SPARKS: A ZINE FOR CREATIVE PEOPLE Issue #4 editors: Jim Esch and Stacy Tartar Copyright # 1993 by Jim Esch and Stacy Tartar All rights for each work contained herein revert back to the author(s) upon publication. We welcome your submissions. Unsolicited manuscripts will be considered for publication and returned, provided you have included a self addressed stamped envelope. Send all correspondence to the address below. 232 North Kingshighway, #616 St. Louis, MO 63108-1248 USA Better yet, email us at Jim.Esch@launchpad.unc.edu Paper copies of SPARKS, including artwork, are available for $2.50. If you like what you see, tell a friend. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ CONTENTS FISH STORY by Frank B. Ford POEM by Michael Morell NIAGARA by Mark Twain FOUCAULT AND THE VALIDITY OF THE OEUVRE: AN EXCHANGE BETWEEN ZARATHSTRA AND DIONYSIUS compiled by Jim Esch, Jim Morris EXCERPTS FROM THE COMPLETE SAYINGS OF JESUS by Paul Ford, Steve Pav THREE POEMS by Jim Morris NOTEWORTHY ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ FISH STORY by Frank B. Ford Like other fish--if, as you said, you really wish to learn--I do not like metaphors. So, as I said, I am a fish. It is a hard thing to explain to you: we simply are, and therefore need no figures of speech. As to the current spate of fish suicides, one must discuss the deteriorating mental health of the majority of fish since 1982, and even before. I have lost too many of my friends, haddocks, tuna...dolphins being the latest. Unlike those of men, these labels are not meant to prejudice or denigrate. The brotherhood among fish is legendary. We eat each other you say? We do what is decreed by The Great Fish, no more, no less. Oh there are wilful renegades as everywhere in the animal...kingdom, so-called. And those of us who kill to eat in the natural order of things don't write books full of circular rhetoric, or make films rationalizing acts of brutality and sexuality--where sometimes the difference between the two is hard to tell. No sleaze, academic or pseudo-artistic, among fish. By the way, I never really found out whether we are included in that lofty designation of Animal Kingdom by you and your species--your own just fits at a certain place in a certain chart like anything else, no better or worse, more complex than some, less so than others--whether you and all your professors know it or not. We fish have our own ways to classify life but it is both too complex and too intuitive for you to, excuse the expression, fathom. At any rate, our solidarity all but overwhelms any tiny tiny antisocial percentage among the untold trillions of fish in the waters of this planet. What if I told you there are as many fish as stars! At any rate--back to fish suicides--I have seen it many times, this decline in the power to think clearly: you do too many unfish things. Then you kill yourself in water full of garbage and medical waste, or they get you with some silly lure, rubbery worm of no natural color which you would have laughed at, herky-jerking by in your strong and healthy and clear-thinking days. Hook you! I know you habitually say some such taunting thing, slightly different and probably just as sick. Well just think of yourself with a hook through your cheek. And yet such horror is not given a second thought. I told a# lobster "You know, they say that when they plunge you into boiling water you don't feel much, your nerves being so primitive." That's what I told him. He cried and cried. I guess that doesn't take much sensitivity. Of course I know that the image of a lobster crying is ludicrous beyond ludicrous to you. Not dreamt of in your philosophy. I won't go on. I ask only that you merely attempt to look at it from our side. Just this once. Oh if you could only be a fish for one luminous, cutting second! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ POEM by Michael Morell EVERYWHERE If you touch me here, I will feel it here. If you touch me there, I will feel it there. But if you touch me in that deepest, darkest, brightest, widest place, I will feel it everywhere. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ NIAGARA by Mark Twain EDITORS NOTE: This story comes from SKETCHES NEW AND OLD, Copyright 1903, Samuel Clemens. Originally written about 1871, this text was placed in the Public Domain in May 1993. We retrieved it off the Internet Wiretap, an online electronic text service that reproduces public domain literature. NIAGARA FALLS is a most enjoyable place of resort. The hotels are excellent, and the prices not at all exorbitant. The opportunities for fishing are not surpassed in the country; in fact, they are not even equaled elsewhere. Because, in other localities, certain places in the streams are much better than others; but at Niagara one place is just as good as another, for the reason that the fish do not bite anywhere, and so there is no use in