On a beach in Italy I am slightly delirious. I am trying to sketch with ink and pen but the heat is frying my mind. Although I’m persisting, the drawing is going nowhere and my vision is wobbling like the heat rising off the sand. I go to reload the pen from the pot of black, oily ink but somehow I miss and insert the sharp point of the steel nib deep into the side of my thumb.
Twenty three years later I have a tiny tattoo between the joints of my left thumb.