Pixie dust
sugarplum
By CARLA RAPOPORT
...the world is full of zanies and fools
who won't believe in sensible rules and
won't believe what sensible people say.
"And because these dopes and dewey-
eyed dopes keep building up impossible
hopes, 'impossible things are happening
every day."
EVEN SOME ten years removed from
the days. when I memorized this line
along with every other, in Rogers and
Hammerstein's "Cinderella," I am still
like it. Even now as I typed the words, I
briefly glanced over my shoulder, some-
what expecting to see the pink fairy I've
been waiting for all this time.
And I'm not embarrassed to say that I
have my three wishes well planned and
organized, waiting for her to grant them.
(I guess I read too many stories a b o u t
foolish people losing everything to tricky
fairies. Anyway, my first wish is 10 more
wishes.)
But the fairy has never appeared, ig-
noring the improvised incantations my 9-
year-old self used to repeat nightly. Yet,
now, a philosophy major and an atheist,
I believe I have my own fairy.
I BELIEVE IN HER because I don't have
to also believe she created the world, or
died for my sins, or would hate me if I
didn't live by her rules. And I don't have
to go to family reunions on her birthday.
She'll always like me, always exist in her
non-entity. She'll always be up there be-
Showering down freedom:
Visions of Justin Thyme
By LARRY LEMPERT
THE MUSIC came on at 10:15 and Justin
Thyme woke up, slowly. He rolled away
from the radio and opened his eyes. Outside -
a dim grayness, wet, cold. He rolled back, turn-
ed off the radio, shut his eyes.
Then he began to remember steam heat. The
overwhelming, burning mist, hot sweat, mois-
ture dripping off the walls, off the skin of so
many living bodies, coating the mirrors.
But it was all distant, a dream lost in waking.
Another glance out the window made him
feel very straight, very normal, very drab. Out
of bed and to the bathroom; he got dressed.
"I can remember talking quietly with John
and Sarah," he thought to himself, "and then
a charge of people suddenly exploded the calm.
Breathing in deep and going up in the smoke-
filled, crowded dormitory room. Lots of laugh-
ing people and a striking girl, with wire-rimmed
glasses and a serious look of impenetrability
on her face (like she knew, but she wasn't
going to tell anyone she didn't like, and she
didn't like me).
"Then hours later the confusion had gone.
The people and the girl with wire-rimmed
glasses had disappeared, leaving John and
Sarah and me alone again in the smoky air."
JUSTIN WENT downstairs, put a piece of
bread in the toaster and poured some milk over
a bowl of cereal.
"Noise in the hall drew us out. We saw a
cloud of steam three feet thick that hid the
ceiling. People ran by, undressed in shorts,
bathing .suits or in towels. Then the three of
us went back into the room and ripped off our
clothes. Wrapped only in towels, we followed
the stream of steam down the hall, around the
corner and into the bathroom.
"It led us into a den of hot, thick moisture.
The showers had been run for hours at full
heat. We stood there, timid at first. Every-
one was soaking themselves in steam and peo-
ple; we smiled at each other through run-
ning rivers of sweat.
"Shyly sharing a new experience, we all sat,
walked around slowly, tried to find worts to
express feelings. It was exciting and exhiliarat-
ing; so simple yet so incredible, so outrageous.
"THE TOWEL around my waist served no
purpose - I took it off. Someone held out a
pitcher of icy water. I dipped my face in the
cold, sharp and shocking. Beautiful. I wander-
ed into one of the showers that was running
cold and let the needles of water pierce my
skin all over . .."
The toast was burning. Justin took it out,
spread some jam on it and munched on the
soggy cereal.
Weird goddam dream. He had been so unin-
hibited. He had felt the joy of being, ac tely
aware of the moment. Now it was remote; he
even felt slightly embarrassed. Now his body
was surrounded by- dry cool air and was
clothed again in its inhibitions.
MAYBE IT ALL did happen, really, Justin
thought. He considered the idea but dismissed
it. Even if it happened, it was still a dream.
And now he was awake again.
