new way of experiencing food and drinks, not to mention an avalanche of new acquaintances.
I had pretty much armed myself with every tool for brewing coffee the alternative way. Pour-over, Chemex, Aeropress — you name it, I was using it with the fierce eros of discovery.

After a lot of mulling it over, an idea was born: a cardiomonitor displaying the heartbeat of every true coffee addict.
No, not a tachycardic mess.
In my vision, on a screen as black as a coffee-soaked night, steady heartbeats are marching along in rhythmic peaks — and then, right in the middle of the beat sequence, instead of a peak, a coffee bean pops up. Then the peaks continue.
It looks something like this:

……peak……peak……COFFEE……peak……peak……

The picture itself was original enough, and as always, Vadim nailed the execution beautifully.
Still, I wanted to throw in a punchy phrase — ideally, a clever spin on some “great quote.”
You'd be surprised how many scientific articles, posters, and memes about coffee there are out there. But as for profound, soul-stirring quotes about this magical drink?
Crickets.
Philosophers were apparently too busy blabbing about trifles like democracy, human nature, and cosmology.
As if it wasn’t coffee that got them through their endless sleepless nights of “genius.”

I decided it was time to correct this historical injustice.
And who better to weaponize for the cause than René Descartes himself?
More precisely, his famous phrase: "I think, therefore I am."
The Latin version — "Cogito ergo sum" — is the one everyone knows, though Descartes, being French, first formulated the idea in his mother tongue: "Je pense, donc je suis."
(And hey, Billie Eilish gave that line a fresh PR boost with her 2021 hit "Therefore I Am," where she sings: "You think that you're the man, I think, therefore I am.")
In English, "I think, therefore I am" perfectly captures that whole existential pondering.

Okay, I had the phrase — but how to tie it all back to coffee?
How to immortalize all those forcefully sleepless nights when roasted beans had helped me finish whatever tasks were screaming for attention?
Or those mornings when “getting up” wasn't quite the word — it was more like rising from the dead, and only a fresh-brewed coffee could crank-start my brain back to life?

To be honest, I’m just dramatising here for flavor.
The idea for the phrase came to me almost instantly.
It stitched everything together perfectly: it would be in English (a language I’m hopelessly in love with); it would reference a heavyweight philosopher (satisfying my occasional urge to show off a little); and it would, of course, glorify coffee — my personal aqua vitae and elixir of eternal wakefulness.

And so, wrapping around the cardiomonitor in bold block letters, there now lives the phrase:
"I drink coffee therefore I am."

And honestly?
Truer words were never inked.

2023

In our age of ruthless consumerism and manic worship of the golden calf, idleness is practically painted as a mortal sin.
You're not allowed to want to do nothing.
You are obliged to want everything new and better.
A bigger house, a pricier car.
If you drop dead somewhere along this mad race — well, c'est la vie.
Or, if not from sheer overwork, then from multitasking yourself into oblivion, you're expected to be a modern-day Shiva, juggling an endless list of tasks and responsibilities with eight skillful arms.
Naturally, without dropping the ball on any other aspect of life, of course.

And yet, pockets of resistance still flicker around the world.
There are still people out there who refuse to throw their lives onto the altar of unattainable achievement and burn out in the crucible of overwork and overtime.

"Sweet idleness," or as the Italians say, "dolce far niente," promotes exactly this kind of attitude toward life.
The phrase became widely known after the film adaptation of Elizabeth Gilbert's "Eat, Pray, Love."
In it, Italians, speaking to Julia Roberts' character, explain that Americans are very good at making money — but absolutely hopeless when it comes to enjoying it.
Though addressed to Americans, this truth easily applies to almost any nation today.

If you ever find yourself at the Brooklyn Museum, sneak a glance at John Sargent’s painting bearing that familiar title.
The people depicted, lounging lazily in the shade by the water, hardly strike you as crazed careerists.
Compare their values to your own sometime.
Or drop by a Moscow restaurant bearing the same name — just make sure you truly savor your meal, no rushing allowed.

And if doubt creeps in — if you start questioning whether this unserious attitude toward life can be justified — there are serious scientific receipts for you too.
Check out "Autopilot" by Andrew Smart — a certified neuroscientist, no less — who humorously and clearly explains why sometimes it's not just allowed but absolutely necessary to engage in hardcore loafing.

So, now that you’re more or less familiar with the concept of "dolce far niente," it probably won't come as a surprise that I got a tattoo just below my left knee: an image of an ice cream cone.
Three slightly melted scoops of ice cream nestle atop a crispy waffle cone.
Because when you're enjoying yourself, there’s no room for rushing.

The scoops themselves proudly sport green, white, and red colors.
On the surface, they could be pistachio, classic cream, and grapefruit sorbet — my favorite flavors.
But look closer, and you’ll see the deeper meaning — the colors of the Italian flag, a little love letter to a country forever lodged in my heart.

Of course, a ribbon wraps around the cone, carrying the inscription: "dolce far niente."
A silent reminder to anyone who sees it (and to myself) that slowing down and catching your breath isn’t shameful — no matter what part of life you’re navigating.

