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Athene Volume 2 Issue 02
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****** ***** of Amateur Creative Writing ************
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======================================================================
March 1990
Volume II, Issue 2
Contents
Etc... .................................................. Jim McCabe
Editorial
"Piled Higher and Deeper" ........................ Kenneth A. Kousen
Fiction
"Uncle Itchy" ..................................... Heidi G. Wolfson
Fiction
"Solace" ................................................ Bill Sklar
Fiction
"Moonlight" ....................................... Sonia Orin Lyris
Fiction
ATHENE, Copyright 1990 By Jim McCabe.
Circulation: 654 (21% PostScript)
This magazine may be archived and reproduced without charge under the
condition that it remains in its entirety. The individual works
within are the sole property of their respective authors, and no
further use of these works is permitted without their explicit
consent. This ASCII edition was created on an IBM 4381 mainframe,
using the Xedit System Product Editor.
Subscriptions: Athene is available in PostScript and ASCII form, and
is distributed exclusively over electronic computer networks. All
subscriptions are free. To subscribe, send email to
MCCABE@MTUS5.BITNET, with a message inicating which format (PostScript
or ASCII) is desired.
Etc...
Jim McCabe
MCCABE@MTUS5.BITNET
======================================================================
Some might find it strange that it has taken me six issues to
finally get comfortable with Athene. The tedious job of processing
subscriptions, although still done by hand, is becoming more
efficient. The development of the PostScript edition is also becoming
more and more automatic, as I continue to fine-tune both my custom
software and the templates used by FrameMaker. I am comfortable, but
I don't think I will ever be completely content. There is always room
for improvement, and I encourage the readership to recommend changes.
This month's issue contains some subtle changes, suggested by a
few concerned subscribers, which relate to the formatting of the
PostScript versions. The story titles are now enclosed in quotes,
instead of being underlined. The title of this column is now
formatted more consistently, using no italics or quotes everywhere it
is referenced. Also, the gray "filler" blocks, used to balance the
columns of the last page of some stories, have been discontinued. A
true dash is used now as well, instead of a double hyphen. In
addition, the "A" icon is now used to signal the end of every story,
instead of being used only for my editorial section. The most visible
change is a reduction in the size of the type. The smaller type helps
to ease the psychological burden of reading such narrow columns of
words, and it also makes each issue about four pages shorter.
I have also started a newer system for distributing the
back-issues of the magazine. Before, I would process each request an
issue at a time, immediately when I received it. Now, I save up all
the back-issue requests until the end of the week, then I send them
all out at once. Although this causes a slower turnaround time in the
short run, above this individual level it makes much more efficient
use of the network and contributes to a faster throughput in the long
run. These reader-sponsored improvements, balanced with a few other
small modifications made on my own, should help to make this monthly
magazine a more enjoyable experience for everyone.
I am happy to announce the formation of a new fiction magazine
for the Scandinavian community -- Volven. Like Athene and Quanta,
Volven will be distributed electronically, over the ever-expanding
global computer network. The editor, Rune Johansen, had originally
planned for it to deal exclusively with science fiction, but has
decided to allow for "any good stuff in Danish, Swedish, or
Norwegian." (Not "Nynorsk.") Rune may be reached at:
Rune Johansen
Editor, Volven
rune.johansen@odin.re.nta.uninett
But enough of this, on now to the real purpose of the magazine,
the stories!
"Piled Higher and Deeper"
By Kenneth A. Kousen
KAK%UTRC@utrcgw.utc.com
Copyright 1990 Kenneth A. Kousen
======================================================================
Sometimes, graduate school is no picnic.
I reflected on this fact in the Student Lounge while "talking" to
my friend Jeremy Davis, a fellow Ph.D. candidate in mathematical
physics. I use the word "talking" loosely, because Jeremy suffers
from Graduate Student Disease: the firm conviction that his work is so
fascinating that everyone in the world ought to be eager to hear about
it, in great detail, for hours on end. I find this self-centered
foolishness frustrating, because it makes people reluctant to hear
about truly important work.
Like mine, for instance. I am going to revolutionize physics by
introducing the concept of negative probabilities. How can the odds
of something happening be negative? Simple. If something is
absolutely impossible, its probability is zero. Therefore, a negative
probability means that it is so totally impossible that you shouldn't
even be wasting your time thinking about it in the first place.
This, naturally, brings me to the problem of writing my thesis.
Don't get me wrong; I'm an excellent student. I took all the required
courses, and did fine (after all, grades don't matter to graduate
students, right?). I passed my qualifying examinations at the end of
my second year with only minor damage, and spent the last four years
blissfully contemplating the wonders of the universe. All right, so I
mostly did it while drinking beer at the beach. Thinking deep
thoughts is best performed when you are relaxed, and where do you go
to relax? Q.E.D. (Latin for "it ought to be obvious from here, so
don't bother me with any questions"). All in all, it had been a good,
productive, and, of course, relaxing existence, all for the benefit of
my fellow man.
Last week, however, my entire carefully cultivated world received
a shattering blow. I had presented the deep, powerful theorems I had
been working on to my advisor for His review (note: advisors always
get a capital He/She/It -- follow this rule and you have at least a
fighting chance to get your degree). When He later called me into His
office, I subtly commented that it was He who had provided the
inspiration for this beautiful, elegant work, and carefully called His
attention to the way my work built upon His own. I finally told Him
that I was going to name my first child after Him, even if it was a
girl. He rolled His eyes in response, no doubt thanking the heavens
that He had been blessed with such a devoted disciple.
Imagine my astonishment when He then informed me that funding for
my project was being terminated, so that if I wanted a Ph.D., I had to
submit a thesis within two weeks!
