Near Puerto Escondido, Mexico

SEPTEMBER 1974

Dear Doris,

It was nice to find a letter from you at the general delivery Lista de Correios in Mexico City. It’s good to hear from you, even though I’m far from homesick as you mentioned. Give me another five years on the road here, then maybe I’ll have a quick thought of ‘home,’ but I doubt it. I thought I’d be homesick at first, like you said, but I’ve been aware for some time now that my home is wherever I am and nowhere else. I don’t really relish the thought of coming back to the USA, but when I do I’m gonna have to decide alot of new stuff, like how long I’m gonna stay. After all this traveling, I know I’m never gonna be the same guy who left, and if I ever do come back, I know it won’t be for very long. There’s still too many places to see and I’m meeting alot of good folks along the road to wherever I’m going and that’s as good a bunch of friends as I ever needed.

Meanwhile, I’m trying to make the money you lent me stretch as far as I can until I can find work on a ship. I’m living very cheap and getting along well by traveling on the top of trucks mostly and sleeping by the road and cooking my own food in a little frying pan I got whenever I stop somewhere for more than a day or two. Living on less than a dollar a day has its good side though, mostly because it brings me in closer contact with people than if I had money for busses and hotels and restaurant meals. Communication is more essential to survival than all the money in the world. I really wouldn’t want to be traveling any other way. Mostly I’ve been staying in small villages off the road and off the map. People are honest and simple and I learn a lot being around them. Even when I’m in the bigger cities, I manage to get by for under a couple of dollars a day, and much less when I’m hitchhiking from town to town. Sometimes people feed me and put me up for the night too. Mexicans are very hospitable generous people, nothing like Americans. I can’t wait to be able to speak enough Spanish to pass for anything but an American. It’s embarrassing being from a country where everything is made of plastic, including people’s souls. I’ve learned real quickly why the whole world thinks Americans are assholes.

On my way down the coast I walked around this crazy old town from 7am till way past midnight, exploring every nook and cranny. Now today i dont even have the energy to get up go out and eat, so i write to you now. This place is fantastic, like nothing i’ve ever seen. The whole town is like one big hyperactive flea market. Feels like Morocco or Hong Kong. But how would I know that, having never been to those places? Ha ha… All I know now is that I wanna go to em all someday. But first I need to get to Brazil. I met a guy from Rio the other day, don’t even know how that happened, just sat down next to him at a lunch counter in an open air Market in Mexico City and I dunno, we just got to talking and it turned out he was a Brazilian guy traveling through Mexico, just bumming around, like me. We hitchhiked down to Acapulco together. Acapulco sucked. Tourist trap. We split up after a day or two there when I realized that, as much as I dug his company and the fact that he spoke better Spanish than me, I really missed just traveling alone. I tried to explain to him that it wasn’t him, just that I needed to travel on solo. He seemed kinda sad, but what else could I do? He gave me his address in Rio for when I get down there, so now at least I actually know somebody there. But I guess I just don’t want any company on the road just now, like I need to sorta just float around on my own and not deal with people other than the ones I meet on the road. I don’t wanna get attached to any sort of comfort just now, not the comfort of having any regular friends at least. I had all that before I left, and where are they all now? Dead.

Ah, what bullshit all these little words are! I wanna tell you of my travels, the things I’ve seen and people I’ve met, but I find it hard to describe any of it now. The words all seem too contrived and poor and primitive, the very idea of even trying to convey what I see and do and feel with words anymore. Maybe when I see you again someday it’ll be easier to tell you about the stuff that’s going on now. But maybe not, maybe I’ll just forget it all. But I just cant get into writing anymore. I much prefer to be with people, talking, or better yet, just living, and feeling the impact of experiences and knowing together that that’s what it is…. The indians in some parts here don’t EVER talk, but they’re heavily telepathic. Anyway, maybe I really can’t tell you much with words, but I’ll try, and if you know the spirit, I know you can dig it. Most of the Americans I’ve run across in my travels are stupid hippie types — just a bunch of long haired touristas with backpacks instead of Hawaiian shirts, but to me they’re all the same. Gringos. I can’t relate to that at all. It’s strange, but I don’t feel like a gringo. More like a refugee maybe, or a Gypsy like my grandfather, your father. I feel like this is where I really always belonged; on the road. Maybe that’s why I was always so unhappy and ill-at-ease in America. It’s weird. Sometimes I think about how you always talked about your life in Italy when you were young, about how sometimes you regretted coming back to America. Now I think I know how you must have felt. Maybe it’s our Gypsy blood? Anyway, whenever I see gringos coming, I go the other way. I got nothing to say to em and I have nothing to do with them, a bunch of mercenary creeps with plastic souls. But that mercenary thing is just human nature I guess. Plenty of Mexicans are mercenary creeps too, of course, but that ugly spirit seems to flourish mostly in places like Acapulco where there’s lots of gringos. Americans just seem to bring out the worst in people wherever they go.

