Attached like fire escape stairs to the sides of a red brick tenement, the way up the cliff-face Maiji Mountain Grottoes rose up, threatening, impossibly high for someone like me who is deathly afraid of heights. From Wikipedia, “Acrophobia (from the Greek: ἄκρον, ákron , meaning ‘peak, summit, edge’ and φόβος, phóbos, ‘fear’) is an extreme or irrational fear of heights, especially when one is not particularly high up.” For me, unfortunately, anything above the height of a one-story roof was high up.
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It will be nine years ago on February 20th that Hunter Stockton Thompson died, and the following is a piece I wrote at that time, offered here for what it’s worth, intact, except for the editing of a couple of passages that were unclear: Tonight, in a run down and crowded Internet cafe, I read that Hunter Thompson had put a bullet in his brain. I let out an automatic gasp, swearing, yet did not draw the attention of the others around me, furiously absorbed in their own cyber-universes, clackety-clacking away at their rented keyboards. At first I thought it was impossible, that HST was merely firing away at atmospheric bats swooping by his head and accidentally shot himself, then I realized that, sadly, isn’t that the writer’s retirement plan? The ultimate literary unraveling? I am currently living in Costa Rica and had just come back to San Jose after 3 beautiful days at the beach. My head was full of palms roiling in the gentle wind, casting arachnid shadows in the moonlight, the conical, thatched roof beach bars looking out on waves endlessly tumbling onto the shoreline, and my mood was peaceful and relaxed and so very far away from the aggression and barking dog menace rampant in the States. But this really disturbed me. I had come to know him in the only way you can ever really know a writer, by reading and greedily absorbing everything he had ever written. I counted on him to be enraged for me, because he was far better at it than I could ever be. I needed to know he was prowling about in this world, with his acerbic discontent, his disdainful overconsumption, his armory of weapons locked and loaded and ready against the bastards and the rats and the snakes and their inevitable storming of his fortified compound. Sort of like you secretly revel in the antics of the neighborhood badass, knowing you shouldn’t, yet taking a vicarious, guilty delight in his unruly defiance, secretly believing you would really be like him if it weren’t for your job, your wife, or your stubborn yet innate timidity. Hunter didn’t know the meaning of the word timid. I mean, forget Fear and Loathing for a moment, this is the guy who wrote a book about the Hell’s Angels. Would you? Knowing full well that every biker in the largest and most dangerous motorcycle gang in the country would be pissed at you? And went on writing with the temperament of a rabid wolverine, creating in the process a new form that has spawned legions of inept imitators, and grandly busting out of the kind of journalism Tolstoy referred to as a kind of intellectual brothel from which there is no return. I wanted to go out and spray paint his name on cop cars, drop acid and duck at the swooping of imaginary bats, run for sheriff or at least dog catcher, borrow a friend’s gun and shoot out the street lights, anything but be normal, but I settled for a bottle of Wild Turkey and sitting in my window, singing sad songs that only succeeded in stirring up the alley cats into a yowling frenzy, and most likely alienating forever a neighbor or two, yet that was the best I could do on short notice. Cars passed, lights blinked out in windows, urban hunters and gatherers prowled, ransacking trash cans, as I cursed everything that was tame and gentle, even though I place a high value on gentleness, inconsolable in my Wild Turkey rationalizations, eventually passing out in a patch of moonlight on the floor, lighting me like a fallen angel. The next day I vowed never to drink whiskey again. Most of us will always be Clark Kents. There is no secret costume hidden beneath our clothes, no dazzling superpowers to save us from our ordinariness, and Lois Lane is out dining with some rich guy. We keep our rage well hidden. Safe. We hedge our bets. We leap and brawl, booze and bust, in the safety of secret worlds hidden deep inside us. Hunter Thompson lived on the outside. In full view. Got in a razor fight with life. Had the scars to prove it. Paranoia was an inevitable occupational hazard. I am sure he would sneer at what I have written above. And that is exactly the point. Someone has to. The human vultures and political pit vipers are probably all celebrating tonight, corpulent and crimson with hypertension, knowing that the Woody Creek scarecrow has fallen on his own spear, and his well-worn corrosive keyboard has gone silent now, forever. I think we should all go out of our way to make them miserable for a little while. It seems to me that’s the least we can do for HST, the wild, would-be, Freak-Power sheriff, out there sniffing the wind and following his own wolf tracks on the far side of Woody Creek. A reliable, tried and true way to get to know yourself as well as your culture is to move to another country. The more different the country is, the deeper the experience. The deeper the experience, the deeper the insight. But no matter where you go, no matter how far you go, your country’s stereotype will always be waiting there to greet you. “It's coming on Christmas
They're cutting down trees They're putting up reindeer And singing songs of joy and peace Oh I wish I had a river I could skate away on.” – Joni Mitchell |
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