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Touch
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two dogs, their tongues flopping, playing chase and tumble on the lawn, or a pack of teenage boys playing "touch" football in a corner lot.

it that animals can predict earthquakes. Livereported busting out of their barns, household pets stock are often leaping from the house, pacing in a frenzy, or simply acting strangely before a tremor, which may be because of the static electricity in the
Folk wisdom has
air. As Helmut Tributsch, of the Free University of Berlin, realized, an animal's skin is much drier than that of a human being. There

lot of electromagnetic upset iust before an earthquake, and this produces static electricity, which makes an animal's hair stand up and quiver. I remember watching the launch of Viking II at Cape Canaveral in ry7g, and how, during lift-off, the air felt itchy and electric. I felt bristlingly alert, because it was the 6rst time in the
is a

history of our planet that we were launching a sPacecraft to search

for life elsewhere, and the sense of vigil deeply moved me. The launch itself produced an electromagnetic upset much like that of an earthquake and increased the static electricity in the air, which
made my flesh creep. Bven those skeptics among us viewers could not have been left unmoved, what with the hair standing up on their
necks, the shock waves pounding on their chests like giant fists, their

minds alert from the stimulating dance of negative ions, and the distant spacecraft lurching upward on spasms of apricot fire'

IAT TOO$

Of all the skin-deforming arts, one of the most interesting

and

ancient is tattoo, which traveled like gossip over trade routes and continents. Neolithic farmers tattooed their faces with a design of blue tridents; female singers, dancers, and prostitutes in ancient Egypt wore tattoos. ln ry69, Captain Cook reported in his iournal that both the men and women of Tahiti displayed tattoos (a word that probably comes from the Tahitian tdtdu, "to strike"). King Ceorge V, Nicholas II, and t ady Randolph Churchill all had tattoos, along

with souvenir-crazed Americans and fashionable Victo-

rian women who wished a permanent pink to their lips. The Maori

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Diane Ackerman

of New Zealand perfected an esPecially intricate style of tattoo,

which Terry Landau reports on in About Faces"
fThey have] an elaborate tattoo technique called moko ,. . One traveler described a tribal chief who prided himself on having spared no visible part of his body: even his lips, tongue, gums, and palate were completely tattooed. |apanese tattoo, called irezuml, is a serious folk art like landscape painting or flower arranging, and great tattoo masters still perform

their Chagall-like work in full-body tattoos that are subtle, repulsive,

magical, seductive, sensuous, three-dimensional, thought-provoking,

and macabre. Ultimately, tattoos make unique the surface of one's self, embody one's secret dreams, adorn with magic emblems the Altamira of the
is also a form of self-destruction; fully tattooed people live shorter lives because their skin can't breathe properly and some of the inks are poisonous. Those with tattooed faces, hands, and heads

fesh.

It

have chosen, in a way, to seal themselves off from normal society forever, and so it is not surprising that the largest number of the tattooed in fapan belong to the underworld. Tattoo masters often help the Tokyo police identify bodies. A person completely tattooed in a single coherent scene dictated by body contour and self-image makes you wonder about symbolism, decoration, and identity. In her

book of forty-six almost life-size Polaroid reproductions, The fapa' nese Tattoo, photographer Sandi Fellman explains her attraction to tattoos as an infatuation with paradox: "Beauty created through brutal means," "power bestowed at the price of submission," "the glorification of the fesh as a means to spirituality." fust as westerners donate their organs after death, a |apanese wearing the work of a grand tattoo master may donate his skin to a museum or university. Tokyo University has three hundred such masterpieces, framed. To walk into this chamber of skins must fill one with shock and wonder: What a marvel to see so many lives at full stretch, defined by needles and ink, so many people who wished

to become their own text.