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Volume 2, Issue 1
et Cetera: the zine of everything and nothing
January 1995
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WHAT THERE IS IN THIS ISSUE
---------------------------
THE DIRTY FOGGY WINDOW
Proposition 187
New Year's Resolutions
Dull Lives
Good Books
INTROSPECTIVE-EXTROSPECTIVE?
A Transaction................................................Richard Cumyn
Let's Play....................................................Maree Jaeger
Invitation....................................................Maree Jaeger
me...........................................................William Shard
HOW ONE DARK AND STORMY NIGHT MR. J. ALFRED PRUFROCK
FOUND HIMSELF IN A HOUSTON SUBURB........Brett Allen Holloway-Reeves
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et Cetera is exactly what it says.. "and other things" if i'm not mistaken.
it will conduct interviews on random topics (we'll try to cover EVERYTHING at
least once!) have alot of feedback and have some creative writing in the
second section of the zine with little nibblets about the artists... it's fun
and serious, mundane and inspired, pointless and focused.. all in one. we'll
do everything about nothing and nothing about everything. it is published and
distributed electronically as often as i can (which may not be very often).
Copyright 1994 by Steve Lee. All works are Copyright 1994 of their respective
authors. et Cetera may be downloaded and distributed free of charge for non-
profit use as long as it is cited. All authors hold presumptive copyrights to
their works and should be contacted before their works are reproduced
separately. The views presented here are (probably) not the views of the
editor. It is available via ftp at etext.archive.umich.edu, gopher at
ftp.etext.org, and WWW at http://www.cs.andrews.edu/~adap/etcetera.html.
It is the responsibility of the contributors to make sure they are not
infringing on some other copyright. In other words, if there is some illegal
reproduction here - it's not my fault!
Please send submissions and comments (both are VERY appreciated!) to
lees@andrews.edu.
send everything.... poems on post-modernity
essays on the soul of social consciousness
stories about your pet piglet..
NOW BACK TO YOUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED PROGRAMMING...
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
EDITOR'S NOTES
(mindless ramblings to follow)
last week (ok, it was longer than that.. but i wrote this a week after i
went there), i went to Haight-Ashbury, California - the first time i've been to
a place of such blatant irony. its sheer brashness only made it more obscure
and i felt it was hiding behind every wall and curtain. there were sterile
coffee shops next to S&M shops, McDonald's (which, incidentally, seemed to have
only restroom for miles around) and Wasteland, a bizzare second hand clothing
store with strategically placed (or so it seemed) statues of Mephistepholes and
hanging angelic figures teeming with people in eccentric outfits that
surrounded me. it was all so macabre and i felt as if i was an distant
participant, awed by the subtle explicitness, in Poe's The Masque of the Red
Death. i wondered how all the people kept themselves from falling into dispair
and depression in such a gloomy place... odd. some of the happiest people i
saw there were the homeless, friendly and jovial. i often wonder why. why?
in fact, i was wondering why the whole time i was there. why? why? why? the
more and more i looked, the less and less things made sense. where were the
studios, the art galleries, the quiet muse asleep on its stark flat? where
were the icons of cultural redemption? the longer i stayed there, i felt this
grungy darkness beginning to pervade the place (perhaps it was because the sun
was setting but, then again, perhaps it wasn't). and just when i was about to
dismiss it, i found a grocery store. it was bright and lucid. good fruit and
fresh vegetables. there are few things like bright like on fresh produce.
just imagine it. it was then that i was forced to recant, for Haight is not
unlike Calvino's invisible Irene - as all places are. always drawing the mind
to it's ever changing soul. not to say that i am less confused. i'm not. i
am more puzzled now than when i started writing this... but it's an editorial,
i'm supposed to blabber senselessly... this, i must guess, is a cry for help.
i am perplexed and i wish to know. if there is a reader who lives or
understands the culture of places like Haight, please help me!
but perplexity saves everyone from complacency. and complacency is what
i fear while awaiting the decision by others of my corporeal future these
coming days. it comes so easily and naturally to so many but not for some i
guess... at times, in fact, almost all the time, it feels like parts of life
are the biggest waste of time. but as essie tells me, it's good for people to
herd sheep for a few years - it gives a person perspective. at least my tour
of duty isn't the 40 years that Moses had to endure; poor guy, i truly
empathize with him. in truth, perpective IS one of the few things gained this
year. and that can't be all bad.
i hope you'll enjoy the first issue of 1995 and that all of you are doing
better things with your life than i am.
???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
THE DIRTY FOGGY WINDOW
???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
unfortunately (for you, the devoted readers), i haven't found anyone to
help me out with this...yet. unfortunately because you have to wade through my
banal writing for both the editorial and the window. so if anyone wants to
volunteer, my email address is conveniently located above. luckily, we once
again have procured a list of omniscient experts to discuss current events. in
the interest of good taste, i have meticulously avoided the subject of O.J.
Simpson (yikes, i said it, but i'll never say it again!). you may all
collectively breathe a sigh of relief now. thank you. of course one of the
looming social/political issues today is proposition 187, passed by the state
of california late last year. it denies, among other things, basic health care
and education to illegal immigrants. this drastic measure has been prompted by
the incredible financial burden that providing social services has placed on
the state of california. other states that are also affected by large numbers
of illegal immigrants seem ready to follow suit. so i asked our panel of world
renown social scientists about their feelings on proposition 187.
