Holy Crap, (Hunter Thompson)

Go ahead. Talk about it.
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Doreen Peri
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Post by Doreen Peri » February 21st, 2005, 8:20 pm

lescaret -

Thank you so much for understanding! The vivid example you quoted of running across an online suicide note perfectly illustrated my point. I appreciate you taking the time to come back to this thread and post this...
There is no last resort that cannot be overcome by living.

one last thought....
It was a tragic day for Mr. Thompson's family. I just heard on the news that his son found him and he left no note. His son will have to live with the image of how he found his father for the rest of his life. So sad. :(

Let us dance and sing and celebrate life! Let us write beautiful thoughts today and every day. Life is truly a gift.

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Post by knip » February 21st, 2005, 8:55 pm

a couple thoughts

the only gonzo book i've read is hell's angels...at around 14 years old...then again at 16, again at 19 or 20...but not since...time to read some more i think

the suicide discussion is interesting...a couple stories:

my grandfather was a general in the SS...after the war crimes trials (he was found not guilty after spending close to 10 years in various prisons) he visited one of his officers in the hospital with cancer...the guy told him he was going to kill himself...my grandfather told him he couldn't because he hadn't asked his commanding officer's permission (this was 12 years after the war)...the guy brought in someone to write for him, and sent my granfather a formal letter requesting permission to suicide...my grandfather denied it and the guy didn't kill himself (we're sort of like that - when i got engaged, i wrote my CO a letter introducing her, giving family background, and requesting permission to marry)

fun story

but fact is, europeans think differently about suicide than do north americans...last week in europe i got into a lengthy and sometime sheated discussion on the subject...my position was a man's body is his own to do with as he chooses (sorry for the sexism in that sentence)...the other side, which was pretty much everybody at the table, called it a cowardly act...i cried BS, and that it took guts to take control of one's life that way

but the opponents did sway me in one respect...the family that is left without a note or explanation lives with the act forever...at least most do...i don't think i would, but others would, i think...so i still believe suicide is an honourable way to go, but i think a note is required, polite, and honourable

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stilltrucking
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Post by stilltrucking » February 21st, 2005, 9:09 pm

but i think a note is required, polite, and honourable
and for god's sake check your spelling and punctuation.

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Post by WIREMAN » February 21st, 2005, 9:32 pm

got the whole musical arsenal out and my sidekicks Raagini electronic tambura and electronic Riyaz tabla, we've been rehearsing the words that got me through this sad day and the night is bright, hell yeah me and the boyz got invited to do some recording with Tommy DiVenti and there's also a Cd of some of my wired stuff in the works, the self portrait painting, 2 shows of my wire sculpture coming fast, a poetry show march 6th, and another in early april, and the welding shop is being born and visions realized, it's great to be alive and in the throes, it's all in the doing and being, all you can do is love and hopefully be loved in return...................

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Post by Scootertrash » February 22nd, 2005, 12:52 am

knip wrote:
my grandfather was a general in the SS...

Sorry to stray from topic--but have to comment on how rare it is to be a grandson of an SS general..must be some real stories in that family

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Post by stilltrucking » February 22nd, 2005, 8:09 am

because they were females in a male-dominated arena.
Sylvia Plath was a goddess. She was dominant. Men are actually better at suicide then women except for women poets. Human behavior is over determined like that movie the perfect storm where all the conditions combine to produce a tragedy. She was a heroine in a Greek tragedy. It had more to do with her mother then anything else. The medusa on the other end of the trans atlantic cable.
I got onto Anne sexton and Sylvia Plath because I noticed les did not have one woman on his homage to suicide,


I think I said good bye on this string a couple of times, it is such an interesting problem, Camus said it is the only philosophical problem, I like Camus a lot. He said no to suicide, as long as Sisyphus could smoke a joint and drink a beer as he walked down after that absurd boulder, maybe he would have an Ipod so he could listen to some tunes as he struggled to push it back up again
"I'm sorry, but I have to tell you that what you just said can't be right. Mr. X (here she named a wildly popular and successful teacher in the English Department) told us what happened to Camus: he was overcome by despair and the failure of his philosophy. After all, he committed suicide, and that proves his message was a mistake."
I had also learned his death was accidental; he died in a car wreck. I even remembered the winter day when we heard, over the radio, that he had died.
http://trc.virginia.edu/Publications/OP ... elists.htm
Last edited by stilltrucking on February 22nd, 2005, 8:59 am, edited 1 time in total.