your walking five miles to fish, when you can depend on being just as unsuccessful nearer home. The advantages of this state of things have never heretofore been properly placed before the public. The weather is cool in summer, and the walks and drives are all pleasant and none of them fatiguing. When you start out to "do" the Falls you first drive down about a mile, and pay a small sum for the privilege of looking down from a precipice into the narrowest part of the Niagara river. A rail- way "cut" through a hill would be as comely if it had the angry river tumbling and foaming through its bottom. You can descend a staircase here a hundred and fifty feet down, and stand at the edge of the water. After you have done it, you will wonder why you did it; but you will then be too late. The guide will explain to you, in his blood-curdling way, how he saw the little steamer, Maid of the Mist, descend the fearful rapids--how first one paddle-box was out of sight behind the raging billows and then the other, and at what point it was that her smokestack toppled overboard, and where her planking began to break and part asunder--and how she did finally live through the trip, after accomplishing the incredible feat of traveling seventeen miles in six minutes, or six miles in seventeen minutes, I have really forgotten which. But it was very extraordinary, anyhow. It is worth the price of admission to hear the guide tell the story nine times in succession to different parties, and never miss a word or alter a sentence or a gesture. Then you drive over to Suspension Bridge, and divide your misery between the chances of smashing down two hundred feet into the river below, and the chances of having the railway train overhead smashing down on to you. Either possibility is discomforting taken by itself, but, mixed together, they amount in the aggregate to positive unhappiness. On the Canada side you drive along the chasm between long ranks of photographers standing guard behind their cameras, ready to make an ostentatious frontispiece of you and your decaying ambulance, and your solemn crate with a hide on it, which you are expected to regard in the light of a horse, and a diminished and unimportant background of sublime Niagara; and a great many people have the incredible effrontery or the native depravity to aid and abet this sort of crime. Any day, in the hands of these photographers, you may see stately pictures of papa and mamma, Johnny and Bub and Sis, or a couple of country cousins, all smiling vacantly, and all disposed in studied and uncomfortable attitudes in their carriage, and all looming up in their awe-inspiring imbecility before the snubbed and diminished presentment of that majestic presence whose ministering spirits are the rainbows, whose voice is the thunder, whose awful front is veiled in clouds, who was monarch here dead and forgotten ages before this hackful of small reptiles was deemed temporarily necessary to fill a crack in the world's unnoted myriads, and will still be monarch here ages and decades of ages after they shall have gathered themselves to their blood relations, the other worms, and been mingled with the unremembering dust. There is no actual harm in making Niagara a background whereon to display one's marvelous insignificance in a good strong light, but it requires a sort of superhuman self-complacency to enable one to do it. When you have examined the stupendous Horseshoe Fall till you are satisfied you cannot improve on it, you return to America by the new Suspension Bridge, and follow up the bank to where they exhibit the Cave of the Winds. Here I followed instructions, and divested myself of all my clothing, and put on a waterproof jacket and overalls. This costume is picturesque, but not beautiful. A guide, similarly dressed, led the way down a flight of winding stairs, which wound and wound, and still kept on winding long after the thing ceased to be a novelty, and then terminated long before it had begun to be a pleasure. We were then well down under the precipice, but still considerably above the level of the river. We now began to creep along flimsy bridges of a single plank, our persons shielded from destruction by a crazy wooden railing, to which I clung with both hands--not because I was afraid, but because I wanted to. Presently the descent became steeper, and the bridge flimsier, and sprays from the American Fall began to rain down on us in fast increasing sheets that soon became blinding, and after that our progress was mostly in the nature of groping. Now a furious wind began to rush out from behind the waterfall, which seemed determined to sweep us from the bridge, and scatter us on the rocks and among the torrents below. I remarked that I wanted to go home; but it was too late. We were almost under the monstrous wall of water thundering down from above, and speech was in vain in the midst of such a pitiless