"I was rather shocked when 187 was passed. Who am I to play God and
allow or deny a group of people of education health and care because
of their status? The founding fathers of this nation were all illegal
immigrants, and many of the Asian populace in America came here
illegally. Why weren't they deniededucation and health care? In
fact, the only group of people who care here legally were the
African-Americans, and THEY were denied education and health care at
first. But about thirty years ago, that was found to be
unconsitutional.
Getting back to illegal immigrants...
A doctor takes a Hypocratic Oath, stating that he will do his best to
preserve ALL life. Illegal immigrants are human beings too.
Education is a right, not a privilege. I think this was established
in Brown vs. Topeka.
So what right do Americans, the people living in the land of
opportunity, have in taking away this right from another group of
human beings? Selfishly speaking, I'm scared. My skin color
categorizes me as a minority. How will I be distinguished from an
illegal immigrant? They say id cards will be given to the
legal-status minority. What if I happenned to have misplaced my id
card, and I get into an accident requiring immediate surgery. Will I
be denied life because I did not carry the piece of paper that makes
me legal? Will they know that I'm an American citizen by birth?
Maybe the colored people will have to start wearing labels as the
Jews wore their stars during Hitler's reign.
I'm fortunate not to have an accent in my English. What about the
legal immigrants who do have heavy accents - their legal rights could
only be attained by the presentation of a piece of paper. What kind
of life is that? What would you call that form of racism?"
-SL
"I think that Prop 187 has its good and bad points--as most
propositions go. Furthermore, I don't believe it will ever be fully
put into effect. There are huge problems about it that haven't been
addressed and those are what's stopping it from going into effect. I
was personally shocked that it passed by such a large margin! Doesn't
it seem that Californians are so frustrated with the economy they're
willing to do anything? This law does not cover the dangers of
denying health care to illegals (epidemics! increased # of
emergencies, etc), the unconstitutionality of denying education to
children of illegals, who will replace the illegal workers who work
for minimum wage or the lack of border patrol. This is such a complex
problem and it will not be solved by one proposition--especially one
that won't be of *any* use for a LONG time!"
-RS
"Undecided on how I feel about proposition 187. But I lean more
towards it. I assess that California is in a desperate situation and
they need to do something about their incredible population of illegal
immigrants. Maybe denying health care, public education, etc. isn't
the "morally right" or "humane" thing to do, but until someone comes
up with a better suggestion, I think this has to be done. And for
those who say the state of California is doing this as an indirect way
to keep Hispanics or minorities in general out of their state, I
say--maybe, but it sounds like bull shit to me. They aren't trying to
"get rid of" minorities--they are merely trying to do something that
will help their economy and in the long-run, the common good. What
ever happened to that familiar belief of the "common good" anyway?"
-HT
"This is a federal issue. The US government needs to shoulder more of
the burden rather than expecting CA, TX, FL, etc... to deal with all
of the illegal immigants themselves."
-AR
"The state of California has every right to pass that bill. But
because they can does not equate to they should. The tax money should
be used to help those who pay the taxes first then it should reach out
to others. However, looking at the federal government, that is seldom
the case. The U.S. government still spends billions of dollars in
foreign aid and for various reasons it is necessary for the U.S.
government to do so. The federal government is acting responsible by
spending so much in Israel, the former Soviet, Japan, and various UN
projects. But shouldn't the U.S. government first serve the needs of
the Americans first? And in the same manner, shouldn't the state of
California first meet the needs of the Californians first? Sure it's
not quite humanitarian but when a government tries to please everyone
in the state and then also the illegal immigrants, the government is
bound to fail and then even the legal residents will not be able to
receive any benefits. With the exception of health care (because
denying them health care and letting them die is extremely
irresponsible) the rest of the proposition is sound and only proper."
-JN
"Currently, prop. 187 is a beautiful example of theoretical social
darwinism. If it passes, it will become one more example of the
inability of social darwinism to function in the real world. Pure
darwinism would suggest that the citizens should put their rights
above those of non conspecifics. This would seem to imply that they
ought to vote infavor of proposition 187.
Theories based on natural selection never work well with humanity,
though. [Red Herring: perhaps this is because we are too divorced
from nature in our concerns.] The same sorts of arguements (we cant
handle the horrible burden that this places on us...... were used to
cause the passage of prop 13. Now there is a shortage of teachers in
CA due to a lack of $$$ for schools. I definitely am against prop
187 in its current form. Lowering the educational levels of the
populace will only increase the crime rate."
-JM
Which of course brings us to the unavoidable topic of New Year's resolutions.
"Eat breakfast, have quiet time, get the BIG PICTURE."
-RC
"1. Meet all deadlines on time. No more extension requests!
2. Take piano lessons."
-SL
"one marathon in the next five years"
-AR
and after all these noble resolutions - actually, i found them rather
uninspired... come on people can't at least resolve to do great things even if
we don't have a clue how to do it? how about "join the olympic volleyball
team" or "win the nobel peace prize" or "publish a bestseller" or "best new
artist award" just some ideas - here is julian's thoughts on new year's
resolutions.
