Its day’s end at year’s end here at the end of Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro.

I’m sitting here on the big rock overlooking the ocean as the lights of New Years Eve blink on across the blue and white pastel half moon curve of Copacabana, Princess of the Sea.

I’m sitting here waiting for night to fall after a warm sweet humid afternoon here swimming in the ocean with Narcisa, the Dakini. Now I’m thanking God and all his angels for having survived another year together on the bloody battlefields of love and spiritual awakening.

She’s gone off down the beach now to join the ranks of Hari Krishna. Yes, really! I’m chilling here by the crashing waves again, listening to the noise of firecrackers and sky rockets and Umbanda drums, watching the white-clad Macumbeiros arriving, gathering in the cooling sand of night with their bundles of flowers and little blue and white boats lit with candles and laden with gifts of perfume, mirrors, fruits and bottles of champaine, offerings to Iamanja, Goddess of the Sea. Offerings of gratitude and faith.

The drums are warming up now down on the sand. Let the celebrations begin! Salve Ogum! Salve Iamanja! Two million souls are expected to descend on the beach here tonight to collectively celebrate their existance on this special spot and time. Some will be praying for mercy, some giving thanks, others getting drunk and acting like savage asses from the depths of hell.

Any way you slice it, this is a bright point on the world’s energy grid tonight. Two million tiny points of light gathering together to collectively celebrate life.

All tribes are represented in this hot and sticky madhouse. Bikers, musicians, workers of magic, light and darkness. My gypsy brothers and sisters. My fellow recovering addicts, alkies, survivors and recovering human beings… Artists, peddlers, Hari Krishnas and whores. Umbandistas and Kardecistas. Pickpockets and pimps… The whole world has come down to the sea tonight to see…

I’m sitting here now doing my little part by giving thanks.

First I want to thank Narcisa for showing me the way of unconditional love and compassion for another human being. And for all the painful, ego-shattering painful lessons she has taught me, one day at a time… If pain is the touch stone to spiritual growth, she has been shuttling me into the Fourth Dimention with all her holy crackhead antics. Thanks!

In the same breath I want to thank God and my Heavenly Father, Ogum for the guidance, light, love and protection that’s allowed me to survive the experience and transform it into whatever crooked poetry and insight I’ve been granted to spit back out into this crippled world of Sorrows and Afflictions. We all do our part. I pray to continue to do mine…

I want to thank my faithful assistant and partner in crime, Alessandra, without whose love, faith, passion, dedication and hard work, the evolving legacy of Narcisa would probably still be moldering away in some little notebook in my back pocket.

And most of all I want to thank my readers, fans, friends, enemies, supporters, detractors, advisors and well wishers all over the world for being with us on this crazy ride to hell and redemption right from the start… If you weren’t there to read this stuff, there would be little point writing it in the first place.

I especially would like to thank those of you who have shared your generous comments, advice, criticism and encouragement with me personally. You all know who you are. Thanks.

When midnight rolls around, I will be standing there with my feet in the waves, the triumphant fireworks of Copacabana exploding overhead, wishing you all the same things I wish for myself and Narcisa: love, prosperity and the abundance of miracles: The realization of all your highest hopes, dreams and asperations… Most of all I wish us all more and more Truth (no matter how much it fucking hurts!)

All this and more for us all in another milestone in our crooked march toward the light and 2012.

Happy New Year’s from Cigano and Narcisa!

It’s good to be alive.

Copyright Jonathan Shaw 2008.

NOTIFICAÇÃO: Os eventos relatados neste site são contos de ficção registrados na Biblioteca Nacional com todos os direitos autorais revertidos ao autor Jonathan Shaw. Os personagens mencionados são inteiramente fictícios. 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 várias fotografias apresentadas se encontram com o rosto distorcido para preservar o anonimato das modelos que representam personagens fictícios.