crash of sound. In another moment the guide disappeared behind the deluge, and, bewildered by the thunder, driven helplessly by the wind, and smitten by the arrowy tempest of rain, I followed. All was darkness. Such a mad storming, roaring, and bellowing of warring wind and water never crazed my ears before. I bent my head, and seemed to receive the Atlantic on my back. The world seemed going to de- struction. I could not see anything, the flood poured down so savagely. I raised my head, with open mouth, and the most of the American cataract went down my throat. If I had sprung a leak now I had been lost. And at this moment I discovered that the bridge had ceased, and we must trust for a foothold to the slippery and precipitous rocks. I never was so scared before and survived it. But we got through at last, and emerged into the open day, where we could stand in front of the laced and frothy and seething world of descending water, and look at it. When I saw how much of it there was, and how fearfully in earnest it was, I was sorry I had gone behind it. The noble Red Man has always been a friend and darling of mine. I love to read about him in tales and legends and romances. I love to read of his inspired sagacity, and his love of the wild free life of mountain and forest, and his general nobility of character, and his stately metaphorical manner of speech, and his chivalrous love for the dusky maiden, and the picturesque pomp of his dress and accoutrements. Especially the picturesque pomp of his dress and accoutrements. When I found the shops at Niagara Falls full of dainty Indian beadwork, and stunning moccasins, and equally stunning toy figures representing human beings who carried their weapons in holes bored through their arms and bodies, and had feet shaped like a pie, I was filled with emotion. I knew that now, at last, I was going to come face to face with the noble Red Man. A lady clerk in a shop told me, indeed, that all her grand array of curiosities were made by the Indians, and that they were plenty about the Falls, and that they were friendly, and it would not be dangerous to speak to them. And sure enough, as I approached the bridge leading over to Luna Island, I came upon a noble Son of the Forest sitting under a tree, diligently at work on a bead reticule. He wore a slouch hat and brogans, and had a short black pipe in his mouth. Thus does the baneful contact with our effeminate civilization dilute the picturesque pomp which is so natural to the Indian when far removed from us in his native haunts. I addressed the relic as follows: "Is the Wawhoo-Wang-Wang of the Whack-a- Whack happy? Does the great Speckled Thunder sigh for the warpath, or is his heart contented with dreaming of the dusky maiden, the Pride of the Forest? Does the mighty Sachem yearn to drink the blood of his enemies, or is he satisfied to make bead reticules for the pappooses of the paleface? Speak, sublime relic of bygone grandeur--venerable ruin, speak!' The relic said: "An' is it mesilf, Dennis Hooligan, that ye'd be takin' for a dirty Injin, ye drawlin', lanternjawed, spider-legged divil! By the piper that played before Moses, I'll ate ye!" I went away from there. By and by, in the neighborhood of the Terrapin Tower, I came upon a gentle daughter of the aborigines in fringed and beaded buckskin moccasins and leggins, seated on a bench with her pretty wares about her. She had just carved out a wooden chief that had a strong family resemblance to a clothespin, and was now boring a hole through his abdomen to put his bow through. I hesitated a moment, and then addressed her: "Is the heart of the forest maiden heavy? Is the Laughing Tadpole lonely? Does she mourn over the extinguished council-fires of her race, and the vanished glory of her ancestors? Or does her sad spirit wander afar toward the hunting-grounds whither her brave Gobbler-of-the-Lightnings is gone? Why is my daughter silent? Has she aught against the paleface stranger?" The maiden said: "Faix, an' is it Biddy Malone ye dare to be callin' names? Lave this, or I'll shy your lean carcass over the cataract, ye sniveling blaggard!" I adjourned from there also. "Confound these Indians!" I said. "They told me they were tame; but, if appearances go for anything, I should say they were all on the warpath." I made one more attempt to fraternize with them, and only one. I came upon a camp of them gathered in the shade of a great tree, making wampum and moccasins, and addressed them in the language of friendship: "Noble Red Men, Braves, Grand Sachems, War Chiefs, Squaws, and High Muck-a-Mucks, the paleface from the land of the setting sun greets you! You, Beneficent Polecat--you, Devourer of Mountains--you, Roaring Thundergust--you, Bully Boy with a Glass eye--the paleface from beyond the great waters greets you all! War and pestilence have thinned your ranks and destroyed your once proud nation. Poker and seven-up, and a vain modern expense for soap, unknown to your glorious ancestors, have depleted your purses. Appropriating, in your simplicity, the property of others has gotten you into trouble. Misrepresenting facts, in your simple innocence, has damaged your reputation with the soulless usurper. Trading for forty-rod whisky, to enable you to get drunk and happy and tomahawk your families, has played the everlasting mischief with the picturesque pomp of your dress, and here you are, in the broad light of the nineteenth century, gotten up like the ragtag and bobtail of the purlieus of New York. For shame! Remember your ancestors! Recall their mighty deeds! Remember Uncas!