Jack Rabbits

"People who claim to know jackrabbits will tell you they are primarily motivated by Fear, Stupidity and Craziness. But I have spent enough time in jackrabbit country to know that most of them lead pretty dull lives: they are bored with their daily routines: eat, fuck, sleep, hop around a bush now & then.... No wonder some of them drift over the line into cheap thrills once in a while; there has to be a powerful adrenalin rush in crouching by the side of a road, waiting for the next set of headlights to come along, then streaking out of the bushes with split-second timing and making it across to the other side just inches in front of the speeding front wheels."

Hunter S. Thompson
"Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72"
(Warner Books Inc., 1973, page 17)

As a young man I discovered Hunter S, Thompson and became enamored by his craziness, writing and profundity. Not only was I awestruck by the soldier like toughness with which he explored the fringes of mind altering mania, but I dug his super questioning of the whole world around him. His fearless cynicism had no bounds and was an inspiration that blasted the given assumptions and the cool-aid drinking buy-ins of the Sixty's crowd. He was the lone baby boomer who didn't buy the fact that as a generation they were changing the world, but were as full of shit as any that had come before.

The above quote comes from one of his most interesting books, his crazed cover of Nixon's re-election amid the peak of the hipster, free love hippee claim to "nothing would ever be the same".

This simple excerpt from the first few pages begs a wicked question. Was Hunter S. a jack rabbit bored out of his mind? Was Jimi Hendricks? Was Pig Pen of the Grateful Dead? Did John Belushi kill himself running out into traffic 'cuz he was bored with eveything else? Are we all, more or less jack rabbits?

Clearly Thompson's own demise followed the pattern he articulated above.

He and many others leave us with a staggering question. Confronted with a world full of staggeringly pervasive meaninglessness complicated by a profound personal perception of meaning, how do we handle ourselves?

Do we run out into to traffic?

Or do we find another way....

What do you all think?

It's really interesting.