textfiles/magazines/WHATEVER/thepast.txt

The Void (Journal) #54  email to: (swain@enigma.rider.edu)

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The REAL Questions
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Have we reached a point where all our creative energy has been
synthesized into a computer program, allowing us to print out poems
worthy of T.S. Eliot?  Of course not.

Have we all had so much coffee in so little time that our nerves
are permanently frayed to the point that we don't get excited
anymore?

Is there anyone who hasn't gone to school with a quiet kid that
ended up being the genius of us all?  But wasn't that genius
himself?

Haven't we all emptied a full box of cereal just to get that prize
at the bottom?

Don't we agree that our imaginations are far more interesting than
television?

Could anyone argue that there is no real comparison to the real
thing?

Do our minds get the better of us?  Yes, they do.

Why is it that everywhere you go, there you are?

If there are two sides to every story, why do we only read one
side?

Samuel Johnson defined "oats" two ways.  1) What the english use to
feed horses.  2)  What the Scottish use to feed themselves.

How come every time you step on a crack, you break your mothers
back.  Isn't once sufficient?

If I had a dime for every time I had a dime, would I REALLY have
all the dimes I ever had?

"P" put the "unk" into Punk.

Man is immortal sage or fool, but animals end by a different rule.

Rosine:  Its all the same to me, I assure you.

If you drink too much coffee you will leave youself behind.

If I put my right hand on my left shoulder, what side of my brain
am I using?

Past (past) - 2) Of a former time.



The PAST, as it were...
=======================

My best friend from birth to age ten was Jesse Slee.  At ten I
moved to California.  Together we ran away a mere block away.  We
were back home in twenty minutes; when we got hungry.  We ran away
because the pizza was eaten by our parents instead of us.

My friend Po and I played kickball in his driveway one day as a
tornado levelled Waterworks park a block away.  We used to play
games on his dad's computer, and they always ate a lot of chicken
for dinner (his parents).

I used to watch the older kids jump shitty bikes over propped-up
plywood.  They smoked pot and eventually set the woods on fire in
the summer of 1979.  They have since been replaced with photocopy
houses.

Every Saturday i'd walk into downtown Ann Arbor and spend my 50
cent allowance on four games of pinball.  By age ten I was getting
a dollar a week.  This allowed me to get french fries at the diner
on the way home.

Based on my height, it snowed a thousand feet in the winter of
1977.  Every morning I would awake to the sound of my mom's
Karmenghia being warmed up.  I can still hear the metallic sound of
that muffler.

At age four I went to a day-care center that was a trillion square
feet with two-hundred foot ceilings.  I never went to the bathroom
for fear of the fire alarm going off.

I wet my bed until I was ten.  Then one day my mom brought home
some small red pills for me.  I was dry a week later.

Some summer Sunday in 1979 I was alone in my house.  The only thing
ever on TV was golf.  I watched for a few minutes and a tornado
icon appeared on the screen.  I got scared and ran to my room. 
Nothing happened.

My cat Fellini died in 1980 of Leukemia.  That was a sad day.

My first girlfriend was Debbie.  Apparently I loved her.  She was
a chubby pink-skinned girl who used to ride the swings with me.

My third grade teacher Phyllis Faunce Jones was cool.  She had a
nervous breakdown halfway through the year and disappeared forever.

My stepfather was a bastard.  But then again, I guess they all are.

Johnnie's market was situated directly across from my elementary
school.  It provided enough candy for all of Ann Arbor.

A kid in my third-grade class convinced me he owned that Trans-Am
parked outside.  I looked and sure enough, there it was.

By fourth grade I woke up early on Tuesdays and Thursdays to see my
new friend, Dr. Graphentine.  He wore a suit and had a weird growth
on his face.  We sat in an empty dismal room as he asked me strange
questions while mom paid a hundred bucks and hour.

I wanted an Atari-2600 for Christmas, I got an Odyssey.  That
devastated me.

En-Route to California our motorhome broke down in Wyoming.  I sat
in bed reading comics and listening to Another One Bites the Dust;
over and over again.

The first day of fifth grade my mom introduced me to my best friend
Shannon.  She did this by tellling him to talk to me.

By the end of fifth grade I had injured my own teammate by kicking
him in the face with soccer cleates, thus requiring thirty
stitches.

Claremont is next to Pomona; not the safest of cities.  Helicopters
would chase criminals into our town.  Shannon and I subsequently
ran when we saw them and diverted their attention, letting the bad
guys get away.

One warm night Andrew and I saw a UFO in Johnson park.  It was
unbelievable.

My first cigarette was a clove.  I threw up all over the beer.

In ninth grade my new therapist called me every morning saying in
an insane tone, "Alex, are we going to go to school today?"

November 24, 1987 at 11:19pm I was arrested for shooting out 240
lightbulbs at Mountainview elementary with a Daisy B.B. gun; even
the helicopters came.  

In Juvie I met a black guy named Roger that tried to fuck me in the
showers.  He apoligized right before I got let out.

November 29, 1987 I was mailed to New Jersey to live with my dad.

In tenth grade I worked after-school in a bookstore.  I was in love
with a 23 year-old girl named Sarah.  She wouldn't give me the time
of day.

My first french-kiss was in February of 1988 with a certain girl. 
She tasted like rasberries.  To this day rasberries are my favorite
fruit.

I used to buy cigarettes out of a machine in a Chinese restaurant. 
They never caught me.

By my sixteenth birthday I had enough illegal information to go to
jail indefinitely.

My dad took a lot of tranquilizers that year.  So did I.

In 1990 there were two things I cared about.  Psychedelics and
selling twenty copies of my 'zine.  I sold thirty.

I totalled my dads car on Christmas eve.

My mom was still recovering from 1987.

October 12, 1991 Tim and I left to cross country.  We got into a
lot of trouble, took twenty-four rolls of film, and had a great
time.  We were back by the following February.

April 14, 1992 I had a nightmare about an alarm going off in a dark
and empty daycare center.  One of the worst nightmares i've ever
had.

In July a tornado touched down in Trenton.  Unfortunately it missed
Princeton.

Riding to work one day a car turned in front of me and I slammed
into it.  My whole face resembled a point-blank shotgun blast.  My
chin is still numb.

Fu and I ate chinese food and got drunk downtown.  We smoked
cigarettes and planned to leave for California Christmas day.  It
was ten degrees out.

Christmas day we leave.  I make sure to pack the egg nog.  We land
in Berkeley on January 1st, 1993 with enough tobacco for three
months.  It was cold and rained steadily until March.

While working at Blondie's pizza a guy asks me, "Are you Alex
Swain?  Do you remember Phyllis Faunce Jones?"  I think.  "Small
world" I say.

July 27, 1993.  I get my ass kicked by a bunch of "kill-whitey"
thugs at Giant Burger in Oakland.  Thus requiring thirty stitches.

The first time I make love to someone other than an "average white
girl."  It was amazing.

I met my new friend Andrew in Berkeley.  He lived a half mile from
me in Princeton.

September 1993.  Ace Backwords, cartoonist, warns me to get out
while I still can.

12:00am, January 1st, 1994.  I'm wandering around stoned in the
Berkeley hills trying to find a New Years party.  I know its
midnight because I can see and hear all the gunfire in Oakland.  

--END--

There's more where this came from.  Send Email for a list.  
No rights observed or even considered.  More to come.
December 1994.    (swain@enigma.rider.edu)