--and Red Jacket!--and Hole in the Day!--and Whoopdedoodledo! Emulate their achievements! Unfurl yourselves under my banner, noble savages, illustrious gutter-snipes--" "Down wid him!" "Scoop the blaggard!" "Burn him!" "Hang him!" "Dhround him!" It was the quickest operation that ever was. I simply saw a sudden flash in the air of clubs, brick-bats, fists, bead-baskets, and moccasins--a single flash, and they all appeared to hit me at once, and no two of them in the same place. In the next instant the entire tribe was upon me. They tore half the clothes off me; they broke my arms and legs; they gave me a thump that dented the top of my head till it would hold coffee like a saucer; and, to crown their disgraceful proceedings and to add insult to injury, they threw me over the Niagara Falls, and I got wet. About ninety or a hundred feet from the top, the remains of my vest caught on a projecting rock, and I was almost drowned before I could get loose. I finally fell, and brought up in a world of white foam at the foot of the Fall, whose celled and bubbly masses towered up several inches above my head. Of course I got into the eddy. I sailed round and round in it forty-four times--chasing a chip and gaining on it--each round trip a half mile--reaching for the same bush on the bank forty-four times, and just exactly missing it by a hair's-breadth every time. At last a man walked down and sat down close to that bush, and put a pipe in his mouth, and lit a match, and followed me with one eye and kept the other on the match, while he sheltered it in his hands from the wind. Presently a puff of wind blew it out. The next time I swept around he said: "Got a match?" "Yes; in my other vest. Help me out, please." "Not for Joe." When I came round again, I said: "Excuse the seemingly impertinent curiosity of a drowning man, but will you explain this singular conduct of yours?" "With pleasure. I am the coroner. Don't hurry on my account. I can wait for you. But I wish I had a match." I said: "Take my place, and I'll go and get you one. He declined. This lack of confidence on his part created a coldness between us, and from that time forward I avoided him. It was my idea, in case anything happened to me, to so time the occurrence as to throw my custom into the hands of the opposition coroner over on the American side. At last a policeman came along, and arrested me for disturbing the peace by yelling at people on shore for help. The judge fined me, but I had the advantage of him. My money was with my pantaloons and my pantaloons were with the Indians. Thus I escaped. I am now lying in a very critical condition. At least I am lying anyway--critical or not critical. I am hurt all over, but I cannot tell the full extent yet, because the doctor is not done taking inventory. He will make out my manifest this evening. However, thus far he thinks only sixteen of my wounds are fatal. I don't mind the others. Upon regaining my right mind, I said: "It is an awful savage tribe of Indians that do the bead work and moccasins for Niagara Falls, doctor. Where are they from?" "Limerick, my son." ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ FOUCAULT AND THE VALIDITY OF AN OEUVURE: AN EXCHANGE BETWEEN ZARATHUSTRA AND DIONYSIUS compiled by Jim Esch and Jim Morris NOTE: The following is an edited transcript of correspondence between the two authors assuming the personnas of Zarathustra and Dionysus. The dialogue took place in the summer of 1993. ZARATHUSTRA: Hey yo, DEEP MAN. I thought, in light of our discussions about the nature of electronic text, and even our efforts to establish a Joe/Stacy oeuvre [1], you might be interested in this passage from Michel Foucault's book, The Archaeology of Knowledge [2]. Foucault is trying to reveal and dispense with certain notions of "continuity" that tend to level the workings of difference, discontinuity, rupture, etc. By continuity, he means notions like TRADITION, INFLUENCE, DEVELOPMENT, EVOLUTION, SPIRIT (spirit of an age, etc.). "But the unities that must be suspended above all are those that emerge in the most immediate way: those of the book and the oeuvre. At first sight,it would seem that one could not abandon these unities without extreme