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lescaret
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Not quite accurate

Post by lescaret » February 22nd, 2005, 8:55 am

Truck, not entirely accurate:

"Bottoms up, Ms. Woolf, Davey Jones Locker of the lake the eternal room of your own. "

No need to read too much into my uneven distribution of woman suicides in my written-in-the-emotion-of-the-moment commentary - unless, of course, you want to think of me as a loutish, patriarchal buffoon (certainly your perogative), then make of it what you will.
"... accept balance on the turbulent promenade."

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Post by stilltrucking » February 22nd, 2005, 9:02 am

unless, of course, you want to think of me as a loutish, patriarchal buffoon (certainly your perogative), then make of it what you will.
no I am better equiped for that role you take the high ground, I will go low.

I read too dam fast. sorry about the mistake.

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Arcadia
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Post by Arcadia » February 22nd, 2005, 12:55 pm

yeah, there are a lot of suicidal writers: Alfonsina Storni, Alejandra Pizarnik, Horacio Quiroga. It´s also a fact that suicide in an author is a strong mark for most people in future readings of her/his texts.
Arguedas was very provocative at this point in Zorro de arriba y el Zorro the abajo.

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Post by jimboloco » February 22nd, 2005, 2:19 pm

we have a parallel post on hunter at
the news place.....
http://www.studioeight.tv/phpbb/viewtop ... sc&start=0

looking for viking ships.
slow burn is best.
easy buzz

they say ya gotta have a plan
personally i wanna make death poems and
make them catch me,

time to reflect,
another hike in the woods,
like the savannah just south of Gainsville.

sit back
trees and savannah
grass and sky

melt back into the stream
lost dream
what was it?

la muerte
sigue
siempre
Last edited by jimboloco on February 22nd, 2005, 2:51 pm, edited 2 times in total.
[color=darkcyan]i'm on a survival mission
yo ho ho an a bottle of rum om[/color]

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Post by jimboloco » February 22nd, 2005, 2:19 pm

got the whole musical arsenal out and my sidekicks Raagini electronic tambura and electronic Riyaz tabla, we've been rehearsing the words that got me through this sad day and the night is bright, hell yeah me and the boyz got invited to do some recording with Tommy DiVenti and there's also a Cd of some of my wired stuff in the works, the self portrait painting, 2 shows of my wire sculpture coming fast, a poetry show march 6th, and another in early april, and the welding shop is being born and visions realized, it's great to be alive and in the throes, it's all in the doing and being, all you can do is love and hopefully be loved in return...................
wireman,
it's what hunter didn't have.
(a welding shop in th works.)

needle ball and airspeed
i'd steal me a plane
head for someplace serene

one last scream
dr gonzo
a vintage whine.

no death poems fer me
an abrupt departure
i'm on permanent safari

Image
http://www.suitelorraine.com/suitelorra ... .gonzo.jpg
Last edited by jimboloco on February 22nd, 2005, 2:50 pm, edited 2 times in total.
[color=darkcyan]i'm on a survival mission
yo ho ho an a bottle of rum om[/color]

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lescaret
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ARCADIA

Post by lescaret » February 22nd, 2005, 2:37 pm

Arcadia, please elaborate, who are these authors? I am unfamiliar with them: Alfonsina Storni, Alejandra Pizarnik, Horacio Quiroga.
"... accept balance on the turbulent promenade."

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Arcadia
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Post by Arcadia » February 22nd, 2005, 4:55 pm

who are they? argentine authors that killed themselves.
I can talk of each of them, google them if you want.

