The Calligrapher — Ōuyáng Xún 欧阳询

Tang regular-script master whose 'Ouyang style' is a basic learning model.

Tang calligrapher (557–641), master of regular script/running script — Tang codifier of regular script; crisp, architectural strokes you could measure with a ruler. Tang dynasty

Cultural Story

猥 originally meant numerous or humble, gathering like a crowd; the 說文 gives '犬吠声' and '衆.' Over time it darkened to mean base or obscene. Histories scorn 猥贱 officials, and Buddhist texts warn against 猥亵 desires that degrade the mind and the body alike over time.

Common words & phrases

• 猥亵 indecent · obscene · assault
• 猥琐 petty · vulgar · obscene
• 猥贱 low · mean
• 贪猥 greedy and base

Read the story behind the character

We call a creep 猥琐 (petty and vulgar) when he lingers near schoolgirls, and 猥亵 (indecent assault) is a crime prosecuted without mercy. A 猥贱 (low, mean) act earns contempt, and 贪猥 (greedy and base) describes a corrupt clerk pocketing scraps. The word marks behavior society pushes into the shadows.

Why this character belongs on skin

Be careful with this one, or rather—be deliberate. 猥 began with the dog radical and a sense of the crouched, the huddled, the many-packed-together; its older meanings shade into cramped and creeping, and its modern ones into the crude, the lewd, the shamefully small. It is not a flattering character, which is precisely why someone might want it. There is a tradition of wearing your shadow on purpose: the desert fathers who kept a skull on the desk, the Zen painters who scrawled their own laziness on the wall, the confession that inoculates against concealment. 猥 is the parts of you that hunch, that skulk, that want shabby things. Everyone has them. Most people spend enormous energy pretending otherwise. To ink it is to sign your name on the shadow and thereby domesticate it—the old magic, if you name the demon, it works for you. Place it where you can cover it, because some truths are for you alone. Ink does not have to be beautiful to be true. Sometimes the truest mark is the crooked one, worn like a scar you finally stopped apologizing for.