I went to the Student Lounge to consider my plight, which is how
I received the privilege of hearing every detail of Jeremy's research,
as I said. When he finally ran out of wind, I told him about my
predicament.
"Ok," he said, "so you have to give your advisor a rough draft.
What's the problem?"
"Well, at this particular point in time, I don't have much
actually committed to paper."
"Really? You've been here forever. How much do you have?"
I looked down my nose at him. "Please, sir. Like the immortal
Gauss, I am an explorer, not a colonizer. I prefer the noble quest
for knowledge to the mundane aspects of recording my discoveries.
While it is true that I may have spent more time here than the average
student, I assure you that it has been well spent."
"So you keep telling me. Don't you have anything at all?"
I gave him my pages of theorems and proofs. He shuffled through
them, emitting an occasional whistle. He never actually laughed.
"My friend," he said after he had finished, "you have a problem."
"Nonsense," I replied, "_we_ have a problem."
"We? What do you mean `we'?"
I then proceeded to dazzle him with logical arguments in favor of
his helping me find a way out of this mess. Sadly, I must report that
man is not a rational animal. Threats worked better, but I'm afraid
it was bribery that was most effective. I shall dearly miss my mint
condition set of Pink Floyd original master recordings.
"Well," he said, "I'll try, but I'm not promising anything. I'll
let you know if I come up with any ideas."
"Sir, you are a gentlemen and a scholar. I look forward with
great anticipation to hearing your recommendations."
Later that evening while listening to Pink Floyd's _The_Wall_
(you know, "we don't need no education..."), I compiled a list of
possible solutions to my dilemma. It ran, in part:
1. Finish the thesis. I rejected this as
impractical, given the time considerations and my
adviser's unfortunate predisposition against me.
2. Transfer to another department. (And have to
take the qualifiers again? Get serious.)
3. Transfer to another school. (Possible but
unlikely. See (1) above.)
4. Get a job. (And _work_ for a living? There
has to be a better way.)
5. Extortion.
6. Marry my adviser's daughter.
7. French Foreign Legion.
Believe it or not, the list went downhill from there.
How disappointing. Maybe my work is not the most rigorous in the
world, but at least it tends to be original. I know my ideas
sometimes seem rather far out, but they're certainly new.
I remember when I took that Modern Art course as an under-
graduate. The instructor projected slides of various odd-looking
works of art on a screen, and invited discussion about them. One day
she put a particularly wild Jackson Pollack up there, and it pushed me
too far. The painting consisted entirely of blotches of paint on a
canvas, with no apparent pattern. I felt compelled to say something.
"Now wait a minute," I said. "What's so wonderful about that?" I
pointed disdainfully at the screen.
"It was new and different," she replied.
"You mean that all I have to do to be a famous artist is to come
up with new and different things?"
"It's not quite that simple, but, in effect, yes. If you can be
truly original, perhaps you could produce something of merit."
"All right, then, try this. I'm going to paint an absolute
masterpiece on a canvas and put it in a nice, wooden frame. The thing
is, though, I'm going to hang it so that the picture faces the wall
and nobody can see it. I'll call it `Hidden Beauty' or something like
that. What do you think?"
"Well..."
"Next, I'm going to suspend it by a thread from the ceiling, but
in the middle of the back so that it faces downward. Then I'll attach
a motor to it so it spins back and forth. What do you think now?"
"Um..."
"You like that one? How about this? I'm going to slice a
triangular section out of one end and argue that the missing piece
gives the work a sense of space. Then maybe I'll hang the section
next to it. Maybe I'll just put the whole thing in a locked room and
only let people see it through a mirror. Am I an artist?"
She shook her head sadly and didn't reply. I wound up with a
B-minus in the course. I never did figure out what made some modern
art works worth a lot of money and others garbage. I decided to stick
with physics, where you could usually tell the good from the bad.
This, unfortunately, brought my attention back to the problem at
hand. All this daydreaming may have helped, though, because I began
to get the barest glimmer of an idea. Maybe the whole trick was to
turn everything around and look at it from a different angle. I
pondered the possibilities far into the night.
The next day, I met Jeremy for lunch. He looked like he hadn't
slept well either. He handed me the papers I had given him the day
before.
"I don't know," he said. "There are some interesting ideas here,
but not a lot of development. There really isn't enough here to get a
thesis out of it."
I smiled at him. "Fear not, I have been inspired. With some
help from you, my dear fellow, we are well on the way to becoming
famous beyond your wildest dreams."
"What are we going to do, rob a bank?"
"Oh, thee of little faith. You know my hypotheses about negative
mass and negative probabilities?"
"Sure. Cute ideas, but I can't imagine anything productive
coming out of them."
"The beauty of my plan is that we don't have to. What we are
going to do is to propose the Madison-Abramson-Davis Conjecture."
"The who?"
"Look, all the truly famous problems in mathematics are unsolved,
right? Some may even be unsolvable. But it doesn't matter. Nobody
ever remembers the person who solves an unsolved problem, only the
person who came up with it in the first place. Look at Fermat's Last
Theorem. Mathematicians have been trying to prove or disprove it for
three hundred years with no luck. Even if they do succeed, though,
the guy everybody will remember is Fermat. So I, Robert Madison, and
you, Jeremy Davis, are going to come up with a Great Question."
"Sure we are. By the way, where does the Abramson part come in?"
"Elementary, my dear Davis. No doubt you have forgotten the name
of my esteemed advisor, the soon to be famous Professor Bartholomew S.
Abramson."
He laughed. "Cute. Real cute. Incidentally, why is my name
last?"
