Eric Thomson: Letter to Anthony

[Lars Redoubt]

28 JAN 06

Hail Anthony! Many thanks for your letter of 15 JAN.

I hope you are enjoying your great literature, & that you continue your learning from all sources, since we are all self-educated.

No teacher can learn anything for us. That’s our job. We can have the best teachers in the world, but if we don’t learn from them, we are just as ignorant as if they did not exist.

If we can learn, we can also learn without teachers around to tell us: This is important. Pay attention to this, &c.

Our learning out of school is as important as our learning in school, from my experience.

Thanks for your ‘outside’ address. Let me know when you arrive back home, & I can send you lots of reading material without ZOG-gulag restrictions.

Thanks, also, for telling me what you learned about drugs. I guess you know they don’t do you any good!

People who’ve been on drugs, including alcohol, have told me that they really needed to find something better to do, something in their lives which was more important, so they could pay attention to useful things which interested them.

Drugs are a way of passing otherwise empty time, but, as you know, they are a very bad way of passing, or ‘killing time’, for they wind up killing the user, & hurting those he loves.

Drugs, booze & tobacco speed up the aging process. They do not make one wiser, only sicker & weaker, faster.

I notice the rambling wrecks where I live, some of whom zip around in wheelchairs & electric scooters, because they can’t climb a flight of stairs. Most of them are 10 years younger than I am. Some are war vets, but they did more damage to themselves with tobacco & alcohol than the war did to them!

That reminds me of a song I heard back in the 1970s. The singer sings about his life, which he can’t recall very well, for “he was stoned at the time.” He thinks he was married, but he can’t remember much about it, since “he was stoned at the time.”

Apparently, that was similar to the life of The Rolling Stones’ Mick Jagger, who wanted someone to write his biography or life story. The writer said that Mick was his hardest subject for a biography, because Mick couldn’t recall very much of his own life!

The writer had to sit down with Mick, showing him newspaper clippings & magazine photos of Mick performing at various times & locations.

Usually, Mick had no idea when or where he did those shows, nor anything that happened before, during or after them.

Mick was shown on stage in California, at a rock concert in which one or two fans got killed in a fight with Mick’s Hell’s Angels security guards. Mick had to read the newspaper story, for he could remember nothing, since “he was stoned at the time.”

The movie actor, Errol Flynn, did write his autobiography, “My Wicked, Wicked Ways”, as I recall the title, which I read in 1960, in the bookstore, because I was too broke to buy it.

Flynn was an alcoholic, which was no good for his marriages & caused him other trouble.

The worst part that I remember was his story about how he got drunk, as usual, in his big movie star house in southern California.

Maybe he was going through a divorce, but he was afraid that he would lose his money in legal proceedings, so in his drunken state or normal state of mind, he drew his money out of his bank account. I think it was around $5000, which was quite a fortune in the 1930s, 1940s & even the 1950s.

He put the cash in a coffee can or some such & buried it somewhere in southern California. The next day, he could not remember where he’d buried his money.

He got drunk again, but his memory was not restored. He checked his back yard, his front yard & the nearby vacant lots. How far had he driven, maybe, to bury his cash?

Flynn never found his money, no matter how many times he looked for it. His drinking problem sure cost him plenty!

Hollywood made a scary movie, which I wish they’d reissue or remake. It was called “The Lost Week End.”

As I understand from one who saw it, a man wakes up in a hotel room. He has no idea how he got there, for all he can remember is getting drunk the night before. He does not even know the woman in bed with him, nor why she is dead!

He is sober enough to know that he is in real trouble, so he quickly leaves the hotel & desperately tries to retrace what he did in his drunken state, that week end. Is he a murderer?

I don’t know how the movie ends, but it scares me about drinking to this day! Just how much is “too much?” He found out the hard way.

Alcohol puts me to sleep, & I want to live fully awake, so I don’t drink. Life is much too interesting for that!

People have told me that they no longer used drugs or alcohol when they found their cause &/or career which gave meaning to their lives.

That’s why I hope everyone can find what gives them purpose & meaning, so they can shrug off drugs & enjoy life’s real treasures, instead of losing them like Mick Jagger & Errol Flynn.

Please keep in contact.

All the best & ORION!

Eric

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Write to:
Mr. Eric Thomson
P.O. Box 896
Yakima, Washington 98907-0896
U.S.A.