Take a break. You've earned it

2024

A serious year. A new serious status — "husband." We plunged into a mortgage, which is a serious adventure all on its own. I seriously love my wife, and Nastya is equally, and seriously, committed. To offset all this concentrated seriousness of the moment, I urgently needed to come up with a not-so-serious tattoo.
Fun fact: the word "serious" (or some form of it) was used seven times in this paragraph. Why am I telling you this? I don't know. Let future linguists figure it out.

I still hadn’t given up on the idea of getting a funny tattoo with minimal semantic load. And it seemed like I'd finally found the perfect idea. Picture this: I was chilling in a coffee shop (my natural habitat), suffering from the heat, and lazily sipping a matcha tonic. Very busy, as you can imagine.
You see, lately I had become quite addicted to this way of serving matcha, and the green powder had seriously elbowed coffee down from its pedestal among my favorite drinks.

(Quick info drop for those who have no clue what this green powder baristas whip up in hipster cafes actually is.)

抹茶 — "matcha" or "mattya" — translates to "ground tea" in English. Nowadays it's known as a Japanese powdered tea, but like many iconic human inventions, it originally came from China, sometime around the 10th century. Later, it was imported to Japan along with Zen Buddhism.
A couple of centuries passed, and powdered tea was forgotten in China — but the Japanese not only preserved the production technique with care, but they also nurtured it and made it popular worldwide.

So there I was, savoring this ancient drink with a modern twist, when a thought popped into my head: "well, this is some matcha..."
And then — in a fraction of a second — my neurons pulled a surprising stunt, firing wildly, and I suddenly remembered a scene from the movie 300.
You know the one: King Leonidas (played by Gerard Butler) is chatting with a Persian envoy. They approach the edge of a giant pit. At some point, the Persian gets too cocky, Leonidas snaps, and with a massive kick to the chest, he dramatically ends the negotiations. Right before the kick, when accused of madness, he roars: "THIS. IS. SPARTA!"

The Greeks and Persians clashed at Thermopylae around the 5th century BC. 300 was filmed in 2006 in Greece, on the Peloponnese peninsula.
And now, in 2024, in a coffee shop in Lipetsk, Russia, I came up with the idea of getting a tattoo of a fierce, animated matcha cup — channeling King Leonidas (that is, Gerard Butler, of course) — screaming "THIS. IS. MATCHA!"

Like this but in porcelain

I almost managed to stay loyal to the ridiculous idea. I was so close.
But alas.
While thinking about extra details to add, I remembered kintsugi (金継ぎ) — or kintsukuroi (金繕い).
In Japanese, it means "golden patch" or "golden repair."
Legend has it that sometime in the 15th century, shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa broke a super-expensive Chinese tea bowl. Naturally, it wasn’t his fault — the bowl just decided to fall. He sent it back to China, claiming warranty. The Chinese "fixed" it with brutal iron staples, leaving it looking like it had been assaulted by a medieval office stapler.
The shogun was not amused. He left a savage review and gave it one star. Then he asked local craftsmen for a more elegant solution.

The Japanese inventors did not disappoint.
They adapted a technique called maki-e — painting with gold powder on lacquer — tweaked the formulas, and used the golden resin to fuse the shattered pieces back together.
The restored bowl turned out beautifully — with an asymmetric golden web tracing each crack. The shogun was thrilled.
Beyond its aesthetic appeal, the technique symbolized some key pillars of Japanese philosophy: acceptance of imperfections, non-attachment to material things, and the fleeting nature of existence.

As someone who's been fascinated by Japanese culture and philosophy for years, I couldn’t pass up such a stunning concept.
Credit where it's due: Vadim, the artist, listened to my whole crazy idea, thought for a moment, and then whipped up a sketch we basically used without changes.
At first, I also wanted a spear-spoon and a shield-saucer, but there wasn’t much space left on my leg, so we only managed to fit the spear-spoon.
And so now, on my left leg, I have a matcha-powered Greek general — a little cracked, a little patched — proudly holding the line.

The more tattoos I get, the more I feel... I don't even know how to put it. "Complete," maybe.
It’s like when you open a coloring book — or, for the more mature crowd, a paint-by-numbers kit.
At first, everything is blank, but over time, the colors fill in, and the picture starts to look complete.
That’s exactly how I feel when I look at my ink-covered skin.
Every drawing, every shade was carefully chosen to capture the idea I wanted to express.
To get a little poetic about it, tattoos for me aren’t so much about making a statement or decorating my body — they’re a visual manifestation of self-reflection.
Pretty good line, right? I impressed even myself with that one.

Maybe someday I’ll finally manage to get something completely silly and meaningless.
Like a kitten in a sombrero.
Or a hot-air balloon shaped like a khinkali dumpling — if you flip it upside down, the twisted top could double as the basket.
Or maybe a tiny ruler tattooed along my index finger? So when I'm doing DIY projects around the house, I can measure things not by guesswork, but literally "by finger."

In short, I have plenty of ideas.
I'm off to think about them some more.
But first — I’m gonna eat.
All this talk about khinkali made me hungry.