The Wordsmith

At least 5,000 years ago, humans have been marking their skins for spiritual, religious, medical, artistic and a host of other reasons. Tattoo, from the Polynesian word “ta”, meaning to “to strike something”, and the Tahitian word “tatau”, which is “to mark something.

Tattoos are as diverse as the people who wear them. The Pazryks of ancient Siberia tattooed themselves with griffins and magical monsters, believing the act to be magical. Egyptian princesses were known to have tattooed dots and dashes in geometric patterns on their bodies. The Japanese, the Maoris and other Polynesians, Bornean indigenes, Indian haruman, Thai monks, Greek aristocratic women, Celtic woads. Rites of passage, a form of beautification, spiritual links, religious cleansing, personal freedom, commemoration of acts of bravery, declaration of status and rank. The list is endless. Who started it? Who spread it? The cows will come home and we’d still be arguing. The oldest known tattooed individual was a man believed to have lived 5,000 years ago in the mountains between what is now Austria and Italy. He had 57 tattoos, including a cross on the inside of his left knee.

A thousand words for a thousand reasons are given for the culture of tattooing. But they are all really the same - tattoos are about personal journeys towards self-realization, whether it be an anchor on a forearm or a traditional tribal piece.

Tattoos are wonderful things if they are well thought out, well planned and meaningful. They are personal and permanent mementoes that we gather as we roll through life. But what happens if you need to erase a tattoo. Maybe you thought you wanted it, but it didn’t look as good on skin as it did on paper or in your head. Maybe you were not ready for it for spiritual reasons. Maybe you don’t love yourself enough to have it yet. You could have planned it for years, but at the end of the day, you just could not jive with it. That’s OK. No regrets. Everything about life is a lesson in change. I plan in advance of at least 2 years for every tattoo I have. The last one was planned in advance two years before. It was imagined, envisioned, discussed with my cousin and long-term tattoo artist (who, incidentally, is one of the best in Kuching). And when it got done two years after, I had to have it taken off. Main reason: I was not in sync with myself enough to own it. Strange words. Food for thought, but the philosophy holds that if one is not at peace or one with oneself, tattoos are the last thing one should do to oneself. This particular piece was bigger than my self could handle. To the world, trivial excuses were given - it was hard to hide at work, the family was displeased. Fill in the blanks.

Ten years of traditional and modern tattooing methods, I would now enter the realm of taking one tattoo off. (Left: Fresh, before any lasering).

In a nutshell, the process of tattooing is to use a sharp instrument to insert a foreign substance beneath the surface of the skin, often beyond the first few layers of skin. Traditionally in Sarawak, this is soot. Today, good tattoo artists use high quality organic inks imported from the UK or US. Black inks are black because of the carbon (organic) content. Coloured inks are coloured because of the metals in them - red inks often contain iron, green inks copper and so on. Yes, there is pain involved, but a good sort of pain, many reckon.

Tattoos take hours to complete, from conception to inking. Reversing the tattooing process is far more tedious, involves a different kind of pain, and is a journey in patience. The internet spews up a variety of methods, from cutting the skin away, using salt to abrade the skin (salabrasion) to magic creams that claim to fade the tattoo off. These methods are either ineffective or produce horrendous scars. By far the most effective and guaranteed scar-free way of tattoor removal is by lasering the ink off. The main aim of laser tattoo removal is to remove tattoo pigment without damaging the layers of skin above. Lasers cause the ink beneath the skin to break into minute fractions. These pop out of your skin or are absorbed by your immune system. This is why tattoos fade ever so slowly when lasered off. Your body absorbs the ink bit by bit. It takes at least three weeks before any noticeable blurring of the ink. It also takes more than one session for the ink to fade completely. My tattoo was only a dotted outline. Even so, I am on my third (and last) session and the dots are still visible. The longer one waits in between sessions, the better, because this gives the body time to process out the fragmented ink.

There are a number of lasers out in the market. The best type for black ink and dark skin is the Medlite Q-switch laser. This machine costs RM365,000 and there is only one doctor in Kuching who has it. He cringes when I walk in because it is a LOT of work for both of us to go through my arm and we both know the punishment the machine is about to go through. During the first session, he went easy on me with a low level beam; but increased it to level six by the third session. My arm went from looking and feeling sunburnt during session one to looking and feeling mangled by session 3. Within a week, all the scabs had fallen off and pink baby skin started to peep out from the red area. Three weeks later, more fading. From experience, the ink will continue to fade over the next six to 12 months. It is truly a test of patience. There are no permanent scars. Indeed, the lasered skin feels smoother than ever (lasers are used for skin enhancement, after all). My journey of tattoos has taken an interesting detour at this juncture. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I can have hours of conversations about it, sit by the fireside when I’m old and wrinkled and wow little children with stories about it. More importantly, it’s brought me further along the journey of rediscovering myself. (Left: Week 9 after session one, right before session 2).

More detailed information about laser tattoo removal can be found at Matt Hough’s personal experience here.

Notes: The author has done a third session and the tattoo has faded a great deal more.