artificiality. Are they not given in the most definite way? There is the material individualization of the book, which occupies a determined space, which has an economic value, and which itself indicates, by a number of signs, the limits of its beginning and its end; and there is the establishment of an oeuvre, which we recognize and delimit by attributing a certain number of texts to an author. And yet as soon as one looks at the matter a little more closely the difficulties begin. The material unity of a book? Is this the same in the case of an anthology of poems, a collection of posthumous fragments,.... In other words, is not the material unity of the volume a weak, accessory unity in relation to the discursive unity of which it is the support? But is this discursive unity itself homogeneous and uniformly applicable? A novel by Stendhal and a novel by Dostoevsky do not have the same relation of individuality as that between two novels belonging to Balzac's cycle LA COMEDIE HUMAINE; and the relation between Balzac's novels is not the same as that existing between Joyce's ULYSEES and the ODYSSEY. The frontiers of a book are never clear cut: beyond the title, the first lines, and the last full stop, beyond its internal configuration and its autonomous form, it is caught up in a system of references to other books, other texts, other sentences: it is a node within a network. And this network of references is not the same in the case of a mathematical treatise, a textual commentary, a historical account, and an episode in a novel cycle; the unity of the book, even in the sense of a group of relations, cannot be regarded as identical in each case. The book is not simply the object that one holds in one's hands;...its unity is variable and relative. As soon as one questions that unity, it loses its self-evidence; it indicates itself, constructs itself, only on the basis of a complex field of discourse. "The problems raised by oeuvre are even more difficult. Yet, at first sight, what could be more simple? A collection of texts that can be designated by the sign of a proper name.... [D]oes the name of an author designate in the same way a text that he has published under his name, a text that he has presented under a pseudonym, another found after his death in the form of an unpublished draft, and another that is merely a collection of jottings, a notebook? The establishment of a complete oeuvre presupposes a number of choices that are difficult to justify or even to formulate: is it enough to add to the texts published by the author those that he intended for publication but which remained unfinished by the fact of his death? Should one also include all his sketches and first drafts, with all their corrections and crossings out? Should one add sketches that he himself abandoned? And what status should be given to letters, notes, reported conversations, transcriptions of what he said made by those present at the time, in short, to that vast mass of verbal traces left by an individual at his death, and which speak in an endless confusion so many different languages? In any case, the name 'Mallarme' does not refer in the same way to his themes (translation exercises from French into English), his translations of Edgar Allan Poe, his poems, and his replies to questionnaires; similarly, the same relation does not exist between the name Nietzsche on the one hand and the youthful autobiographies, the scholastic dissertations, the philological articles, Zarathustra, Ecce Homo, the letters, the last postcards signed 'Dionysos' or 'Kaiser Nietzsche', and the innumerable notebooks with their jumble of laundry bills and sketches for aphorisms. In fact, if one speaks, so undiscriminately and unreflectingly of an author's oeuvre, it is because one imagines it to be defined by a certain expressive function. One is admitting that there must be a level...at which the oeuvre emerges, in all its fragments, even the smallest, most inessential ones, as the expression of the thought, the experience, the imagination, or the unconscious of the author, or, indeed, of the historical determinations that operated upon him. But it is at once apparent that such a unity, far from being given imely, is the result of an operation; that this operation is interpretative...; and that the operation that determines the opus, in its unity, and consequently the oeuvre itself, will not be the same in the case of the author of LE THEATRE ET SON DOUBLE (Artaud) and the author of the TRACTATUS (Wittgenstein), and therefore when one speaks of an oeuvre in each case one is using the word in a different sense. The oeuvre can be regarded neither as an immediate unity, nor a a certain unity, nor as a homogeneous unity." DIONYSUS: Zarathustra, so by dispensing with the notion that a book or oeuvre has some kind of special unity we can better understand the evolution of human knowledge. I think