So, it’s been a full year now since Jonathan Shaw finished writing Narcisa: Our Lady of Ashes, handed it to Heartworm Press and sent it to the printers.
It’s also been almost a year since we started Scabvendor.com.
This year has been exciting and tumultuous, requiring a lot of blood, sweat and tears to get our project rolling, but once we got it rolling it seemed to begin to move on its own, quick.
Like a forest fire, bread in an oven.
Growing, all the time, with the support of people who read this blog and continue to encourage us in our work.
A year’s worth of work is coming to an end and we are happy to see that Narcisa, already larger than life, is getting bigger, entering the lives of more people than just me and Jonathan.
For fans of Narcisa, the new edit is well on its way to being finished for major publication, and we are really fucking excited.
I hope you are too.
We just wanted to take this moment to wish everyone a happy, prosperous and abundant new year and thank you all deeply for all your love and support.
Keep it coming and we’ll continue to throw down with the goods. Peace.

The new girl that Narcisa had plucked right off the pista sat on my friend’s veranda, admiring the panoramic view of Rio.
Narcisa went around behind her and I watched, half amused, half horrified as Narcisa suddenly lunged at her new companion like a clumsy horny drunk guy trying to get in a prudish young girl’s pants.
The other one coyly retreated.
“Why you don’ take it off you clothes, hein?” Narcisa said with an edge of desperation in her voice. “An’ then you gonna be more comfortable, hein?”
The girl shyly refused. Narcisa started tugging at her dress like a kid trying to get candy from a broken gumball dispensor. The other girl pulled away. Narcisa kept trying clumsily. Finally she
looked at Narcisa and said, “Why don’t you take off your clothes, and then maybe ill take off mine.”
Now Narcisa was balking… It was like watching a pair of retarded children in a sandbox. Weird. Then, suddenly they were both bare chested, giggling and wading into the pool in nothing but their panties. But when narcisa made another move for her, the girl pulled away again, leaving my poor little pirate princess frustrated, rejected and empty handed…
“You don’ like me! Why don’ the girls like the Narcisa an’more?” she cried out in anguish.
I actually felt bad for her. I think I felt her pain because I knew the feeling so well… I’d been getting the same treatment from Narcisa herself for years now. Until she finally fell into my
clutches. Until I became the only one willing to put up with her last gasp ghetto antics anymore… No matter how badly Narcisa ever treated me, I could simply never escape a weird feeling of deep empathy of identification with her. No matter what… Poor baby.

Copyright Jonathan Shaw 2008.

NOTIFICAÇÃO: Os eventos relatados neste site são contos de ficção registrados na Biblioteca Nacional com todos os direitos autorais revertidos ao autor Jonathan Shaw. Os personagens mencionados são inteiramente fictícios. 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 várias fotografias apresentadas se encontram com o rosto distorcido para preservar o anonimato das modelos que representam personagens fictícios.

 She disappeared again… Now she calls me two days later as if nothing had happened.

I went to meet her down by the ocean in Copacabana. She was wearing a plastic strap on clown nose she’d ripped off from one of her squatter friends as he stood in the middle of the street at a stoplight juggling and begging for change from a captive audience of waiting motorists. She reached into her pocket and handed me a weird flower. It looked like some strange tropical alien spore sitting in a big seed husk like a heart shaped walnut shell. A beautiful gesture, a quiet declaration of love… Suddenly she took my hand and walked me over and sat me down at this crowded little eatery I used to always take her to back in the day. 

“Look what I get, Ciganooo,” she said, flashing a horse-choking wad of cash under my nose.

“Where’d ya get all that?” I asked, not really expecting the truth. 

“I rob it from a gringo,” she said triumphantly.

I looked at her in disbelief. 

“Yeh, man, really! I do these e’sheet! Listen to me how… These e’stupid gringo he wan’ me get it for him the drugs, an’ then I e’say him ‘Gimme two hun’red’ an’ then he insist come up in there together with me… Why alway the gringo he so much, how do you e’say it… Par’noided? Maybe is the guilty conscience I think, hein? An’way I take him up the morro, you know? All way up inside there an’ then he look really e’scare when he see it the garotos there…”

     She was referring to the gangs of skinny teenage thugs armed to the teeth with grenades and machine guns who run the drug trade up in the favela. 