-Daily-Gary Villani
America seen from a moving junk pile
'9
By ROBERT SCHREINER
WHEN SOMEONE asks if I had fun in
Florida over Spring Break, I say yes.
When someone asks if I had a nice trip,
I say no.
I am very careful to make this dis-
tinction. You see, being in Florida was
great. Eight straight days without having
to open a book or write a single word was
a great change of pace. No, being in
Florida was fun. It was the getting there,
getting around and getting back that was
not.
Our friends had told us not to go to
Florida in a '63 Triumph TR-4 with over
100,000 miles of experience. They warned
that with each successive mile, the car
would become less of an asset and more
of a liability.
But we did not heed them. We held
tight to the belief that our trusty red
convertible would get us there and back.
And it almost did.
We left Ann Arbor Wednesday morn-
ing, allowing 30 hours to reach our des-
tination 1400 miles away.
We drove blithely through the night
cruising through Dayton and Cincinnati.
Kentucky passed without incident, and I
remember wishing during one of' those
hazy periods between sleep and con-
sciousness that our friends who told us
the car was not going to make it coulc
see us now, purring along the highway,
with absolutely no trouble after some ten
hours of straight driving.
SOME THREE HOURS later, I watched
John lower the car to the ground and
kick the hubcap into place. It was our
third flat tire in 100 miles, and second
in the last 20. I began to feel a bit appre-
hensive, since our second and last spare
was now on the car. And it was 2 a.m.
30 minutes later, John was driving
down a dark, two-lane highway bordered
on both sides by seemingly endless fields.
The car began its telltale sway--we
stopped. I only shrugged, and kept shrug-
ging while John took the tire off the car
and lit a flare.
We had no idea how far it was to a
gas station. I flipped a coin and we both
lost. John b e g a n hitchhiking toward
Chattanooga and I prepared for a long
wait with the car.
After 10 minutes, one car passed us
going the other way. The flare fizzled
and died. In our direction, about five
vehicles - most of them trucks - passed
every, few minutes. They don't usually
pick up hitchhikers, we found, but rather
beep the horn and wave or offer some
other gesture, as they go by.
I meanwhile harbored the guilty feel-
ing that at '3 a.m. in this desolate spot
I would not have stopped for John either
-and I have known him for six years.
BUT FINALLY John got a ride. As he
drove away, I remember- wishing I had
listened to our friends who had advised
us to hitchhike.
Three hours later, John came back
with the patched tire, and we were off
again. South of Atlanta, we stopped at
a small gas station, where the attendant
diagnosed our tire problem as a bad case
of "rim-rub." I nodded my head and kept
nodding as we drove away, never to know
if he was bluffing or not.
We made it all the way through Geor-
gia and down Florida's turnpike. Every-
thing was fine there, since we could stay
at high speeds. The problem, we realized,
would come at the toll gate when we got
off.
I calculated the toll in advance, and it
came to $3.80. Our plan called for John
to keep reviving the engine, while I would
hand the man four one-dollar bills.
Things went like clockwork until John
lifted his foot off the accelerator to put
the change in his pocket. The car coughed
and died.
BY THE TIME we pushed the car up
the slight grade to the side of the road,
cars were backed up quite a ways. As
people passed us, they kind of squirmed
in their seats. A few of them spit out the
window. Some came quite close to us. But
none of them stopped.
That was probably because we were
hitchhiking. But at any rate, the car
would not start, it was midnight, and we
were standed a on a turnpike exit near
Boca Raton, Florida.
We called someone we knew in Boca
Raton, and she told us we could probably
find a place to stay at a nearby college.
We got directions, and she warned us if
we were hitchhiking to watch out for a
Spaniard in a white Chevy who "drives
around looking for people to kill."
We began hitchhiking, but for some
reason, every time a car approached, we
would pull our thumbs in, and watch it
go by. I have never seen so many white
an interview with Muhammed Ali, and a
number of irate residents of the area (not
even a nice place to visit) began ap-
proaching us with broken bottles. (I must
give the car credit. It started up quick
then.)
