Narcisa’s become a plumber now.After going through every single ball point pen and every tin can and scrap of tin foil and roll of scotch tape and paper clip and safety pin and god knows what else I got in my kitchen cabinets and drawers here in her never-ending quest to build a better crack pipe, she’s finally taken up the dubious craft of do-it-yourself plumbing.Yup.I came home today to find the kitchen faucet missing, just a gaping hole atop the kitchen counter with this sad little stream of water dripping dripping dripping away.What the fuck?It all made sense, of course, when I stepped into the room, only to find Narcisa sitting there on the floor sucking away at a burning rock from the amputated faucet.Great.She’s like this big old bug-eyed rat, gnawing steadily away at my home.I just looked at her, and she looked back at me with that ever-loving shit-eating grin of hers which always ensures immediate forgiveness, no matter how outrageous the latest offense…

Copyright Jonathan Shaw 2008. All Rights Reserved.NOTIFIÇAO: Os eventos relatados neste site são contos de ficção – registrados na Biblioteca Nacional como ficção com todos os direitos autorais revertidos ao autor, Jonathan Shaw. Os personagens mencionados são interamente ficticios. Certos eventos, personagens, lugares e relatos foram baseados em fatos reais, porém qualquer semelhança a qualquer pessoa viva ou morta se trata de pura coincidência.As vários fotografias apresentadas se encontram com o rosto distorcido para preservar o anonimato das modelos que representam personagens fictícios.

CHECK OUT OUR REVIEW ON VICE MAGAZINE’S WEBSITE:

LITERARY: NARCISA

An authentic and colorful novel like NARCISA can only be produced by an individual who has experienced an authentic and colorful existence. Few have dipped so deeply or functioned so extensively in the cultural underbelly of our world than the notorious artist and adventurer, Jonathan Shaw. In this literary firmament he is a virtuoso.
- Robert Williams (Painter, Author of Malicious Resplendence and Through Prehensile Eyes)

Tattoo of Robert Williams’ cartoon by Jonathan Shaw:

The following email exchange started when my old friend Nadine Purdy read my recently-posted, now-notorious “Crack Monster” blog.

From the tone of her email to me, I got the impression that it must have totally horrified her.

I get that a lot. Especially from well-meaning, albeit sometimes slightly misguided friends and well-wishers who seem to fear I’ve gone completely off my rocker now, given my chosen attitudes toward the crooked litle path I find myself on today.

That and the nature of my seemingly bullet-proof Eternal Muse and the object of my love, a long suffering angelic young crack-whore named Narcisa.

I’m getting used to all the friendly concern by now.

What some of these beloved well-wishers may fail to recognize though, is that, in order for me to have “gone insane,” I must have already once been “sane”, so as to have “gone” nuts to begin with.I was never “sane”.At best, I am simply smart and, at times lucid enough to have fooled a lot of good people for a very long time- including myself.

I’m not fooling anymore.

I have finally come to grips with my own “insanity”.And I’ve somehow become honest enough to be willing to accept my, heretofore, total inability to form a true partnership bond with another human being.

In return for my good intent, it seems that The Source of Infinite Love, in its infinite wisdom and mercy and endlessly ironic sense of humor, has sent me an earthly partner: Narcisa- the one person who constantly reflects my own insanity right back at me. And always in ways that motivate me to want to unearth, hand in hand with my unlikely, crack-addled little “partner” the illusive path to that wonderful place called “sanity”.But my friend Nadine Purdy, not unlike the lovely Narcisa herself, has also taken some pretty interesting twists and turns and hair-raising detours along her own rocky road to Nirvana.

If anybody deserves an overdose of peace and happiness and “sanity” in this life, it is Nadine’s absolute birthright, given all the fucked up crazy shit she’s been through to find it.

I first met Nadine some years ago through mutual friends, who, like myself, were forced, under the lash of their addictions onto a newfound spiritual path that none of us had ever imagined.

Nadine and I hit it off like kindred spirits right from the start.

I’ve always had a soft place in my heart for crack-whores, retired or active, don’t make no difference to me. And Nadine, being another recovering addict could relate pretty well to my shit too, I guess.

