I’m thinking of the secret life of birds. All around us they exist, like beings of some parallel universe. One sits just behind me right now, like a ghost in the window sill. It’s one of those cuckoo birds, coo-cooing right there by my head. A cuckoo bird, living right behind me here. And as in a painting, the background sound of the Cukoo bird. I listen to its lonesome coo-coo all day long. A flying school of big white predatory seagulls squeals by on their way to distant ships and faraway kingdoms beyond my pointy rooftop. Cars and garbage trucks are part of nature too in the street down below this muted space of steady breathing and morbid contemplation.

The clouds roll by my window and the cuckoo bird flies away in a theatrical ruffle of feathers and wild bird energy. Off to inhabit the next ledge, I suppose. But the steady breathing of its presence continues behind me now, as if to remind me that we all live with a cuckoo bird at our shoulder. In that I know I’m never alone.

Copyright Jonathan Shaw 2010

This week my beloved city by the sea is infested with all manner of bad creepiness and ugliness from the 4 festering corners of hell. Carnaval, a demented specticle of mass debauchery to make the likes of Joe Coleman and Heronymous Bosh cringe in revulsion together. Me, I’m planning to hole up at home and bury meself in me work for the duration of this foul interlude — which is pretty much all I do anyway. And so life goes on here in Rio de Janeiro.

Meanwhile, the new book I’m working on, Scabvendor — Confessions of a Tattoo Artist –is coming along and getting easier for me to write, a day at a time. The process is bringing me all sorts of new revelations as I go along, and with them a much-needed sense of ease to the whole cathartic process of writing about my life and my past — Everything from my nightmarish non-childhood, my insane alcoholic family, the musty dungeons of drug-addiction, to the art and travels which ultimately lead me in search of redemption. All I can do is continually give thanks to whatever powers of light and darkness seem to be guiding my hand as I go.

Actually, these last few months have been the best period of time for me, hanging by the sea and working on this book at home here in Rio. And the further I go, the more the syncronicity seems to happen around all the stuff I’m writing about — as if the universe is sending me the help and support I need, just when I need it from all over the place; strange, long-estranged friends and random unexpected people coming out of the woodwork lately and writing to me out of the blue from all over the world — and each time  just as I’m completing another new section of material that would be of special interest to each of them, amazingly enough!!

Meanwhile, all sorts of obscure long-blocked people, places, things and family memories keep creeping into the book as it seems to slowly write itself with me being there simply as its servant, showing up to work a day at a time. More will be revealed, surely, and when it rains, brothers and sisters, it fuckin really pours!!

Dunno how its all gonna play out with whatever family members are still living, people who are mentioned in the book – mostly cousins on my mother’s side who I haven’t seen or heard of in decades. Sometimes I wonder about stuff like that, since, surreal as it may seem, this book is officially a factual Memoir. I seriously doubt, however, that most of em are even still above ground at this point — not the way alcoholism was taking em out when I split from my family of origin over 40 years ago, running for my life. But it will be interesting to see what some will have to say about certain memories I’ve put to paper, if and when I ever find em. Who knows? Maybe they’ll find me. Considering the mystical way these things seem to be going and developing lately along this quest, nothing would fucking surprise me now!!

The fact that I’m battling with is that The American Dream itself has to take on face and character somewhere in this story, since it is the real villan — and what better living incarnation for all its bitter dissappointment and disillusionment than real-life characters like my insane stepfather, who enabled– even encouraged– my mother’s alcoholism until the day she died of it. With a cast of characters like that, it often seems more like a horror story than a memoir. But those fuckers are an intergral part of the palate I’ve been given to paint this picture with — and I only pray to be able to use their sorry asses to good and effective purpose without my own spite and resentment creeping into the narrative to pollute or cloud artistic judgement. Especially since, deep in my heart, I truly believe that in real life, as in art, there are no heros or villans. Only people, some more fucked up than others, but people nonetheless, all doing the best they can in their fumbling, bumbling, often tragically pathetic way… The only real villans are our own mistakes, and the fears which cause em. At least that’s how I’ve come to see things over the years since I’ve begun to wake up.

All in all, this is a time of heavy inspiration and creative energy for me, and I’m glad to be here in Rio, making the most of it. I can really feel the presence of many invisible and human hands helping me to write this and dig deeper and deeper into the essence of my task. More and more with every day I go along. And for that I am infinitely grateful.

Another long hard summer rain is fixin to fall here at my open-air office by the sea now. I can see the lightning flashes on the trembling horizon. Soon I’ll get on the bike and brave my way thru the storm to home with a quick stop for dinner. There I can get back to the laptop and sauna and whatever else there’s to do there on another wonderful day’s work, praying all the while for guidance.

