Daily Ramblings:
Too Dead For Dreaming ...02/23/2005 07:44:35 pm
So Hunter S. Thompson is dead. And his desire was
for his remains to be blasted out of a cannon.
Though not every news source is reporting it,
apparently an element of that last wish was that Mr. Tambourine Man should
be playing as his ashes get blown to the sky.
I do not question the poetry of it all, but I do
note a shared trait of most of the stories on his
suicide. It is that thing which they all in common
lack: any hint of surprise. A 67 year old man, well
regarded by his peers, believed by many to have
talent in abundance, decided to put a shotgun to his
head and pull the trigger. Is it not worthy of any
question? The initial stories, in particular,
reported the news like they would report anyone
else's death from a long illness. I know Thompson's
reputation, but still, is it such a given that a
human being should kill himself?
From today's ABC story, a quote from someone who
worked with Thompson, namely Douglas Brinkley:
"I think he made a
conscious decision that he had an incredible run
of 67 years, lived the way he wanted to, and
wasn't going to suffer the indignities of old
age," Brinkley said in a telephone interview
from Aspen. "He was not going to let anybody
dictate how he was going to die."
No one except himself, that is. A man decides that
he cannot live even one more day. Tomorrow will bring
no new twists, no new possibilities, no further
potential for anything of value, not pleasure nor
hope, nor any good at all.
He had been married for all of two years to a
woman named Anita. He had children and grandchildren.
Raise the shotgun; pull the trigger. Hooray for
Hunter, everyone seems to say. Going out on his own
terms. Blood and bone scattered in a room, for his
son and grandson to discover.
Hooray for Hunter.
Then take me disappearin' through
the smoke rings of my mind,
Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen
leaves,
The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy
beach,
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow.
Addendum: It is now being reported that his weapon of choice was a
45-caliber handgun, not a shotgun as previously
stated in the press. His widow's tolerant and kind
comments about Hunter in the linked piece speak very
well ... of her.
You are viewing an individual
item from RightWingBob.com - click here to view the
main page.