Over time, we became good friends, as she told me some of her story.

Here’s my somewhat fanciful version of it.

Nadine had once upon a time been a highly successful New York City fashion designer, scrambling right up the food chain to compete with the likes of Betsy Johnson, Patricia field, Ana Sui, Carolina Herrera, Christian Joy and Diane Von Furstenburg. (The same Von Furstenburg I eventually sold my building in NYC to before moving back here to Rio – small world).

Anyway, as Nadine was quickly swept up into the glittering whirlwind of money, property and prestige on the New York fashion scene, there were, of course, lots of fancy parties to attend.

And of course there was plenty of cocaine at those parties, the prerequisite fancy hipster party drug, an indispensably fashionable 80’s accessory for life in the good old fast lane.

Meanwhile, Nadine, right at the height of her fame, good fortune and worldly $uccess, had gone flying off to Tokyo on fashion business. There, somehow she met and married the son of the Emperor of Japan or some crazy shit like that, producing two beautiful children and a spectacular dreams-come-true happily-ever-after Hollywood ending.

One problem. It didn’t quite all end up like that.

Fairy tale endings can be terribly boring. Especially when you’ve had a few rounds in the fast lane with the white lady.

Here comes trouble.

Without going into all the apocolyptic details of Nadine’s pop-culture rise and fall from grace, which have since become the stuff of a Hollywood movie in-the-making, not to mention the subject of the ubiquitous talk show circuit, from Oprah on down, I’ll just cut to the chase for simplicity’s sake, and give all you dirty little Peeping Toms the proverbial bottom line.

Nadine moved quickly southbound, downwardly mobile from fancy party cocaine lines, to freebase, to street level crack, to eventually circling the drain right down down down into a dirty old life of petty crime, prostitution and eventual homeless, hopeless, helpless destitution, systematically dismantling and smoking up her whole hard-earned fashion empire along the way, converting it all to ashes strewn along the ratty road to ruin.

She eventually ended up living among the notorious “mole people”- a shocking tribe of sub-human derelicts, the stuff of shadowy urban legends, slithering through the subterranean sewers and abandoned subway corridors running deep beneath the busy streets of Manhattan.

Somehow Nadine Purdy survived the Homerian trials and purifications of a true warrior spirit.And she finds herself today, after many hard years of spiritual seeking and ego-smashing, courageous recovery work, back with flying colors among the human race, reunited with her beautiful kids that the crack monster had cruelly abducted, and being slowly but surely restored to sanity and a life of love, service and spiritual awakening…

And she’s got her fashion line up and running again too, flying high and proud under the fabulous banner, Purdy Girl.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you… Nadine Purdy.

How’s that shit for a happy ending?

Here’s our latest bit of correspondence, right after she read my recent “Crack Monster” blog:

Nadine wrote:

OH JONATHAN -MY HEART BLEEDS FOR YOU SOMETIMES.YOU ARE SUCH A SPECIAL PERSON AND FRIEND.WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO STOP TORTURING YOURSELF AND FIND A REAL WOMAN WHO WILL MAKE YOU HAPPY? SOMEONE WHO IS A FRIEND AND A PARTNER.DO YOU ENJOY THIS IMMENSE PAIN?

FIND SOMEONE WHO IS ON YOUR LEVEL AND BE AT PEACE.I WAS JUST IN THE JUNGLE IN PERU FOR 2 WEEKS WITH A SHAMAN, DOING A DIETA.IT WAS A MAJOR TIME FOR REFLECTION. VERY PAINFUL AT TIMES, BUT SO WORTH IT. I LEARNED TO LISTEN TO THE SILENCE WITHIN.I HAVE COME TO A POINT OF PEACE AND FORGIVENESS.NEVER IN MY LIFE HAVE I. EXPERIENCED SUCH TRANQUILITY.I HOPE THAT YOU CAN FIND THIS PEACE.IT’S FUCKING AWESOME TO FEEL GOD’S LOVE SO DEEP THAT YOU HAVE NO FEAR. COMPLETE BLISS.

HOPE TO SEE YOU SOON.

