Don't Mourn for Dreamers



by Scott Weisman



Copyright (c) 1989 - 1997

And when they saw him afar off, even before he came near to them,
they conspired against him to slay him.  And they said one to
another, behold this dreamer comes.  Come now therefore, and let us
slay him, and cast him into some pit, and we will say, an evil beast
has devoured him; and we shall see what will become of his dreams.
Genesis 37:18 - 20

The Beginning 1974

Before the beginning there was UCSD.  "Occupying more than 1,200
acres, the campus spreads from the seashore at the northern edge of
the city, across a large portion of the adjacent mesa, high on bluffs
overlooking the ocean.  Much of the land is covered by trees."

"Among the trees of this university are many large gray cement
buildings.  They house offices and laboratories for professors,
classrooms for students.  Architecturally, they are dull, resembling
a large number of scattered boxes connected by rolling green lawns
and stretches of sidewalk.  Most students spend only necessary class
time in such buildings."

From the beginning there were other students and stragglers
(adolescent children of professors, mostly) who congregated around
the stairwells in these buildings.  They talked about many things,
played music, got high.  The walls around them remained pristine.
One time, though, one of these stairwell-trippers got very tired of
the blank expanse all around him, and he wrote a little poem about
the wall behind him.

for the wall
Do you get lonely?
Do you care?
Can you see me?
Are you there?
Silently screaming
Sound for all
I heard you call
the quiet wall

He signed it Moon Child.  The year was 1974. All of his friends got a
kick out of it.  The problem was, his chosen method of publication
was a misdemeanor offense punishable by up to a $500 fine by the
State of California, which didn't bother him or any of his friends in
the least.  He was attempting to solve a problem that had been
bothering him for months.

Many of his friends and fellow travelers picked up pens after that
and contributed to the growing wallwritings.  The university
administration did not take kindly to their literary activities.  The
writers were well aware of the situation.  They were very cautious
and wrote only at night.  Still, several peeps were arrested several
months later.

"One of the writers had been caught and squealed on the others - he
was underage, not a student at the university, and threatened with
juvenile hall.  Other wallwriters were tracked down and threatened
with having to pay $800 towards the $8000 cost of repainting P&L
West, where most of their writing was.  The writer originally caught
spent Christmas vacation cleaning the walls and the tower was
repainted.  The others refused to make any reparation because they
had never actually been caught writing.  But because it was the first
quarter of their freshman year, fear of being caught made most of
them stop writing.  One of them, Zabin, feels that they were never in
the wrong: 'What happened hung over us for months.  We hadn't thought
we were doing anything against the law - we were writing where others
had written before.  No one had ever tried to clean the walls or
repaint them since we had begun.'"

Despite all of the administration's efforts to curb their activities,
the writing continued and even flourished.  That was all it took.
Writing on the walls exploded after that.

A quarterly roster was established to find out who was around and
active.  The quantity of poetry and prose committed to the walls
increased geometrically, and some of it was even pretty good.  Then,
the many conversations that the writers were having ever so slowly
migrated to the walls.  Soon, the congregations and conversations
evolved, leaving only roaming writers, having their say for the
moment and maybe even for all time.  Still, it was not even
considered or imagined that the writing could catch on and last
beyond this small group of friends.

This loosely knit groups of friends became the Family, whose home was
in the Towers.  A lore and mythology grew out of their humble
beginnings.  There were tourists, those who read the wallwriting, but
did not participate.

A hierarchy of sorts was also set up.
Gov - The Governor of the Land
Thov - The Prime Minister of the Land
Frache - The Archbishop of the Land, Commissioner of Taste
Yeenman - Commissioner of Parties and the Wizard of Oz, Commissioner
of [...]
Egman - Assistant to the Governor, Minister of Tradition, Education,
and Transportation
Iksman - The Innkeeper of the Land and Assistant to the Prime
Minister
? - Minister of Silence.  His job was to shush everyone when they
were in the Towers or tunnels.

Times were good, and people were happy.  To the surprise of everyone
involved, space, or the lack thereof, became a concern.  The
occasional disputes and rivalries surfaced as well.  In short, the
walls quickly became a reflection of society around it.

Just sitting here wondering what to do.  Hmm, I guess an explanation
of my disgust for CK, V&M, etc. is in order.

It's too damn crowded and no one seems even remotely interested in
saying anything of even remedial value.  All seem caught up in
childish games of "Let's get high and write on some walls."  Not even
close to the point of this!  You write to ease pain and tension.  You
write to add importance to other people's lives.  You express
yourself to be artistic.  You express yourself to show care and
understanding.  Be meaningful.  Be careful.  Don't be a child or even
foster childish thoughts.  Children are the most easily deceived.  I
come here to be quiet.  I wish some people would just shut up!
There's too much yell in my ear!

Whisper...
Quip 12/2/76

Although he was one of the younger writers around, he possessed
charisma and authority, and many of the writers looked up to him.  He
became the balm and unifying force of Towers, mending disputes and
soothing raw nerves.

The high point of the Family and the Towers had to be the wedding on
the roof of P&L.  Quip and Venus, after a full year of courtship with
much of it recorded on the walls, decided to wed.  Archbishop Frache,
smoking a very fat stogie, officiated.  It was a regal affair.  The
guests had on their Elizabethan finest.  The Blue Dinosaurs
(blue-painted window-washing hooks) on HSS were festooned with the
Towers Crest.  After the vows were exchanged, entertainment worthy of
the occasion was displayed by Yeenman.  At the arranged signal, two
peeps appeared on HSS, one stationed at each Blue Dinosaur.  Yeenman
raised his hand in a sign of readiness, counted to three, then
quickly lowered it.

Each peep pushed his mount as fast as he could around the track on
the roof of the building.  Yeenman imitated a horse race announcer as
the race continued and the riders advanced toward the inevitable
conclusion.  Every peep was fixated on the building across the way.
Egman was laughing hysterically while recording everything in his
ever present notebook.  Contact!  The low rumbling sound of the
moving Blue Dinosaurs transformed into an incredibly loud crash that
could be heard for hundreds of yards.  The peeps were stunned.
Suddenly Yeenman yelled "Run!"  Thus was born the Blue Dinosaur
Races.

Over the next couple of years, more and more writers graduated or
moved on.  No new writers started.  This didn't surprise the peeps
because they were a Family and didn't expect people to join them who
had no previous connection.  But the walls remained.  The last to go
were Quip and Venus. Their relationship broke down and they could not
continue as before.  They sought to end it as it started.  There was
no ceremony, but their breakup was painstakingly recorded in all its
pain and anguish, in P&L's West Tower.  Quip called it Heartbreak
Tower.

The story of the Towers would have ended right here, were it not for
the fact that they were too good to ignore.

These walls weep tears
of deep blue ink.
The words, nay
the images, of Venus and Quip
call longingly for each other.
To the two I never knew
I love you.
You have moved me beyond anything
I have ever experienced.
You have lifted me to new heights
You have cradled my passions
and stirred my soul.
Gilrael the Child 12/77

1985

The Ides of March.  Simon was wandering around campus in what had
become a routine late night quest for identity.  This had been going
on now for several weeks.  He was very excited when he started
college six months earlier, seeing it as an opportunity to begin
again with a clean slate.  There would be none of the reputations and
opinions built up and accumulated through elementary and high school.

High school life was shallow, dominated by the values he despised,
namely crass materialism and vanity.  The student body president was
a major coke dealer.  When a group of inner-city students came for a
tour of the campus, he accompanied them.  "I hear that this high
school has a major drug problem, is that true?" one of these less
fortunate students asked him.  "Drug problem?!" he replied,
incredulous.  "There's no drug problem here," he went on, "we have
very good drugs available."  He felt different than everyone around
him.

During his senior year, two students committed suicide and a third
died in a horrible car accident, in a period of just a few weeks.  He
was grief stricken and couldn't stop thinking about them.  Death was
so final.  He barely knew these fellow classmates, but they had been
in the periphery of his life for years.  Their absence left a void
Simon's life.  Most of the people around him seemed unconcerned.
Issues that bothered no one else burdened him.  He didn't want to be
looked at as a freak, so he kept these feelings to himself.

