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Lesley

Grey Matter

1.23.7

Keep the Lasagna Flying

At 4:50 a.m. on 1/11/06, Robert Anton Wilson passed away. I give you his last blog post, posted on 1/6/07 -

Do Not Go Gently Into That Good Night

Various medical authorities swarm in and out of here predicting I have between two days and two months to live. I think they are guessing. I remain cheerful and unimpressed. I look forward without dogmatic optimism but without dread. I love you all and I deeply implore you to keep the lasagna flying.

Please pardon my levity, I don't see how to take death seriously. It seems absurd.

RAW

Those last 2 sentences, like many of RAW’s other words will probably stick in my mind until I pass on into the great beyond. I am hopefully not near death, but it does seem absurd.

I never had the extreme pleasure of meeting Robert Anton Wilson, but that did not keep me from loving him and his books.

I first learned about RAW on, what was at the time called The Art Bell show and is now coast to coast am. I would guess it was somewhere around 1994 or 1995 that I first heard him of and his book (along with Robert Shea) The Illuminatus Trilogy mentioned by some guest who now escapes my mind. I was obviously quite a bit younger then and this was the first I had heard of The Illuminati. I bought the book and totally enjoyed it and I would say mostly believed it, or at least the basic concepts of it.

A bit later in 1996, I worked in a bookstore. I was the strange one that they always turned to when someone was looking for a strange book that they couldn’t find. I can’t tell you how many of The Illuminatus Trilogy were sold while I worked there, but for a book that wasn’t new or on the best seller list it was a lot. The reason nobody could ever find this book was because they had heard about it on Art Bell or from friends and, from the description, they didn’t realize that it would be found in fiction. I always wondered what those people ended up thinking of the book when they were done reading it. I never heard or saw any of them again so I have no way of knowing.

As for what I thought of it, as I said before I mostly believed it. It started whole new wheels turning in my brain. It contained concepts that I had never even considered before. So those of you who think I am a bit (or way too) conspiracy minded now, you can blame it mostly on Robert Anton Wilson because before him such thoughts did not exist in my mind. Oh sure, I often thought Presidents or politicians were lying, but I never thought there was any grand scheme behind what they said and what they did. It never even crossed my mind that there could be an elite group of power hungry individuals running the world.

There are many wonderful ramblings I could have about RAW, but what really could I say about someone that would be better than the fact that they opened my mind to new concepts? I don’t think there is anything better that I could say.

The only other thing I will add is that the world will be a poorer place without him and that he will be much missed by myself and many others.

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