     “So listen these,” she continues breathlessly, “I know I gonna get him now cuz he e’scare, Cigano, got it? An’ then I e’say him, ‘Hey you, so now is really the big danger for you come up more in here’, an’ then he e’say, ‘Okey, okey,’ an’ then he give it to me all his money real fast an’ then I e’say him ‘Okey, now you go wait wait wait right here, got it?’ An’ then he e’stay there wait, an’ then I go down in the little beco an’ then I get it all these crack an’ the maconha an’ thing, an’ then I run out the other way back down an’ then l come out by the paderia, go! Hah! Take it the money, run, go, get in taxi, go!  An’ then I have keep it even these much  the gringo money an’ then I can buy it the good dinner to you, Cigano…  Prob’ly he e’still e’stay wait there for Narcisa come back, e’scare for move away these place… Hah! Good! E’stupid gringo!”  

     She squealed with delight like a little kid as I dug into that delicious stolen meal. 

Copyright Jonathan Shaw 2008.

NOTIFICAÇÃO: Os eventos relatados neste site são contos de ficção registrados na Biblioteca Nacional com todos os direitos autorais revertidos ao autor Jonathan Shaw. Os personagens mencionados são inteiramente fictícios. 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 várias fotografias apresentadas se encontram com o rosto distorcido para preservar o anonimato das modelos que representam personagens fictícios.

People like Narcisa need and deserve a lot of love. Even as they are cursed with a deadly soul-affliction that compels them to chase it away with a chainsaw.
And that’s always been my biggest hope for the book from the time I started writing it – that people reading about Narcisa’s life and beleaguered soul would come to know her and love her as much as I do – and that she might somehow benefit on some esoteric metaphysical or spiritual level from all those crazy love vibrations floating in the ether around her troubled head. That the force of all that love might somehow run off all her dark tormenting boogie men and curses of isolation and self-sabotage and self hate and self destruction and light up a path for her back into the land of the living.
 I met up with Tonico tonight for a party in Santa Teresa and he was happy to hear that she was on the verge of a breakthrough and getting some help… He told me he’d thoroughly enjoyed reading Narcisa’s book. I thanked him again and thought gratefully about how the whole universe just seems to be coming together to force-feed this bizarre, obscure work out into the world. I feel like some kinda literary terrorist pissing into the stream of the mass consciousness and sometimes it feels pretty good.
 When we got up to where our friends were gathered, Mateus was with his beautiful, interesting daughter, who I wound up talking to the whole time, thinking why can’t Narcisa be here to enjoy this moment with all these mellow intelligent people? The food was great, as always, since Mateus’ girlfriend, Natasha, is the top chef in all of Brazil, the one who did all the catering for the Rolling Stones and what’s left of Bob Dylan on their recent visits to Rio.
 It was a good time there, hanging out with old friends on Natasha’s wide veranda looking out over the rain-swept city below. Mateus looked tired and jet lagged and after a warm embrace and a quick exchange of news and events, we made plans to get together later in the week. Then Tonico gave me a ride back to my place.
 Narcisa was out cold when I went in. I went over and checked her breathing, just to make sure she was still alive. She was. Then I took off my clothes, went to bed and kissed the pillow.
 I had strange and terrible dreams as our souls battled the forces of darkness together all through the night. Spirit war. Can’t remember details.

Copyright Jonathan Shaw 2008.

NOTIFICAÇÃO: Os eventos relatados neste site são contos de ficção registrados na Biblioteca Nacional com todos os direitos autorais revertidos ao autor Jonathan Shaw. Os personagens mencionados são inteiramente fictícios. 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 várias fotografias apresentadas se encontram com o rosto distorcido para preservar o anonimato das modelos que representam personagens fictícios.

