Dr. Hunter S. Thompson: A Tribute

Wednesday, November 30, 2011 4:01 PM By Stephen J Christophers


"Genius Round the World Stands Hand in Hand, and One Shock of Recognition Runs the Whole Circle Round" - You know when you've found a home: We left Pattaya for the hills early this morning, a reconnaissance mission ten miles inland. It was the day for it, and working on a tan... One had the mighty 125cc Suzuki-Step balling it's little heart out - backfiring like a KTM on a mixture of 101+ octane race additive, benzine and a drop of LSD: "Look, there's two women fucking a polar bear!" It kept saying to me, as we negotiated the steep incline, and one of the many obstacles that seemed to rise-up out of the dirt-track like Elvis and coconuts at a Las Vegas wedding.

Circumnavigating Buddha Mountain and the temple above, almost surrendered in the moment; but for a split second; and out of the dust; out of the dust one can never quite tell... the dust here does strange things to people. Could it be a Toyota Hilux full of Muslim Militants? My mind strayed for a moment - Lucy paints portraits of Barbara Streisand. We're wired into a survival trip now... There was only one road back to Pattaya, and I was heading down it in the wrong direction... Tooling along beside, with arms, legs and heads out of the window shouting me down to stop: The bastards have caught me, I thought. You people just don't understand! This bike is property of the World Bank, that money goes to Italy! ...the inevitable: like a bunny in the spotlight. It was the moment of realization you see... Their rear windows lit up with a touch, like frogs in a dynamite pond - It was dangerous lunacy, but it was also the kind of thing a real connoisseur of edge-work could make an argument for.. so I put my head through the window to greet them... friends and acquaintances, out here? ...in this dust and heat... surely not...

You see, history is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of 'history' it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time — and that which will never be explained, in retrospect, what actually happened that day, on that dirt track, with that Toyota Hilux and those people - that was one of those moments.

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