He went through high school virtually unnoticed, mostly playing by
the rules.  Other than a "minor" incident, where he was caught
breaking into the school computer (an anomaly which drove the
administrators crazy), he was a good kid.  He never cut classes, had
decent if not great grades, and very high SAT scores.  He even
received a few accolades in the process.  He had few friends,
certainly none he felt comfortable exposing himself and his
insecurities to.  He kept thinking to himself, if only I act happy
long enough, eventually it will be so.  And so he always had a happy
countenance to those who knew him, which cheered everyone but
himself.  Around those who didn't know him, Simon was anxious.  He
would fidget, as if he had something better to do than be with them.
Many people mistook his anti-social nature for arrogance.  This was
not true, but to get to know Simon was a difficult process.

Simon was very shy, timid, naive, and introverted.  He avoided
unfamiliar people and places.

Simon's repressed angst stood in marked contrast to his dominant
aspect, which was respectful, obedient, traditional, acquiescent, and
ordered.  It was most apparent in his deep interest in all manner of
gadgetry and technology.  Some of Simon's fondest childhood memories
were of taking apart telephones, cameras, televisions, and any other
discarded equipment his father provided.  His interest became a
passionate love affair when, for the first time, he walked into a
computer store in 1975.  On any other subject and he would be glum
and morose, but Simon's true nature came out when involved in any way
with computers.  He would talked excitedly and animatedly, to anyone
who would listen, about computers.  He would patiently explain their
function.  And here it would be the people he talked to who were
anxious and fidgety!

Through his entire life up to his entrance in college the ordered
part of him dominated, as indicated by his choice of major, computer
science.  He believed that this was the chance to break out that he
was looking for his whole life, and figured that by sheer virtue of
the new situation and with a little effort, his problems and
conflicts would be easily solved, if they didn't actually go away on
their own.  His only real problem, as he saw it, would be to graduate
in four years, instead of the five it normally took science majors at
UCSD.  What could possibly go wrong, he thought smugly?

The first quarter got off to a good start. He met and befriended
several people immediately, which is hard not to do in a brand new
college dormitory environment packed with people, even for someone as
shy and introverted as Simon.  Classes were interesting and not too
difficult.  He attended the on-campus parties, which were very
numerous and free-flowing with alcohol.  He threw up a few times.  He
even thought he was having a blast.

After winter vacation his doubts only increased.  The newness of
college life was beginning to wear off, and classes now became more
of a burden.  Much to his surprise and disappointment, college
started to look painfully like high school.  Until now, he was only
dimly aware of the battle raging inside him.  Simon's hidden romantic
yearnings, which were chaotic, rebellious, and spontaneous, then took
advantage of his disorientation at every turn.  He felt confused,
angry, desperate.  He was miserable, but didn't know of any
alternative.  He started exploring his newfound freedoms and desires
as an adult and felt ever more restless, searching for an outlet for
these no longer latent romantic yearnings.  There was, from deep
within, a desire to break out of his self-imposed mold, to scream a
long, low cry, to express himself in verse, to draw meaningless
images.

He saw that the people he had befriended were no different than the
people he knew in high school, shallow with very adolescent senses of
humor.  Their two biggest concerns were the stock market,
Reaganomics, and how to pick up trashy girls.  It was really three,
but that was one of their lame jokes, and they practically guffawed
every time they repeated it, which was painfully often.  Initially,
Simon was amused by their childish antics, but their dull
repetitiveness grew tiring.  In addition, they became increasingly
secretive but over small-minded issues that didn't make any sense.
They would peruse the paper for potential stocks to buy, but they
intentionally kept their research from Simon from a perceived fear
that he would somehow manipulate the market and screw up their
position.  It was laughable, but they were quite serious.  This was
the last straw.  He could handle the childish and immature stuff to a
point, but he could not handle more of the very same secretive
behavior that he had endured throughout high school, or of the
mockery he was suspicious he was being made.  In the end, he finally
saw that he had been marginalized by them and pigeonholed by everyone
else.  They were a clique of two, he was a shadow, and he wanted out,
but did not know where to turn to.

This posed a dilemma for Simon, though.  He knew he was squandering
his opportunity.  He was complacent hanging around these people, even
as he felt miserable, since they reminded him of many people he knew
in high school, which was his mistake, but he still didn't know how
to meet other kinds of people that he thought he could connect with
in a genuine and authentic way.  He put himself in a rut.  He thought
about his situation often and didn't know what to do.  Simon's
existential crisis fully manifested.


One class in particular provided Simon with a truly nauseating
experience that exacerbated his plight.  He registered for the first
part of a required two-part English composition and grammar course.

He always turned in his papers on time, though initially he didn't
put much effort into them.  The assignments certainly didn't
captivate anyone, being that the subject matter was so profoundly
uninteresting.  And worse, there were to be five assigned papers,
with each paper requiring three drafts!  That in effect meant fifteen
papers.  The first assignment was to pick an advertisement and
analyze its content and technique.

He picked out an American Express ad, thought about it while, and
wrote three pages off the cuff.  The problem was that it needed to be
at least four pages.  No problem.  Simon was one of the few people in
the entire dorm who had a computer.  A nip here, a tuck there, adjust
the margins, use a bigger typeface and voila, four pages easy!  It
was crap and everyone knew it, but it was four pages of crap.

Then Simon got sick.  It was winter, and illnesses spread rapidly in
a dorm environment.  So even for someone as healthy as Simon, that
wouldn't be so unusual.  But this was unlike any illness he ever
experienced, where he had extreme difficulty breathing and taking a
breath was like sticking a knife into his chest, and had nearly
fainted several times.  The campus health services didn't know what
to make of it and couldn't help him. It went away as suddenly as it
appeared.  Simon felt vulnerable.

As the class wore on, Simon got the hang of writing and was able to
write meaningless bullshit as good as the best of them.  His papers
were markedly better then when he started, and one of the goals of
the class was to improve everyone's writing skills.  He felt like he
was actually accomplishing something.  But the TA and Simon did not
hit it off at all.  The class was on his floor in the dorm, and he
would frequently arrive to class right out of bed, clad in his robe.
He had weekly meetings with her to discuss his progress.  After the
first draft of the third paper was handed in disaster happened.

"Come in and have a seat Simon."

He silently sat down.  Simon tended to speak only when absolutely
necessary.

She got right to the point.  "Who wrote this paper?" she asked him in
a voice that was at once soft and tender and accusatory.

"W-what do mean?" Simon was confused.  He wasn't expecting this.

"This paper, it's much better than your previous work.  Did you write
it?" she continued in the same soothing voice.

Simon was shocked.  He had never cheated before in his life.  He had
certainly never been accused of cheating before.  The veins in his
neck instantly began to pulsate wildly, his face turned red.  He
stood up in a fit of near rage and she recoiled in horror while her
hands started shaking violently.  She had miscalculated badly, she
thought, and now prepared to meet her end.

Simon screamed at her, "Of course I did!  Are you accusing me of
cheating?!"  His sharp reaction startled both of them. He then
appraised his confident voice and stature, sat right back down, and
now withdrew even further into himself, unable to speak further, and
his happy countenance (from his confidence that he was doing pretty
good) was replaced by a rather sullen look and a slouch very low in
his chair.  He was furious but also hurt, embarrassed, and flustered.
She had some nerve.  He certainly didn't deserve the accusation,
which she quickly withdrew, but things did not improve after that.
The meeting continued along as if nothing of any significance had
happened. But the damage had already been done.  The rest of the
class went downhill from there.

Two things happened.  First, the TA managed to elicit a purely
emotional response out of Simon, an exceedingly rare event.  For this
reason alone, the meeting affected Simon in a powerful way.  This
outburst was a major catalyst for the developments that followed.

Second, Simon's reaction to his outburst was not to seize the moment,
but to recoil in fear.  He withdrew even more into his own world.  He
thought, with disgust, so this is the treatment I receive after all
that work and effort.  More than that, though, he was in uncharted
emotional territory.  He had to pull back before he did something
terribly wrong.  He could not recall ever being so angry in his life.
He did not think he was even capable of such emotion.  So instead of
going further, he instantly sat down, stared down into his folded
hands, and became intensely sullen.

