QQQQQQQQQQQQQ] QQQQQQQQQQ] QQQQQQQQQQ] QQQQQQQQQQQQQ] QQQQ] QQ] QQ] QQQ] QQQ] QQQ] QQQQ] QQ] QQ] QQQQQQQQQQ] QQQQQQQQQ] QQQQ] QQ] QQ] QQQ] \QQ\ QQQQQQQQQ] QQQQ] QQQQQQQQQQ] QQQ \QQ\ QQQ] QQQQQQQQQQQQQ] QQQQQQQQQQQQQ] Volume I Issue VI ~~~````''''~~~ CORE is published monthly by Rita Rouvalis (rita@eff.org) and is archived on ftp.eff.org in the /pub/journals directory. It can also be downloaded from the EFFSIG Forum on CompuServe, Library 5, Zines from the Net. Subscriptions and submissions should be sent to core-journal@eff.org. Feel free to reproduce CORE in its entirety across Cyberspace as you see fit. Please contact the authors to republish individual articles. ~~~````''''~~~ FEATURING A Short History .... Joe Green I Look At My Children.. .... Kenneth Wolman Busted .... RICHH The Old Hobo's Tale .... Robert Curtis Davis ___________________________________________________________________________ Rita Rouvalis rita@eff.org New Frontiers When people ask me how many people read CORE, I generally shrug and say I have no clue. I know how many subscribers I have, and I can even track pretty closely how many copies are ftp'ed from the archives on ftp.eff.org, but where the e-zine goes from there is anybody's guess. It's put on bulletin boards and distribution sites all over the world. I tend to think of these BBSs and other services as little islands out there in the grand matrix. Some are linked to each other through e-mail gateways, others are not. One of the things I would like to do with CORE and the other e-zines (with their editors' permission) is start building bridges between these islands over which writers can traverse and meet and talk with one another. Recently, due to the advent of a free account and some work I need to do there, I've been exploring CompuServe. The writers who hang out in the literary forum have never even thought about doing an e-zine. Geoff Duncan's editorial in the anniversary issue of InterText talks about an individual who believes electronic fiction publishing dead. Au contraire. Electronic publishing is barely into its infancy. I fully expect it to flourish in the coming years as more and more individuals travel between the networks and discover the excitement of the medium. __________________________________________________________________________ Joe Green n2412@willow.cray.com A Short History I have been very good. I have been very good for 8 years. I told my wife that our children looked like tiny skeletons only three times. When I spat blood I did so discreetly into monogrammed hankies. I told my wife that at last I had a single integrated action plan (SIAP). The time I went to Disneyland and blew the head off the hippo in the jungle ride was an aberration. The time I spent 2 weeks in the Rocket Motel with a topless dancer named Baby Madonna was truly unusual. I no longer think I am a wolf. When I vomit on family holidays I do so with some grace and never at table. It has been years since I insisted on going into the woods to shit. I have been interested in organizational development. I no longer drink wine from bottles wrapped in paper bags with guys named Spider and Bullethead. I especially avoid doing this in our driveway. I am meek at work and participate with enthusiasm in group activities. When I run in 10 kilometer races it is hard to tell that I itch all over and am imagining that I am being chased by hearts with mouths. I only speak to the dog in my command voice. I go dutifully to all the Vietnam movies to learn what I should think. I explain to my son what a dustoff is. I do not mention the fact that to me it looks like people in the audience have the heads of hyenas and jackals. My son looks like a tiny skeleton. When he was born I went down in the cellar and built him a coffin. I will send this with him when he goes into the army. From Dad. If all dads did this it would save our government considerable expense. Dads should also build coffins for the sons our sons will kill. I have a complete set of plans for coffins for sons of many nationalities. Spider told me that this was a waste of time. Just send along some extra-strength garbage bags. He said. And what about the mommas and babies. He said. And, anyway, you dumb shit. He said. There ain't nothing to bury most of the time. He said. You dumb old fucker. You think we're back in Vietnam. I still think that it would demonstrate our compassion. I often imagine my daughter on fire. I was