Quipu (3 page)

1961: aspirations of the embryo

At once the most heart-warming and spine-chilling loc we’ve spied since the last ish is from J. P. Williams, a baby bright at Brunswick High School who hopes to be wed to the bride of his dreams before the Sixties is over. When we asked readers to supply some personal details, I’m not sure that this is
precisely
what we expected. The reaction of you eager Australian hikes was so underwhelming that J. A. Williams (of the Brunswick Williamses) is the first cab off the block for 1961. Over to you, J. W. By the way, it really is acceptable to tell us Big Name hikes your own Little First Name, J. K.

Dear Editor

I have not contributed to a quipu before, and you do not know me, although I think my friend Paul Ramsden has met you at the Point Two Six Society “convocation” last year in Sydney, and might have mentioned that he lent me some copies of GRUMBLING WOMBATS. You ask for details of readers’ lives and experiences. Nothing much has happened yet in mine, but I will try to oblige. I hope you don’t find this too uninteresting. I will try to disclose everything but those hidden thoughts which are a man’s greatest privilege.

My name is J. D. Williams. I am five foot seven and a half in my socks. I will soon be 15, am not overly blessed with good looks but generally do not scare small children who come upon me at dusk. According to the Mensa tests I have an I.Q. in the 99.9th percentile, but this rarely shows in either school marks or behavior.

Probably the former arises from my dislike for school work, and the latter from emotional immaturity. I know from novels, learned treatises and gentle chats from my maths teacher, that I am passing through a “stage.” I am aware that fellows of my age react in certain stereotyped ways to certain stimuli.

The trouble is, having diagnosed “the adolescent,” discovered the still-childish drives that work him, I find the same attributes in myself. I am not pretending I cannot do anything about it. But I remain a victim of my pituitary gland. Sometimes I think the bumpkin who is ignorant of much of this is better off than I.

Some of this knowledge comes from my reading of science fiction. I have been fascinated by space travel, biology and astronomy since I was quite young. Nowadays I am more intrigued by psychology, sociology and semantics, as described by Robert Heinlein and John W. Campbell, Jr. Much of this information is new to my teachers, which is quite infuriating.

I turn to books instead of people, and find them much friendlier and more intelligent. At the moment I have only two friends (one of them being Paul Ramsden, but he is six years older than me and so has rather different interests!). I am resolved to change myself for the better, which is one reason I am writing to Wombat. If I can contact some “like-minded people” (or even some “hike”-minded people!), perhaps it will aid me in my resolve.

As a result of nearly 15 years of lonely, selfish living (I am an only child, with rather elderly parents), I am mean, nasty, unsociable and egocentric. I recognize these faults, but it seems that 15 years of habit create a deep impression. To effect a lasting change, my whole way of thinking will need to alter. This is particularly true since I want to get married eventually and raise a family. So I am going to have to change drastically, and soon, while I am still in my formative years.

Many of the books I have read claim that we are influenced very heavily by the type of civilization we live in. I truthfully feel that much of what I am—the features I dislike—can be traced back to early influences. Until I was three I had an unsightly scar on my face that was eventually repaired, but I remember other children screaming (one, anyway) when they saw me. Perhaps this is why I hated close contact with other kids. At any rate, I did not play much sport.

However, in summary (sorry for all this boring complaint, but you asked for it!) what I become is, in the last analysis, my own responsibility. It might not be my fault the way I am constructed now, but it will be my fault if I allow present trends to worsen while failing to cultivate their alternatives.

In my next loc, I will discuss the importance of imaginative fiction as a means of putting forward new ways of looking at Man and Society. That is, if you are interested enough to print this one! Best wishes,

J. D. Williams

1969: the bride of frankenstein

Paddington

Sydney

14 November 1969

My dear Joseph

So, in Sydney. If I were as cynical as Brian Wagner I’d add “…all safe & sound.” In fact, we very nearly didn’t make it. I had a prang about 100 miles out of Liverpool. Sixteen hours at the wheel, by the time we got here to Paddo, pilled of course. Had to have the radiator replaced fifty bloody bucks.

Antony and I will stay in Paddington until we can organize a beautiful, peaceful house of our own.

I am finding it extremely difficult to recuperate & my mind is not functioning. This is an extremely dull letter. Can’t face the thought of a job. Hope all is well at your parents’ place. I guess it isn’t. I wish you’d get out of that godforsaken place.

