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SPECIAL REPRINT ISSUE! Those who BUDDHA WITH A welcome LIGHT BULB By Terry Carr death have very now and then I have Chinese are becoming assimilated, only tried it E what you call a mystical ex- and maybe they think the light perience, like. bulb is appropriate to a statue of from the This one happened in New Buddha, the Enlightened One.” York’s Chinatown, when my wife “Aaargh!” said Walter. There’s ears up. Carol and I went down there to eat no reasoning with him. one night. Walter Breen, an in- But as I say, he’s a cynic. I dis- Wilson Mizner telligent but cynical friend of ours, card cynicism whenever it raises Wilson Wilson Mizner Mizner was with us. It was a night like any its serpentine head, because after other in Chinatown: the narrow all it is nothing but a destructive streets were crowded with Occi- force undermining the founda- dentals squinting at all the neon, tions of our society. If by chance the Orientals sat on steps reading our world stands on quicksand, I The New York Times, the cops would rather not be told; the mud cruised by looking wary, and the might tickle my toes and distract telephone booths had pagoda-like me from higher things. roofs atop them. Personally, I was deeply moved We stopped in front of a by the complacent image of the Chinese curio shop. It was closed Buddha smiling beneath his elec- at this late hour, but there was a tric aura. I think it may signify a light in the display window. There cultural breakthrough of tremen- was this Buddha statuette, see, dous importance, a plateau finally about a foot high, and it had a light reached on which spiritual and bulb in its head. practical values will at last come “Aaargh!” said Walter. “That’s together and blend in peace and about the most disgusting thing harmony. For too many millen- I’ve ever seen! A Buddha, with a nia have we worshipped our gods light bulb!” in darkness. The murky mists of We looked more closely at it. futility crouch around the feet of It was otherwise a fairly standard the godhead, like smog on Calvary. Buddha, sitting in the lotus posi- It is time that we answer the tion with hands in lap. There was pragmatic question which is at a small pan or something in the the end, the essence of all man’s hands. philosophy: What’s in it for me? “What’s that?” I wondered. I envision a new kind of Christ- “An ashtray?” figure; I see the Lamb of God at “No, I think it has Mexican last becoming a ewe, and giving jumping beans in it,” Carol said. milk instead of blood. We must We walked on. “The think is,” bring Christ into our homes in a Walter said, “I can imagine some truly real sense. No more the dead- dumpy middleclass housewife end idolatry of the Figure on the from Atlantic City coming by and Cross: henceforth we shall use His seeing that and thinking it’s just crown of thorns for a coat rack. too, too wonderful, and rushing And that isn’t all; for, a cul- in to buy it. It’s been in the win- tural revolution — to be truly FUGGHEAD Number Five - The dow for months now; I don’t see significant — must embrace the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioxidants, is world, and be embraced by it in published by Dan Steffan, 2015 NE 50th why some idiot hasn’t bought it.” Avenue, Portland, OR 97213 and available “Maybe they won’t part with turn. It is perhaps chance that for trade or editorial whim. JULY 2016 it, “ I said. “Maybe it’s the house- this revolution has begun in our [email protected] hold altar. I mean, after all, the own country, but having seen the seed glowing atop Buddha’s head very nearly as always, done with kind, the mystic and masticate, we must carry it forth and plant it the loving care and consummate the eternal and pragmatic Yin and in other parts of the world. Per- artistry of the East. But no longer Yang of our existence. the new haps it is a fitting task for our shall it be merely a spiritual figure, Vishnu will also serve as a Lazy Peace Corps? an idol, a dead end in itself. No. Suzan. I see, for instance, a statue of In keeping with the meeting of It is only the Beginning. the four-handed Vishnu. It is the spirit and the belly of man- Terry Carr, August 1963 cannibals getting crushed by Mack GOODBYE, MR. STATHIS, trucks, do you? What could I say to them? That I would appreciate or, How I Brought Truth to a it if they all ran outside and stuff- ed themselves down