reading "Come Away, Joe" to her and she was curled up in my arms and I imagined that she was hit with white phosphorus and burned from the inside out. The white phosphorus looked like a star in her belly. I imagined that she was also hit with napalm. Have some jelly, honey. We called people burnt up by napalm "crispy critters." This was a popular breakfast cereal at the time. Here is how I am telling you I make love to my wife. I imagine that we are both dead and holding each other. We are under a hill. The hill looks over a blue and peaceful town. The town is not a town. It is the shadow of a tone. The bank, the church, the little stores and tiny houses tremble and dissolve in a soft mist. No-one can see the town. It is not in any government records or on any maps. Our children live there. For a long time I was unemployed. I drove a car the color of a cloud. I would pick up our children from school. Your father comes for you in a car the color of a cloud. At night I imagine that our dead cat is walking in the garden. I imagine I am in the garden and she treadles my chest. She licks my eyes thinking the moon's rays are milk. Her eyes shine with love. Lay down with me lay down in the humility of death. You see that I am very sentimental. This morning we all sat at breakfast and I said "I am worried about Goethe." "Why, Dad?" My son said. "Ok, dear." My wife said. "You have been good for eight years. You can have that party." This is a lie. My wife left me 10 years ago. She lives with our children and her new husband in a very nice rambler on a cul-de-sac in the very nice state of California. I often imagine that my children are dream children. I still live in the same house which is where I grew up. My father is dead. My mother is dead. They are buried in Fairview cemetery. Just off Oak Street. Warrensville, Pa, 19320. They are on a very nice cul-de-sac. Old joke. I spoke to my mother the other night. "Do you have your gloves on?" She asked. "Yes." I asseverated. I came home from Vietnam when my father died. "Your father died." They said. "Complete this form." They said. "Be back in two weeks." They said. When I got off the plane in Honolulu they hung flowers around my neck. Then they unloaded the bodies. When I saw my father in the coffin I saw that they put glasses on him. He only wore glasses to read. They wanted a homey look. I vomited in the men's room. I held my mother at the grave. Her cloth coat smelled the same as it did when I was little. We went home to the funeral meats which were Vienna sausages in tomato sauce. This is how a lot of people live. My cousin turned on the TV to watch a football game. True. He was down in the basement. True. Other males were enjoying the game. I threw my father's hammer through the screen. Incoming. I kicked my cousin in the face. Everyone was embarrassed. Here's who was dead when I came back. Daniel Mitchinok Carlos Gonzalez John Rollins William Latoff Gross weight: about 710 lbs. I bought a tape recorder to record my thoughts about war and letters to my mother. Here are my thoughts about war as recorded by me at Landing Zone X-Ray adjacent to the Chu Pong Range: Here is a continuation of those thoughts as recorded by me trekking overland with the 5th Cav: Here are my thoughts as I surveyed the 800 dead of a famous battle that you can read about in a coffee table book available at a discount rate from Barnes and Noble: My letters to mother were equally eloquent. Is this too easy? Yes. Do you want to know the truth? My wife told me she was leaving. I am tired of this shit. Blah. Blah. She said. I asked her to wait. "Don't pack yet." I said. I went to the mall and bought a camera. Plenty of film. When I came home she was crying. She was on the couch. I took pictures of every room in the house. I opened every closet and drawer and took pictures. I took her picture. When the kids came home I took their pictures. They left. Then her mother and her brothers came over and took everything. It took me two years to complete the reconstruction. Now I have a lifesize wife weeping on the couch. My son sits at his desk and plays Pac Man. My daughter plays with her doll. Some of that shit was hard to find. You understand. You are also sentimental. One year I drove to California to see my children. In the car the color of a cloud. In Oklahoma I woke up at dawn and went outside the motel room. It was next to a pasture. There were horses in the pasture. I stood