I miss you. I yearn for your company. I’m incredibly vulnerable. When I realized for the first time that you were 600 miles away I knew how much I “loved” you (the unspeakable verb) but what’s the sense in it what’s the point when you won’t accept it. I tell myself that you can love another person without any return of love for only so long before you are brought right up against your own bloody masochism.

Antony, of course, dramatically declares his love. How farcical. He and I have been together such a short time.

Surely you must feel something for me after 2 years even if it’s only to despise oh shit why should it matter now? Hell it’s all over but so often you’re still with me.

I can’t go on raving like this I feel slightly delirious.

Regards to parents.

fondest—?

Caroline

1982: getting started

written, edited, run orf and footnoted by Vladimir B. Wagner for Point Two Six Amateur Press Association,[2] and out just in the nick of time to rescue his good standing and sustained credentials with that August body. Some copies will be seen by non-members of .26APA, but I regret to say that I am far too niggardly and costipated to trade for your scungy rubbish. Away with you! There’s a wheelbarrow out in the toolshed. Emitted 17 December 1982. You can find my phone number in the book. Overseas readers never ring me anyway. Does anyone read colophons any more? Doubtful. I’ll just keep strumming on this

[1] Concise Oxford: a. constipated; [fig.] niggardly

[2] the well-gnome writing arm of all us good guys who there are only 0.25742 per cent of in the world owing to our having smarts of 146 or more oh wow which isn’t as good as Mega[3] but you can’t women all

[3] the Mega Society, limited to folks in the 99.9999th percentile, which is taking a good thing a little too far if you know what I

As you know, I am an inveterate entrant of contests. I have pushed pennies along a train track with my nose, heedless of the iron horse and motivated by nothing better than a powerful wish to see young Billy Illywacker bested. Billy, needless to say, was scrambling along the alternative rail, shoving with all his might, short-trousered knees grinding through blue stone fragments which lacerated as well his horrible snot-hardened palms; the broad flat penny darkly dazzling in his vicious squinting eyes as the summer holiday sun burned up from coin and rails without discrimination as to metallic pigment; and I scrambled likewise, the damned thing teetering and skidding off the track, splinters in the sleepers tearing into skin and bone, the hoot of the on-rushing train and the panic-stricken cries of our youthful companions unheard by either of us in the unspeakable compulsion and fire of macho competition; ah, those were the days.

Now, of course, I am far more refined. I must needs be urged by my colleagues to enter, with tremendous diffidence, such sublimated wrestling matches as the
National Time
500-item Old Time Movie trivia quiz, say.

These days, as a subscriber to many of the world’s leading intellectual journals, quarterlies, newspapers and financial advice letters, it was inevitable that I would write and submit by urgent airmail the following shrunken saga (here annotated in the usual manner for the edification of those numerous members of .26APA who, it grieves me to report, would not know their asp from their Elba).

THREE MINUTE EPIC, WITH SEQUEL[1]

Zero puckers. Bright spacetime Bangs.[2]

Quark[3] soup[4]: that’s one-hundredth of a second.[5]

Lumps curdle in boiling soup: nucleons[6]. Mesons[7] and anti-kin[8] smash, evaporate, leave thin grit.[9]

The light[10] goes out.[11]

Everything[12], blowing apart[13], cools to a hundred million degrees.[14]

Somewhat later: stars[15], life[16], us.[17] Thin wisps in darkness.

[1] That merry wag Brian W. Aldiss invented the mini-saga while penning the introduction to a short story anthology. He was, at the time, embedded in his monumental “Helliconia” trilogy, a multi-generational 70mm split-screen saga. In stark contrast, the mini-saga must be a miracle of concision and compression: precisely 50 words long, with a contributory title of up to 15 additional words. Upon public disclosure of this new art form, the Sunday magazine of the London “Telegraph” launched a contest that attracted entries by Frederick Forsythe, Frank Muir, Hammond Innes. P. J. Kavanagh, and the Australian hike editor, columnist, wit and namesake of the artform’s discoverer, Brian Wagner, whose effort graces this footnote.