"Ah, sometimes my subtlety surprises even me. Can you think of a
better name for a kooky idea like this than the MAD Conjecture?"
Jeremy grinned. The grin forced its way into a laugh, and then
into a guffaw. It is extremely gratifying to watch skeptics come
around to my way of thinking.
"Now for the minor details," I continued. "As wonderful as my
work thus far has been, it needs to be presented in the proper manner
for it to yield the desired results. This is what I want you to
do..."
During the next two weeks, I circulated rumors around the various
funding agencies that my advisor had made a Nobel Prize-worthy
discovery. I stated that he was reluctant to announce it yet because
he hadn't worked out all the possibilities. I then called the science
editor at the local newspaper and gave him the story. He loved it.
Most professors don't have time for science journalism types; they
prefer to talk only to each other. Consequently, the newspaperman was
thrilled to be on the inside track of a potentially major discovery.
I then called the governor's office. `If you're going to be
audacious, you might as well go all out,' is my philosophy. I
eventually was placed in touch with the state representative for
public relations in education. When I told him the story, he ate it
up. Nothing like a little state xenophobia to make people not worry
about facts. All he could talk about was how this reflected well upon
the governor, the state, the university, and my advisor, probably in
that order.
My favorite call, however, was to the fund-raising office at the
university. Here, the operating principle is greed. They love
anything they can flaunt to potential donors. I spoke to a Ms.
Weston, Senior Executive Assistant to the Dean for Industrial and
Alumni Relations.
"We're so glad," she said, "to see our junior faculty producing
such important work." She always used the royal plural. "We simply
must see to it that Professor Abramson receives our fullest support
and appreciation. Would you please, for the good of the University,
of course, persuade him to release his results as soon as possible?"
I promised to try.
Meanwhile, Jeremy was working on graphics. There's nothing like
multicolored diagrams and videos to dazzle the uninformed. Just look
at all the computer manufacturers that show bar graphs on TV.
Honestly, when was the last time you truly needed to use a bar graph.
Jeremy really came through. He made multicolored pie charts,
constructed elaborate three-dimensional models, and even managed to
create a video tape of some complicated numerical simulation. It
looked beautiful.
Finally, everything was ready for the big day. I triumphantly
entered my adviser's office, just before my list of callers was
scheduled to arrive. Professor Abramson motioned for me to take a
chair until he got off the phone.
"No," he was saying, "I'm not ready to publish my results just
yet. Yes, yes, I'll let you know when I am. You're welcome. Good
bye." He hung up the phone and turned to me.
"Strangest thing," he said. "All week long I've been getting the
oddest inquiries about some supposed `Big Question' they say I'm
working on. Can't imagine what they're talking about. No matter,
they're all daft anyway. Now, Mr. Madison, have you a thesis to
present to me today?"
"Sir, with my associate, Jeremy Davis, I have prepared a paper I
believe you will find quite interesting."
I handed him a copy of "The Madison-Abramson-Davis Conjecture and
Its Revolutionary Impact on Modern Physics." His expression was
priceless. He couldn't decided whether to be astonished or furious,
and tried to do both. Fortunately, at this point the first visitor
arrived.
"Professor Abramson, I presume. I'm Dick Jorgens from the Daily
Press. Your student here tells me you're on to something big."
My advisor turned to him, but before he could respond, in walked
the Honorable William H. Wyeth, State Senator and Head of the
Governor's Commission on Science and Technology. He didn't introduce
himself. He just assumed everyone knew him, which was probably
correct.
"Nice to see you again, Bart," he said. Nobody ever calls my
advisor Bart, but what the heck, I was going with the flow. "I hear
you're up to something that will make the governor proud."
Right on schedule, Jeremy came in, with an armful of materials
and equipment. He and I started handing out copies of our paper,
complete with multicolored graphs, etcetera, and he then hooked up a
video monitor and a slide projector. Everybody started talking at
once.
Now that it looked like something really important was going on,
in walked the Dean for Industrial and Alumni Relations, Randolph
Murphy, and the Dean of the School of Science, Chong-Liu Mei. An
assistant professor's office is not large, so this made quite a crowd.
I called for attention.
"Honored guests, members of the press, distinguished gentlemen, I
bring you greetings. You are witnessing an historic occasion.
Professor Abramson, my esteemed advisor, tends to be overly modest
about His work, so I am now taking the liberty of informing you about
His latest results. If I may have the first slide, please..."
I talked for about an hour. I said a great many things, some of
which might even have been significant. I wasn't worried, though.
When you are dealing with an audience of non-specialists, it's easy to
get them to ignore your words in favor of your pictures.
"... and so, in conclusion, let me say that negative
probabilities and negative mass could change our entire conception of
reality. Future work on solving the Madison-Abramson-Davis Conjecture
will undoubtedly open up whole new continents of theory, and lead to
many new and exciting discoveries for the benefit of mankind. Thank
you for your kind attention."
Dean Murphy was first to speak. "Thank you, son, that was quite
impressive, and no less than we expect from such a gifted young
researcher. We in the administration are proud of the progress
Professor Abramson has made, and consequently we would also like to
make an announcement. In consultation with Dean Mei here, we have
arranged for an award of early tenure to be given to Professor
Abramson, as a reward for his important advances in his chosen field.
We are very pleased to have such a brilliant young colleague, and look
forward eagerly to his next discoveries."
Beautiful. Couldn't have planned it better myself. There's no
better way to get a faculty member on your side than to help him get
tenure.
I'll skip the subsequent discussions, which primarily consisted
of my advisor making polite denials about the importance of his work,
which were naturally taken as appropriate modesty. Eventually, all
the VIP's left, leaving me alone with Professor Abramson. The video
tape was still playing in the background.
