Running Diary: this is water tattoos

Apparently, when you get married you're supposed to give all your groomsmen a gift.  I wanted to gift something that had Ken written all over it, so I went with a short (you're welcome groomsmen) book that was originally an inspirational commencement speech given at Kenyon College.  It was given by David Foster Wallace (DFW), a literary legend.  The book was entitled, This Is Water.  

Quick summary: Two young fish are swimming along the river one day when they come across an older fish who says to them, "Morning boys, how's the water?"  And swims on.  The two young fish swim on and one of them asks, "What the hell is water?"

My friend Amulya really loved the book, so a few months ago we decided to get "this is water" tattooed on ourselves.  Here's the running diary:

9 PM: Amulya arrives at my mom's house in Newton, MA.  sidenote - my bedtime is usually around 9 or 10, so I was about ready to pass out at this point, but we drove over to Amulya's house for a bro slumber party and watched the Celtics-Kings game.  DeMarcus Cousins went for a triple double and the Celtics lost 118-96 to the second worst team in the West.  Classic 2012 Celtics.  sidenote - I would love to see this trade: straight up, Cousins for Rondo.

Fast forward to 2 AM: Listening to DFW give the This Is Water speech at Kenyon.  Analyzing it one last time for its significance.  

Next morning, wake up at 10 AM: Take Amulya's dog out to walk through fresh New England powder.  I wish I had a dog.  Except when it poops.  I want someone else to pick up the poop.  

1 PM: Start the drive towards Providence, RI - the land of tattoos.

1:15 PM: Ken checks phone.  hmm...  You have 3 new messages from Katie Noguchi.  This can't be good.  Katie doubts ken will actually come home with a tattoo.  

1:40 PM: Arrive in Providence, surprisingly short drive.  The first tattoo parlor only has about 4 font options..  Pass.

1:55 PM: Arrive at tattoo shop #2 - Providence Tattoo, referred to on yelp as the BMW gallery of tattoo shops.  

sidenote - I would have live tweeted this epic event but I don't know how to use twitter yet.  Although, I did just read an idiot's guide to twitter.

2:15 PM: Ken and Amulya make a reservation for 5 PM, and embark on one last tattoo strategy session at a hip coffee shop - Cafe Zog.  SO much time spent on dafont.com going through hundreds of possible fonts.  Countless screenshots and editing different images in powerpoint eventually resulted in this:

font: daniel

Amulya decided to go with his own handwriting. A brilliant idea I would have copied, except I have doctor handwriting which looks like this:

4:30 PM: Leave Cafe Zog, back to Providence Tattoo.  

5:10 PM: Our tattoo artist drew out "this is water" trying to copy Amulya's handwriting, but it looked girly so we had to make a last minute switch to:  

font: garamond

Didn't feel right to audible this late, but we had to.  

6 PM: Walking out of Providence Tattoo with ink.  

7:15 PM: Back in Newton, dazed and confused, we stopped at Starbucks to get some coffee and reanalyze the lingering question: Why did we just do this?  

yolo

Our temporary conclusion: This Is Water is about paying attention to water.  It's too easy to get caught up in our day-to-day routines.  Wake up, make coffee, go to class, go for a jog, eat dinner with wife, call it a day. I love a good routine, but the danger is that we become numb to the details.  

And that was the major reason Amulya and I wanted these tattoos. To have a constant reminder of all the small decisions that surround our inevitably routine lives.  Take the example of owning a dog - loving a dog isn't just about having a friend that's always around, it's also about being a responsible dog owner and picking up its poop.  This Is Water is about realizing that we need to pay attention to poop.

But at the end of the day, Amulya and I just love doing bold things like this together.

See you on the other side,

from ken

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