A blue and white sign on the wall. JUST FOR TODAY. Look down. A cold colorless blue linolium floor. Feet. Legs. Shorts, skirts, shoes, socks, sandals, human beings… I look up again like a deep sea diver coming up for air. There is no air. Shirts, arms, skin, faces. Colors, textures. Black plastic and metal chairs. Made in China. Shit. A cheap plastic orange clock hanging on an unattractive pre-fab off-white wall. Telling time. Time. Shit. Voices. Addicts. Alkies. Losers. Lost souls…
Recovery… Easy does it. Keep coming back. A day at a time… It’s a long road. Long and hard and complex. Tough luck. Fans spinning. Hard to hear. Voices. Bla bla bla… My mind is talking too loud. My mind is restless. My feet are restless. I don’t wanna be here. Don’t wanna be anywhere. Don’t wanna be…
That’s why I ended up here. And now I got acid coming up in my throat from a big hole in my gut. Too many cigarettes, too many drugs, too many doses of rotgut rum. Too many whores. Too many beatings. Too many sleepless, restless lonely nights and bad nasty habits, thoughts, memories, traumas, scars. Too many thrills and spills and self inflicted dramas and terrors. Too many nightmares and too many fears. And now I’m here… Nine years clean and sober. Shit. I look around the room. Lost souls. Like me. Fighting the void. Voices. Like mine. Screaming, barking like motherless dogs for a scrap of salvation. Shit. Shit. Shit.

 ”You want me to drive, Artie?” I ask as we walk over to his car.

“What?” he shouts, gripping his cane with one hand, adjusting his hearing aid with the other. “Can’t hear a fucking thing with this goddamn thing,” he growls, “I hadda take it back three times already, goddamm it!”

I repeat my offer to drive us to the restaurant. “Naw, I can make it,” he says, adding “You can park the car for me when we get there,” he concedes. “I don’t see so good in the dark…”

Great! I think as we get into his car in the dark driveway.       

As we speed along the Ventura freeway in his fully loaded Toyota Prius, Artie’s hand seems to take on a life of its own, playing with the radio dial in a most extraordinary way, working the radio like some bizarre psychedellic musical instrument, and suddenly my ears are assaulted with a loud surreal cocophany of hiphop gangsta rap and evangelical radio preachers and Mexican news broadcasts and fast food chicken ads and folk songs and frenetic techno music. It’s as if the old man is in a fucking trance of some sort. Fuck… If that ghostly white hand of his wasn’t continually fiddling with the radio dial, I’d think he’d fucking fallen asleep at the wheel as the car careens dangerously across the blurry white lines at 90 miles an hour, and I feel like I’m a helpless little kid again, sitting on Mr. Magoo’s Wild Ride at Disneyland. Fuck. And now he’s listening to the nigga station, word up, yo, word to ya motha yo yo yo baby, with his head cocked to one side like a stoned out parrot and I sit there beside him, feeling my asshole pucker like a Sea Anemone caught in a swirling whirlpool of Mexican rap and horn-blaring Mariachi music, static, easy listening, opera, more static, Heavy Metal, opera again…

Fuck. I’m watching the highway, frozen silent in escalating waves of terror as he sideswipes careening 18 wheelers, narrowly avoiding instant annihilation for us both. Fuck, fuckin’ bastard’s 92 years old, every hour above ground’s a fuckin’ bonus hour for his worn-out ass, I’m thinking, what about me? I’m just gettin started here, selfiish prick. God don’t lemme die here with this demented old crow, not now, not today….

Finally he looks up from the radio like a sleepy old cocker spaniel and explains that he’s looking for a news station. “Riders on The Storm” is playing… Into this life we’re born, into this world we’re thrown… and then suddenly we’re speeding down the off-ramp and we’re gonna make it one more time, another day for us both, another dinner with this narcissistic old mummy, my father, where I’m gonna have to get the hundred dollar check at some expensive fancy suburban restaurant again, cuz Artie magnanimously picks up the check only when he drives us over to that cheap greasy Chinese joint next to the taco stand in the strip mall, fuckin old Jew bastard.

Thank you, Jesus, I think as we pull to a screeching halt in front of the Dolce Vitta Trattoria. Artie snatches his silver and ivory tipped mahogany cane up from the floor, nearly bopping me on the chin with it as he unfolds himself out of the driver’s seat, cussing and complaining, one pissed off cantankerous old bone at a time.

Copyright Jonathan Shaw 2010.