I could tell about how we were 'stopped
by the police in Ft. Lauderdale for ex-
cessive noise. And in Pompano Beach.
And Miami.
Or how we left for home on Saturday
morning, and drove 600 miles without any
problems at all, only to have the lights
go out-panel lights, rear lights, head-
lights. And how it was midnight. And
pouring rain. And big trucks going very
fast down the highway.
And .how we subsequently pulled into
a gas station near Macon, Georgia, where
the following exchange took place:
"Sir, do you take credit cards here?"
"We take them all. What kind you
got?"
"Gulf."
"We don't take that one."
OR HOW A STATE policeman walked
into the gas station's men's room, looked
at us combing our hair, and said loudly,
"My god, I better get out of here. I must
be in the ladies room."
Or how five minutes later, he ticketed
us for not having a muffler, even though
the car was not running, and despite
John's helpful offering that we did in-
deed have a muffler-in the trunk.
And how, at nine in the morning (after
being in the same gas station for ten
hours), a guy at the station next door
offered John $20 for the car (and he
had been offered $200 up here) and how
we haggled him to $40 and sold it. But
how just as a policeman was drawing up
Eighty years of editorial freedom
Edited and mdnaged by students at the University of Michigan
420 Maynard St., Ann Arbor, Mich
News Phone:, 764-0552
Editorials printed in The Michicon Doily express the individual opinions of staff writers
or the editors. This must be noted in all reprints.
SUNDAY, MARCH 21, 1971
NIGHT EDITOR: JONATHAN MILLER
*i
cause, in her nothingness, the mere pos-
sibility of her appearance is always pre-
sent.tWhen I'm wicked she'll be sad, but
understand the motives behind my actions
and not chastise me. She'll never chastise
me.
It's easy to get a fairy.- I guess I knew
my fairy was here to stay when I wrote
a story in the Daily saying registration
would be only today and tomorrow when
in fact it was lasting for two weeks, and
due to my story thousands of people were
jamming into a little room in the LSA
building and secretaries and Daily editors
and students in line were cursing and
swearing at one incompetent: me.
But a feeling within me could only laugh
and laugh in a mischevious sort of way,
teasing my depressed self into seeing how
important the mistake really was. And
from then on all my mistakes have been
important. (In fact as time goes on, my
mistakes have grown more and more im-
portant.)
A SLY WINK, a mischevious tug, a pinch
or a peal of laughter, these are the ways of
my fairy. She humors me without asking
me what's wrong, she likes me without any
reason. And unlike my dog Buster, she'll
never get hit by the garbage truck.
A lot of times I argue with her when she
kicks someone I'm angry with and will be
jealous .if I become friendly with them
again. Those times, she'll go away and I
won't need her until I forget my midterm
was on Tuesday and it's Thursday.
WHILE ONE CLOCK counts in frenzied
subtraction of minutes from the in-
evitable doom of the environment, and
another measures in a jittery glare the
days before Graduation and thousands of
watches guage with a kindly glance back-
ward, we can only pause and ponder the
charging click on our own wrists, curious
where we are.
Because one moment an eye to the wrist
means flurries of the present; it is 10
o'clock and our moments are haunted by
papers and tests and that steamroller,
work. And then we lean back, flick the
watch aside, and the clock marks dif-
ferent: another time, younger perhaps,
reliving that innocence, puffing streams
of hope and faith.
And we shock ourselves back to the
place we are sitting-stalled, confused,
eternally cynical. We've entered the pres-
ent again; but the clock doesn't clatter,
with the staccato of professor's voice; it
is still, circling unceasingly around a
moment. At age five she dreamed to play
the actress until time slips forward and
the ticktock of fate meets her at 10 p.m.
in a placid rendezvous with the shimmer
of the part she dreamt at 10 p.m. one
Saturday thirty years before.
