escape yourself and gravity

I am still determined to be cheerful and happy, in whatever situation I may be; for I have also learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends upon our dispositions, and not upon our circumstances.
- Martha Washington


Mom sent me this today from her daily announcements at work, and I am applying it to myself right now. I'm going to try to remember to pay attention to my disposition and not my circumstance.

Just to be clear, these questions are not about my next tattoo. (severity_softly is designing that for me.) This is for a character I am writing about.


I have a character (Caucasian former Army brat in her mid-30s) who is fairly fluent in Japanese thanks to living in Japan for a couple of years as a teenager. She made some very poor choices there and I'm thinking maybe she got a tattoo afterwards. I want something like the concept of "regret" or "the road not taken" or that kind of thing. From what little I know of Japanese, it seems to be somewhat conceptual rather than literal (one of you told me once the word for 'perfect blue autumn sky' or something like that - I have to look it up every autumn).

So anyway, two questions:

1. How do I find out the Kanji for something like "regret" or "the road not taken"? I can give more details when I get home if needed. I really don't know enough about Japanese to know if I'm asking the right question.

2. Question for men (or women who fancy women) in particular: What do you think is the sexiest location for a woman to have a kanji character tattooed on her (black ink on pale Caucasian skin, if that influences your answer)?






Note to self: I need to make an icon for this writing project, just for fun.
Second note to self: It's been a year since printing a list of tags & userpics to use at work, and I need to update that.

I'm cleaning, going through old papers and sorting them into three piles: scrapbook, file, and pitch. So I'll probably be posting all kinds of stuff I want to remember here.

"Fiction does not ever answer questions. It keeps them from coming up. That's how we create worlds."
- Chuck Wachtel

( Indiana wines, quotes, etc... )

The fun part is going to be doing the filing and scrapbooking. Hahahaha not.

James C. MacDonald

Debby' birthday is 4 Oct

Duroc (name)

Iris is 1 June

Kiz's Birthday 29 June
Eliza 26 March


Reconstruction
Reminiscing
Resurrection
Restriction
Restraint
Redivivus (Revived or Reborn)
Remuneration (Ron)
Repercussion
Reclamation

"You always got to follow the truth. Even if it brings the whole damn thing crashing down around you."
- Nelson, Life on Mars

Maddiec24 birthday 26 June

Hepzibah Goston

The Rotters Club Jonathan Coe