In the end Simon got a C, but he didn't care anymore.  No one did.
The highest grade for the class was a C+, and this from a student who
everyone else agreed deserved an A, so everyone was happy just to
pass.  Who knows, maybe she thought the whole class was involved in a
conspiracy?  Still, her ghost and the specter of the meeting hung
over him for years.

The episode with Cynthia had unhinged and unsettled him.  That
combined with his unsettling illness was exacerbated by the gnawing
sense that he was doing everything wrong.  [but he already felt this
way as described above]  The passionate, wild side of him that for
years was submerged, contained, controlled, repressed, and rejected
as not socially acceptable was gaining the upper hand.  The annoying
friends, the mysterious illness, the cheating accusation, and his
general unease all conspired to allow this unconscious chaotic and
insane yearning to break through all his carefully constructed
barriers that kept it in check.  It now exploded into his awareness
as a raw, primal yearning.  But he still did not know where to turn.

It wasn't from a lack of options.  When he started school in Sept.
84, UCSD was still one of the more backwater campuses of the UC
system.  Though all the UC schools provided a high quality education,
Berkeley, Davis, and LA basked in the reputation, while the remaining
five grabbed for the scraps of redirected students.  Thus UCSD became
a bastion of students that qualified for admission to UC, but had
lackluster performance in other ways.  For Simon, that meant being
accepted on his SAT scores alone, a strange policy that allowed many
very smart but aimless students to get accepted into the UC system,
but not into Berkeley, Davis, or LA.  They went to San Diego or Santa
Cruz mostly.

On the very floor he lived in Tioga Hall, were (besides the droll
characters referred to above) some very interesting, quirky, even
downright bizarre, people.  Paul lived next door to Simon, in fact
with Dan, who was one Simon's friends.  Dan and Paul were like oil
and water.  [Describe Paul here as contrast with Dan]

Even though Simon and Paul definitely did not share musical
interests, the two of them shared a yearning for escape and dreamed
big dreams.  Down the hall lived Kat, one of the most bizarre women
Simon has ever met, and in the other side of the building lived
Laird, one of the most bizarre men Simon has ever met.  While Simon
felt a connection to Paul as a potential friend, he was at once
attracted to and repulsed from Kat and Laird, for their actions and
beliefs could at times be shocking, but was in a sense liberating.

Simon wasn't sure why he was so attracted to these people at the same
time he was so repulsed by them.  That had more to do with Kat than
the other two.  Paul and Laird didn't care what other people thought
of them but that's where it ended.  On the other hand, for Kat that
was just the beginning.  Sometimes you would get the impression that
yes, she did care what other people thought of her actions because no
one was innately like that, right?  so it was really surprising to
learn after getting to know her over time that her opinions, thought
processes and actions were the real her, and in fact not only didn't
care about what other people thought, but was even somewhat
oblivious.

The three of them became fast friends, and months after school
started, Simon realized it was time for a change.  It was almost too
late, because he was seen as very much a shadow of these uncool
people, and a great deal of effort went into disassociating himself
from that reputation.  He tried to fit in to this new group, and
started hanging out with them.

They were extremely intelligent and much more genuine.  They were
also very accepting of Simon.  That was refreshing.  They had street
smarts and real-world experience that Simon lacked, which was
intimidating, but by this point Simon was weary and tired of being
intimidated.

[Describe Kat]

Laird was in a class by himself.  He dressed like a nerd, albeit a
well-groomed one.  He had a ruddy complexion, but his skin was pale
due to the indoor nature of his exploits.  He wore typical nerd
clothes: jeans and a button-down collared shirt (long sleeve flannel
in winter, short sleeve cotton in summer) with plastic protector in
the pocket over a plain white undershirt, one of those heavy duty
leather utility belts, the wide and thick kind with lots of holes in
it, and would often don mountain climbing boots for some unknown
reason, probably in case a mountain should suddenly spring up in the
immediate vicinity.  Other than his light skin, it was easy to
mistake him for a lumberjack.  There was only one anomaly in this
picture of nerd heaven.  Attached to the belt, always, was a very
large hunting knife, which no one ever seemed to trouble him about.
It was a vestige from his days as a white student in an Oakland
inner-city high school, where the knife was de rigeur as a necessary
addition to every wardrobe.  Here, at the rarefied ivory towers of
UCSD, it was out of place, but old habits die hard.

[have Laird obsessed with cleanliness, contrast  with Flute.  Won't
shake people's always washing etc.]

Simon was enamored of Laird from the first moment he met him.  The
next thing that piqued Simon's interest, after Laird himself, was his
prize possession, a fully functional Processor Technology Sol 20,
designed by Lee Felsenstein, proudly situated on his desk.  Not many
people knew they were looking at a real historical artifact when in
his room, but Simon did immediately and was very, very impressed.  To
Simon it really was a museum piece, and he hadn't seen one since the
mid-70's.  Laird however, used the thing with gusto.  He was the
ultimate tinkerer, a born hacker of all trades, and a natural in
front of a computer or electronic equipment.  He was the nerd
incarnate.

He was endlessly fascinating, being highly intelligent and
opinionated, and, surprising to Simon given his liberal upbringing
and bent, very conservative.  Simon argued with him constantly about
liberal canon.  However, what got Simon more than anything else what
Laird's insistence that the US actually won the Vietnam war.  He just
couldn't believe that anyone could believe that.  Wasn't it obvious?
But then Laird, ever prepared, would bring out books and cite facts
supporting his case.  When Simon pointed out the US retreat and the
current state of affairs, Laird retorted, "If the US didn't retreat,
they would still be running the show.  I said the US won the war, not
South Vietnam."  It was a subtle but very important distinction.

To say Laird was a nerd would be stating the obvious.  Laird was also
downright weird, which became very clear after knowing him a short
while.  He had covered his fridge with glossy white tack paper that
served as a dry-erase board, and there was a continuous exhibition of
poetry on it, all signed by Flute or Pegus. Every time he questioned
Laird about the poems and other strange writings, he would just grin
and avoid answering the question.  "You'll find out."  Simon was
rabidly curious about this last bit, but all that Laird, or Paul, or
Kat for that matter, would say about the poetry or the identity of
the authors, was a cryptic "you'll find out," along with some
requisite snickering by Paul and Laird, and giggling by Kat.

Things moved along slowly for a month or so.  Simon was in transition
and distancing himself from his old friends and moving closer to his
newer ones.   He took to wandering the campus at night, exploring the
plentiful nooks and crannies in a large public university, looking
for an outlet to express himself.   Dark classrooms and lecture halls
became his haunts because of the chalk boards within.  He had an urge
to find kindred spirits suffering from the same melancholy, and
scribbled very visible but very anonymous pleas.  His thoughts and
yearnings coalesced into single question, something thought up one
sleepless night, about dreamers and unfulfilled dreams, and how sad
and mournful that seemed.  It was at once a question and a battle cry
that strove to come out.  Alas, he was not the last visitor before
the morning classes rolled in, and the very late night custodians
eradicated his futile attempts at reaching out.  He was exhausting
every possible alternative.

Then one day...

The Guardian was the UCSD student paper, and as such had pretensions
to grandeur.  It looked with envy to its more prominent brethren at
Berkeley and Los Angeles, or even worse, lowly San Diego State, all
of which had dailies, while The Guardian was relegated to a
twice-weekly publication schedule.  This was an even bigger
humiliation to the staff because the paper and its predecessor, The
Triton Times, published thrice weekly from its inception until the
early eighties.  they were constantly scooped by even the lowliest
daily.  They dreamed of the big scoop or going daily.  it occupied
their every spare moment.  thus their biggest stories were really
human interest, because everyone beat them to the big scoops.  still,
they were a paper, and had to provide the news, even if it was late.

The administration was vying for research dollars, and was inexorably
moving towards a more corporate and impersonal school. The school
seemed to host more than its share of suicides.  There were always
controversial stories on their antics, like how they raised student
parking fees in the middle of the year to avoid defaulting on a loan
for construction of a medical center parking structure that none of
the students would ever be allowed to use anyway; and how they
promised that rates would be stable for another year at least.  They
weren't.  Or how they signed agreements to have large tracts of
University-owned land developed into extremely exclusive and
expensive housing.  Occasionally, they run a human interest feature
as the cover story, probably because they were too lazy to find a
scandal in its place.