"Was anyone stupid enough to make a resolution this year? What
exactly is a resolution anyway? To break up the word, it's a
re-solution. A solution again, or a new solution. What makes you
think that this solution that didn't work all year last year will
suddenly work this year? What, is January 1 some magical date or
something? Hello! Wake up Mr. Room Temperature IQ! If it didn't
work last year, it's not going to work this year so forget it.
Besides, why are so many people trying to do something new anyway?
Why are people trying to lose weight, trying to become a vegetarian,
trying to give up smoking or drinking, trying to get fewer speeding
tickets, etc. Like someone once said, Everyone's either a smoker or a
non-smoker. Decide which one you are and be that. There's no such
thing as "I'm trying to quit smoking." And that goes for meat eating
or being thin/normal/fat. Decide who you are and be that. People
have such hard time deciding who they are, especially among the youth
or women. Really they have such a hard time making up their minds.
Ladies, don't even try to defend yourself. It's true (Deborah Tanner,
one of the leading psychologists who studied the differences between
men and women, told me this). When four women get together to do
something, it'll take more than fifteen minutes just to decide where
to eat. Why? Okay, so the reason goes deeper than just their
inability to decide but to discuss that is way off the new year's
resolution topic. So save yourself the trouble. If you're fat, be
fat. If you smoke, just keep on puffing. If you think you got a big
butt, it's okay. Most people feel the need to change because of their
peers or the society. You don't need to please them. If you really
want to change, don't start at the beginning of a calendar year
because new year's resolutions are meant to be broken and it won't
work and you'll feel bad that another new year's resolution didn't
work and you'll just give up trying for the whole year until next year
when you'll try again at January 1. Instead, try a new month's
resolution or a Sunday's resolution. This way, if the solution
doesn't work, then you can try something different every month or week
instead of year."
wow, from now on, it's new month's resolutions for me. of course, one month
isn't a whole lot of time to win the nobel prize...
anyway, there is something i've come to realize this year. i have no
passion for life. and i've come to realize that almost no one does either. oh
sure, we want to do alot of things. we want to succeed. we want to accomplish
this and that. but i can't help but think that we don't want as much as the
people we've read about. about people who dedicate their lives to one thing as
if it means everything to them, because it does. we're so caught up in success
that we have no idea what success is. it's just the idea that we chase after.
maybe i'm just talking for myself. so i asked some people if there was
anything they REALLY REALLY were dying to do.
"Dying to do: SKI!!!! But there's no snow here!!!"
"Go to Australia, learn another language, bike through France, build
something, paint something, learn acupuncture, "push back the
boundaries of ignorance" in medicine."
"What are my goals in life?"
"I REALLY REALLY want to save the world from the global environmental
crisis, but realistically, I don't have the power nor the knowledge to
do so."
"Well I'd like to get some studying done and actually do halfway
decent in my classes for once."
"Dive the Great Barrier Reef"
no one's proven otherwise to me. it's like, my goal in life is to lie on a
beach in the bahamas and drink margaritas. maybe helena was on the right track
with the environment... but i know i'm more guilty than anyone else. it's a
sad world.
but on a lighter note, here is the list of the best books to read.
Couplehood by Paul Reiser got two votes
Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan (tried to read it but couldn't really get into
it)
The Kitchen God's Wife by Amy Tan (what's this fixation with Amy Tan)
The Cost of Discipleship by D. Bonhoeffer got two votes (and i've never
heard of it - ok, i
feel dumb)
Waiting For Godot by Samuel Beckett
The New Turing Omnibus by A.K. Dewdney
A Severe Mercy by Vanauken
Short stories by Richard Wright
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand (book is far too thick to think seriously of
reading)
happy reading... and on to the heart of the matter.
*******************************************************************************
INTROSPECTIVE-EXTROSPECTIVE?
*******************************************************************************
Richard Cumyn
A Transaction
-------------
Heather glanced up from drying the dishes and said, "I remember when I was a
little girl, it was so nice when I was sick because my mother would hold my
hair out of the toilet."
The dishes were dry already because Dixon had washed them an hour previously
and had left them in the rack while his wife shopped for groceries. She was
still wearing her overcoat. She refused to unpack the groceries until there was
nothing else on the counter beside the sink. When Dixon unpacked he took the
packages right from the paper bags on the floor to the fridge or cupboards, but
Heather liked to have all the items spread out on the counter before her. She
had to see the whole week's food laid out as if spilling from a cornucopia.
Dixon leaned on the stove as he watched her clear space for the food. She liked
to do it all herself. Besides, there was his back to consider.
"Leave the bananas out," he said.
"What?"
"The bananas. Don't put them in the fridge. They go all brown and mushy."
"I can't concentrate with you hovering around me."
"Sorry."
"I drove right by the house on the way back from the store. I've never done
that before."
"People are not avoiding us."
"Then, what? When was the last time my brother came over? He lives ten minutes
away."
"He has a life. They all have busy lives. You make it sound as if they all sit
around their kitchen tables plotting how they can best avoid running into us."
"You don't understand."
"I do. I understand."
"No. You don't." She hesitated before continuing, not deliberately but as if
she
really were confused now. "I've forgotten what I was going to say."