"Congratulations, sir," I said. "It's no more than you deserve."
He wanted to be angry with me, but couldn't. Getting tenure will
do that to you.
"Now look, you know very well that I didn't come up with any
`revolutionary hypothesis.' What happens when nothing ever comes out
of any of this?"
"Not to worry, sir. You just tell them that the problems are
more complex than you imagined, and that it could take years to see
practical results. Besides, what difference does it make? You are
now a tenured professor."
That did it. Finally, even He had to laugh. "All right, you
win. Congratulations, _Dr._ Madison."
One final note. Two years later, I visited Jeremy in his office
at Rocket Propulsion Associates, where he worked as a research
physicist.
"Bob!" he said, wringing my hand. "Good to see you. What have
you been doing with yourself?"
"My dear fellow, you have the distinct honor of addressing this
year's winner of the Golden Squiggle Award for Original Concepts in
Modern Art."
"You became a modern artist? It figures. Only you could find a
way to make a pretentious attitude and a crazy imagination pay."
"Please, sir, you wound me. I earned it. Don't argue with
success."
We sat around, talking about old times and listening to his
(near) mint condition set of Pink Floyd original master recordings.
Eventually, the subject of Professor Abramson came up. Since I had
left the field soon after receiving my degree, I wasn't up on current
events.
"Then you haven't heard?" Jeremy asked.
"Heard what?"
He dug up a recent copy of Physics News, and opened it to a
picture of my advisor. He had just become the youngest ever recipient
of the Nobel Prize in Physics. My jaw dropped.
Jeremy laughed. "Apparently, there really was something to all
that stuff about negative probabilities and negative mass. Professor
Abramson managed to tie a theory for antigravity to it. They're
talking about a multi-billion dollar industry."
Hoist by my own petard! I recovered quickly, though.
"Nonsense," I replied. "Not `they.' We."
"We? What do you mean, `we'?"
Here we go again.
---------------------------------------------------
Ken Kousen is an associate research engineer at
United Technologies Research Center in East
Hartford, CT, where he works on computational
models for the aerodynamics inside turbomachines.
This story was written while he was completing his
doctoral thesis at Princeton University, which he
admits "was finished by the traditional method,
rather than the one used in the story."
---------------------------------------------------
"Uncle Itchy"
By Heidi G. Wolfson
v5011e@TEMPLEVM.BITNET
======================================================================
Uncle Itchy was the one who gently shook my sister and me awake
to announce the arrival of the family's first baby boy. To use the
word gentle in the same sentence with Uncle Itchy's name is very
unlikely, yet fitting. As a child, I would stare up at his anchor
tatoo, down at his shaking hands and up again into his anxious, red
and blue eyes. There was a gentle fright inside of Uncle Itchy that
he pushed inside himself with Seagrams. It was apparent to me then,
but dissolved from my sight over time. The only real fact that I knew
about my Uncle Itchy was that he had been in the navy. That was, for
me, the whole of his identity. He was my father's older brother and I
was a week shy of being five on the night that my brother was born,
old enough to wonder what my Uncle Itchy's job was and why he had no
wife.
"It's a boy! Girls! Girls, you have a brother." They may be the
most gentle words my Uncle Itchy ever bestowed upon us or anyone;
still, he was our favorite adult in my grandparent's house. Uncle
Itchy would make faces behind the backs of the other grown-ups in the
room and then smile through his eyes at our giggling.
My mother called it immaturity. My grandfather referred to it as
laziness, often calling my Uncle Itchy a schleper. Whatever it was, I
liked it. It was the thing that prompted Uncle Itchy to pay more
attention to us than our grandparents did. "I'll trade you a quarter
for your nose," he would say.
My grandparent's house was the opposite of other places. There,
the adults were noisy and the children were quiet. My Uncle Itchy and
my father's sister, Aunt Sheila, lived at home. Aunt Sheila was
getting married that year, and would soon be out of the house. It was
not shameful for her to live at home. My Uncle Itchy was thirty-five.
He lived at home, walked boldly up and down the avenue, and tip-toed
around my grandfather.
My grandfather had a booming voice and would criticize every one
around him. He was also riddled with aches and pains. My grandmother
was always fussing over my grandfather, making him food and coaxing
him to eat it. I used to think of her as my grandfather's pet dog.
There was something about my grandparents' cedar smelling house
that made all adults who entered act a little bit like my grandfather.
There was a mirrored wall along the stairs. I would watch myself walk
up and down the stairs as an available form of amusement, and sing
songs to myself to block out the voices. "Lazy slob," "No good bum,"
"Schlemiel," "Faird," (which meant a big, stupid horse) and so on,
talking about no one in particular and everyone in the room. Uncle
Itchy was often the sullen target. I would watch him drift into the
living room while the adults were in the dining room playing cards and
exchanging insults. From the top of the stairs I could see Uncle
Itchy in the mirror, opening the bottom door of the cabinet where the
bottles and decks of cards were kept, screwing and unscrewing the cap
of the Seagrams and taking drinks out of the bottle while keeping
sharp watch on the dining room. I wanted him to know that it was our
secret. I would stare at him through the mirror and try to send him
that message through secret brain waves.
The occasional nights that my sister and I would sleep over at my
grandparent's house were the longest days and nights that I can
remember. The neighborhood was quiet and felt desolate despite the
old women that would sit on their front patios in lawn chairs. For
play, my sister and I would walk around the block and fill paper bags
with acorns. We were always in identical dresses and tight,
patent-leather shoes. We would smile at the old women. Sometimes
they would call us over and pinch our cheeks, exclaiming "Shana
Maedelachs!!" and put candy in our acorn bags. We circled and circled
the same square block. We weren't allowed to cross the street.