On 2/11/85, they ran a story on campus graffiti in certain building
stairwells.  Normally, graffiti would not warrant any attention
whatsoever, let alone a cover article even in a college paper, except
in reference to its desired eradication, and perhaps with an
expletive thrown in for emphasis. (as in "we've got to do something
about that damned graffiti!")  But according to the article, this was
different and unusual as far as graffiti goes.  It was systematic,
and the graffitists were regular contributors, not one-time trashers.

The article piqued Simon's curiosity.  It was intriguing, talking
about conversations, poetry, art, and a
thoughtful and irreverent sense of humor, much of it inspired by
Monty Python.  Simon was fascinated by what he read.  He was
totally ignorant of the existence of the
writers and graffiti until its appearance.  Despite his exploratory
yearnings he rarely ventured outside of his well-traveled straight
and narrow path.  He wanted a more detailed explanation but
was too intimidated by what he imagined was the imposing
presence of the writers and his perception of himself as too
normal to do something so esoteric or avant-garde as to write on
walls, or even explore them on his own.  He could never write, he
decided, or even investigate about the walls.  He didn't have the
nerve, but most of all, he felt inadequate.

Yet, now that the article was out, the very idea of the walls would
not go away, and was becoming more of a temptation everyday.  So he
sought out Laird.  He seemed to him the logical choice, and he
thought there might be a connection between the wall writing and his
refrigerator.  It was always with curiosity and not a little dread
that Simon went to visit Laird.  On his way to Laird's room, Simon
noticed a new sign on the entrance to his suite:

This suite is occupied by two Preppies, four Generics, and one Laird.

He laughed, but someone in the suite in which Laird lived, pinned him
down with that one statement.  He knocked, went in, and sat on the
bed, the usual ritual in coming to pay obeisance to Laird.  it wasn't
really that, but he was eccentric about observing protocol.  He
preferred guests to enter in a certain way and sit on a particular
place on his bed.  Simon noticed the entire Guardian article already
prominently placed on the wall, which had many samples from the
stairwells interspersed with the article on the folio it occupied.

While Laird would talk to Simon about the walls in a vague and
general manner, he avoided answering any questions that dealt with
any possible relationship he had with them.  Yes, he had seen them.
He had even met some of the writers.  The writing on the
refrigerator was completely sidestepped, and he completely ignored
any attempt to turn the conversation toward it, with only an
instruction to investigate the walls.  Whatever connection that
existed between Laird's refrigerator and the walls escaped Simon, and
the whole issue seemed rather cryptic.

Laird had several motives in his curt approach to Simon's curiosity.
First, he was a very private person.  But more than that, Laird was
incredibly perceptive, and sensed Simon's angst and desire to change
and grow.  He knew that if he told Simon anything detailed about the
walls he would never investigate further himself and possibly benefit
from the experience.

Weeks went by as he agonized over what move he
should make next.  No matter how intrigued he was by the still unseen
walls and graffiti, he just couldn't overcome his inhibitions and did
whatever he could to avoid a confrontation.  Excuses flew threw his
head - "I won't fit in; I'm too stupid;
They're too bizarre."  They beckoned, and yet
still he hesitated.  It was clearly too late, though.  Simon was
hooked on the walls from the moment he knew about them.  They
had a hold on him like a plot from a Greek tragedy.

March fifteenth rolled around.  Until now, Simon was avoiding P&L,
the building with the most "active" stairwells, like the plague.
Finally, the power of the impulse
outweighed the trepidation he felt.  Instead of fighting it anymore,
Simon headed for the destination where few fellow students dared to
go, and fewer still to participate.  He walked with purpose to the
side of P&L.  At school for six months and he never set foot in the
building.  Without the knowledge of the article, he probably never
would have, either.  The nearer his proximity to P&L, the quicker his
pace became.

The bright orange door was right in front of him now.  With a twist
and a whoosh it opened, with a minimum of effort.  What Simon saw
inside made him dizzy with excitement.  The essence of the Towers was
exposed to him for the first time and he felt a rush as a chorus of
words began singing through his head.

Salubrious Salutations
to you all
Come and place your mark
Upon the wall
Listen to the inner call
We will catch you
when you fall
   Silver Rainbow

Opening the door was Simon's introduction to the bizarre and surreal
world of the peeps.  What to most people was a mere stairway to
access offices and classrooms now became an end in itself.  Simon was
overwhelmed by everything rushing him all at once.  He didn't notice
a thing, save for the massive amounts of colorful ink pulsating on
the walls that came from everywhere at once.  After the initial
euphoric effect wore off and he regained his composure, this is what
he saw.  Directly to the right of him was the stairway leading up;
looking carefully, one could make out some writing:

Didn't your mummy tell you not to write on walls?
   Blue Wraith 5/16/82

Why do we write?
Do we write to right the wrongs of our rights?
Or is it just a good excuse for not doing EE/CS homework?
   Space Moose 10/11/84

No, no.  We write to express ourselves.
ME!
There.  I feel better already.
   Cirbryn 10/14/84

About ten feet in front of him was a dead end, and immediately before
that on the right was a door, presumably accessing the stairs down to
the basement.  On the door, in large black script was written "Dis
way to da Rats' Pad."  In between, on the wall, was a carefully drawn
illustration, penned in blue ink, of two moose, one male and one
female, cavorting inside what looked like a large hangar bay in a
space ship.  In back of them were large containers prominently
labeled "TNT" and, strangely enough, "Mustard."  There was definitely
a humorous element here, but there was clearly inside information
involved that he was not privy to.  Mustard?

All thoughts deserted him as he was drawn into the Tower, and up, up,
up the stairs. His eyes were dancing wildly, trying to take in as
much as possible. He couldn't even think of anything, so amazing was
the sight to him.  Simon's first encounter with the walls was a
genuine defining event in his life.  What exactly would that be and
why did this qualify, though?  One thing he sensed (but not on a
conscious level) was the tremendous potential that was present here
to break out of the mold he had placed himself in his whole life and
even up until now in college and go off in a million tangents to
where his life was going.  Although he was admittedly dissatisfied
with his life, he actually didn't think there was an alternative that
existed that was suitable for him.  The walls came out of left field
and created new opportunities, sometimes forced, not always pleasant.

Simon was overwhelmed and speechless at what he saw.  Without any
more lost time, the decision was made.  "This is it, and I am going
to make it here," was the next thought that occurred.  For the
moment, all insecurities were swept aside.  He felt drawn in as if a
huge motor was creating a vacuum and pulling him towards the top.
Slowly he went inside, moving ever upward, taking notice of little
bits of writing here and there.  On the lower levels, the graffiti
looked random and haphazard.  There were bits and pieces of typical
street-graffiti strewn in with more deliberate, thought-out writings.
The difference was obvious.

Dave loves Sue.         Jack was here.          Wallwriting is
stupid.

The street writing usually was a line or two at most, with a
typically inane cliché as its main argumentative thrust.  Not very
intelligent at all.  By the third floor, the "tourists," as readers
or pseudo-writers are called, have tapered off, perhaps expecting
more of the same.  Whatever the reason, something far different and
prevalent is left in its place.  Directly in front of him now,
written in a large, distinctly feminine script:

i sit
pen in hand
waiting for
a break in the traffic
of poetry
a continuous stream
of emotion
what gets recorded?
what is merely
examined in passing
and left to continue
on its beautiful way?
   Tenar 3/12/85

"That was written just a few days ago!" Simon exclaimed, as he grew
more excited by the moment.  He didn't think that it would be so easy
to pick out the writings, but now he knew that not only was there
much impressive writing going on, but that the walls really were
active and alive.

Simon continued on up the stairs, feeling ever more unsteady with
each step he took.  The writing actually got denser as he ascended,
with more colors, more writing styles, and more writing in every
direction.  The humming of the fan added an urgency to his ascent.
No one-liners existed here, but solely a world of stories, poems, and
above all, conversations, with their distinct pattern of initiations
and responses, endless, starting from nothing, exploding in all
directions and then ultimately stopping just as suddenly as it
started.  The poems, stories, and artwork, unless a collaborative
effort, stood in isolated splendor in the maelstrom of ink.  After
all, what do you write to a story?  I like this.  I hate this.
Anything would simply diminish the work, irrespective of quality.