"Why don't you take your coat off?"
"Don't the groceries look nice all spread out like that? If there was a really
bad storm and we were stranded in this house for a week, we'd be safe and warm
and have enough to eat."
Dixon helped her out of her coat. Heather was a trim woman who wore petite
sizes. She was still pretty with a youthful face. Even when she was in her
mid-twenties, clerks in liquor stores had asked her for proof of age. The only
difference he could see between then and now were the two deep vertical
wrinkles beside the edges of her mouth.
He said, "What were you saying about your mother?" but she just shook her head
at him.
* * *
He thought, I should be walking a dog at this time of the day.
The stars before dawn were clustered in the north-east. He recognized the line
of Orion's belt and Ursa Minor and decided that one fuzzy concentration of
light in a cluster was a nebula. It was the cold, hard sky of a late summer
morning before sunrise. It was different from the light at sunset the night
before, which had left the sky not yet black but no longer blue with the sickle
of the new moon suspended just above the glow. He resented the street lights
for the way they diluted the precision of the night.
He passed a used furniture store with its awning rolled up. The transom window
above the entrance was smashed. The street light above him dimmed and
brightened, then shut off completely. Perhaps, he thought, a power surge had
blown the bulb. What really went on at night while the city slept? He imagined
a million sleeping hearts skipping a beat to accommodate the power surge that
God or a nuclear power plant might perpetrate. The offence was perpetrated for
the good of all by an unknown assailant, to whom many pray, at approximately
5:35 AM E.S.T. An eye-witness said that he was just rolling down the awning on
his store front when it happened.
Nothing inside the store was dusted. Items sat in no particular arrangement,
just where they had been deposited. The room into which he was peering was an
annex where no one worked, although adventurous customers could pass into it
from the main display room if they wished. There was no guarantee that what
they wanted would be available. "I mean," Dixon could hear the owner say, "the
item you want may well be there; I just can't guarantee that I can get to it."
At which point you might look suspiciously at the store-owner/awning-roller/
eye-witness, one eyebrow raised. He might take this to mean that you do not
believe him, and he thinks you think he wants it all to himself. That is why he
is being not very helpful. That is why he is not being very helpful. The
difference is one of shadow and light. The man thinks, "I want it for myself.
That's why I am being not/not being very helpful."
One item, a Coca-Cola tray from the 1950's, looked exactly like the one on
which Dixon's mother used to serve Kool-Aid to him and his friends in the
summertime. It lay flat on the top of an armoir whose finish was cracked in
spidery cells that appeared to follow the molecular structure of the wood. The
tray, which could probably be seen only from the street and not from inside the
cluttered room, there being roughly two meters of rubble between it and the
entrance of the annex, showed a girl lying in her bathing suit on a blanket in
the sand. In the girl's hand was a bottle of one of the first Coca-Colas, the
one now referred to with the same word used to describe ancient languages or
works of literature that had passed the test of time. Her bathing suit,
originally yellow, had yellowed (if that is conceivable) along with the rest of
the tray over time. She had a heavy voluptuousness, that Marilyn Monroe pillowy
bulk. Rather than a thong or a second skin, her bathing suit, by present
standards, was a modest piece of substantial clothing. If you were to undress
her, you would know that she no longer wore anything. You would have disrobed
her. She would not have been peeled like a tomato but uncovered, revealed,
presented.
The store-owner would say that he didn't know anything about any of that. He
had a store to run and there were customers he must attend to, he would say, as
if people who have driven in from the suburbs on a Sunday are going to insist
that a transaction (a sale, a consideration, a transfusion) occur immediately.
So far nothing was settled in Dixon's mind about the fact that this man was the
sole eye-witness to the surge of power that had made the whole city, all the
people, all the people's hearts, dim for an instant. Not go out exactly, but
just do what electric lights do occasionally when the power grid becomes
overloaded. Flicker. It was also not yet established whether this was an act of
a god or a nuclear power plant manager. For the purposes of the transaction,
Dixon accepted that they could be the same.
* * *
At breakfast Dixon offered to take Andrew up to the lake for a couple of days.
Heather said it would probably be a good idea.
All along the highway north were posted signs warning against speeding. For
every ten kilometers per hour over the speed limit, the fine increased by
fifty-three dollars. Dixon kept the car steady at three kilometers per hour
under the maximum and let other cars pass him whenever the highway widened into
four lanes. By the time he got off onto the secondary roads, his back had
tightened into a knotted cord.
Of course, at the lake his sister and her husband wanted to know how he was
holding up. He told them that the store kept him busy.
He saw that a sailboat had capsized out on the lake in relatively calm water
and wondered if anyone else had noticed. Andrew pulled him outside, demanding
to be shown where his sister had put her initials in the mortar of the stone
wall she had helped to build. As they walked down the slope to the beach, the
sand shifted under their feet, making them slide part way.
Lately Dixon had been having vivid daydreams about Heather and himself
together. In one, along that same ravine path they took to try to get away from
the lights of the city, he imagined that a squirrel had spring-boarded off her
shoulder and she had just turned around and walked back the way they had come
without saying a word. In another, he imagined that twisted tree branches were
actually snakes frozen in mid-air and that as soon as they walked past, the
snakes would resume their twining.
