******************************************************************************* *00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000* *0 0* *0 CCCCC 0* *0 CC CC 0* *0 TT CC CC TT 0* *0 TT CC TT 0* *0 TTTTTTTT CC TTTTTTTT R RRRR 0* *0 EE TT CC EEE TT EEE RR AAA 0* *0 E E TT CC E E TT E E RR A A 0* *0 EEEEEE TT CC CC EEEEEEE TT EEEEEEE RR A A 0* *0 E TT CC CC E TT E RR A AA 0* *0 EEE TTT CCCCC EEE TTT EEE RR AA A 0* *0 0* *0 0* *00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000* ******************************************************************************* ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Volume 2, Issue 1 et Cetera: the zine of everything and nothing January 1995 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 ?&?&?&?&?&?&?&?&?&?&?&?&?&?&?&?&?&?&?&?&?&?&?&?&?&?&?&?&?&?&?&?&?&?&?&?&?&?&?&?