at the fence. The horses were the color of the dawn. They came to me. Then I kicked in the bedroom door. Shot this picture. Reader. Rider. Horses. Slaked. Plausive. Ignorant. _________________________________________________________________________ RICHH richh@tigger.jvnc.net BUSTED James and I got busted for underage drinking. A cop called our parents and told them we had a choice: either pay a three hundred or so dollar fine or pay seventy-five and attend weekly AA classes for the summer. We picked the latter. Once a week we would get drunk, stoned, and head over to these classes, held in a church and held specifically for minors who'd been caught with alcohol or a joint or so. There were maybe a hundred of us all together and we were broken into groups, each of which was run by a former alcoholic. They passed out charts, pamphlets, etc. and lectured us against the dangers of letting our lives turn out like theirs had. James and I had a field day. Most all of the other kids there were the dregs of teen humanity, while James was president of our Honor Society and I was, well, me. One day, the woman who led our group was explaining how very risky it was to take both quaaludes and alcohol together, that if you take a certain amount of both you could lapse into a coma and die. "Well, how many?" said a particularly scummy member of our group. "How many what?" "How many 'ludes can I take, before I die? I wanna do one less." We were rolling. She passed out a chart to all of us, showing a graph that compared body weight to intoxication. "If you weigh so and so and drink such and such, you will feel drunk, lose your sense of balance, your reaction time will suffer..." She added more drinks. "And if you drink this many, you can pass out...fall into a coma...die." I raised my hand. "Yes?" "Well, if after nine drinks in two hours you pass out, how can you ever drink enough to make it to the coma part, or die?" "Um, er--" "I guess if one of your friends hooks up an IV..." "That's enough." We bought a loose joint off of the 'lude guy and ate a pizza. __________________________________________________________________________ Kenneth Wolman ktw@hlwpk.att.com I LOOK AT MY CHILDREN AS SERPENTS AND PRAISE THEM It is defiance that borders the dark, abusive land of indecency: referring to my children as ``serpents'' swings opens the garden gate to a world of expectations in our notions of the serpentine: a Miltonic shade, clutching a Bible, squats in the corner by the love-apples, shaking its head and scratching loud tickmarks on the well-worn slate, recording my errors. Snakes, indeed! why stop at snakes? why not go the distance: enter the allegorical human barnyard and name them ``wolves'' for how they eat? We are bound to our theologies, and lose the beauty of the created world in the straits of our closed systems. With the skin of a stained-glass window, the snake absorbs and emprisms the sunlight, radiates the silvered colors of the moon, and like the undenounced (because it is unreal) resurrective Phoenix, lives its rebirth of new skin, and its Mozartean geometry of new colors. Shedding the old, it remains its self-recreated self, rebirthing itself in splendor. What is our religion when it teaches that the snake walked erect, a thing of radiance before its fall, but that it paid the price of beguilement by surrendering its feet and spine? It's our jealousy, perhaps: did it eat the fruit of the tree and have the knowledge that we lacked? Or was it, in its prelapsarian allure, the lover of the bodyless but shape-shifting God, who cast it down for sharing their secret, for its betrayal? Deprived of speech, the snake cannot answer: instead, it crawls quietly away from its interrogators: or raises its hood and bares its fangs to hiss at the presumptuous, colorless people who would dare to seek its truths. Serpents are of the created world, but, recreating themselves, go beyond creation: and view experience as manna, a gift to be devoured, swallowed whole. Once my sons stood in a pet shop, and gaped with fascination while a python took and absorbed the inert body of a mouse. This is Nature, I told them: it is not always pretty, it is not always fair, but it is Life. They ignored me: or they intuited the snake's true meaning as they watched the python, sinless and sinuous, brilliant-colored, taking his prey into himself with a lover's concentration: and took their own lesson of their place in Nature: not