Andrew played all day with his cousins in the sleeping cabin. The children put
on a puppet show about the evils of smoking. Dixon's sister laughed uneasily,
butting out her Pall Mall.
Down the beach an old-fashioned dinner bell sounded. Dixon had brought a
casserole of macaroni and cheese that Heather had mixed and frozen for him. He
did not like to come empty-handed. Politely, they dished it out alongside the
pork chops and apple sauce. Dixon ate quietly, responding to the occasional
question or safe remark, keeping an eye on Andrew at the kids' table. A dog was
swimming in circles not far out in the lake and was snapping at bits of sun. A
motorboat towed a naked sailboat back to shore. Gulls circled above the vessels
and rain clouds gathered in the sky.
Meal time was informal, as it must be all along the beach, Dixon figured, as it
must be everywhere at cottages where old fir trees shaded golden sands. At
home, Dixon had insisted from the very beginning that meals be regular and
orderly, uninterrupted by television or radio, a place where the family talked.
A place where children told their parents what they had done in school that
day, what they had learned.
He and Andrew got their own breakfasts, for lunch whipping up peanut butter and
strawberry jam sandwiches, and so had just the one sit-down meal a day with the
others at the cottage. The floor under Dixon's chair was sandy. He lifted the
soles of his sandals slightly and passed them over the granular surface while
the others talked. His beard began to tingle, each strand it seemed demanding
to be felt. The adults drank three bottles of wine, though Dixon noticed that
his sister and brother-in-law had drunk only four glasses between them. Before
the last of the wine, he felt like arguing about something. The sun hung above
the water like a molten ingot ready to be dipped in its cooling bath. His anger
simmered, sinking like the light.
He found one chair he liked down on the beach. It was an old leatherette
bean-bag chair that supported his back at just the right angle. Andrew went
exploring with a boy he had met at the other end of the beach, the son of
someone Dixon used to play with. Heather had said that it would be a good idea
for them to get on up to the lake for a few days because she did not feel she
was any good to them just at that moment. He moved his bean-bag chair back into
the shade. His beer tipped over, half of it emptying into the sand before he
noticed. He looked over at the red pine he used to climb to the very peak and
at the section of sand just at the high- water mark where he used to find the
most perfect flat stones for skipping.
He saw a winter scene. Heather was walking with him along a farmer's access
road between thick hedgerows burdened with snow, along the track of a
snowmobile to a place where pines grew in impossibly straight rows where
someone had planted them sixty years before. He imagined the person who had
planted them to be an old, old man now who lived in a little hermitage back in
the woods, beyond the tree plantation. The smoke from his wood fire, like
vapour off an open cut of water, hung in the freezing air. Dixon and Heather
scooped snow with their hands all around the cabin until only the chimney
remained visible. Their breath froze the smoke into an obelisk which Heather
climbed. Dixon's head ripened, exploding milkweed seeds in silken clumps. She
lowered herself until all six meters were cold up inside her. It made her
laugh. The questioning pines stood in impossibly straight rows. She could not
explain to him why they were there, why she was laughing so wisely, why Dixon
felt all a-flurry and was spinning in curlicues around and around her perch.
Before he returned home, Dixon went blank in the middle of what he was saying,
twice, in front of everyone, once at the campfire on the last night together
and once when they were saying goodbye standing around the car the next
morning. Everyone was too polite to say anything.
* * *
Andrew begged to stay longer at the lake, and it was agreed that he would come
home with his cousins in a day or two. On the way home Dixon found it
impossible to relax behind the wheel.
At the first town he stopped at an automatic teller where he used his card to
pull an extra three hundred for gas and unexpected problems. It was a funny
grey day, a wet kind of blustery wind coming at him, hardly like summer at all.
As he passed through the downtown core on his way back to the highway, he
noticed the school sale signs and felt a fluttery dread in his stomach.
He flipped the lights on even though it was only mid-afternoon, slowed down to
the speed limit, and settled back into the seat. He had his back cushion
strapped behind him, but after only an hour his spine began to talk to him.
Shifting the seat forward so that his right leg on the accelerator was bent
helped take the strain off, and he continued like that for ten kilometers or
so. From time to time he leaned forward and rested his forearms on the wheel,
his chin at twelve o'clock, chest pressed up tight against the steering column.
It shifted the weight off the vertebrae at the bottom of the spine. He could
feel it stretching, becoming lighter, although he was not used to driving like
that and he over-compensated on a sharp curve. The right wheels ate gravel for
a stretch until he could ease back onto the pavement. Two cars that had been on
his tail for the past ten minutes took that opportunity to scoot out around to
pass. He was still on the curve. Visibility was limited and the second car
swung in ahead of him with only inches to spare before an oncoming logging
truck blasted by. Dixon swore out loud and gave the driver the finger. He was
rigid in his seat by now, and his back was out-in-the-open painful. The fuel
was still above half-full, but he decided to pull into the nearest gas station
to get out and stretch, maybe even find a flat surface to lie on. No amount of
shifting in the seat helped.
At a gas station he pulled in and asked to have it topped full. The attendant,
who looked to be about seventeen, was dressed in oil- stained overalls and a
dirty Blue Jays cap, his long dark hair falling out of style to his shoulders.