the nearest Savage Tribe of Heathen Pygmies sewer?” By Lou Stathis Old Dr. Glickstern, the prin- t all started (as have countless my yen for magazine publishing, ciple, laughed indulgently and I other tales of this sort) with a my obsession with science fiction, turned to my mother. “Great battered, grease-stained mimeo- and some gibberish about my un- sense of humor your son has. Heh, graph machine. In this instance it deniable forthcoming success as heh, heh.” My mother glared at was on the occasion of a casual a writer. Wind of this garbage me. There was no way out. I was remark by my mother to the effect drifted to the ever vigilant ears of trapped, snagged, pinched, bag- that the local elementary school, the school’s principal, who corner- ged, or whatever you care to call where she worked as a lunchroom ed my mother that afternoon for it. I tried pleading, groveling, lady, was planning to dispose of a more details. The result was a binding arbitration, even the working A.B. Dick mimeograph. deal between these two unscru- trusted old tantrum, but nothing It seemed that they had stumbled pulous schemers with me as the worked. across some unsquandered funds helpless victim. And so it was that at one somewhere which they were now I was informed, now that I had o’clock on the appointed day I furiously trying to get rid of be- the provocative metallic taste on found myself climbing the stone fore the cash could be reclaimed my tongue, that in exchange for steps of PS 154, shaking pitifully by the state at the end of the fiscal the mimeo I was to appear before and wondering what sort of year. First on their Christmas list a class full of toothless sixth horror awaited me. The school was a spiffy new mimeo. Hearing graders and give them all a talk was a hulking, brick red eyesore this, I suggested to my mother about the wonders of science smeared with soot, and sported a that she encourage them to throw fiction. I laughed at the absurdity cornerstone that read 1926. Which the old one out into the trunk of of the request. “You want me, a was a lie, I knew, from some wild her car. This was accomplished pathological kid hater to stand up stories I had heard dealing with with much urging (it is apparently in front of thirty-three little savages the last inquisition. Pulling open against the New York Board of and talk to them? You can’t be the doors I encountered what Education rules to give anything serious.” would be the first in an endless to anybody), and after a few quick Oh, but they were. This was series of sensations that hit my double hernias it was mine. That’s such a good class, they insisted. war weary memory like a blow- when all the trouble started. Well behaved, interested in learn- torch, and reawakened long dor- I had just enough time to ing, attentive, polite, courteous. mant flashbacks into my hideous stroke its dented, dull gray body In fact, it was to be the top class pre-adolescent period. It was the and get that aching hunger down of the grade, just like the one I smell, or maybe I should say, the deep in my loins when I was told, was in when I was a pudgy little stench. It drifted heavily from the sadistically, that there were strings twelve year old. I laughed and hot lunchroom on the first floor attached. It turned out that when saw flashing before my eyes and brutally assaulted my nose. my mother had put in the request scenes from those days of fierce Murky split-pea soup, government for the old machine, everyone spitball fights, chalk wars, and surplus peanut butter, bubbling wanted to know what she planned sub-desk expeditions for shots of cauldrons of brown fart-beans to do with it. Eagerly seizing the Eleanora Stubinsky’s underpants. drowning in a vile sauce like opportunity to blibber away about I was beginning to sweat. rubber cement, pale boiled hot her exceptionally gifted and multi- “Hold it,” I said shakily. “You dogs, rusty sauerkraut, paper- talented son, she proceeded to don’t want someone who has wet wrapped squares of odd flavored give them an entire story about dreams about brainless knee high ice cream, soggy Wonder Bread 2 and minuscule containers of con- Not exactly my field. My eyes Daniels, by name) launched into gealed milk. My God! I hadn’t wandered slowly around the room. the buildup for my act. She intro- gagged on that stink in almost ten There were bulletin boards duced me, with a flourish, as “Mr.