I got that right. It's therefore useless to try and make a set of CDs with all the best Joe/Stacy stuff on it. At least it's useless to do it and call it "complete" in any way. We have to include the complete Dylan, Beatles, Strawbs, Procol Harum, Moody Blues, Genesis, Chicago, Billy Joel, Steely Dan, Bartok, Floyd, Townsend, that guy who plays "jack and diane" catalogs to even begin to scratch the surface of completeness. As a matter of fact, we'd have to include the whole of western civilization on the same CD, completely cross referenced and.....wait a minute... When all human knowledge and thought has been digitized and available on the World Wide Web (5-10 years) maybe it would work! As we navigate through cyberspace we could be listening to say.... "Living in a bubble"3 and with a slight shift of our pinky finger jump to other songs by Stacy about living or bubbles. Then we could expand on the term "living" and find other S.T. songs about dying and existence. Moving further along we do an audio/visual scan of all recorded Joe or Jim/Stacy songs having to do with bubbles or other nebulous, spherical objects as in "say goodnight, I had a -ball-" from "It's Too Long to Make you See.".4 As we travel along we take a slightly different course and focus on instrumentation - specifically the distorted electric guitar. A picture of Les Paul appears with the text of his biography, along with audio clips from a 1972 interview with David Frost. "See also, Link Ray" is noted below the picture. Instead of reviewing the entire history of electronics we decide instead to find out more about bubbles, or perhaps we need more info about Stacy and her life (pictures of Orange Street, Lucy, Romania, Camden, Levick street, the Record Cellar; complete written works of poetry, blood type.) And so on. I could see getting a better sense of continuity with this type of interface. Still it would be highly subjective; the information we retrieve would be based on our own whims and prejudices. Hmmm....I guess Michel is right. It's an absolutely hopeless and more importantly useless endevor. We all are one. Ask not for whom the bell tolls, you can't step in the same river twice, a man's maturity consists in finding again the seriousness one had as a child - at play. ZARATHUSTRA: What IF all discourse shared the same medium [digital, right?], would one conceivably be able then to link all statements to all other statements? What kind of mother-of-all-computers would that require? We'd need to build it on the moon probably. But what's all the fuss about? "We must ask ourselves what purpose is ultimately served by this suspension of all the accepted unities.... In fact, the systematic erasure of all given unities enables us first of all to restore to the statement the specificity of its occurrence, and to show that discontinuity is one of those great accidents that create cracks not only in the geology of history, but also in the simple fact of the statement; it emerges in its historical irruption; what we try to examine is the incision that it makes, that irreducible--and very often tiny-- emergence. However banal it may be, however unimportant its consequences may appear to be, however quickly it may be forgotten after is appearance, however little heard or however badly deciphered we may suppose it to be, a statement is always an event that neither the language (langue) nor the meaning can quite exhaust. It is certainly a strange event: first, because on the one hand it is linked to the gesture of writing or to the articulation of speech, and also on the other hand it opens up to itself a residual existence in the field of a memory, or in the materiality of manuscripts, books, or any other form of recording; secondly, because, like every event, it is unique, yet subject to repetition, transformation, and reactivation; thirdly, because it its linked not only to the situations that provoke it, and to the consequences that it gives rise to, but at the same time, and in accordance with a quite different modality, to the statements that precede and follow it. "But if we isolate...the occurences of the statement/event, it is not in order to spread over everything a dust of facts. It is in order to be sure that this occurrence is not linked with synthesizing operations of a purely psychological kind (the intention of the author, the form of his mind, the rigour of his thought, the themes that obsess him, the project that traverses his existence and gives it meaning) and to be able to grasp other forms of regularity, other types of relations. Relations between statements (even if the author is unaware of them; even if the statements do not have the same author; even if the authors were unaware of each other's existence); relations between groups of statements thus established (even if these groups do not concern the same, or even adjacent, fields; even if they do not