BIG KISSES,NADINE

I wrote back:

I’m glad that’s all working out so well for you, Nadine.

But please please please, don’t let your heart bleed for me, or anybody else…. Ouch!! That shit sounds painful. Stop that shit!! Right now!!!

But seriously… there are many paths to enlightenment, baby. Just as many as there are people on paths. And that’s a whole shitload of paths… In fact, if I may be so bold, I’d like to believe they all go there, eventually.

Some may be faster and easier than others. But you don’t always get to choose your path. Not when that fucking love bug strikes like an arrow to the heart.

And not when you learn to trust your own intuition and try to live with open eyes and mind and heart- really open to seeing beyond all those old ideas of “peace” and “happiness” and all the fairy-tale illusions of facile outward appearances and shit…

I believe we don’t always get choose our paths, not consciously anyway… But we DO get to choose how we walk them.

My art and my daily life and my relationships with others, no matter how complex, challenging, troublesome and painful, ARE MY spiritual path.

Different strokes, got it?

Sometimes the very ‘worst’ relationship is exactly the one that’s best for one’s soul. The one that brings out our very best and challenges us to grow stronger, spiritually, emotionally, mentally.The fire that cleanses and heals…My own creative process is the best way I know to attempt to express and manifest the magnificence of my Creator. That’s why my art IS my Higher Power and my spiritual practice.Any Muse one finds along the path therefore, however bizarre, surreal or insane they may seem to my admittedly crooked way of thinking, is always a total blessing to an artist.It can be a big mistake to judge what you’re not living through, Nadine.

Cuz that’s somebody else’s path. Maybe you just got no business on it, with all due respect, cuz it’s not yours to walk- or judge…

Don’t be so quick to take my black humor and demented poetic rants as some sign of “the real me” sitting around in some maudlin pity party bitching, complaining or feeling sorry for myself. I am not. And I don’t want my friends’ hearts bleeding all over the place for my “plight” either. Too messy! That shit is wack! There IS no plight! Only light!

Thanks, but nooooo thanks, baby.

Got yer tourniquet right here…

Just for today, I ain’t seeking any needless pain for pain’s sake. I’ve already done enough of that shit.

But there’s pain and then there’s pain.

Some pain can be quite useful to an artist or any real seeker of truth. I’ve been told its even the touchstone to spiritual growth… Can you relate?

Like you, I’m seeking truth.

And growing.

And having a pretty good time along the bumpy old path, taking the ups with the downs… Like Mark Twain said, “it’s all grist for the mill.”

Amen to that.

Keep seeking, baby

“Hasta la vitoria, siempre!!”

Love ya, JS. 

Then Nadine replied:

I agree with you. I am just glad my path is going in a different direction… All spirtual paths do lead to the same place, see you there.

Much love and light. N

 I wrote:

Vive la difference!!!

“From each according to their ability – to each according to their need..”

Love, JS

So, now the time has come…  Jonathan has finally begun a whole new marathon rewrite of “Narcisa – Our Lady of Ashes“.

This time he’s working hand in hand with a seasoned book editor for a major literary agency – a real step up from a few weeks proof-reading the first edition’s funky first draft text with me, sitting in coffee houses and all-nite greasy-spoons around Silverlake, Echo Park and Hollyweird.

Our original editing system was always pretty haphazard and unconventional, to say the least….

But now…..

with daily blog posts, and this whole website shit up and running, and Jonathan long gone, back home in Brazil with his crazy crackhead, Narcisa, it’s all swiftly plummeted south to the next level of wierdness, coming together, a day at a time, mostly through tidbits and scraps of random emails, peppered with numbered headings, sometimes in strange heiroglyphic text but ALWAYS broken off in the middle by that familiar tagline.

“Sent Via Blackberry T-Mobile”.

That’s right kids, he now writes and edits all of his blog entries on a friggin’ blackberry.

BUT. WAIT.

The jig doesn’t stop there…

This is a 360 some odd page novel he’s re-working down there.

And, get this: Jonathan has proceeded to begin the whole fucking rewrite on his little pocket sized Crackberry too!!

