From the Book of Voices: an interview with Hunter S. Thompson

[Currently the wife of the late Hunter S. Thompson, Anita T in Latin. She has given me some of her husband's books. Story of Balaam comes from the Midrash. I think]

And in order to be fair the Lord G-d sent one prophet also unto the gentiles. And Balaam was his name. And the prophet Balaam was a wicked man and his prophecies always came to him at night and only after he did unspeakable things with his white donkey.
- I do wonder sometimes... Am I perceived as sme kind of crazy drug addict?
- Chances are you are not perceived as much of anything at all.
- You are a Quiet Type.
- But still. Suppose they do.
- Perceive.
- Notice.
- Suppose Hunter had noticed. If... If I was 34 ten years ago, not in ten years.
- If. But let's suppose.
- What do you want to show me. What do I have to notice/see?
- That reading is not a wholesome alternative to smack.
- Heroin you mean. Don't foul your pages with strong-seeming words.
- But I am sick of decent, tended meanings.
- The strong words won't be any more attractive than strong breath? Fool enough to court an empty vestige of a brutal manhood such as that?
- There is no way out of the labyrinth of reading. There is no way out of the multiverse of words.
- All depends on how you view it, I suppose.
- Your trip to Vegas turned to loathing of itself. You switch to harder drugs in REACTION. To more thorough madness in the external, materially sober world.
- The stone-cold sober world of matter run by an allegedly sober god.
- Is that the moral? Men drink and fill themselves with rancid toxins because the world itself is drunk unto white fever and hallucination and only with a mind unhinged a man can... understand. Begin to understand. The trip?
- And the much-used white ass of Balaam is the same undying snow-white talking donkey which the Messiah the last son of the House of David will ride into Jerusalem one day.
- Suppose the moral is easier than that. Suppose the moral is that there is no Search. No uppercase ideas. We rode into town packing more drogs per square inch of our flesh than the richest and the most desperate (NOT the same individuals, believe you me) junkies anywhere in out and within shooting range of sight. Suppose my moral is that those who seek the Right with a capital letter have already lost their way and those who seek the Dream also with a capital letter for their pains have only until the end of their drug high to keep dreaming. High's over and bam! back in the world of pushers and graspers - not in the intellectual sense of grasping stuff either, oh no. That old sick world of grasping for the needle in another body's arm and oh so what if you do cripple that worthless body and give your own worthless one some horrible blood-poisoning disease. Baby, you'll do it.
- No matter what the drug. Including women.
- Including a ertain way of thinking about women which brings a nice deep hit of a certain speedball brew of pheromones, adrenaline and boyish optimisim into your smart-boy clean-as-kleenex brain.
- Kleenex is not very clean. Ecologically speaking.
- Neither is your brain. Sociologically.
- Well I know my truth when I feel it. And besides. If you were already full of chemicals when entering Las Vegas.
- It is a try at narrating an acid trip.
- The other drugs, who's counting?
- Who can soberly count drugs anyway?
- Considering everybody either hates them or wants them.
- Often both. Retaining either.
- The strangest thing. I could kick a huge cocaine habit but I can't kick the habit of always being late. What do you make of that?

June 20.

From the Book of Voices

This is a kind of journal I am writing. Opinions mine, voices products of conscious artistry. (i.e. I am not insane.) Figured I'd share.


Not the smooth speeches which you could say but the slippery sentences which you do. Not the influential tomes you could have written but the few spare booklets remembered by your friends friends you actually have.
- Haven't you been meaning to say that for you sex is inseparable from friendship?
- Not the life which you may have led but the life which you are leading. Not the measured thoughts you may have if but the accidental and half-noticed ones you actually do.
- Because you know, it's not like there is some dividing line. Often there isn't even any change of feeling. When clothes start to come off you never do discover any special knowledge. No mysteries revealed. No... revelations.
- Not the right ones whom you could have been with but the wrong ones with whom you are. Not the years of comfortable peace and loyalty to one another that could have been as you imagine but the unexpected hours when disloyalty was not a tempting choice that actually were.
- And even if your world does end after the first time with a wanted woman, too bad for you. The both of you. You are too busy with belts and elbows, pantlegs and hands to seriously notice anything.
- All that is wanted happens once; all that is needed turns into a habit. A friendship is a way two bodies have of reacting to the closing of distance. Take three steps into infinity and mind the gaping void. All limits fluctuate.

May 19

Further Adventures in Found Poetry

This week I played a game similar to Oracle with my students - or at least, I tried. The youngest ones didn't fully grasp the concept, and the oldest wrote belligerent nonsense about each other.

Here's a transcript of a game I played with a third-grade girl. She's rather flighty, and about 75% likely to be thinking about food at any given time. So it's not too surprising that she not only misunderstood the game (we were supposed to continue each others' sentences), but was obviously hungry at the time. My sections are in blue; hers are red. I've preserved her errors for archival purposes.

Once upon a time there was a horse with two

baseballs haVe BaTs in iT.

PiAnos have a funny aftertaste, but they're worth it if you're

into
We are abouT To go inTo The Ping Pong rooM

Mical likes to run and jump and skip and launder her pet

camel CaMel has A faT humP

HaMburder helped me overcome my fear of

gigantic
Mrs mical is giganTic

Book time! Everybody get out your copy of "Jerry and the Manic

Kleenex
We need Kleenex or will geT sik

M Cheese

Surgam

The 2009 edition of Surgam is now in print and online! Pick up a print copy around the Columbia and Barnard campuses, or check it out online. 

Philolexian Centennial Washington Prize

Philolexian Centennial Washington Prize

Tuesday, May 5

6:00pm

Wallach Lounge

Symposium

 Come to Philo's last event of the semester - Symposium!

Topic: Schadenfreude

Thursday, April 30 at 8:30 pm

Milbank Lawn, Barnard

Croquet Tea!

The Philolexian Society's Croquet Tea
04/26/2009 @ 11:00 AM
Low Plaza

Time to pull out your lawn sport wardrobe! Come enjoy the sunshine and a small spread of victuals while using The Philolexian Society's own set of mallets to learn how to play croquet.

This Is Just To Say

On Sunday night, my over-educated and underslept roommate Ms. Zeffren pulled an all-nighter. On Monday morning, I found the following gloriously erudite note:

This Is Just To Say

I have eaten [some]
of the potato dish
that was in
the refrigerator

and which
you were probably
saving
for the week ahead

Forgive me
it was delicious
so flavorful
and so flaky