The day after my brother was born, Uncle Itchy promised to take
me to the library. We walked first down to the Avenue, and Uncle
Itchy brought me a whole dill pickle, which he allowed me to hold in
my hands and eat as we walked. He never cared if I got my dress
dirty, and didn't keep after me with a napkin as the pickle juice
dribbled down my chin. He smoked cigars and said brisk "Hellos" to
people in his throaty voice. Uncle Itchy had a big nose and a black
moustache. Black, curly hair circled the sides of his head; he was
bald on top. Now I know that he wasn't a particularly tall man, but,
as we walked down the avenue I remember likening his sullen stare to a
Wooden Indian in the tobacco store and wondering if all of the people
we passed weren't just a little afraid of him.
Uncle Itchy didn't make me hold his hand as we walked, which next
to my Grandmother's overprotection and grandfather's bossiness, was
wonderful freedom. We paused for a traffic light, and I darted
against it out into the busy Avenue. When Uncle Itchy finally caught
up with me, his face had turned white and he grabbed me with both of
his hands under my arm pits.
"What's a matter with you? Meshugeneh! Didn't anybody ever
teach you that red means stop and green means go?" He shook me
violently and I dropped my pickle.
"Yeah, they did," I defended as I sadly watched my pickle rock
back and forth and then settle on the dirty sidewalk. "But that's for
the cars. People are supposed to do the opposite of what the cars do
so's they don't bump into each other."
"Lunatic, crazy person," Uncle Itchy mumbled to himself and then
held my wrist between his vice-like thumb and forefinger as we walked.
My brother and I were wrestling on the carpet of the living room
in our own house, when Uncle Itchy showed up with Aunt Mable. My
brother was then five, and I was old enough to know that Uncle Itchy
had brought disgrace to the family by marrying this huge, red-haired
gentile behind everybody's back. My brother and I stopped wrestling
when the screen door opened. Uncle Itchy was proud and defiant as he
quickly led Aunt Mable to the couch. I guessed that she had to sit
down right away because her legs couldn't hold her. My mother
nervously shuffled into the living room with glasses and a pitcher of
iced tea. My brother and I stared at Aunt Mable. My mother lightly
kicked my bum with her pointed shoe when Uncle Itchy and Aunt Mable
weren't looking.
There were rolls of flesh wagging beneath Aunt Mable's chin and
her arms were as wide as my mother's whole body. She had bright
red-orange hair piled high on her head. I wondered how she got it so
stiff and shiny. I thought that it was really a plastic wig and
fought the desire to walk over and touch it. Aunt Mable didn't say a
word. She looked at all of us with a blank expression and smiled
lovingly at Uncle Itchy. "Oh, Itch," was all she said during the
whole visit, giggling and looking down at her own fat thighs. She
seemed amused by every word that came out of Uncle Itchy's mouth. She
even looked at him lovingly when he belched real loud, as he tended to
do.
That was the only time I ever met Aunt Mable. After she and my
Uncle Itchy were married, he didn't come to visit us very often, maybe
once a year, and when he did, he came alone.
On Uncle Itchy's visits he would bring money and candy. He never
stayed in our house very long. My parents kept no booze in the house.
On each of these visits, someone would ask Uncle Itchy where Aunt
Mable was. "She's home," was his standard reply. Uncle Itchy's eyes
and nose were becoming permanently stained red. He would promise to
buy us cars and tell stories about all of the important people he knew
and all of the money he had in the bank. At the time, Uncle Itchy was
selling appliances at a downtown retail store. I had heard that he
and Aunt Mable lived in a dim, brown-paneled, one room apartment,
although I had never been there. My sister and I used to laugh about
him when he left, and then feel guilty for laughing as we each spent
the five dollars he had given us.
"Where do you think Aunt Mable really is?" My sister once asked
me.
"I don't know. Maybe he killed her."
"Do you think?"
"Yeah. And he's got her buried under the floor boards."
"Damn," my sister said with widening eyes. "He would have had to
pull up the whole floor."
We amused ourselves for hours, planning out Uncle Itchy's
strategies of murder.
"He pushed her face in a lemon meringue pie and held it there
until she suffocated," my sister suggested.
"Yeah. And then he hung her on a meat hook in the closet and did
some process on her like dried beef so he could fit her under the
floor boards."
Five years went by, in which I didn't see my grandparents. My
father didn't talk to his parents. There was some blow-up in the
family that evoked this grudge. I think it had something to do with a
card game. I suspect that for most of my grandfather's life, he
didn't talk to his parents either. When I finally did see my
grandfather again, it was at my grandmother's funeral.
Before the service, the coffin was opened for the immediate
family and the grandchildren. My grandmother was the first dead
person I had ever seen. I remember thinking that at any moment, my
grandmother would sit up in her coffin. My Aunt Sheila and my sister
were crying. My sister held my hand and reminded me of all the times
that my grandmother sat us down and her linoleum, kitchen table and
plied us with potato-latkas and luxion-kuggle. I wanted to cry, too.
I thought that everyone was looking me and thinking that I was a bad
girl for not crying for my dead grandmother. I turned away from my
sister, and looked over at Uncle Itchy. He was red-eyed, silent, and
nervously fidgeting with his keys.
"Where's Mable?" Aunt Sheila had asked Uncle Itchy during the
Shiva.
"Oh. She's home," Uncle Itchy said quietly. My sister and I
looked at each other and suppressed our laughter.
