It was one of those New York City Tattoosday moments, when you really hit it off with someone and a simple question about a tattoo turns into a lengthy conversation.
I was coming home much later than usual and, at West 4th Street, where I'll occasionally switch from the A train to the D train, I spotted a woman in front of a subway map on the platform. She had tattoos on her ankles and was carrying a large hoop.
Amy, a nursing student and trapeze artist, shared the long segments on either side of her right food, inked in Sanskrit, quoting the
Baghavad Gita:
She paraphrased the meaning as "Weapons do not pierce this. Fire does not burn this. Such is the eternal nature of the soul."
Or, in one translation, referring to the
Atma, or higher self:
Weapons do not cut this Atma, fire does not burn it, water does not make it wet, and the wind does not make it dry. (2.23)
This Atma cannot be cut, burned, wetted, or dried up. It is eternal, all pervading, unchanging, immovable, and primeval. (2.24)
Why this quote? Aside from her appreciation of Hindu art and design, she got in "in honor of forgetting a person's number that I really needed to forget".
In other words, as I interpret it, she couldn't remember the number of someone who she was better off without. Her mind released the link to the person the heart craved and, in hindsight, the mind was operating in the best interest of the soul.
She had this work done by an artist at
Purple Panther Tattoos on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood California.
Although the photos above were taken on the train platform at West 4th, we spent a good amount of time chatting on the D train after it pulled into the station. We talked about tattoos mostly, and I recommended some artists to check out in New York.
Amy said she had been recently thinking about a new tattoo and it was funny that I just happened to approach her about her own work.
We parted ways when the D rolled into 36th Street in Brooklyn, where I switched to the R train, and Amy headed to work teaching an Aerial Hoop class (which explains her possession of the large ringed object I alluded to at the beginning of the post).
A hearty thank you to Amy for sharing her inspirational tattoo with us here at Tattoosday!
