The brain is not a post office with little slots holding discrete mail for separate deliveries.

In the folder of personal letters that George has shared with me, the majority of correspondences are either from Hunter S. Thompson or Cynthia Oliver, also known as “Ed” or “Eddie.”

For a couple of years Eddie hung out with Doug, Jules, Kevin, Beth, Spunk and Wronsky, as did my oldest son Patrick. Eddie was a cigarette smoker and I suspected, with no particular evidence, that she was easy. If she didn’t talk much, at least she was truthful.

These were high school years for Eddie et. al. and they felt safe enough in my home to talk to me about their lives. I think they felt that way because somewhere along the line I had learned that occasional grunts of approval or mild surprise were good listening skills and that judgments were not.

Eddie and Doug left town as soon as their school year ended and ended up hanging around my place in Woody Creek. I was in single dadship with the boys while the divorce proceeded. Blatz turned into Millers, and the rules were about the same: Take a beer and don’t be a jerk. The bad shit hadn’t come upon Eddie yet, at least as far as we could tell. It was not sweet going through the divorce, losing the children (and some genuine cash), but sweet enough gathering a new life and having some kids around, dependents sometimes and sometimes not, on that cusp of being 18.

Eddie went home after the summer, a job as I recall, and I didn’t see her for several years. The next time I saw her I was sitting on the downstairs pot with the door open, thinking I was alone in the house, when I heard step sounds coming down the stairs, scaring me good, and then a fat face showed that I recognized in spite of the fat. It was Eddie. I explained that I was living alone and that she would have to leave, go to some of her family, anything, and I would buy a bus ticket to wherever that was. I stopped at the traffic light by the airport liquor store and she was gone. We write now, from time to time.

July 21, 2000

Dear George + Patty,

Hi, I’m feeling better but still having bouts with my voices…I don’t remember any of last year; Jim + Krista’s wedding, Christmas and the year 2000. From January to the end of May. Nothing.

But whatever it was that happened, it had to. Suppose to. I’m happy with my new home. But want to live in Boulder Colorado. I have to wait till [my doctor] agrees with me that I’m better – enough to make a move. I think I’ll talk to my case-worker, see if she can find me a case-worker in Boulder.
Never did like the east.

Oh yea, [My doctor] has spaced out the ECTs to once every 2 wks or twice a month. The reason I’m doing ECTs is because we couldn’t get a Med to work. That’s what they told me, my case-worker. But I also know that I assaulted my Mother and I guess Dad called the police. Involuntarily hospitalized. I don’t remember going down to Ann Arbor. I’m not going to ask either. I don’t want to know. What I did.

…I sometimes think I’m talking to John Lennon. I wonder if there is a heaven? I suppose it’s all part of my paranoid schizophrenia. I’m a Dreamer…I’m gonna get this in todays mail. It’s about 11:00 AM time. Hope all is alright at Woody Creek. Just felt like writing. Been writing a lot. That’s all there is to do.

Love,
Cynthia O.

P.S. Is Hunter Thompson still down the road?

We all knew Hunter Thompson because he was our neighbor during our summers in Woody Creek. Hunter stopped by when he was on his way East to cover the 1971 presidential election. We drank and did speed. I almost missed a class through oversleeping.

Betsy squeezed enormous volumes of grapefruit juice because that was Hunter’s hangover cure. We talked late into the night, certainly about politics, the evilness of Nixon as well as his humanity, but also about alienation from society, the barricades in Chicago 1968, and youth today.

I loved to talk politics with him; the boy-children worshipped him for the same reason that students today worship him⎯he gets away with a lot. I confess also to a fascination, envy even, of Hunter’s outlaw behaviors.

Hunter, in a draft dated Jan.25, 1971, describes the visit this way: “Then I went out to East Lansing, Michigan for a long chat with the NRA president, and after that quickly out to a home near the MSU campus for a chemically-adled night with a friend whose living room floor rolled back to unveil a big swimming pool. We spent part of that night pondering the horrors of his situation: a full professor at Michigan State with two teen-age sons who kept using the house as a refuge for runaway junkies. Here was a wealthy professor/liberal with enough blue-chip economic clout to buy & sell the (local lawyer) president of the NRA, but who found himself constantly on the verge of disastrous ‘contributing to delinquency …’ charges because he insisted on keeping his house open to his sons’ crazy friends. We sat up all night talking about the nightmare of ‘polarization’ that was coming on us all …. And the next morning I had to drive to Detroit in the snow at about 90 mph in a goddam useless fishtailing Mustang to catch a plane for Aspen.”