He was now on his way past the fifth floor, the last "legitimate"
floor.  After that was roof and elevator service access only.  Here
though, the writing was even more dense, becoming incredibly small,
weaving in and out of already existing pieces in an attempt to use up
every available space to fill the walls up with silent praise.  The
writing actually blended smoothly onto the floor and ceiling here;
writing would pass through the boundaries between the sections as if
they were merely a change in shading.  The ceiling was similar, but
not to the same extent.  This was the sixth floor landing, called the
living room by the peeps because of its relatively large size and
homey atmosphere.  There was a lot of room up here, enough to stretch
out or even fall asleep if the urge overtook you.

Simon was on the verge of a genuine emotional outburst, but of a much
more positive nature than the result of the cheating accusation.
There was no rage or anger this time.  Here, Simon finally let the
dizziness overtake him completely, and he started spinning madly,
letting out an occasional laugh and listening for an echo.  Finally,
while turning wildly, the walls looked as he really saw them, streaks
polychrome, no patterns, just shades blending into one another.

He continued this for a few minutes until queasiness set in, and
stopped.  For an instant the world stopped with him, and then
continued on, almost laughing at him.  An "oooh!" escaped from his
lips as he crashed on the floor, laughing like there was no tomorrow.
Finally, all was silent, except for the quiet humming of the fan, and
he got up and proceeded slowly downstairs.  There was so much
present, he didn't know where to start.

After a few moments of contemplation, he started on back down again,
just as slowly.  He thought about his message, a question rather, why
it was important to him, and where he should write it.  Without
finding a place suitable to him, he reached the entrance.  With no
place left to go he decided to write his message, which was more
desperate and urgent to him than ever before, here.  He fumbled in
his pocket for a pen, yanked it out, bit off the cap like a grenade
pin, put the tip to the wall, and with heavy breathing and his hand
shaking, started writing.  His cry, silent for so long, became fully
formed.  It was short and simple, and within no time whatsoever, it
would become a torrent.

Who mourns for dreamers?
   Simon 3/15/85

He felt an inner joy settle over him, while his heart raced, his face
flushed with giddiness and his head flowed with excitement as he put
his pen in his pocket and opened the door, ready to face the world
anew.  He stepped outside and felt a little strange.  A sense of
comfort came over him a in world where only minutes ago he never
imagined an alternative existed.  He looked longingly into the tower
and the new world he discovered.  He stepped outside and felt a
little strange then surged forward and ran back to the dorms.

Without thinking he ran to his friend Mike's room on the fourth
floor.  Mike was a friend from high school who came to UCSD as well,
and lived in the same dorm, four floors below Simon.  They could look
out their windows and wave to each other.  He knocked urgently on his
door and opened it.  Mike was there and so were all of his friends.
"I'm a pheep!  I'm a pheep!" he exclaimed, short of breath and
without thinking what he was saying or who he was saying it to.  A
"pheep," he thought, without having correctly remembered the term,
was the term used to refer to wallwriters.  The fact is, Simon just
committed a major faux paux.  "A what?!" they all chimed back in
unison.  Simon thought fast.  A sudden realization dawned that they
might not look so kindly on his surreptitious exploits of the last
few minutes.  "Uh, never mind," he mumbled.  Now he was embarrassed
and turned beet red.  They never saw though, since he left in a
flash.

Simon had no idea why he went there.  He was in an altered state and
his thought processes were short circuited.  They would always be
friends, but at the time they were going off in different directions,
and Simon didn't feel comfortable expressing his angst to Mike.  He
was adjusting well to the new surroundings, and even thriving in
their new environment.  Simon now headed up to the eighth floor,
where he lived, and where he would find a much more sympathetic
audience in Laird, Paul, and Kat.  Simon, even shorter of breath,
bolted into Laird's room, where they were all congregated.  "I'm a
pheep!  I'm a pheep!" he blurted out yet again!  Simon just committed
another faux paux.  Three bewildered stares were all that met his
excitement.

"What are you?" Flute finally managed to say.  This time Simon had
nowhere else to go to.  "You know," he stammered, "a pheep," and then
in a hushed voice, "a wallwriter."  "Oh!"  A knowing expression took
over their faces.  "Oooohhh!" all three exclaimed at once, and then
the ultimate humiliation.  Flute giggled.  She had a habit of doing
this when she felt motherly, particularly towards Simon, and it drove
him nuts.  "You mean a peep!" she offered back, along with more
giggling.

Simon was downright sheepish now, and a felt a little stupid for
messing up such a basic and simple term.  Pheep didn't even sound
right.  He only heard the term mentioned once before in passing in
his conversation with Laird and Kat about the walls, and didn't pay
close attention to it or its meaning.  So pheep sounded as good as
anything.  But he went to the right place and finally felt at home.
He recounted his story for them, but he certainly didn't have to
explain the walls.  Laird finally went into detail about the writing
on the fridge.  Flute was a wallwriter - a peep - and was sitting
right here in the room.  Simon looked around at the three faces
eagerly, even tenderly looking back at him.  "Kat?" he asked timidly,
and she replied with a wide smile.  "Pegus," Laird went on curtly,
"was another writer."  The way he said it though, Simon got the
feeling he was holding back on crucial information, but he ignored
it.  Flute had been writing since November. Many things became clear
that night.  He never connected the Guardian article hanging on the
wall, with the writing on the fridge.  Simon, ever naïve, never made
the connection that these three misfits with their strange and
evasive manner were indelibly linked to the graffiti. In hindsight of
course it fit perfectly.

"Did you sign the Roll Call?" was the next question to come out.
What was this; was some sort of attendance taken?  Not exactly.  For
as long as anyone can remember, a quarterly roster was posted which
any peep around at the time would sign.  Intriguing, and Simon almost
expected the State to allocate money to repainting the walls based on
the number of writers present at any one time.  In order to
discourage writing, they would encourage it!  It didn't quite work
that way.  The Roll Call was quite new and Simon didn't remember
seeing while there, so it was back to the walls, this time in the
company of Flute, X, and L.  He couldn't believe he would be back
already.  He tried the door and was locked!  What was going on here?!

A shudder went through his whole body as the realization hit.  What
if he had come only a little while later and found that door locked?
What would he do then?  Would he have even attempted another visit,
given his enormous reluctance to check out the walls?  He was only
too thankful that it wasn't the case, but the mere thought opened to
him a whole messy philosophical quandary.  He felt control of his
life slipping away as unforeseen and completely fortuitous events
shaped his identity and the direction he would go in.

The others were well aware of the state of affairs, but they weren't
deterred in the least.  Laird pulled out his blade, and in a quick
two-handed maneuver, with a flick of one wrist and a turn with the
other, propping the knife with one hand into the crack between the
door and the building, and pulling the handle with the other hand,
the door opened effortlessly.  "I knew this knife would come in handy
down here sometime," he snickered.  This was a revelation for Simon.
The idea that doors could be opened by some other method than the use
of keys was alien to him.  He demonstrated the move again for Simon
to take note of the nuances and subtleties involved for future use,
something he would take advantage of time and again as the years went
on, and went inside.  This time, instead of going up, they headed
straight for the door to the basement and went into the stairs
leading down.

"This is where the newest writings are," Flute had commented, and
indeed most of the writing dated from just the previous two months.
Space was short, so during Winter Break, Cirbryn painted out "Rath
Dinen."  It was a Tolkienesque term referring to "The Silent Street
below the Tower of the West," a fanciful name for the West Tower
Basement, which also referred to the stairs really, not the basement,
but in the lingo of the peeps, the names all refer to stairs, and the
buildings are mere afterthoughts.  It was a purposeful painting, with
selected writings considered to have lasting value left untouched,
while some of the conversations were considered ephemeral and subject
to periodic wipeout.  This made sense, since the conversations, while
the glue that binds the peeps together, are mostly expendable.  Many
of the things that people experience and write about have been
experienced by others before them.  There are some conversations or
running commentary that the writers deem to have lasting merit.