RE-WRITE. AS IN, he’s re-writing… a book. On a Blackberry. I’m not joking. Or laughing. Well maybe a little.

Sitting on a motorcycle in the middle of the jungle, dodging automatic weapon fire up in some shanty town drug war favela, sitting on some rodent-infested rock by the beach or whatever whorehouse he’s sitting (or laying up) in right now…

Whatever the fuck he does that no one will ever really know…

Typing. On the Blackberry.

The following recent email exchange between us should give you some idea where my head’s been at today…

And as a pre-req, please envision the grimace on his Hollywood-bound assistant’s (that would be yours truly) pretty little face while I sit at my desk, running the whole official shit show from my office at the Crow’s nest overlooking the glittering lights of Babylon and the smog of the apocalypse.

I wrote this email to Jonathan a full FIVE times before sending it, searching for the right words to express my absolute outrage at his working methods…

At first it was a very angry email, I chastised him mercilessly for being an inconsiderate, unprincipaled caveman of an ignorant old Ludite prick with no decent sense of respect for modern communication systems or basic technology. But then I realized… how the fuck could anybody really get pissed off at such a spectacular display of savage insanity? Some might even call it genius…. I call it atavistic genius (something like a cross between Asberger’s and Bukowski logic).

- Alessandra

Here goes:

From: SAILOR

Subject: Blackberry endorsements and Lasek surgery

Date: June 13, 2008 4:14:52 PM PDT

To: JS

Captain-

Has that bitch got you smoking crack now? WHAT THE FUCK?!?!?!!   Shit’s cut off, nothing’s in the right order, I cant even believe you’re just merrily going about your business down there in the jungles of Hell, attempting a MAJOR rewrite on a 360 page book from your fucking Blackberry… as if that is something even remotely acceptable or normal.

Only you, you pirate-minded mentally insane psychopathic whore-fucking douchebag sniveling demented freak.

I have to wonder… How did I get so graced by the hand of such a technologically impaired innovator?

I fucking love you.

This will definitely go down in literary history…

Take the following, for example…

“So Jonathan, how did you become blind?”

” Well I was writing this novel on my blackberry and…”

From: JS

Subject: Re: Blackberry endorsements and Lasek surgery

Date: June 13, 2008 7:28:51 PM PDT

To: SAILOR

Little Sailor. You’re lucky I like you for being so hilariously… Retarded.

This aint exactly fuckin’ Starbucks here, darlin’!

I know you mean well, ya little suburban white trash SUV-driving, attorney-blowing hosebag amateur hooker… but it’s not like ya can just whip out the old laptop and start getting all artsy-fartsy here in the fucking vermin-infested crack ghettos of Rio, ya know…

I love you too. You are truly my other wacko muse, ya sniveling little cunt!!!

Btw, go ahead and put that ‘how’d you go blind?’ question into that big collective interview you’re supposedly preparing for me, whenever the time comes…

By the time you get it all together with all yer big shot Bel-air celebrity ass-sucking pals, maybe I’ll be deaf and dumb too.

And that could be a real fucking blessing, the way things are going loonie-toons around here lately, believe me!

Gotta go go go go goooo!!!

“Hasta la vitoria, siempre!”

Xx js

Sent Via Blackberry T-Mobile

WHAT A COMPLICIT BOND WE HAVE. Goodnight boys and girls.

Thanks to a Godfather of high-end lowbrow, Joe Coleman, for your blurb.”A writer of immense passion and soul, a true survivor who has painstakingly documented an archtypal descent into the various hells of this festering disease of a planet, Jonathan Shaw has the courage to vivisect his own soul. And what pours out is a staggering stew of passionate decay, rage, revulsion, desire, ecstasy and pain. As in an autopsy, Scabvender captures the putrid smells, the stinging sounds and the blistering sights in a complex, sensuous tapestry of the author’s own dark pathology. In the dungeon reserved for outlaw writers, Jonathan Shaw is right at home with both Carl Panzram and Louis-Ferdinand Celine.”
-Joe Coleman A ROADMAP OF JONATHAN SHAW ACCORDING TO JOE COLEMAN

full frame, originally uploaded by Scab Vendor.

banner, originally uploaded by Scab Vendor.

top left corner, originally uploaded by Scab Vendor.

top right corner, originally uploaded by Scab Vendor.

bottom left corner, originally uploaded by Scab Vendor.

bottom right corner, originally uploaded by Scab Vendor.