If you read Friday’s blog, here is the continuation:

Doris, dressed to the nines in high heels, mink stole, pearl necklace and her best Hollywood Starlet dark glasses, is righteously indignant.
She has been working hard and without pay or much in the way of critical acclaim; flirtatiously playing the role of ‘concerned parent’ for that idiot police Sergeant. Proud of her successful performance, she now sternly escorts her errant son down the gray steps of the Hollywood station house. He doesn’t know if it’s still part of the act or if she’s really pissed… Until grim-faced, she pushes him harshly into the back seat of the grey Cadillac, slamming the door behind him like a coffin lid. She gets in front with her husband Len, the kid Jonathan’s distant, melancholy new stepfather. The kid hates him… “The breadwinner”, as Doris sarcastically refers to him often lately, mostly when she’s drunk – which seems to be most of the time…
 As if this little man’s only purpose for being is as a grim and functional support system for her alcoholism, an unfortunate but necessary evil. She might as well just call him her full time trick.
 A haggard, conservative looking man in his mid-forties, Len navigates the car defensively into traffic, then adjusts his horn-rimmed glasses. Doris is milking the moment now, turned sideways toward her now-juvenile-delinquent son…
 ”You’re GROUNDED, boy… I should just let you rot in Juvenile Hall with the rest of the delinquents…  and to think”, she says in a dramatically eloquent stage-sotto, “that I threw away a brilliant career, at the height of my fame to play some… suburban PTA matron. And for WHAT? To raise this troublesome, ungrateful, sullen… SOCIOPATH?”
 ”Well, boys will be boys, Doris. When I was a young man…” Len meekly interrupts her Oscar Acceptance Speech.
 ”SHUT UP… ‘Boys will be boys’”, she mimics him cruelly.
 ”I was just saying…” He ventures weakly, just not getting it. He never gets it. The kid would be be amused, if he wasn’t burning with hate.
 ” ‘I was just saying…’” she apes him in biting sarcasm. “Just shut up and keep your eyes on the damn road. What do you know about it? Nothing, that’s what! ”
 Len falls into a brooding silence. He always does. That’s why the kid hate him. The kid wishes he’d just pull the car over and give her the back of his hand, like Artie would’ve…If there was an Artie. No such luck. There’s only Len. And his habitual brooding silence. The kid hates him. Even more than he hates her…
  Doris turns in her seat like a snake now, facing the kid, aiming her deadly venom at him, eyes blazing with a hellish mixture of anger, pep pills, self pity and boozy hangover… the impossible weight of her anguished lot in life…
 ”I wouldn’t listen when they told me the boy needed discipline”, she annunciates dramatically to her invisible audience. “No. Not my Jonathan. Not my beamish boy. And THIS is the thanks I get? SHARPER THAN A SERPANT’S TOOTH… Just like his father, that puffed-up, egotistical WINDBAG.”
 The kid glares at the pair of them. Sorry old spooks. Bastards… Then he turns away, tuning them out, looking out the window as the old bitch rants on. As the car travels along, his eyes scan the streets, sidewalks alive with denizens of a 60’s counter-culture Hollywood.
Runaway kids, longhairs, bikers and pretty hippie chicks with long flowing hair, sitting on the sidewalk, free as alley cats, panhandling, smoking pot, playing guitars… groovin’ out, happy, free…
 As the car rolls to a stop at a red light the kid sinks down in the backseat, hiding, drowning in embarrassment…

  “I felt like a hostage, a prisoner of war in that big, shiny Jew Canoe, a glaring status symbol of white upper class values reeking of poisonous suburban angst. And right out there passing by on the sidewalk like fantastic fish in some exotic aquarium, was everything I wanted to belong to. I slunk down low, horrified any of those kids would see me with those bickering, alien squares on my way back to Squaresville. Total humiliation…”

 ”Look at that scum”, she rants on, glaring at Jonathan. “Filthy degenerates. Juvenile Delinquents. Is that what I’ve raised? Over my dead body… God…  to think, those are somebody’s children… Outlaws, scum!! Lock the doors, Len, they’re all on DRUGS!”
 The kid cringes in hell… He makes eye contact with an attractive little hippy chick and his heart stops as she gives him the peace sign.
  The kid is in hell…
 ”Look at those little tramps”, she growls at her son. “If I ever catch you with something like that, I’ll DISOWN you, you hear me boy?”
 The kid’s heart overflows with the poison of hate and impotent frustration, as the Cadillac waddles home, like a crippled paddy wagon to his surreal teenage funeral.

Copyright Jonathan Shaw 2008.

For these cultures, getting rid of the pain without addressing the deeper cause would be like shutting off a fire alarm while the fire’s still going. 
-David Foster Wallace