Friday Feels: “Permanent” Palm Trees
By: Jeremiah Mayfield
Tags: Tattoo, Change, Mindset, Perspective, Transformation

Ya boy recently got some fresh ink. My first ink, to be precise.

If you’ve been on a video call with me in the last couple weeks and I’ve had short-sleeves on you’ve likely seen it…right there boldly on display on my right forearm, a 6-inch palm tree woven into the fabric of who I am.

I’m 40 years old and for my entire adult life I have always said I would never get a tattoo because I didn’t feel strongly enough about anything that I would want it permanently on my body.

I think it was always the concept of the finality of it all. The potential for regret always kept me safely in my lane.

I have always admired the tattoos of others, but that was good for them — not for me.

Palm trees feel exotic to me. Likely because growing up in Dallas, Texas you never see them. The nearest ones are along the Gulf of Mexico, roughly 300 miles away.

The trees of my childhood were mainly squatty Live Oaks, Cedars and Mesquite trees — regal and resolute. They fit the plains of Texas nicely.

But a palm tree? Well that was something uniquely “other” to me.

As an adult I moved to Miami and started what I would later recognize as a massive personal transformation.

When I started my weight-loss journey it was the palm trees that smiled down on me as I exercised under their swaying branches. It was under the palm trees in my backyard that I closed the chapter on my first marriage. It was in a courtyard filled with palm trees that I met Carlos who changed my life forever.

Palm trees no longer hold a mystique so much as they occupy a place of milestone markers, an Ebenezer of sort, in my story.

So there I am sitting in the tattoo shop, alone because of COVID rules, and the artist begins his work. His name is Gui. He’s from Brazil and also lived in Miami before he moved to SF a few years back. He’s a funny guy, full of incredible stories that probably are reserved solely for tattoo artists.

And suddenly there was no turning back.

The first lines of black ink are pushed deep into my skin repeatedly by a tiny little needle.

And I joined the ranks of people who have tattoos.

Looking back, it was kind of an unceremonious moment, but one filled with deep personal importance to me.

As he was drawing he regaled me with colorful stories — likely to distract me from the pain and the persistent instinct to punch him as he stabbed me with his needle.

As we talked while he worked I mentioned that I never wanted to get a tattoo because I never wanted anything on my body permanently. But then I had to explain that this palm tree, and what it symbolized, was the first time I had ever felt so sure about the permanence.

For Gui, there was nothing permanent about what was happening in that moment.

He shared with me that most art forms such as paintings, drawings, sculpture, etc. would last for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.

But tattoos, while feeling permanent to us, are actually the most temporal of art — for when we go, so does the tattoo.

It’s perceived permanence is tied only to us and our experience.

I sat there a bit stunned as I processed the depth of his perspective.

This palm tree was to represent that transformation is always possible, that nothing is really permanent. And the reason transformation is possible is because I’m not permanent.

Nothing is finished, until I’m finished.

I had spent my whole life fretting over this moment, riddled with anxiety that once I do this there’s “no turning back” but that idea is not real. We cannot always “go back” but we get to choose how we go forward.

We get to transform.

I chose such a prominent place because I wanted the constant reminder in my face that transformation is always possible, whether it’s under a palm tree, or a Texas live oak, or even a California redwood.

And that truth is maybe all that’s really permanent.

Take care of each other, mi gente.

JM

#fridayfeels