Uncle Itchy was the first to notice my breasts. I think he
noticed them before I did. I remember my face turning red as he
commented.
"Ooooh, looks like you're developing," he said with his Uncle
Itchy grin, red eyes and twitching moustache lurking in my disgrace.
"Yeah." I would run out the door, letting the screen door slam
behind me, and head for the corner to drink beer with my friends.
There was a relief in being handed a cold can and pulling the tab
back. I remember the beer tasting soapy and the chore of getting it
down. There was something in the beer, however, that pulled me far
away from my family and Uncle Itchy's shaking hands. The slow,
mechanical clicking in my head replaced all thoughts and violent
emotions. My friends and I laughed and spent nights trying to climb
telephone poles or hang onto the back bumpers of moving cars in the
snow.
Aunt Sheila told my sister that Aunt Mable was put in a mental
hospital because they found her wandering naked down the crowded
Avenue. I tried to picture it for a moment and then blocked the sight
out of my mind and laughed.
"I guess she's alive, after all," I said to my sister.
This was my teenage years, drawing to a close. There was a
feeling of the world stretched out before me that the thought of a 300
pound, naked Aunt Mable could do very little to disturb. There was a
world beyond family to explore and I was beginning to get served in
bars.
Once, in my early twenties, as my head was throbbing with
hangover and I was calling out sick from work, I thought about Uncle
Itchy. It was the second time I had called in sick that week and the
sixth time that month. The memory of my grandfather's voice, hurling
insults and accusations, disharmonized with the pounding in my head.
The exact look of Uncle Itchy's watery eyes came back to haunt me, and
then disappeared.
The phone call had come like a wolf at the door on a particularly
cold, January evening. I was sitting in the dark, in my downtown
efficiency, listening to traffic and drinking brandy. The phone call
was from my sister. Aunt Sheila had asked her to call me. My sister
passed on to me all of the details that Aunt Sheila had passed onto
her.
Uncle Itchy's friend had called Aunt Sheila to say that Uncle
Itchy had not been to work in a month and that his phone was
disconnected. Aunt Sheila went to his apartment, and when there was
no answer at the door, called the landlord to let her in. In the
apartment were my Aunt Mable and Uncle Itchy, stretched out on the
floor. They were surrounded by empty whiskey bottles and there were
empty cardboard boxes in the corner that once held cases of Seagrams.
Aunt Sheila said that the apartment was overwhelming with the smell of
urine and that the mattress and rug were covered with human
defecation. The food in the refrigerator was unidentifiable in its
mold. Aunt Mable was dead, and had been for days. Uncle Itchy was
still alive, holding onto her.
It wasn't until I got that phone call, that I realized that Uncle
Itchy had a friend. He had a friend at work. I wonder what they
talked about. I wonder what kind of friend my Uncle Itchy was.
My sister was going to the hospital to see Uncle Itchy the next
day. She asked me if I was going. When I didn't answer, she insisted
that if I ever wanted to see Uncle Itchy again, this was my last
chance.
I hung up the phone and stared into my snifter. I resolved that
'tomorrow' I would stop drinking.
Uncle Itchy's eyes were open and moving with vague recognition as
my brother and sister and I stood above him. His feet were sticking
out from the bottom sheets. They were yellow and scabby and three
times as large as life. His face was yellow and bloated as well. The
only things about him that looked like Uncle Itchy were his blue,
watery eyes and the anchor tattoo on his arm. I suddenly wished I
could talk to Uncle Itchy. I wished I could tell him something,
anything. I thought about saying "I love you", but decided against
it. I wasn't sure myself if it was true, and even if it were, he
never would have believed me.
The shiva was at Aunt Sheila's house. Everyone, except for my
grandfather, had fond stories to tell about Uncle Itchy. The way that
he died was never discussed. The talk made me uneasy. I escaped the
sound of the voices by going into the kitchen. On the counter was a
bottle of Seagrams. I poured myself a drink, glancing nervously over
my shoulder at the adults in the living room. I suddenly heard a
child's laughter. I looked down. Aunt Sheila's little boy was
sitting under the kitchen table, staring up at me. I winked at him as
I lifted the glass to my lips.
"Solace"
By Bill Sklar
86730@LAWRENCE.BITNET
======================================================================
I sat in the lobby playing guitar. It was my "Flamenco" phase
and music to me was often a form of fire. I remember the feel of my
fingers as my right hand struck the strings with a syncopated pulse
and my left climbed up and down the fretboard with rhythmic ferocity.
People sat near me, watching and listening, but I noticed them only
incidentally. My mind was occupied with the music.
John walked into the room. I looked up. He grinned. He opened
his trumpet case and started to warm up. I continued to play,
nervously looking forward to his participation. I went into an
uncharacteristic scherzo-- my thumb plucking a pizzicato bass while my
index and middle fingers played an arabic dance. Then without thought
I moved back into my original theme. I was watching myself create.
My hands knew more than my brain what was to come next.
John piped in with a soft flurry of notes. I smiled and relaxed,
letting him take the lead for awhile. My strumming grew sparser, and
his tone grew fuller, painting the room a regal rustic red. The
rapport was better than usual. John and I had played together for a
long time, but it was rarely this good. My mind was cleared of
extraneous thought as I grew more and more oblivious to the world
around me. The beat led me like nothing else could.
John too was the music's willing slave. He played a theme and I
echoed it back, giving it a slight variation and he returned the
favor. It felt so smooth, so lucid, as if nothing could possibly go
wrong. We were one with the melody, the harmony, and for a single
moment, we were one together as well. Suddenly John dropped out,
leaving me to face the music alone. The beat wavered a little and I
felt suddenly lost.