cruel, but able to envelop, absorb. They are not snakes, that is only metaphor: and the power of metaphor is that it says more than saying bald truths. ``Children grow, renew, yet remain themselves.'' Suppress the yawn: contemplate instead the beauty and wisdom of the serpent who sheds his skin, who is reborn, who creeps and grows close to the earth from which we sprang, who does not fear the coming of his new self but knows it as part of his old, who cherishes the smell of earth around him, who takes his life into his mouth and holds it there, lovingly, with an old passion that is morality. And understand. __________________________________________________________________________ Robert Curtis Davis sonny@trantor.harris-atd.com THE OLD HOBO'S TALE Shadows from a ragged slouch hat played about the old hobo's rough, weather-beaten face. He stared into a campfire and spoke in low, growling tones to his nodding companion. "Hell, it ain't my fault I'm so ugly or that I lack what my Momma always called the 'Social Graces'. It all goes back to when we was dirt-poor and Momma, me, and my baby brother lived in that old run-down shack just outside Moundville. Hell, I reckon I was about eight years old -- just a snotty-nosed kid you might say. 'Ugly as homemade sin' my Momma was always saying. Said I got my looks from that 'no 'count Paw' of mine who'd done run off with some 'floozy.' "Why, we was so poor in those days till most times we didn't even have milk for my baby brother, and he'd cry and cry -- mostly at night. "Now, Momma was forever and a day trying to talk some storekeep up in Moundville into hiring me to sweep floors or some other piss-ant job like that. Hell, I didn't care nothing 'bout sweeping no floors! And I'd tell'em so! Why, they'd 'bout have a fit when I'd spit on the floor to let 'em know how I felt about sweeping floors! "Well, you might guess, I never did get me no job. So we never had no milk. And my baby brother, that rascal, he'd squall nearly ever' night. I coulda hung around and lived with it if it hadn't a-been for my brother -- him always cryin' and hungry like that at night... "Now, I ain't never told nobody this, but, you know what? Lotsa times I'd be in bed and Momma'd come in with a kerosene lantern, lean over me, and you know what she'd say? She'd say, 'Damn it all, Johnny! Why was you born so all-fired ugly? And so lacking in Social Graces? Damn that no 'count Paw of yourn!' "I'd scrunch down under the quilt, watch my Momma leave, and, why hell, I'd have to fight to hold back the damn tears. I'd grab that old tore-up stuffed bear of mine and lie there listening to my brother and my Momma bawlin' in the next room. I'd shove my head under a pillow to block out all that hellacious squallin'! And, you know what I'd do then? Now you ain't gonna believe this, but I'd pray... Yeah, pray. Me -- Bama John! I'd usually say me something like, 'God? Maybe You could see Your way clear to take some of this here Ugly off me and bring me Social Graces. Now it don't matter a whole lot to me, but it shore would make my Momma happy!' "Next morning I'd get up real early and stumble over to the mirror... and you know what?... Why, hell, I'd still look just as ugly as ever!... So I'd spit on the floor and say to myself, 'Crap! Probably didn't get no Social Graces neither!'" The old hobo chuckled, spat a thick, sizzling stream of tobacco juice into the fire. His companion stirred, grunted sleepily. Beyond the railyard, a whistle wailed as a powerful engine stroked away into the night, drilling a hole into the darkness that lay beneath the bright stars. ___________________________________________________________________________ CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS THE LOWELL PEARL, a stable, paying literary magazine affiliated with the University of Massachusetts at Lowell and the Lowell Arts Council, is currently accepting submissions of short fiction, poetry, and essays for its summer issue. All submissions must be typed and include a SASE*. Please do not send originals as no submissions will be returned. Deadline is 1 May 1992. Please send to: Literary Society S. Campus Student Information Center University of Massachusetts at Lowell One University Avenue Lowell MA 01854 *Submissions may also be e-mailed to me. In this case, a SASE is not necessary. You can also ask me any questions via e-mail. Internet: rita@eff.org Compuserve: 70007,5621 ((((********)))) March 1992