"No man is an island."  Who said that? Isn't it one of the most
glaringly false statements you've ever heard?  I mean, aren't we all
completely isolated within our minds?  I exist in the universe of my
perception, and no one else occupies it.  For example, I am now alone
in this stairway, even though I am communicating with you, my fellow
peeps.  Would it be different if we spoke, and saw each other's
faces?  Or would we still be isolated, just communicating a little
more information?  Because, no matter how much we share, no matter
that we have similar experiences or thoughts, we have them
separately.
   S 3/8/85

Unless of course we can come to see that we are all formed of the
same energy and thus are really of one piece.  Three dimensional
space and an over-reliance on visual and auditory stimuli have led to
an alienated society.  Perhaps I am touching your arm just by trying
to understand your printed message.  Perhaps you are disregarding the
tingling as instead a case of excema.
   Tenar (trying to make contact) 3/12/85

In the end it doesn't matter, because everything gets wiped out by
the administration eventually.  This isn't necessarily a bad thing.
It also isn't as inevitable as it once was.  Whereas the
administration was determined to quash the Family when it first
coalesced, by painting and scrubbing over and over, by the time P&L
was painted in 1980, an unspoken and unwritten understanding was
reached.  The peeps referred to this as the status-quo agreement.
They would lie low, stay in the few buildings already staked out, and
the administration would turn the other way.  P&L, which had been the
central location for the peeps since they started, hadn't been
painted in over four years, which was a break from the previous
biannual cycle that had been established.  The administration got
tired of trying to fight it, but instead of becoming part of the
process, they ignored the walls altogether, which was also
undesirable, and which forced the peeps to do their own sweeps, which
at least had the benefit of being selective when providing for new
space.

the never-ending cycle of renewal and destruction that life is, and
the walls are no less a reflection either.  A peep once commented,
after a recent introduction to the Grateful Dead (in 1989) that they
saw numerous references to the same band from 1976 onward.  It was a
humbling experience.

They weren't the first and they were certainly not going to be the
last.  The walls were the same.  Certain topics of conversation had a
way of cropping up again and again and yet again.  It made no sense
to keep them around.  Of course, this whole process was in direct
contrast to the administration's way of doing things, which had all
the subtlety of distinction of a steamroller.

At the bottom of the stairwell, written in bright, thick blue ink,
was

ROLL CALL
WINTER '85

and below it was over a dozen names, dutifully signed and dated,
announcing each peep's presence.  Flute was there, along with a small
multitude of others.  Laird pulled out a Sanford Sharpie, always the
peep's primary choice of writing instrument for its fortitude, and
handed it to Simon, beckoning him to sign in as well.  He did, and
then X took the pen and did the same.  Laird, despite his close
association with the peeps, was not a writer himself, and his
participation was chiefly as an observer.  He was the itinerant
outsider.

[two days later the suicide, he becomes more despondent than ever,
but now he has the walls to turn to]

The walls became a both a source of inspiration and intimidation to
Simon.  He was in love with the writing and the peeps behind it all,
and at the same time, felt himself lacking sorely in ability himself.
How could he measure up to these very talented individuals?  At
first, it was easier to live vicariously through the walls, and he
voraciously read everything he could whenever he went into the great
gray towers.

Simon had brought considerable undesirable baggage from elementary
school onward along with him to college.  Along with this came
tremendous guilt.  Odd as it seems, it just didn't occur to him that
this could cause problems for him.  He had to learn very painfully
about cause and effect, action and responsibility.  In short, he had
to grow up.  Once he figured that out, he saw the Towers as the way
to achieve it.  He was nothing if not persistent.  At first, many of
the peeps didn't take him seriously.  They looked at him no
differently than people did in high school, but at least here he had
a chance to be heard.

he also went through a phase that could at best be called verbal
diarrhea.  he wasn't sure what to write about, and having never
worked on writing skills before, was at a loss for words.  there was
one attempt at a poem, an endearing and sweet dedication to writing:

Ode to a Pen
Ah!  The pen!  The Pen!
What a marvelous device you are.
You have no mind of your own,
Yet what you produce is poetry
And oftentimes genius.

The pen!  The pen!
You are my outlet, my path to peace
When nobody will listen.
When I am lonely only the walls listen,
And I talk to them through you.

The pen!  The pen!
I love you!
Simon 3/18/85

He was trying to introduce and define himself, but didn't know what
was important.  he wrote what his favorite movies, TV shows, books,
and music was, and his taste was pretty tame and pedestrian.  he
wrote what he thought were cleverly crafted pithy phrases, trying to
identify his philosophical position, but what was in reality mindless
dreck.  he didn't really have a position, he never really thought
about it in depth before.  in later years he would wince whenever he
saw these old immature (gems) writings of a sheltered 18 year old,
but he figured they did help to dispel the myth that came to surround
him.  still, he was thankful as they faded over time.

this must be where shadow drew his conclusion about Simon as a dweeb,
because when they first met, he hadn't yet gone on his writing
rampage yet.  he never was able to fathom it, because shadow never
explained himself, and no one else could fathom it either, especially
as time went on and everyone else was convinced that Simon was
genuine. [move this to later]

At the same time, he began to copy down many pieces written by the
writers, mostly poems, but sometimes snippets of conversation and
stories that piqued his interest.  This became his sometime
obsession, especially after the paintout of P&L Prime and HSS in
1985.  The thought of painting out what took great effort to create
was anathema to him, but wouldn't affect him personally for a couple
of years.

Even though it became clear pretty quickly that most if not all peeps
knew each other, and that new ones, even those that sought anonymity,
would not remain strangers for long, it was still hard to imagine
peeps running into each other in the stairwells and recognizing each
other as peeps without ever having met before.  Most peeping (yes,
there was a verb form as well) was done at night and that reduced the
opportunity for chance encounters immensely.  Other than peeps, you
only had to watch out for bleary-eyed grad students intent on their
research (not very threatening), professors (which were usually
threatening if encountered late at night), and CSO's which if
wallwriting lore were taken at face value were nuisances, pains in
the ass, always threatening, and a danger to Western civilization
itself.  Some of this had to be taken seriously, minus the obvious
exaggerations, because CSO's were an official organ of the university
with certain key responsibilities granted them that interfered with
the peeps' pursuits.

It is with this background in mind that Simon had his first
encounter, that happened only two days later.  He was doing his
rounds in Heartbreak Tower, he didn't know any other existed, when he
heard the door open and two people involved in conversation enter.
His heart raced and face flushed at first. What the hell were people
doing here at this late hour, and invading his solitude, no less?
One of the entrants started a happy, tuneful whistle.  Now, he didn't
think even the most absent-minded professors, grad students, or CSO's
would resort to whistling in the staircases.  It was too immature.
Whistling was therefore also a logical signal for the peeps to adopt
to announce and make other peeps aware of their presence while just
seeming to be a happy-go-lucky undergrad amblin' through to the
uninformed, upon entering a tower.

So he laughed quietly and realized these people were probably here
for the same reason he was - to read and write - and he continued on
his way, figuring they would run into each other soon.  They weren't
Flute, X, or Laird.  Flute wasn't nearly as boisterous sounding, X
never peeped alone, and Laird not only didn't write, but he seemed to
have a sixth sense - he knew the time to go when no peeps were in the
building.

Flute didn't let on to all she knew about the walls when Simon
started two days prior to now, be she did warn, "watch out for CSO's
and Shadow"

CSO's were supposed to be the enemy, an official organ of the
university whose main job in the public's view was as an escort
service, but also locked buildings and on occasion issued parking
citations.  The walls were full of writing about the hated and feared
yellow-jackets, so named because of their day-glo jackets and
annoying manner.  Rainbow Warrior led a one-man crusade against all
of them, particularly Black Beard, who had a fondness for nabbing
peeps, back in 1981 and 1982.  He would write long, incendiary poems
and songs in his attempt to incite the peeps against the scourge of
society.  But something entirely different was going on.