I looked at him, somewhat annoyed. He grimaced as he moved the
trumpet back to his lips and inhaled deeply. Suddenly we were flying.
Before I knew what was happening, John was at double tempo, and made a
deliberate effort to avoid every melody I approached. I chased him,
kept trying to pin his theme down, but every moment I reached a
connection, he found a new tangent and moved on it as if he were
racing with the wind.
"You bastard!" I wanted to scream, "It was going so damn well!
Where the hell are you going now?" and yet his melodies mocked me,
taunting "catch me if you can."
My fingers were driven by vengeance. I wanted to win that
melody. I wanted to find it and tie it down, so my fingers moved to
match John's tempo. My tendons began to ache. My fingers grew sore.
I kept chasing. My hands began to sweat.
Resigned, I stopped, letting him carry the last moment of the
song. It was his show now, he would be the one to move it through and
follow the action, though I was still fuming with anger for the way he
had edged me out.
Upon stopping, however, I was able to sit back and listen. The
turmoil, I noticed, was hardly what I had felt it to be. This new
view showed me something different and I heard a melody for the first
time from the ears not of a performer but a listener. I felt ashamed
-- ashamed that I had tried to interfere with his theme, and ashamed
that I had been angry with him for taking on his own song.
I carefully edged myself back into the song. We finished it as a
duo, separate, yet joined -- alone yet together. John's cheeks above
me blow air through his golden horn. I caressed his flourish with a
cadential strum and the room exploded into a laudatory roar. I looked
at John, and he back at me. "It's time," our eyes said to one
another, "It's time to move on."
I hugged him and kissed him on the cheek. He stroked my hair as
the crowd dispersed. It was over between us, we both knew, but to let
him go was so hard. The music was good, sometimes great, but it
wasn't enough simply to make beautiful music together. My head ached
for a second, resisting the moment I knew was about to come. He put
his trumpet away. I watched him move, wanting to hold him next to me.
I didn't touch him again. I knew I couldn't handle it if I did. From
across the room I waved a warm goodbye, holding back my tears. As he
left he blew me a kiss. I still feel it to this day.
I turned away, and picked up my guitar. I started into a solace,
but the notes didn't come together. I tried again, and still it
didn't feel right. I put the guitar down. I paused for a moment.
"Alone again," I thought, and looked back at my instrument. I paused
again. "But I've still got you," I added aloud.
I picked it up once again, and struck a gentle chord. I started
into a solace -- it flowed like never before. I could feel it working
itself within me, though it was painful. The music knew, better than
I, what had to be done. It hurt so much, trying to hold onto those
memories. "Let go," it told me. "Let go."
My hands were becoming their own masters again. I watched and
listened as they played with bittersweet simplicity. I took a breath
and exhaled a sigh of relief. Alone we sat, me and my music, but we
were no longer slaves to the sounds of another. I fell into song.
Tears streamed down my face and rather than hold them in this time, I
let them stream. The song flowed in unison and I reached a harmony
with myself. With the tears still flowing, I laughed aloud, my joy
complementing my sorrow in a rubato rhythm of fire and ice. My fear
dissipated and my hope soared. "Finally," I thought. "Finally I am
alive." I strummed like mad and my voice bellowed with joyous agony.
The pain flowed as I released it -- the wounds bled, "but oh so much
better to feel this pain," I thought, "then to be denied the chance to
embrace it." Blood coursed through my veins and I was aware of every
last corpuscle -- I felt the pulse inside me in tune with the rhythm
of my music.
I allowed the melody to end itself. My heart relaxed and I wiped
away my tears as I put my guitar away. "It's over," I thought aloud,
half-smiling. "Time to go home."
---------------------------------------------------
Bill Sklar is a musician with interests in
filmmaking, photography, fiction writing, and
sexuality issues. He feels a driving force to
express himself artistically as well as politically
through whatever means he finds appropriate. He is
currently working on a multi-media presentation of
his photography and music, with the possibility of
incorporating them into a play. Bill lives
"somewhere in central Wisconsin," where he spends
countless hours composing and recording his own
music for various combinations of fretted
instruments, keyboards, and percussion. This is
his second appearance in Athene.
---------------------------------------------------
"Moonlight"
By Sonia Orin Lyris
sol@lucid.com
Copyright 1989 Sonia Orin Lyris
======================================================================
I cannot shake the desire to kill.
We have won. I have survived the fight, and it feels very good.
I know I have been cut but I cannot feel it because I am still too
full of battle lust. I am still furious, and the passion rises inside
me, crashing, demanding more. I am still hungry, but there are no
more enemies.
The sun is reddening, threatening to leave the sky and I curse at
it for depriving me of light. The handle of my sword is slick with
sweat and blood. I tighten my grip and swing at nothing.
There are bodies everywhere. Some are still moving and some will
be fertilizer for the soil. I notice the sky, the land, the smell of
death, the sounds of pain. I walk towards the rise, still swinging my
sword, towards the mountains that ring the valley that we won today.
This is fertile land, and now that we have fed it with the blood of
our enemies it will be even more fertile.
Our enemies. They resisted us and so we killed them. Their
farms, their mills, their animals, their wealth, are now our
inheritance. I remember how they fought, not as warriors but as
farmers, clumsy and slow. It is what happens to a people who settle
to become workers of the land and forget the skills that made them
masters of men. This will never happen to us. I will teach my
children as I was taught, I will see to it that they are always
warriors first and farmers second.
There are children in the piles of bodies. My kin collect more
dead even as the pile is lit on fire. I should stay and help, but
there is still too much of the battle in me.