possess the same formal level; even if they are not the locus of assignable exchanges) ; relations between statements and groups of statements and events of a quite different kind (technical, economic, social, political). To reveal in all its purity the space in which discursive events are deployed is...to leave oneself free to describe the interplay of relations within it and outside it. In other words, he's warming up his humanistic wrecking ball. Does it strike you that Foucault is trying to work-out some of the ideas that Nietzsche started? Granted, the style of writing is much less poetic/entertaining/bilous. But this whole questioning of established unities and truths, with the double aim of establishing a new horizon of truth, or maybe demolishing truth in favor of extended play seems to me akin to Nietzsche's philosophy. SeeThe Geneology of Morals . After all we are fruits of his thought, aren't we? His pen has liberated us to roam the paths of discourse, hasn't it? Are we not masks to be worn by different persons in different places? The the Greeks, Nietzsche, Jim Esch, Jim Morris, the reader? Once we have designated ourselves in words we become something else. Who needs such truth? Such legendary soothsaying? From whence these prisons of thought? NOTES [1] Joe is the name of a musical group featuring the two Jims. Stacy refers to co-editor Stacy Tartar, who joined them around 1987-88. Esch and Tartar have recorded together in addition to their collaboration with Morris. [2] All Foucault quotes come from The Archaeology Of Knowledge & The Discourse On Language. Trans. A.m. Sheridan Smith. New York: Pantheon, 1972. [3] Song on Jim/Stacy tape Beef Stew, 1990. [4] Song on Joe tape Joe II. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ EXCERPTS FROM THE COMPLETE SAYINGS OF JESUS according to Paul Ford and Steve Pav This is based on the fact that books titled "The Complete Sayings of Jesus" certainly don't include _everything_ the man said, nor does the Bible. So we're filling in the gaps: "Hey! How many shekels for this fish?" "Excuse me...pardon me...excuse me...sorry...coming through." "Hi!" "I like those sandals on you, Peter. They bring out your eyes." "Anyone got leprosy?" "Pork? It's my last supper and we have PORK?" ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ THREE POEMS by Jim Morris untitled Outside my window there is a tree with its branches reaching toward my room and every hour I'm awake I spend dreaming of the day that I'll feel those arms around me. Ever since I first noticed this, each week It seems a month away Now it's been over a year and I'm still hoping for the same thing It takes him years to move Soon it seems his arms will be pounding against my walls wanting to break in. And I probably won't be here I'll be somewhere else with someother window and someother tree SANTA CLAUS Bring your bags to me And empty the contents so it all spills on you. BY THE PEOPLE, FOR THE PEOPLE Raygun and Bush Boom! Whoosh! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ NOTEWORTHY This marks our first issue of Sparks west of the Mississippi. Now that our move is complete, we're expanding our distribution to include our new home base as well as the Philadelphia area. As always, we are seeking quality submissions, so what are you waiting for? EMAIL us at Jim.Esch@launchpad.unc.edu We are also working towards electronic distribution over the internet. This version of the magazine would be in ASCII text format, no graphics, available worldwide by electronic mail. If you have access to the internet, you may request a copy by sending a message to 'Jim.Esch@launchpad.unc.edu'. GOVERNMENT ADDRESSES You may want to store these addresses in a safe place and bother these folks when they try to sell off your rights and liberties.... THE WHITE HOUSE President Bill Clinton 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20500 (202) 456-1414 Switchboard (202) 456-1111 Comment line (202) 456-2883 FAX 1 (202) 456-2461 FAX 2 president@whitehouse.gov THE CABINET COMMERCE Ronald H. Brown Department of Commerce 14th Street and Constitution Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20230 (202) 482-4901 DEFENSE Les Aspin Department of Defense The Pentagon Washington, DC 20301 (703) 697-5737 STATE Warren Christopher Department of State 2201 C Street, NW Washington, DC 20520 (202) 647-6575 (202) 647-7120 FAX JUSTICE Janet Reno Attorney General Department of Justice 10th Street and Constitution Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20530 (202) 514-2007 (202) 514-5331 FAX TREASURY Lloyd Bentsen Department of the Treasury 1500 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20220 (202) 622-2960 (202) 622-1999 FAX FEDERAL INFORMATION CENTER (800) 726-4995 -END OF FILE- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SPARKS Jim.Esch@launchpad.unc.edu ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~