[2] A nearly perfect instance of the form can be found in the first fifty words of the King James translation of the Bible, describing creation. A somewhat more up-to-date version, using many more words and equations, has been given by the Nobel Prize laureate Steven Weinberg, in his popular (but, I am assured by that great physicist Joe Williams, accurate) account of cosmogony,
The First Three Minutes
. The interval mentioned in both Weinberg’s title and my own is approximately equal to the time required for the primeval universe to settle down from the Big Bang singularity to an expanding mass of elementary nuclear particles, exchange quanta and neutrinos. Everything of importance to human beings occurred, of course, after this three minute egg had boiled and been removed from its shell.

1975: worth the journey

It has taken the arrival in Canberra of the Magi from Overseas, here for this international Point Two Six Convocation—prophets of Intelligence and egalitarianism alike, Hans Eysenck and Richard Lewontin, Richard Herrnstein and Isaac Asimov (a dedicated non-flyer, borne by luxury ocean liner)—to goose the media into paying attention to the indigenous hikes. Ray Finlay finds this strikingly apt.

“We’re still having a bit of bother with the O.B. van,” the director tells him soothingly. “I do apologize for not getting you chappies a little drinkie, but we don’t want you sloshed before the actual event.” She laughs and holds Ray’s biceps.

“Isn’t it going to be rather contrasty? I was expecting something indoors, to tell you the—”

“Relaxed and outdoorsy is what we’re aiming at. We’ve had a fair bit of experience with sporting functions.”

“Quite.

The ABC crew stagger about with wires, cables, conduits, television cameras and make-up kits. His own face has been lightly powdered. Joseph shambles out of the lavatory, looking like a clown.

“I’m starving.”

“What a stroke of luck that you find yourself in a restaurant.” Ray stares at his watch. “I suppose Professor Eysenck and Dr. Rose
will
arrive before the pudding.”

“Ah, they’ve had to cancel,” the director says over her shoulder. “Hans ate a bad oyster and it’s given him collywobbles. Steven had a prior engagement, our slip-up. You’ll have to do all the work by yourselves. Think you’re up to it?”

“Oh shit, no,” Joseph says and Ray tells her at the same moment, “We’ll manage, Shirley.”

Grant Moore, his macho moustache bristling, steps from the kitchen into the bistro’s patio, face tanned from forays to Queensland and points farther north and retanned by artful cosmetics. “Okay, blokes, the tucker’s just about edible. Let’s siddown.”

Ray is already seated under the merrily striped bistro umbrella. Joseph is placed at his right hand, Grant at his left. A camera takes the fourth place, with another off to one side. By artful editing it will be made to appear that they sit in the customary arrangement.

“Everyone’s sick of the usual talking-head bullshit. It’s 1975, for Christ’s sake, not 1965,” Grant Moore tells them. “And what’s the fall-back alternative? How much guts does it take to slam your audience from one walk-in jumpcut to another? Listen, Ray, we’re really climbing out on a limb here.”

“Really? In discussing intelligence intelligently?”

“By going for conversation, period, for fuck’s sake. If a point’s worth hammering, we’ll linger on it. We’re not scared of a bit of abstract conceptualization if that’s what it takes. With me?”

“Won’t our chewing-tend to…well, muffle our conversation?”

“We can cut. We can dub. That’s technical shit.”

“Jean-Pierre’s ready,” Shirley tells him.

But it takes three false starts before the mood relaxes sufficiently for their lemon sorbet to be broached.

A DOG’S WIFE

…nine

I was not wholly without sympathy for Fiona’s qualms, though I’d have died before admitting so. On the other hand I judged her objections fundamentally reactionary. In this age of moonshots and dime-store calculators, it seemed to me not merely ignoble but rather trite to find some course of action offensive simply because it was not hallowed by family tradition.

The fact is, Spot was the brightest dog I had ever met. He entered college under a special program, endowed by the Chomsky Institution, and was a wild fellow, mad for poetry and drinking all night and the theater. He swiftly discerned that culture as such is problematical, overdetermined, quixotic, that its appeal is essentially to the intellectually lightweight. He dabbled in painting for a time, creating a small stir with his innovative brush stroke. But it was the endless wonder of science that spoke to Spot’s heart of hearts, and led to his specializing first in chemistry and finally in the application of Sophus Lie’s theory of continuous transformation groups to that previously intractable poser, the ‘periodic table’ of elementary particles and their resonances.