SO NOW SHE creeps into that dusty
past, united for an instant - until
present's foghorn blurts back; where is
she, where has she been-only tracing
footsteps. Yes, we all tread a shadow in
different shades: a fairy sprinkles pixie
dust sugarplum, Justin Thyme's moment
melts to nakedness. In the murky hodge-
podge of ambivalence a body starves it-
self. While a s p o r t s car searches the
country as a moving junkpile, thumping
hundreds of miles u n t i1 a final jerk,
stranded somewhere (like us all uncertain
where we are or when we are) stray in
that modern bustle: nowhere.
-RICK PERLOFF
the
-Daily-Gary vinlani
Chevy's in my life. We finally took a
taxi to the college, where we slept a
troubled sleep in the lounge of the un-
locked(?) administration building.
I COULD GO ON for a long time, if I
had the space, and tell you about the
rest of the trip. About how we finally
got the car started two days later (it
was the points), and how it had to be
push-started (me pushing, John steer-
ing) each time we started it for the next
week.
Or about how the muffler fell off
across from the Fifth Street Gym in
Miami Beach, where we had gone to get
the bills of sale, I went over and turned
the key and the car started up.
Then I could tell how we put all our
stuff back in, threw five dollars on the
floor and left to the warning of the
attendant that "the next time that junk-
pile stops, it will never start again."
I, could also tell you that if you were
to go down now to the long-term parking
lot of the Atlanta airport, you would see
a red, '63 Triumph TR-4 convertible still
sitting there, running up a bill at the
rate of $1.25 per day, which no one is
ever going to pay.
IT ONLY HURTS when I laugh.
4i
sundoty
doily
By RICK PERLOFF
SUFFER, MY CHILD, suffer-you
shall not nibble or lick or sniff
your way into the stingiest snip of
food; no lad, this is a week for fast-
ing, for abstention from, instinctual-
psychologicaldrive, eating (I'm talk-
ing to you, myself); they say that. to
eat is a necessity so you must neces-
sarily gargle flat splashes of fruit
juice, fruit juice I said, in the dankest
concealment, and comfort is taboo
and we would prefer it if you did not
sleep, only suffer.
Suffer, my friend, suffer, for this
is a fast to stop military and classi-
fied research because it is wrong and
a tornado of other adjectives which
you have not used in the past for you
Starving the body,
Ah, that is downright romantic be-
cause I know, I the Self, and nobody f
believes in God anymore, they just }
construct a superstructure Self which
is as majestic and awesome as God
has ever been. Yes you who had
never fasted before can ring up an-
other experience and you slurp your
fruit juice because then you will be
on the wagon to Strength and Power,
your own virtues in an age when you
have enough, but others do not.
So I would like to know just why you
do this, for the shelter of yourself or
our of concern for others, and please
I know the adjectives to describe their
plight in Vietnam; which is it, fellow?
"I DO NOT know, Self. I wish I
could answer. I have no swirling tun-
feeding the soul
child. You are neither Job nor Mac-
Leish, my boy, and I decree guilt,
suffer, and you must ask no more.''
AND SO HE FASTED for seven
days and seven nights, not quite sure
why but petrified when he once
touched a slice of cheese, fearful that
the wrath of Self would hurl down;
plodding through the dark of fright,
terrified that at any moment he might
snatch a crumb, commit blasphemy in
a restaurant and never would be
saved.
He huddled, he stumbled through
the seven days and worried that the
ice he ate on Wednesday was per-
haps solid, not liquid, and wrong, that
the coffee he twice swallowed included
} f' solid chunks, before mixed, and even
suffered, now at last the Self would
save his soul.
But in the end it did not matter, his
sprinkles of romance in a teeming age
of filth. In the end, the Self did not
tell him (had he won or lost?) and the
child brushed his teeth and washed his
hands, so guilty and confused at the
outcome. Because during the seven
nights and seven days, when he had
hoped to suffer alone at night, pray-
ing that he would crave comfort,
yearn for swarms of globs of food, he
had clawed for nothing and found the
effort barely tantalizing.
Oh, he had 'lost some weight, of
course, a little hungrier than before,
but it had been no callous fate, no
torrid hell, it was just a nuisance to
abstain a week, a bit monotonous to
f