One summer night in my final college year, my roommates and I went to an In-N-Out Burger for dinner. It was then I first noticed something on my European roommate's stomach.
"Is that a tattoo?" I asked.
She nodded. Lifting her shirt slightly, she revealed her very cool, mono-colored... blob.
"What is it?" Another roommate asked.
"It's a boa constrictor swallowing an elephant." She answered briskly, taking another bite into her juicy burger.
My other roommate looked confused. Coincidentally, I happened to have just finished the book she referred to. I replied, "How lovely. Little Prince."
Yes. My European roommate's "blob" of a tattoo was based on an illustration drawn by French author/illustrator Antoine de Saint Exupéry in his famous book The Little Prince. It is a book filled with wonders, beautiful illustrations, and meanings of life. It should be read over and over again in the course of a lifetime, because you get something different out of it each time you read it in different stages of your life.
Antoine de Saint Exupéry (1900–1944) was an aviator in addition to his poetic and artistic talent. He wrote mostly of his passion in aviation. In 1944, he disappeared over the Mediterranean on a flight mission. I firmly believe that when passion runs deep in a person, it will seep through everything he does. The Little Prince is lovely and magical because this passion carried through. A part of de Saint Exupéry's soul had carried on in the name of literature.
"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
(A quote from The Little Prince.)
Antoine de Saint Exupéry
A page from The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint Exupéry.
(The upper illustration was the tattoo my European roommate got.)
2 comments:
<3
And now this baby is all miiiine!
I'm lucky! =D
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