Dixon asked him to check the oil. It was down a litre, which the attendant
replaced, and while the tank was filling he set out to clean the windshield.
When the attendant announced the price for half a tank of gas, Dixon feigned a
wince up at him through the open window.
A real stab of pain shot down his left thigh as Dixon rolled out of the pump
area over to where he could park and get out to walk around. He could tell by
the way he had to hold onto the door and the back of the driver's seat when he
got out that he had thrown something out of whack. There was no use trying to
stretch when it was grabbing like that. If he were to lie flat, he would
probably never get up again, and so as smoothly as he could he walked over to
the door and stood there in the empty waiting area.
It was like a hundred thousand service stations. Cartons of cigarettes lined a
shelf behind the cash register. Keys hung attached by string to dirt-smudged
paper tags in a recessed part of the wall. An anatomically perfect Vargas girl
in a French bikini bottom proclaimed the month and the name of a tool-making
company. Vaguely alien looking pieces of metal machinery adorned the counter
top. In the corner furthest from the door, a Coke machine stood, out of order.
The smell of petroleum in all its various forms hung like a stale varnish on
the air. Through the adjoining door he could see two people, the gas jockey and
an older man, who he assumed was the chief mechanic.
Dixon asked the teenager if there was a pharmacy nearby. He consulted with the
other man who was clearly annoyed at being interrupted in the midst of his
tune-up. They pieced together directions to a nearby town not far along the
highway. Both could see by the way Dixon was standing against the counter that
he was gripped by pain. The kid asked if Dixon would like him to go pick up
something for him, but he said no. He told them about the back and instantly
the older man's face became alight. A fellow sufferer.
Dixon heard about the ten months the man had passed flat on his back in
hospital. The mechanic lifted his blue GWG workshirt to show Dixon the brace he
wore all the time now, taking it off only for bed. But the man was sensitive to
Dixon's agony and he reached in to a hidden place behind the counter, pulling
out a prescription bottle of pills, heavy-duty muscle relaxants. Dixon said he
would rather not be taking such complex chemicals, but by then the kid had
shoved a styrofoam cup of water into one hand and the mechanic shook two
capsules into the palm of the other.
"Wonder pills, friend. You should get yourself a subscription."
The pain was the only part of him making decisions now. He thanked them and
downed the horse pills which would get him to the drug store.
Once there, he bought the strongest Tylenol he could without a prescription and
swallowed two of them with a sip of Coke. Working in tandem with the muscle
relaxants, the pain killers gave him a buzz of calm. The back was a dull throb
now, miles distant. Back in the car he began to enjoy himself, as if he was in
a simulator set on Sunday Drive.
His eyes began to droop. His head snapped upright a couple of times when the
big car drifted to the right onto the shoulder, but instantly he began to fade
again. He pulled off, the car sloping at such an angle toward the ditch that he
could not get his door open, and he had to exit from the passenger side. He was
so groggy that he left the door swung open. A couple of turns around the car,
the fresh air, the unfiltered sunlight all helped to clear his head somewhat.
He was lucid enough to know that he would not be driving any further that day.
His shoes slipped in the loose gravel as he struggled to close the passenger
door. He removed the car keys through the open driver's window but did not lock
the doors. There was nothing worth stealing.
The first person to see his thumb stopped, a woman in her early twenties in a
black pickup. He climbed into the cab beside a baby strapped backwards in a
molded plastic seat.
"You're really at an angle there. Were you in an accident?"
He shook his head no, but offered no explanation except that he had to get back
into town. Usually he took pains to ensure that everyone was informed
completely. He asked her to drop him off at the nearest motel.
Sitting upright, Dixon drifted off to the happy sounds of the baby gurgling and
the well-tuned Ford engine in the background. It seemed they had been driving
only a minute when the woman shook him awake and told him that they had arrived
at the Blue Spruce Motel. He thanked her, giving her a look of gratitude that
did not hide his embarrassment. She looked amused.
"The owner's a nice guy. He'll send someboby to fetch your car for you."
Dixon thanked her again and slid out.
The woman was right about the motel. As soon as Dixon checked in and explained
his situation - it all came spilling out, garbled, unrehearsed, the back, the
pills, the fatigue - the owner and his son drove back for the car. He found he
could not relax in the motel room, though. Still groggy but agitated now like
someone roused from REM sleep, he flipped through the channels, finding nothing
but soaps and game shows. He left the TV on while he paced in a circle from the
bed to the tiny bathroom to the window.
When the car pulled up and stopped directly in front of the unit, Dixon closed
the curtain and moved quickly back into the bathroom, closing the door behind
him. He did not want them to see him just standing waiting in the room. Neither
did he want them to see him lying on the bed in the middle of the day. When the
knock came at the door, he yelled from the bathroom that it was open. The man
and his son entered carrying the suitcases and Dixon's bag of custom- made golf
clubs which they stood in one corner of the room. The owner took his thanks
with an impassive shrug.
"We got four championship courses in the vicinity."
For an instant, before they dipped their heads to leave, Dixon considered
staying there for the rest of his life, selling the car, sleeping for as long
as Rip Van Winkle, even playing some golf once he awoke.
After a shower he phoned Heather to tell her what had happened, that he would
spend overnight and try to get away early in the morning.