Darkness.  Silence.  Suddenly, a jingling of keys.  A door opens, and
a figure approaches...yellow be the color of his cloak, black be his
beard.  The music stops...The two shadowy figures fade into the
darkness, ne'er to be seen again.  Blackbeard goes hungry for another
night!
Cirbryn and "Tim," Pursued but not deterred.
7 Feb 82 12:15AM

Hey Mr. CSO Man
Bet you can't catch me.
'Cause I been here,
but you don't know where
I'm going to.

Hey Mr. CSO Man
Now I think I see
That maybe given half a chance
you could be writing here too.
Cirbryn 12/84

Shadow and Benny, seem nice enough, take a liking to him, he wearing
all black with black cape, very animated, with hands, face, and eyes
darting all around, he would occasionally lapse into pseudo-medieval
English and third-person, she in white, his damsel, more passive and
laid back, but definitely with the understanding that she was no
trophy

To outsiders and even potential newcomers wall writing seems such an
arcane and specialized activity that the people behind it must be
bearers of untold wisdom beyond their years.  But writers are people
too.  Of course, it would be nonsense to ascribe such perfection to a
group of obviously imperfect human beings.  Overall the group was
talented, intelligent, and admirable, but still suffered from petty
jealousies and infighting.  Some were passionate beyond reasonable
control, but they were easy to forgive, for most.  Others held a
grudge so long as to mythicize the event that was its ultimate cause.
Shadow is the prototypical example here, and the one most peeps would
warn the unprepared newcomer about.

Generally a happy-go-lucky sort of guy, if an unsuspecting individual
somehow arrived on his wrong side, that was it and he was stuck there
for life.  Considering himself honor-bound to a sort of twisted
medieval code, Shadow's alter-ego Darkblade emerged to protect those
he felt wronged.  A knight-errant, tilting other peeps' suspected
windmills, was born.  The use of multiple personalities wasn't
started by Shadow, but his application of it was unique among all the
writers. [go into depth here]

The uninitiated might see this as a case of manifest schizophrenia,
but for the writers, it provided a means to explore differing
aspects, definitions, and identities of the self.  For others,
possibly misunderstood or ostracized by the Family, it meant a new
lease on life and another possibility to reach out.  Obviously, this
wasn't for everyone, especially the uncommitted writers who would
occasionally barge in on the scene, and so guaranteed that those who
made the attempt were serious about their desire to write.

Run in with a peep! It was very late, which isn't unusual.  Simon
headed right for the big orange door, ready to write.  He heard
whistling, which he took to mean that a peep was inside, and wasn't
frightened at all.  The door was of course locked, but that didn't
stop him.  Standing directly in front of him was a very friendly
looking CSO garbed in yellow-jacket splendor.  Whoops!  Something was
wrong, but Simon didn't quite know what it was.  She offered a gentle
smile, and awaited a response.  She was on to him.  "Hello," was all
he could mutter, as he sprinted up the stairs around her, looking
face down, and into the second floor of the building.  He figured he
would trick her and take the elevator down to the basement and come
up through there.

But she was wise to his ways, and when he turned around the bend in
the stairs, there she was again!  Damn, how could she know?  Simon
darted right past her again and went back to Flute's to find out what
the hell was going on.

"That was Tenar!" was Flute's reaction to Simon's debriefing.  He
described her as blonde and tall, and she was the only one
who fit the bill.  Simon was dumbstruck and a little
annoyed, because just a few days ago, Flute made a blanket statement
about CSO's, without mentioning a single exception, when now it
appeared there were many.

Simon learned that not everything was as it seemed in the towers.
Those eccentric ramblings by Rainbow Warrior were exaggerated fables,
and he was known to take himself a little too seriously.  Not only
that, but he was also a CSO!  Black Beard was a friendly CSO in those
old days, whose favorite gag was to sneak up on unwary writers and
scare the shit out of them.  After all, he had a job to do.  As it
turned out, many of the older writers were, and it all made sense.
UCSD was much different in those days, and CSO's had a quirky nature
then, unlike the paramilitary image they possess today.

Tenar was every male peep's secret fantasy.  Tall, lithe, blond,
beautiful, and so damned funny with a warped and twisted philosophy
and sense of humor that could drive you crazy.  After that first
botched meeting, Simon really wanted to meet her, and only managed to
at the end of the quarter, just before her graduation.  By the time
of their first encounter, she even had an entourage, who seemed to
accompany her everywhere, or went out of their way to give the
impression that they did.  She and her cohorts always wore black.
She had flowing black clothes, and a cape that responded seductively
to every move.

My hair is green,
my eyes are auburn.
If you're not seeing
these colors right - you haven't
taken the correct drugs.
   Tenar 2/7/85

Kachink!  Clank, clank, clink. Plunk.  The sounds of dorm life on the
weekends.  Roaming around the corridors, one would think he or she
was lost in a surreal pachinko parlor; only this wasn't Japan.
Drinking games and activities became the norm, once classes ended
Friday.  However, there was always the occasional exception.  Every
Wednesday Simon's floor had a study break, to help people to unwind
and release stress.  A different suit would have the honor of
presenting it for the remainder of the floor.  One week, one of the
rooms decided to have an audience participation game as part of the
festivities.  Mexicali was a game with a complex set of rules and
playing pieces that included dice, a skateboard, a shot glass, and
tequila and 7-Up.  People got drunk.  Bang!  Instant tradition, and
for the rest of the quarter, people congregated every Wednesday into
the same tiny dorm room to play.  Presumably, it helped people
maintain their sanity.  All Simon could see was people getting drunk
on a weekday, not good academic practice.

This time they ended up in Flute's room.  Her room was a classic
study in extreme contrast, easily in the realm of good and evil or
light and dark.  It really was that definitive.  Like Simon and X,
she had a roommate.  Unlike them, who both had their dorm rooms
arranged in classic style, with beds, desks, and wardrobes around the
perimeter of the room, leaving a large central general space, Flute
and her roommate arranged the two wardrobes to effectively divide the
room into two singles with one entrance.

It was obvious why when you entered.  Flute's side was accessed first
and all one could see anywhere, everywhere, was complete, utter,
total, chaos.  Clothes, who knew what state of repair or cleanliness
they were in, were mixed with books and papers and every other
strange doo-dad that college students, especially bizarre college
students, accumulate.  The floor, bed, and desk were virtually
invisible, and the wardrobe had a stream of unidentifiable objects
literally flowing out of it like a river.  The wardrobe was obviously
suffering from a drought, since inside it was nearly empty.  It was
difficult to tell where or how she slept or did anything, for that
matter.

Her roommate was exactly opposite in every way.  She was meticulous
and spotless to the point of obsessiveness.  Everything was in its
precisely calculated position, neatly aligned both horizontally and
vertically.  Pencils, papers, books were all clearly labeled and instantly
accessible.  Though the same could be said about Flute's side, since
there was a good chance that wherever one would reach, they were
likely to find a close approximation of the desired object, however,
one could never be sure.  The bed looked as if it could pass a
military inspection.  She had an acute sense of position.  One time
before the three peeps had gathered in that room, and since they
could barely fit on Flute's side, they all spontaneously moved to her
roommate's side.  When she returned from her weekend sojourn home,
she asked Flute if she or anyone else had been on her side.
"Something is out of place."  They tried, very hard, to restore the
room to its pristine condition, but it was to no avail.  Flute lied,
and said it must've been the wind.

One other odd result about dividing the room in two is the effect it
had on the lighting.  The normally bright fluorescent lights in the
ceiling were rendered an impotent and horrifying muted gray, making
everyone look slightly dead without the benefit of supplemental
lighting.  Flute had none.

Many weekends and study breaks later, Simon was in Flute's room, with
her, Diem, and X.  It was with such apprehension that Flute brought
them back to her
room yet once again, to brave the peril of venturing to her
roommate's side and possibly incurring her vengeful wrath.  Simon and
X were never quite sure what to make of the scene.  It must have been
Flute though.  Diem had known her since before high school and always
gave a knowing shake of her head when entering her room.  She
practiced a kind of creeping imperialism, and would have obviously
inundated the whole room, were it arranged in a more traditional
manner.