7-26-02

George – Why is
your car from
Stevinson Toyota?

And why is Patti’s
car from Buckhorn
Toyota?? (Big Horn?
who knows?)

It has puzzled us for 3 hours.
Now I am
hungry.

Do you have
any hashish?

Love
H

why am I cold?

Who is Jesus?

Are all descended
from Jews?

Where is the
Deviled Ham?

In Jail we ate
it on crackers

Nice Rain Tonite
eh?

Anita stepped
in dog-shit
+ went crazy

Are you a Jew?

I want to
buy the tree
farm on credit

I have some
white hash that
is scary

Who owns the
Rain?

Why not put in
a deep end +
a diving
board?

Off the Pig.

OK H

The mind contains the greatest mysteries, far beyond anything we hope to search for in the entire universe. Is consciousness an abstraction or a knowable reality? And does the state of madness provide more tangible insight into the machinations of the brain, or push us even deeper into the void?

Whether one’s madness can be converted into a bankable career, or keep one locked behind societal compounds, is inconsequential when considering insanity. But it does tell us something about the value we place on performance.

In passing, I call myself crazy. I have struggled with depression since I was eight years old, and have experienced hypomania in the form of anxiety since my late twenties. My maternal family tree blooms from splitting roots. George once remarked that Dr. Thompson used drugs, as George uses alcohol, to quiet his nonstop internal commentaries. There must be peace on Earth somehow.

I wonder if insanity can be defined by voices alone, by whether one can identify and categorize the voices, or if one is controlled and overwhelmed by them. Who doesn’t either ignore or succumb to obsessive cerebral messages that pierce everyday interactions?

Perhaps it’s the non-sequitors that are more frightening – when one can’t draw a straight line from one thought to the next. But isn’t such unpredictability the mark of creative genius?  And isn’t our world so far gone that those who believe sanity actually exists are truly the crazy ones?

Psychiatrists are a funny lot these days. Anyone claiming authority on lunacy should be popping a few of their own pills habitually – and most likely do.

September 19, 2000

Hi Dear George + Patti + Ben,

Hope all is well. Ben in High School now? Just had time to write. I like to write to you George.

I think I told you, I’ll have an ECT every other week now. Then what we’re aiming for is one a month.

I was Hearing Voices last weekend the 8-9th. It was Thundering + banging + booming. I was at my parents’ house for a visit on that weekend.

It’s always the same story. Jesus is coming. Is what the voices are telling me. And I’m the “chosen one.” Doing my work for Him.

But since I hadn’t had an ECT in more than a week, the voices come on.

And on the 13th Sept when I saw [my doctor] at Munson Medical Center, for my therapy, the anesthesiologist didn’t put the thing in my mouth, to hold down my tongue when they did me. And I had a convulsion during the ECT and I bit my tongue! And after I recovered and got dressed. Nobody said anything to me. I didn’t know until I was at home and my tongue turned Black + Blue and swollen. And spitting blood. Sue panicked and took me to Emergency. We waited there for 3 hrs. And the anesthesiologist came back and looked at it and said rinse with saltwater about 8 times a day and don’t drink coffee for a while. Oh well. It’s better now. But I’ll remind them to put the boot in my mouth!

I’ve made friends with the DJs from WCCW 107.5. Oldies FM. Charlie + Dave + Mike. I call them once a day and make my request. They play it. I won a T-Shirt for guessing John Lennon’s 1st wife’s 1st name. It’s “Cynthia.” That’s what I knew.
There’s 2 old men here at my house that want to Marry me! I don’t know?

I want to get this in the mail it’s almost noon.

So take care. Say a prayer.

See ya,

Cynthia – “Eddie”

This is the quote printed on notecards Juan Thompson, the only child of Hunter S. Thompson, and Juan’s wife Jennifer, sent to friends following Hunter’s death on February 21, 2005.

My main luxury in those years – a necessary luxury, in fact – was the ability to work in and out of my homebase fortress in Woody Creek. It was a very important psychic anchor for me, a crucial grounding point where I always knew I had love, friends, & good neighbors. It was like my personal Lighthouse that I could see from anywhere in the world – no matter where I was, or how weird & crazy it got, everything would be okay if I could just make it home. When I made that hairpin turn up the hill onto Woody Creek Road, I knew I was safe.

-    Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in America [2000]

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