I walk towards the mountains again. The land is steep, and I
push myself to walk faster, and it feels good.
The sky is dark in front of me. After a while I stop, breathing
heavily. I look out on the valley that is now ours. The moon hangs
on the edge of the sky, as full as it can be, so bright the stars
nearby have vanished. Smoke rises from the fire below, painting the
moon dusty red.
The moon holds my gaze. The sun is life, but the moon is a
mystery, and I do not know what it is good for. It does not fight.
It does not change us, it only changes itself, over and over again.
I turn and walk again up into the darkness of the hills. Around
me are trees, birds and the sounds of night.
The battle is over and I have killed and somehow it is not
enough. I recall every hand that was raised against me today, every
cry, every death. It is important that I remember each death
carefully, for each one brings me life.
I look at the valley again, watching the fires. My sword has
grown heavier, fed with blood. It feels alive in my hand, hot,
fevered, and I am hot, too. The night air has begun to cool me, but I
am still much too warm, and sweat gathers under my leather.
I hear a step behind me. I have turned almost instantly, my
blade raised, ready, hungry, and the sound stops suddenly silent.
In the moonlight there is a girl. She looks almost a woman, but
the moonlight washes her color and the color of the rags she wears so
I cannot be sure. She is one of them, I know, a villager, the enemy.
She must have run to the hills to escape the battle.
Her eyes are wide. She thought that I was one of her own, come
to take her back to the valley.
She backs away towards the trees, but I have already caught her
by her hair and arm. She cries, at me, at the night, terror and
anger, and I grab her and throw her to the ground.
Now I sheath my sword. I do not need it for her.
I straddle her on the ground, pinning her. She is small beneath
me. She pleads wordlessly for a few moments and I hit her to make her
quiet. I tear the rags away from her chest and stomach. She is
slender, just at the first change of life, and she squirms to get
away.
I take out my knife. She cries and I hit her again. Her hair
fans out around her head on the ground and I take a handful, tilting
her head back to expose her neck. I hold my knife close and I think
about where I want to cut first.
Suddenly she goes limp under me. I look at her face, thinking
that she has fainted, and I see her looking back at me. I hold the
knife against her neck a moment, and cut a bit to draw blood. She
closes her eyes and I watch the trickle of blood run down her neck.
Her eyes are open again. There is a look on her face, and it is
not one of fear. She is going to her death and she is not afraid and
this makes me angry. I hit her across the face with my fist, with the
handle of my knife, and she exhales as her head turns. I dig the tip
of my knife into her chin and turn her head to me to look at me, to
see in her eyes if she is afraid yet.
She is not. I grab her breast and slowly I dig my nails into her
chest, raking lines across her skin. She looks past me, into the
night sky. I search her face again for fear, for any reaction. The
moonlight makes her face very pale. She might be dead already.
I decide that it is time to finish this. I place my knife
against her ribs, angling to slide the blade through, into her heart,
but I do not. She looks at me now and I do not look away.
I know I must kill her. We do not take prisoners and she is
enemy. But there is something in her eyes that I have never seen
before. For a long moment I do not move.
She waits, and I wonder what to do. This is not right. She
should be afraid. She should resist. She should fight me, fight
death. It is right and good to fight death.
I growl and I grab her neck and I shake her. She winces and
cries out, and then she is quiet again and without expression. I
position the knife once more, ready to put my weight into the
movement, but everything feels wrong and I hesitate again, angry at my
hesitation, my confusion. I struggle to find the answers before this
moment is past understanding.
As I look into her eyes something new comes into my mind and I
begin to understand. She breathes still, but somehow she has already
given up her life. How can I take what she has already given away?
Her eyes are so strange and calm. I am drawn in and caught.
I shake my head to clear my thoughts. This is a moment of death,
but she is already dead. How can that be? I hold the knife but I
cannot move my hand to kill her.
And then, suddenly, the warrior inside me decides, and the blade
plunges deep into her. She cries loudly now, with pain, but her eyes
are still fixed on mine and mine on hers. She convulses under me, and
I lie on her, I embrace her with my body, breathing with her as she
breathes, breathes for the last time, watching her eyes as they watch
mine, watching her, seeing her die.
Long moments pass. Her eyes are open but they do not see, and I
close them for her.
I pull my knife out of her body. I wipe her blood off the blade
on her body and then I sheath my weapon.
I look at her a for a while. The moonlight makes the blood on
her black and her face white. I stand slowly, looking at the stars,
not looking down, yet I see her eyes as I walk back down the mountain.
They stare at me, clear, calm, alive.
Now the blood-lust has finally left me. I do not understand what
has happened, what I have done, what it means. How have I killed what
was already dead? I wonder if I have been cheated somehow, and the
thought makes me angry.
I stop walking to let my anger cool.
A doe bolts into my path, freezes. Her eyes meet mine for a
moment, glinting in the moonlight, and then she bounds away into the
brush.
I realize that the girl has won. Slowly I smile.
The moon shines on me as I walk down the hills, away from my most
recent battle. My enemy lies dead on the ground behind me and I
realize that I have lost and she has won. I don't know how, exactly,
but I know it is true.
I look at the moon and I almost think that I understand what it
is for now, what its mystery is about, but I am not sure. I must
think about what has happened, about this battle, and about the moon.
I will stay outside with the moon every night until I understand
this thing. Eventually I will win the battle that I have just lost.
---------------------------------------------------
Sonia is a software engineer by trade. She has
been writing fiction since she was first able to
read and write. She also sculpts SF & Fantasy
critters and shows them at local convention art
shows.
---------------------------------------------------
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______________________________________
A Journal of Fact, Fiction and Opinion
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