THE VAJRA CHOP JOB

The long road to a rad tattoo

I grew up really loving to look at tattoos on other people — a love that still consumes me (anyone who knows me knows how addicted I am to Ink Master) but it seemed nightmarish and terrible to get one myself. I couldn’t imagine any image I’d want painfully scarred into my flesh forever, with the dark ink degrading under my skin into a greenish blur. I survived the nineties without getting any tattoos, despite working in nightclubs and the advent of Modern Primitivism, rockabilly, Goth, Bauhaus, and Ed Hardy’s ‘Realistic’ tattoo studio mere blocks from my warehouse in North Beach.

When I lived in Park Slope Brooklyn in the oughts, I had a great witch/healer friend - the writer Sarah Falkner. She introduced me to a great many esoteric concepts, but for some reason the one that stuck with me the most was the Vajra Chopper, sometimes known as a Kartika — a ceremonial symbol in Vajrayana Buddhism. It looks like a mezzeluna, or a curved blade, topped with a dorje — four lightning bolts joining together into a bulb, which represents everything that cannot be dissolved by time. The blade represents “skillful means,” also the separation of muscle from bone, and/or the removal of anything that separates you from enlightenment. In a particular practice of Vajrayana caled “Chöd,” the blade is for cutting through demons. I’ve encountered quite a few in my life, at close range. It is my spiritual weapon of choice.

Anyone familiar with my Facebook page knows I love black cars — particularly lowriders — particularly dropped, channeled, chopped and shaved Mercuries from around 1949, 1950, 1951. Those big chrome teeth. Those beady little headlights. When they get customized into ‘lead sleds,’ everything goes long, bumpless and streamlined as an art deco panther. The windows go slitty and the doorknobs go away. They look sinister, sleek and delicious.

I had an idea back then I really wanted to do - a conjoined book and art piece, called “The Vajra Chop Job.” When I traveled around the country to explore the semiotics of regional fashion for my book “Fear and Clothing,” I noticed that most places I went had Christian car shows. I was hoping to score a deal with an art gallery and a publisher. I wanted to build a Buddhist lowrider — each part of it blessed and/or customized to be Buddhist ( e.g. any wheel that rotated would be engraved like a Buddhist prayer wheel )— and describe all of the Buddhist customizations and rituals we did to it, and drive it around the country, into the Red states, to Christian car shows, to see if I could change any hearts or minds.

At the end of the grand tour, the Buddhist lowrider would be driven into an art gallery, and dissembled piece by piece and sold at auction or eBay or on site, or given away, or otherwise distributed and atomized… like a sand painting. And I’d write a book about it.

Nobody wanted that for some reason.

For the last 8 months, ever since my egregious ejection from my uncle’s rental and my subsequent cutting off of various toxic family members, I have been realizing that my life has been consumed by narcissists, for the most part. I started visualizing a Vajra Chopper on my inner left wrist, to go with a gesture I had been making, every time I was feeling agonized about people I am estranged from — I make a long, left handed karate chop to cut myself further off. The more I visualized it, the more I realized I needed the tattoo - my first and only.

I was ready for 6 hours of agony to receive this sigil, but was extremely surprised when the artist, a brilliant micro-realist named Oro, was so gentle, it didn’t hurt at all. At all. I was so surprised. It was only as painful as having your teeth cleaned.

I sat ‘like a rock’ (as tattoo artists say) for all six hours of the tattoo without so much as a twitch or a wince. While I was laying on the table (with no intoxicants whatsoever — I wanted to feel the burn, which was weird because there literally was none. I had thought some kind of Catholic torture penance was required of me to get the tattoo. ) I had sort of a mystical experience. I wasn’t asleep, just kind of unfocused with my eyes half closed, listening to the Neo-soul on Oro’s playlist, and I suddenly felt the impression that someone was holding my right hand, then realized that was impossible because I was laying next to the wall. I shook off that strange sensation, and a few minutes later I had the impression that my left hand was grasping the small golden Mexican pyramid that Oro wore around his neck. That wasn’t actually happening either. I chalked it up to angels.

The tattoo came out startlingly perfect, beyond my wildest imaginings of dopeness. I’m so stoked with it. I keep staring at it in disbelief. It looks like a museum piece. I got it to grant myself a magic ability; I imbued the symbol with the power to protect me from toxic people, who, since I was so narcissistically abused growing up, I tend to hang onto like grim death. I got it to cut people off; to slice through the invisible emotional tendrils and the remaining sinews of deep emotional connection. To stop giving people that hurt me free rent in my brain, and active space in my heart. To utterly disengage from people who are bad for me — something I’ve always had problems with. Usually, I never want to let go of anyone.

Unfortunately the first toxic person to get the chop was the person closest to me. The blade was blooded within the day. But that’s another tale for another time. I am not grieving — I just look at my tattoo and know the magic is working: I feel strong, and I know beyond a shadow of doubt that it is protecting me.

Cintraw@gmail.com

Theme song: Jack Black!

Artwork: Vajra Chopper by Ink de Oro