Anyway, after I got out of Acapulco, things got better and better the further south I traveled. Last week I hitchhiked down the coast all the way south to Puerto Escondido, a little fishing village on the southern Pacific coast — in ten years it’ll probably be another big Alcapulco-style gringo trap, but for now it’s still alot quieter and cheaper than other places… still there were too many people for my liking there. I got in around 9pm and after only a few hours, I decided to hit the road again. I musta walked south for 30 kilometers and didnt even see one damn truck. By midnight, I was just about to drop from exaustion when i spotted a small dirt turnoff from the road. On a whim, I followed it in hopes of finding a drop of water and a place to lay my blanket down and crash. But, instead of a drop of water, I found a whole river. After a quick swim and drink, I followed the river down another few kilometers till I came to the ocean. On the way I passed thru another primitive village. Small, about 20 grass huts with chickens and mules tied up and walking around all over, pigs too, and dogs barking as I passed thru in the sleeping darkness. Then I walked along another little dirt path through some coconut groves right down to the sea. Right at the edge of the trees by a deserted stretch of beach, there was a deserted hut with no inhabitants. I went right in and fell asleep and it musta been 6 am when I woke up and walked into the town and bought some fresh eggs and vegatables. I’ve spent the last four days right here, camped out in this hut, swimming in the ocean and bathing in the river, and the only people I’ve seen the whole time are some fishermen who stop sometimes on their way back to the village to offer me first choice of their catch. I had a whole lobster today for 8 pesos, about 80 cents, not bad with lime and coconut.

Your Son,

Jono

10-11-74

I walked up to the first crew member I saw who was a big and friendly smiling, gesticulating guy who obviously loved spaghetti and wine and big families more than anything in the world and who immediately dragged me into the galley (not even asking me if I was hungry) and sat me down before a huge frying pan of octopus cooked in garlic sauce and olive oil and proceeded to talk nonstop waving big hands in the air and looking for the right words to say in English as if his big sweeping hand gestures were way ahead of him all along and giving him trouble, but going and going like “Aw, well, what de hell, ehh? Eat! Eat!” and he goes on telling me about his wife and kids in New York and his brother who has a grocery store and a pastry shop and how Greeks were “shit people” and Greek freighters no good and how he couldn’t believe an American like me was looking for a job on a freighter. “I meena you de American boya.. plenty good job fa you at de home” and truly puzzled like he really couldn’t understand why I wanted to work on a ship, which made me feel bad and want to apologize for the thousandth time for being born in America.

But then he was off on something else and I could see that this big fumbling man was free of any kind of malice and really pure and innocent like a child. A great character really, a big simple Dominick. All he wanted was to be back in Italia bouncing babies on his knee while the smell of garlic filled the room and big white sheets flapping around outside the window. The guy had a lot of soul.