The point is: when you read in autobiographic clue (that´s a strong tendency) the suicide is usually used as a teleologic unidimensional metainterpretation of both the life and the texts of the writer. (Example: he/she writes something in 1950 but... (highlight but) he/she kill herself/himself fifteen years after that). There is a tendency to try to find a sort of substratus in retrospectivity that makes the readings of the texts poorer and a bit tendenciosas.

Arguedas was a peruvian author that wrote a novel (his last novel.... ) where the narrator told in first person in a diary format how and why he wanted to kill himself (the time-space datos coinciden with what we know about Arguedas biography). An year after that he shot himself. I find it provocative because is a sort of reading tramp: you finally have (highlight have) to "believe" that the narrator of the diaries of "El zorro ..." was Arguedas (with all the weight of his bones). It´s sad but it´s an strong and very human text.

PRIMER DIARIO

SANTIAGO DE CHILE, 10 DE MAYO DE 1968

En abril de 1966, hace ya algo más de dos años, intenté suicidarme. En mayo de 1944 hizo crisis una dolencia psíquica contraída en la infancia y estuve casi cinco años neutralizado para escribir. El encuentro con una zamba gorda, joven, prostituta, me devolvió eso que los médicos llaman "tono de vida". El encuentro con aquella mujer debió ser el toque sutil, complejísimo que mi cuerpo y alma necesitaban, para recuperar el roto vínculo con todas las cosas. Cuando ese vínculo se hacía intenso podía transmitir a la palabra la materia de las cosas. Desde ese momento he vivido con interrupciones, algo mutilado.
(...)
Porque, nuevamente, me siento incapaz de luchar bien, de trabajar bien. Y no deseo, como en abril del 66, convertirme en un enfermo inepto, en un testigo lamentable de los acontecimientos.
En abril del 66 esperé muchos días que llegara el momento más oportuno para matarme. (...) Hoy tengo miedo, no a la muerte misma sino a la manera de encontrarla (...) Soy cobarde para el dolor físico y seguramente para sentir la muerte. Las píldoras -que me dijeron que mataban con toda seguridad- producen una muerte macanuda, cuando matan. Y si no, causan lo que yo tengo, en gente como yo, una pegazón de la muerte en un cuerpo aún fornido. Y ésta es una sensación indescriptible: se pelean en uno, sensualmente, poéticamente, el anhelo de vivir y el de morir. Porque quien está como yo, mejor es que se muera.
Escribo estas páginas porque se me ha dicho hasta la saciedad que si logro escribir recuperaré la sanidad. Pero como no he podido escribir sobre los temas elegidos, elaborados, pequeños o muy ambiciosos, voy a escribir sobre lo único que me atrae: esto de cómo no pude matarme y cómo ahora me devano los sesos buscando una forma de liquidarme con decencia, molestando lo menos posible a quienes lamentarán mi desaparición y a quienes esa desaparición les causará alguna forma de placer (...)

José María Arguedas

[/b][/i]

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lescaret
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Latin author suicides

Post by lescaret » February 23rd, 2005, 8:45 am

Thanks Arcadia (though reading the phrase "a teleologic unidimensional metainterpretation" before my first cup of coffee this morning made my hair stand on end).

Yup, googling these writers would have been the self-sufficient thing to do - but I figured, as you brought them up, you might be able to throw a biscuit of insight out for the gang here to nibble at.

I'm working on a "substratus in retrospectivity" right now, though mine looks sorta like whole wheat toast.

Harry Crosby's "Shadows of the Sun" is a fascinating journal of the infamous, some might say mad, American expatriate/poet/publisher from Paris in the 1920s. It's brim full of suicide. And poetry. And champagne. And Black Idol. And eccentricities of many stripes.

And sure enough, he killed himself, age 31, in rather sordid circumstances to boot. He'd maintained the motto "die at the right time" (ala Nietzsche) but apparently, in the heat of the final moment, forgot that dictum and went out in a less dignified manner than the rest of his brilliantly whacky life might have deserved. Oh well.
"... accept balance on the turbulent promenade."

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Post by Lightning Rod » February 23rd, 2005, 10:01 am

"These words don't make me a poet, these Eyes make me a poet."

The Poet's Eye

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