I guess we always knew it would turn out this way.
From: ish
To:HST
Going gonzo is a lifestyle that doesn't allow for growing old gracefully, and you never really could relax the full-throttle pace. And you probably always knew it would turn out this way, too, right from the first step, but you didn't hesitate or tiptoe but leapt, running full tilt onto the road which on some February day would hold your doom.
Ever the gambling man, you told Pascal to shove his wager right into his own nonplussed nether cavity and put it all onto the Hard Eight. "Let Him come and get me," you said, "in the meantime I'll be in the bar."
Somehow along the way the Bad Craziness was just too much, as surely it had to be someday. But how can I judge, Ho Ho, say I, there are worlds along the way and dusty roads full of fear and loathing that might give any man a taste for cold steel or splatter his mind upon the coffee table. You've climbed fences into the devil's asshole and camped out like you owned the joint, so walk a mile in those sandals, rube.
What will history remember, I wonder now that the frenetic wild genius of your mind has finally rested upon your own coffee table of eternity, what the hell will any of it *mean*? And wondering, I doubt it can really be understood, you were always a part of the times, always live, always a journalist more than an artist, reporting to us from the abyss from the places we were terrified to go. Without you, what can it mean, what could someone draw from it 6 or 60 or 600 years past? I'm afraid all they could draw is the story of a life, lived intensely, burning brightly into the forests of the night.
Uh-huh. But cut the shit, shall we, Doc? I'd like to feel sorry about that, but fatalistic or not, it's hard to see how it could have happened any other way. You'd proven yourself invincible to carwrecks and heroin and firearms and all the bad craziness life delivers. You'd met everyone worth meeting and if you hadn't you'd made up a story infinitely better than the real thing. Nights in dens of debauchery from across the world and in the back alleys of anytown USA we like to think don't exist. But who knows, maybe you were facing the one danger you couldn't escape, Yee-haw partner, maybe you were facing boredom.
Truly the only thing more terrifying than being bored is being *boring*. That's a mindfuck, and Amen! Enough. You'll be missed, but there's a price for traveling into the darkest places, paid in blood. Good travels, Doc, whether you've moved into the haze or out.
From: HST
To: ish
Blow it out your ass. You attempt to psychoanalyze me is laughable. I cannot be understood. I am eternal. Or I suppose I shall find out. Ho Ho. In any case, I can't see my feet and I'm done.
Notes:
Fear and Loathing in Elko
Shotgun Golf from the Page 2 Column
It's hard to say anything else. You'll just have to read for yourself. Start Here
UPDATE: Actually, this is a pretty good article.
Posted by ktismael at February 21, 2005 10:49 PM