"Don't be a stupe," she said, "leave the car there and get on a bus. How can
you be sure you won't fall asleep at the wheel again?"
"I won't."
"Dixon, I'm worried about you."
"See you tomorrow, safe and sound," he assured her.
He tried sleeping on the bed, but when he rolled onto his left side as he did
habitually at home, something popped. He yelled his shock. Curling up into the
fetal position did not help this time. Unable to sit up, he slid, grunting and
gritting his teeth, onto the floor. He tried pressing the small of his back
into the carpeted floor. This relieved some of the pain for a while, but he was
soon clenched like a fist. He crawled on hands and knees into the bathroom
where he was able to run the bath as hot as he could stand it.
He stayed in the bath until the water began to cool off. He was able to walk
back to the bed, but the tightness returned quicker than he expected. He took
two of the Tylenol, then pressed himself flat on the floor again, pelvis
tilted, knees bent. He hugged his knees to his chest and released. As he lay,
his eyes fixed on the stucco ceiling, he had an instant sensation of seeing
himself from above. He yelled down at himself.
Someone in the unit next to him pounded on the wall.
"Hey! Cut the racket! We're trying to sleep."
A little later he heard a knock at the door.
"Everything all right in there?"
"Yes. Everything. All right. Sorry."
But he could not get himself straightened out. It was never going to be the way
it was. He knew that he would have to call Heather to come and get him.
It took him another hour to reach the telephone.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
"A Transaction" began with a journal entry I made after walking down a farmer's
access road one winter night in Osgoode, Ontario. Off the main path, I'd
stumbled on a little shack just beyond a mature planting of pines in
unnaturally orderly rows. It was a cold night, the snow packed hard and
squeaking under foot, and I could see smoke coming from the hovel's makeshift
stovepipe. The feeling was that I was out in the cold, the interloper, while
inside, this squatter was snug and warm. How that feeling flipped and was
translated to Dixon's experience is one of those mysteries of the creative act,
I suppose, a transaction in its own right.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Maree Jaeger
Lets Play
---------
Lets play love
we can dress it up
or down
according to the weather.
We can comb the tendrils
of its hair
one way
then another.
We can scatter it
around this space.
We can invent
dialogue and situations.
The decor, the clothes
the outdoor walks
are all co-ordinated.
We can hang the sheets
on
this
line.
Lets play love
and when we get tired
We can pack it all
under the bed
out of view.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Maree Jaeger
Invitation
----------
Hopscotch, chalk, bruised and bleeding knees.
How nicely veneered you are.
Excuse my sickly pumpkin coloured smile.
Make yourself at home.
You fit in snugly near my manic depressant devotee
on your left lies my timeless addict,
but so composed now.
Ssssh!
He mustn't be disturbed.
Please sit down.
Ignore the sickly mimosa
Ignore the pervert in the corner.
Have a piece of chalk, take my hopscotch
take my bruised and bleeding knees.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
William Shard
me
--
a childhood long faded into
pastel smears never forgotten
- images of swaying sunflowers
stoic stone warriors beside giant
mounds of long dead monarchs
i knew was every life's fate
but never stopped to consider
of images i teased into lucid
details impossibly later
imagined royalty i too,
might prod the inner demons...
lonely daydreams on humming
maryland summers broke into
the future's illusions pondered on
lying still on cool autumn nights
alive with expectation
and i believed (such words
as only i could have spoken
to myself... and the lies
most easily destroyed are
the ones we tell ourselves...
and know)
with every pounding moment,
i hoped - begging
for justice i knew could not
be just
a shattering end to things
thought so innate
hopes... (i know them well,
though perhaps
they are not my own...
who can claim anything
their own? and i could
tell you what those humming
sunlit days and crisp nights
flashed through the mind's eye
to tantalize with vague
nuances of staccatto lives
to be...
of this i am as death)
for desire itself
everything for it's own
sake...
and you are guilty too
yet how are you to know
me (though i spoke in
stuttering eloquence)
how are you to know what
i am to be
(when i could not
tell you)
?
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Brett Allen Holloway-Reeves
HOW ONE DARK AND STORMY NIGHT MR. J. ALFRED PRUFROCK
FOUND HIMSELF IN A HOUSTON SUBURB
O do not say that again,
how the rain-laden wind has rocked our boat.
See the river of life ceases to murmur in the psychic background.
An aesthetic junkyard, infected by change and process, rots,
the very trashiest collection of column, pilaster,
architrave and moulding.
I, wandering the smoke-filled *chambres de bonne*, fulfill romance.
Ihab Hassan, forgive me the thrill of ordering *hors-d'oeuvres*
(outside of the meal).
I have built my house on the sand,
given up the transcendental playgroup of the bourgeoisie,
the petty bunch.
Sick, as a fungus creeps inside the human will, sneaks
by the riverside of life, laying down the burdenous riffs of
a quaint jazz impersonation BigBand lie.
Shall I call on Madonna?
Shall I tell her what I wanna know?
Can't tell Kenneth Burke from Edmund Burke
and even Elvis turns out an imposture.
All names penetrated and penetrating, the tortured Foucauldian lie.
Pity for the old guy.