Copyright Jonathan Shaw 1974, 2010

10-11-74

Why worry anyway? This life is just a crazy old movie and I’m like some mad visionary director who can’t get the actors to do what he wants em to, ahh, but they’re just confused and lost like me and anyway that’s all a part of the movie, some higher plan or something. I don’t know, like me sitting alone at that little bar last night while the rain poured and the ship’s mournful horns boomed in the harbor. No jukebox, nothing, just the old bartender’s wife sitting there in her night gown looking out at the Greek sailors chasing after prostitutes and taxi cabs in the rain, waiting silently for me to finish my drink and go home (home?) Sitting there in her nightgown and big Dostoyevsky boots, just like that. And I did finish my drink and go home and sleep and that was that. And anyway all these visions just look really great sometimes like this morning when I went out on the docks seeking a job and climbed a gang plank of a giant Italian freighter and was stopped at the top by some power-crazy soldier- portcop who was guarding the ship and unceremoniously stuck his hand in my pocket, just like
that and asked me all sorts of silly authoritarian-sounding questions like who I was and what was I doing there and where were my papers etc. In the end he finally just got bored and let me pass so he could go back to talking to his buddy about soccer cuz he was just a typical Central American cop, killing time until he could go home and get drunk and not really give a damn
anyway.

Copyright Jonathan Shaw 1974, 2010

Port town, Honduras 10-10-74

Listening to classical music on the little transistor radio I bought yesterday. Sitting in candlelight darkness, my lonely pants hanging from a nail by the window (the same pants I wore when they took me to jail in British Honduras- but that’s another story.) Outside it’s pouring rain and I’m thinking the whole world is under water empty and hopeless. I dunno. Maybe I like it that way sometimes. This feeling, comfortable-sad; entirely different from the truly depressing feeling of total despair I got when the ship pulled into this port at first light two days ago and I got a look at the dead industrial wasteland of the docks and the foggy horrible green hills and meadows across the bay. Feeling totally alone and even now when I’ve grown accustomed to this place and even comfortable here, somehow these hills make me feel empty and bad when I look out past the ships and see them over there and know they’ll still be there when I’m dead, grave-rot green and peaceful and horrible. I remember how I almost cried looking across the bay that first damp morning. Aw well, fuck them fuckin hills anyway. Now it’s late at night and I’m sitting at my little desk in my little room by the railroad tracks across from the docks full of ships, big booming monsters from far away, China and Londontown. It’s raining hard and I’m content for now with this happy/sad feeling. Like this classical music I’m hearing now. I don’t need to listen to lively Latino ritmo or go out and get drunk and dance with the girls in the street. I’m just happy right now with my candlelight and my little radio playing sad-static sounds in the endless rain.

Copyright Jonathan Shaw 1974, 2010

The blogs that you are about to enjoy in this series have been transcribed from various corresponding napkins and small scraps of waste paper, Mexican product labels and cigarette wrappers that I came across while uncovering new (old) material for Scabvendor. The first entry was written by a frustrated and bored young junkie named Jonathan Shaw shortly before leaving his Los Angeles home forever in the twilight months of 1974.

- AD

July 26, 1974

City of the fallen angel, with your glowing 3 AM streetlights that nobody sees, you lie too still, too still; it’s not a healthy sign.

Where are your street corner musicians, your sidewalk cafes? A truck rumbles by and gone down along the tiny block I’m on, intent on some great and important midnight mission. A cake to deliver. Where is your past, burned out young friend? When do you dream? Or am I but a dream, a figment of your unsure imagination, who is this ragged figure who walks catlike the line of your deception? Mourning the death of the unborn, I am a friend to your crazy ways, so don’t sic your mad dogs on me before I see you all lit up like a Christmas tree in apocalyptic fires of your earthquake Armageddon.

I stop to light a pale cigarette before moving on seeking the eternal fix, the answer to no particular question. Whispered conversations, lines to greater things zigzag your worn-out welcome mat like the directions of a suspended whistle. Where am I to go now? Please show me some sign that you’re alive. You are the great god of madness, gone disturbingly laconic tonight. It’s not right. Give me some great rumble of disaster in the distance, and I’ll leave well enough alone.

© Jonathan Shaw 1974, 2010

Special Thanks to Gogol Bordello for The Shout out

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“When Mick Jagger came down to Brazil,” said Shaw, who lives in Rio, “he was a total wimp. He had all these bottles of vitamins, his special water, creams. All he cares about is his looks.” Shaw had been friends with Jim Morrison and he ran briefly with the Manson gang. He knew the wusses from the punks.

Article by Gerry Visco. Read Full article >here<