The Crack Monster is a totally filthy, destructive creature, nothing like the prissy little perfectionist old bitch Narcisa becomes whenever she’s away from the drug for awhile.

Tonight she actually blew her fucking nose right in front of me into the hundred dollar blouse she’d begged me for the last time she swore off crack for a few hair-raising, white knuckle, teeth-clenching restless, irritable days, consumed in a swirling consumer cloud of continual endless Want, gravely exaserbated without any crack to stifle or anestetize her bottomless need for impossible material satisfactions, distractions, adventure and unattainable “fun.”Later tonight, when she’d got herself well buzzed with a good head full of crack smoke, she just began tearing the fancy little mother of pearl buttons off the snot encrusted shirt, one by one, before slowly, methodically shreading off strips of fabric with her yellow teeth, until her beautiful, expensive designer-label shopping-mall trophy was finally reduced to a tattered remnant of it’s former glory, about the size of a ragged little dishrag bra….I think she trashed the shirt because she was pissed of at it for not being able to fill up the gaping hole in her soul.But the crack monster wasn’t satisfied, even with the shirt’s demiseBroken mirrors, mangled silverware, shattered cups and glasses. Torched, melted sticks of lipstick, tampons (*see below). Disabled radios, telephones, binoculars, sunglasses, pens, pencils, scissors, eyeliner, furniture, whatever…

fire, originally uploaded by Scab Vendor.

Whatever gets in the crack monster’s path, it immediately and efficiently destroys.Cigarette lighters seem to be a specialty…The other day, she put her little “Cricket” disposable lighter down on the table by my bed and walked away talking to herself, the way she does when she’s flying smoke rings around Alpha Centauri. Suddenly it just exploded like a flaming grenade, singing my head, reducing my beard and eyebrows to ashes.Scaring the shit out of us both.I walked around for days looking like that fucking dog in The Little Rascals. How?The Crack Monster has a special touch…Fuck. Does this kind of shit happen to “normal” people? I sure hope not, for their sake.

“Oops” is Narcisa’s favorite word, poor thing.The other day my friend who knows all about these weird plagues from the spirit world told me she carried an “encosto”, some troublesome, pissed off crustacean attachment that fucks people up really bad, makes them break everything they touch before it finally just all turns to shit.That sounded pretty familiar.Quite plausible too, especially in Narcisa’s case.I asked my friend how she could get rid of it.”She has to want to,” he told me.Great.He also said it would help a lot if she gave the crack pipe a little rest for awhile.Duh!Shit. That’s not gonna happen. No time soon, anyway.I don’t think Narcisa wants to get rid of the Crack Monster. She thinks it is her best friend.Narcisa says she really likes things the way they are.Oh well.She just came out onto the balcony where I’m sitting and looking out over the bay, writing about her. She sat on my lap for awhile, singing some crazy old song in her heartbreaking and raw, savage growl. After awhile she got bored, as usual. Then she stood up and walked away.As soon as she was gone, the biggest, ugliest, nastiest, most persistent insect I have ever seen in my entire life swooped in on me, circling my head like a miniature helicopter from Hell, going round and round and round, until I was so dizzy and pissed off I thought I would puke.Beelzebub…The Lord Of The Flies.Shit.I’m really starting to wonder about this shit…Copyright Jonathan Shaw 2008. All Rights Reserved.NOTIFIÇAO: Os eventos relatados neste site são contos de ficção – registrados na Biblioteca Nacional como ficção com todos os direitos autorais revertidos ao autor, Jonathan Shaw. Os personagens mencionados são interamente ficticios. Certos eventos, personagens, lugares e relatos foram baseados em fatos reais, porém qualquer semelhança a qualquer pessoa viva ou morta se trata de pura coincidência.As vários fotografias apresentadas se encontram com o rosto distorcido para preservar o anonimato das modelos que representam personagens fictícios.