Every confession a pleasing digression:
In 1973, three women and a man smoked marijuana on the White House roof.
O do not say that again.
Once I dreamed of laying hands on the wind.
Now only mourning.
Mourning the death of God, we're doomed to reerect him,
lazar-like licking at his heels.
So let's be done. Let it be done.
But for what is it done?
For the potluck supper? the talk turned to television,
the rapid vision of pixel and light,
every vision a revision,
every thought already thought,
and no turning away.
And only for this?
I dream, I dream.
Even in a gaudy land of plastic pharoahs and guitar millionaires,
even in the checkerboard halls of the Eastgate mall.
I dream of original thought, decidedly live-pan.
Irony is more than the muslin of the mind, it's the deathshroud,
a one-way ticket to Turin.
But will it have been possible to give back the inspissated jargon of a Lyotard
and in exchange peel on the black bodysuit and the poet's shirt and a
blue headband with red fardels and touch our lips to the
cold
dirt the rain has nuzzled with?
Could this be enough to inspire?
Silly sensitive lovelike-
My feet stiff on the concrete, catcracker fumes dizzy the mind,
I grow old and tired.
A streetlight hums.
Marx and Mill were modernists.
And Omar Calabrese.
Said said I'm not to say this.
I will face now the fact that my own mother gave birth.
My gaze hits the side of her face.
My jaw droops to my chest.
My fat dewlap licks my neck.
*Geworfenheit*
You have never heard, never heard of him:
How in a litter of leafmould he lay down at last, and tucked the leaves
around his throat.
His mind leapt lively from classical bronze to *D.O.A.*
But of course he made it out alive.
Doomed to suffer the tumbril's bray.
Held to stumble the shopper's way.
The wind, not rain.
Body, wholly body.
Did I mention a song of hope?
Wake me Wake me Wake me up
Bridge time passed without a doubt
Shannon in a triplecabpickuptruck
Nearly paid it off but he drowned
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
The People
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
THE ARTISTS
Richard Cumyn is the author of _The Limit of Delta Y Over Delta X_, a
collection of short stories published this year by Goose Lane Editions. He
lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Maree Jaeger has had work published in books, anthologies and magazines in
Australia and overseas. She has also performed her work in public. She has a
number of University degree's and has worked as a research officer, consultant,
journalist, and computer consultant. She is also an actor and is currently in
the middle of publishing a book of her work.("With a Glass to the Wall") Loves
the moon, the ocean and Swiss chocolate.
William Shard thinks he may know what he's doing and where he's going to be
soon and sincerely hopes he is right. His works have been published in Groovy
Toothpicks, Fresh Oil-Loose Gravel, The Black Dog Review, previously in et
Cetera, and a few others that he can't remember at the moment.
Brett Holloway-Reeves a Ph.D. (in English) student at the University of Texas
at Austin, where he host a poetry show on student radio 91.7 KVRX. He grew up
on a farm in Louisiana (South La, thank you) and is just finishing a collection
of poems and short stories about that area, called %Topsy%.
THE PANEL
Adam is currently doing time as a law student in Cambridge, MA (as in Harvard -
the man is just too humble - the editor). For relaxation purposes he enjoys
running and running up long distance phone bills. Originally from Florida,
Adam is looking forward to the day when he will live where the sun peeks
through for more than 3 months out of the year. All those interested in
contributing to the "Feed a hungry law student fund" campaign should make
checks payable to Adam Rose and send them to Oklahoma, c/o Steve C. Lee he WILL
make sure they get to their appropriate and worthy destination.
Julian Nam is looking forward to June when he (finally) graduates from Andrews
U. with a BA in Sociology and a minor in Chemistry, after which he will go work
for ???? company where he will earn $XXX,XXX per year.
Joey Maier is part fish, and is currently seeking a graduate school where he
will be paid to learn as much as possible without straying too far from the
water.
Helena is currently experimenting on ways to become immortal as a first-year
student at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. Environmental Studies will
probably be her major and she is hoping that some day she will own a beet farm
and a canoe.
Edsel Adap can't decide if he wants money or education??? Career or School?
He wants to be a millionaire by the time he's 30 AND have a PhD by that age
too.
The following people were too lazy to write their own blurb so I am
taking the liberty of doing it for them.
Susie Lim is a senior at UC Berkeley. Her plans are to travel all over the
world and learn about music while she's young and then veg behind a big oak
desk at a university when she's old.
Ramona Sohn is trying to survive the smog of the "Inland Empire" (where they
get off calling themselves that is beyond me) while studying piano at UC
Riverside. She is very secretive and has not told the editor what her plans
are.
Russell Chin is a second year medical student at University of Texas in San
Antonio. The last time the editor heard, he was planning on a career in
neurology. If anyone is interested, Russell would be more than happy to
serenade them with his violin and speak excellent French to them.
Jessica Kim is a third year at University of Alberta and lives very close to
that obscenely large mall in Edmondton. She plans to run back to Korea as soon
as she possibly can.
Thanks again to everyone who helped out.
Send comments to lees@andrews.edu
?&?&?&?&?&?&?&?&?&?&?&?&?&?&?&?&?&?&?&?&?&?&?&?&?&?&?&?&?&?&?&?&?&?&?&?&?&?&?&?
