The other day I brought Narcisa a set of colored pencils to draw some of her psychedelic visions with.
Her otherworldly geometric forms and shapes make crop circles look simplistic. She says she doesn’t know what they mean.
One day my friend, Mateus, the spirit medium came over and saw them and when Narcisa asked him what he saw, he said that they were clearly sentient alien “beings”.
Narcisa just smiled knowingly and said nothing.
After 2 years of non-stop crack smoking, only interrupted by intermittent forced nuthouse internments, her artwork has deteriorated visibly now. The shapes are becoming unbalanced, crooked and sloppy. It’s sad to see another brilliant mind eat shit and die. But what can ya do? I know I didn’t cause it and I also know I can’t fix it. All I can do is love her and be a witness to whatever…
When I brought her the pencils, I forgot to buy a pencil sharpener. Narcisa insisted I go back down the hill and get her one. She was adamant and she chased me right out the door, and off I went on another abstract mission for Narcisa.
She couldn’t wait.
When I returned an hour later she had already taken matters into her own crack-blackened, burnt out hands. The new set of colored pencils lay strewn and broken across the floor, looking like they’d been ravaged by a pack of rabid hyenas.
Narcisa, in a burst of wild inspiration, had attacked the pencils in a frenzy with her teeth, sharpening them sufficiently to illegibly scrawl one of her long ranting poetic discourses across the pages of a notebook in big, insane, page-tearing colored letters.
Then she sat me down out on the balcony.
“I gonna never publish this or read it in front of any peoples but you, Cigano. I don’ care ’bout any that shit. So you are my only audience an’ now I gonna read it for you. Ready?”
Ready or not, I sat there in awe while she shouted the following words through the humid air into my face, weaving unseen patterns, alchemical formulas with the musical power of her raw, savage growls of pain and passion – she hates the word ‘poetry’, said if I gotta call it anything, to refer to it as a ‘discourse’…
When she was done she walked across the room and tore the pages from the notebook, furious once again at the betrayal of language, the inadequacy of words to ever express that which she lives and experiences with every excruciating breath of her intensely disturbed existence.
She was about to set fire to the pages and convert it all to ashes when I snatched it away and pocketed it, provoking another near battle to the death, during which she accused me of being a mediocre, hypocritical sellout, among other things for ever publishing my work to be sold in commercial establishments, especially a book about her, for the idiot masses to banalize and… bla bla bla…
Whatever, we somehow survived the moment, though later that night she went out and got herself pistol whipped by someone else a bit less tolerant of her artistic temperament. But that’s another story…
Today’s a rainy Sunday. Narcisa’s crashed out on my sofa, comatose from her latest grueling mission to hell.
While she snores and cries out at the sleep-demons who mercilessly taunt and torment her dreams, I’ve taken the time to translate her ‘surto literario’ into English and put it out there before she finds it and destroys it, like all the many notebooks of poetry and writing she’s produced and promptly trashed over the years right before my eyes.
I do feel just a little guilty for sharing this with the world “out there”, as if I’m somehow violating her intentions that her work never be published or even seen by anyone but me.
But I think it’s important. Maybe that’s my whole purpose here…
So I guess, just for today, I’ll have to live with it…
“Suicidio abortado” – by Narcisa
All the same, it’s good to know
I exist
And know how to describe
My steps… Articulations
Perception.
I didn’t inherit it
Didn’t acquire it
Didn’t purchase it
Didn’t find it.
Only experienced it… Intermediately
The little and the much that
I’ve been permitted
And all that I haven’t been permitted too.
Naturally and spontaneously
I feel and know
The limits of organic matter
And the arrogance of the ego
And the sickness of the mind
Even anesthetized.
I choose to continue to exist
And conform to the customs
Imposed and defined by this
Human society.
But should there be no other choice…
I give thanks.
Thanks for the time and for the space
For the scars and for the tears
For the smile and for the pain
For the textures and the flavors
I give thanks for the shapes and for the colors.
For the dimensions
And for the distance
For exhaustion and
For hyperactivity.
I give thanks for the velocity
And thanks for the curves and
Straightaways
Of this existential route.
I give thanks for the discipline
And for the indiscipline
For the sounds, for the songs, voices, tones, rings…
Thanks for the dance…
Thanks. For the shame and for the boldness, the courage to dare.
Thanks for the profit and for the repose
For the neglect and for the
Concern.
I give thanks for the weight and thanks for the taste
Thanks for the scent
And thanks for the pleasure.
I give thanks for the arrogance
And thanks for the humility
Thanks for the abandonment
And thanks for the chance
Thanks for the technology and thanks for
Nature.
Thanks for the joy
And the sadness
Thanks for the vanity and for
The homeless begging destitution
Thanks for the shouts and thanks for the silence
For the public and for the anonymity
For the opinions and for the judgments
For the facts, for the accusations and for the emancipations.
I give thanks for the controversy and I give thanks for the criticism
Thanks for the acceptance
And for the vice
For the hypocrisy
For the humor, for the ignorance
I give thanks for the idea and thanks for the mediocrity
For the transport, for the immobility
Thanks for the morale and for the atrocity.
For the modesty, for the evil
Even for the character and for the personality…
But now, so as not to prolong the boredom
I give special thanks
To Art.
But I am annoying
And compulsive, tedious, rude
And inconvenient…
So, despite having already concluded,
I will continue giving thanks
For the paranoia
And the ecstasy
For the comas and the insomnia
For the attention and for the solitude
For dreams and for nightmares
For perspectives
And for illusions too.
And for so-called ‘honesty’
And for all terrorism and sabotage
I will give thanks
For the efforts and for the indolence
For the revolt rage anger and frustration
I give thanks
For the moments and for the repetitions
I give thanks
For the real and for the imaginary
For curiosity
For all the attempts at superiority
And inferiority
For escape and for courage
For the wars lost and won
For the allies and the enemies
For the strategy and for spontaneity
For the coincidental
For the logical
For the absurd and
For the premeditated
I give thanks
For the doubt and for the certainty of the emotions
For the cost
And for the hunger and the loss
For the priceless and for the reproductions
For the lack and for the leftover…
I give thanks for the deficiency that makes beings reproduce themselves.
And, at the risk of banality, I finally will give thanks for the replicas and for the originals…
And for at last having nothing left to illiterate.
But I would so much prefer to have wings
To fly so far away
And not need to walk so very far
To have to give thanks…
I would thank myself
If I could float unconsciously
In the untouchable and fathomless blue
Of the heavens
Soon to be darkness
But lit by the stars
Which are so far beyond what can be found,
So much more than an existence.
And soon the vultures will have a case of indigestion.
I am not going to rot in any cemetery.
Or be turned to ashes.
What frustration!
To smoke MYSELF would be perfect!
But just for today I will smoke the ashes of the others.
The vultures aren’t starving. They can wait still
For me to duplicate
And die from an overdose of my own ashes.
And yes! That would be the REAL self-sufficiency:
Self-consumption.
My very OWN death.
Not an imposed demise
Nor suicide.
In the meanwhile, I will just smoke
Whatever.
Copyright Jonathan Shaw 2008. All Rights Reserved.NOTIFIÇAO: Os eventos neste site são contos de ficção – registrados na Biblioteca Nacional 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 vivo 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.
immaculate genius, pure spirit is she who wrote that.
You always send the sweetest comments! Its really nice to know somebody’s reading our shit. Thanx, hon! Xx js
—–Original Message—–
From: JD
Date: Sun, 6 Apr 2008 19:38:13
To: JS
Subject: Re: “Suicidio abortado” – by Narcisa
holy fuck. beautiful. you and your little girl are certainly chewing on the same spaghetti strand, ol’ mate.
i hope all is well, and i’ll just bet it is.
love and all=
JD
Hey brother man – I’m glad you dig what my little psycho’s putting down! When I told Narcisa what you said, she laughed derisively, said ‘yeh right! I’m sure johnny depp is gonna take the time to read MY e’stupid little shit poetry!”
She didn’t believe me, till I showed her your e-mail, then she almost choked on her end of the spaghetti strand, bro. You hadda be there. Thanx! Love, js
Johnny Boy. This is some serious shit man. Wow. This girl is some really deep creature. An abyssal animal of existential pain. So real and powerful…you are quite right man, this girl is unique.
If you ever think she would be up to stand up and read this poem in front of a crowd that would be eager to listen, you know about the Tuesdays of Poetry at Letras e Expressões I am part of. I would be glad to introduce her. She is sure to freak some people out, which I think she would enjoy. I think that could be therapeutic, cathartic and who knows… may be good for her self-esteem.
Aloha
Tonico
Toni the tiger! Serious shit as can be! deep as the hole to hell, mano, and don’t I know it?
So we took yer bogus invite to heart went down to the poetry reading at letras e expressaoes last night. I tried calling you, but you didn’t show up, viadao!
All the big shots were there, Caitano Veloso, a porra toda! They were all staring at us like a coupla aliens when we walked in… Either one of us seems to have that kinda effect on those artsy types, so imagine us both together! Raios!!! Narcisa got cold feet at the last minute and there was nowhere to sit, so she just sat down on the floor and ate a big hunk of chocolate cake, getting more of it on her shirt, hands, face, feet, then in her mouth.
Then she stood up and loudly declared, “boor-ing!” And we got the fuck out of there, with every eye in the joint following us silently out the door.
I think she made more of a lasting impression anyway than any of those constipated little poets reading there… That’s my Narcisa. Reading her poetry woulda been an anticlimax! As we got on the bike to split, I told her, “you don’t need to read any fucking poetry, baby. You ARE poetry…’ Anyway, sorry you missed the show. Next time show up when yer supposed to, fucko!! Abraco do cigano