The sounds of dorm life were going through the
room, but it was mostly X doing the drinking.  Flute
could never hold alcohol, and was drunk off a half can of beer.  Diem
did not drink, and Simon just sort of went with the flow.  Of course,
X loved to drink.  Six packs, cases, it didn't matter
to him, as long as it had the requisite five percent alcohol content
or more.  So, this was another Saturday night.  Since the writers
were all outcasts of sorts, and didn't really get along with their
roommates, every time one of them would go away for the weekend, that
is the room where they would congregate.  So, this is how they came
together on this night.  Eventually, the clanks, giggles, slurps, and
in fact any sound emanating from the room must have proved too much.

"Will you shut up down there," clamored the disembodied voice of
Wiglaf, in the low, throaty drawl that was his trademark.  Wiglaf lived
in the room directly above Flute's but until that moment there was no
indication that he was present.

"Wiglaf!" Simon yelled back, "What are you doing?"

"I'm getting stoned," was his dour reply.  That explained it.  The
noise was not excessive by any stretch of the imagination, Simon
figured, so his perception of external stimuli must have been
enhanced by some artificial means.  Either that, or he was listening
to music and we were interfering with that pursuit.  Both proved to
be true.  Simon's eyes were now wide open and a mischievous smile
formed on his face.  Up to this time, the most he had ever done was
get drunk, occasionally severely, but marijuana had intrigued him for
years before this moment.

Simon found that as the years went on, his attitudes about certain
things went through wide adjustments.  Drugs were perhaps the most
pronounced example of this phenomena.  From elementary school on he
was vehemently against any drug usage whatsoever.  This stemmed
partly from parents who both smoked amazing quantities of cigarettes,
and partly from school propaganda programs.  Being against it didn't
mean he didn't tolerate it, because he had been exposed to it from a
young age, but he knew it wasn't for him.  It's hard to know from
this vantage point what set off a change, or even if any specific
event did, but a likely candidate was the confirmation party in high
school, the only party he ever went to, which was his initiation into
drinking.

It was the first time he had ever been drunk, let alone imbibed of an
alcoholic beverage.  In his explorations of the house, he encountered
a room where somewhere on the order of ten people were smoking pot,
and one girl there was just staring at a lit lighter.  At the time,
Simon looked at the activity with amusement and not a little disdain,
but things change through the progression of time, often more so than
it is possible to imagine.  he became very curious, because he went
to class with these people every day, but really had no idea that
they used anything.  over time he came to believe that certain drugs
could be used in moderation with no serious or lasting effects.
Further research into the actual literature confirmed his thesis.
His attitudes about other drugs (acid, shrooms) also changed, but
more slowly, as he was exposed to them only in college, but others
like cocaine and heroin he was convinced even more of their evil
effects and never would touch them.

Trying it was on his mind for a while, but he very particular about
the setting he would try it in - the right people at the right time.
For years he waited for the right opportunity, and there were many
offers, but it never came.  It was partly the beer, and partly the
company, and partly the cool aura Simon felt Wiglaf had but now he
felt was the right time.

"Hey, you got any left?" Simon asked him.  The conversation was a
little surreal given the illegal nature of the subject matter and the
wide exposure of their voices, but no one seemed to mind.

"Sure, you want some?" he asked back.

"Yeah, I've never done it before," Simon dropped a small bombshell on
Wiglaf.

"Hey, neither have I," X chimed in.  He was keen on the moment, too.
This was a second bombshell dropped on Wiglaf in less than ten
seconds and was just too much for him.

"What?!  Never?  Both of you?" this was shocking news to Wiglaf.
Apparently, there were different ways to lead a sheltered life.  He
was practically struck dumb, but he knew exactly what to do next.
"Both of you come up here right now!"

End of conversation.  Simon and X left from Flute's room in a flash,
much to the confusion of her and Diem, who missed out on most of the
conversation.  By this time, Flute was drunk and nearly passed out on
her bed, impossible though it seemed.  Diem was sighing dreamily on
the other side of the room.  A quick "We'll be back soon" was
followed by an even quicker exit.

They sprinted up one floor and an instant later they were at Wiglaf's
room.  "What took you so long?" he stonily asked, as the intrepid
stoners walked in, without even knocking.  College life was always
very casual, especially among the peeps.  Wiglaf looked as if he just
came from a studio session for a new album, circa 1968.  The funky
clothes he wore and his long, wavy light brown hair, with a receding
hairline, gave him a roguish look that that was reminiscent of one of
Robin Hood's merry men.  Indeed, he was fond of archery and had an
impressive collection of several menacing looking bows and crossbows
strewn about his room.  But his approachable smile and friendly laugh
never failed to put you at ease.  With his wire-rimmed glasses on, he
looked like a cross between John Lennon and Jim Morrison, and had a
deep bluesy voice that yearned for expression.

They looked at each other and replied in unison, "Traffic was a
bitch."  He glared for an instant then turned away as if to imply the
answer was acceptable to him.  Then he shot back at them and started
laughing.  No doubt about it, he was stoned out of his gourd.  "You
came at the right time," he continued, "I was just about to smoke
another bowl."  Sergeant Pepper was wafting gently through the room,
and Wiggie was lounging on his bed with his prize possession, a 1963
Fender Stratocaster, strumming unamplified to the music.  His parents
helped him purchase it.  He smoothed the way for them by helpfully
informing them that "it's not just a guitar, it's an investment."  Of
course, now that he had the guitar, he tended to look at it the other
way around.

Wiglaf's room was a collage of posters, guitars, and other
psychedelic memorabilia strewn hodgepodge around the room, along with
the typical piles of books and clothes gathered into some semblance
of organization that only the owner of the items in question could
fathom.  His room was representative of the modern dorm eclectic
style.  The scene was utter perfection in Simon's eyes.  This was
exactly what he was looking for, and he was glad he waited.

He sighed as got up from his bed and out of his reverie, and motioned
them to follow him to his desk, where he pulled out a small
wood-embellished metal pipe and a plastic bag full of green stuff.
"You first," he pointed to Simon as he pulled out a small pinch of
the "green stuff" and pushed it into the pipe.  He went on to
explain, "You just put the pipe to your mouth, but don't close it
completely, so that you inhale air mixed in with the smoke, like a
carburetor, and when I light, start inhaling."  That's exactly what
he did, and Simon inhaled for a short while, noticing the hot,
burning sensation building in his lungs when the effect became
overpowering, and he coughed up a massive cloud of electric blue
smoke.  X snickered.

"Good hit!" he exclaimed, "but next time, stop just before your lungs
feel like they're going to explode, and then pull the pipe away and
inhale fresh air for just an instant afterwards.  It enhances the
high."  His instructions were right on, and Simon finished the bowl
without coughing again.

"Now it's your turn," he pointed to X.  He didn't help X at all,
except for perfunctorily loading the bowl.  X did the same thing, and
then he coughed.  Wiglaf rebuked for the snicker.  This time he
coached him, too.  Now they were all stoned.  The first thing Simon
did was laugh!  He couldn't believe the sensations he was
experiencing.  After taking the last hit, he stood there and waited
to see what would happen next.  He didn't have to wait to long as a
slow, rhythmic beat spread out from the center of his head to the
extremities of his body.  All powers of expression felt impeded as
his thoughts raced madly ahead, with his mouth not even close to
keeping up.  This is the typical experience while stoned, enhanced by
sheer virtue of the new nature of the experience.  Simon's thoughts
now, as they always would whenever he would toke up in the future,
would wildly digress from one absolutely amazing, essential, and
utterly unique philosophical insight to another.  He was putting
everyone from Plato to Nietzche to shame!  The stoner's dilemma: if
only he could retrace these same thoughts while straight and record
them for posterity.  Ultimately of course, these thoughts prove to be
a little too abstract to record and maybe pull a few too many rabbits
out of a hat to be the key to utopia that everyone is looking for.
But they sure are amazing when they are happening, almost as if by
instinct alone.  X smiled at Simon as if in complete agreement with
his unexpressed thoughts on the matter.  Pot is the most amazing
thing in the world, and they were stupendously high at the moment.
The world took on a different look and college, nay life, would never
be the same.  Another instant tradition was born.  Such are the
origins of legends.

When the digressions proved too much to bear and the music too
distracting, and Wiglaf's room just too familiar (only ten minutes
had passed) they left to search for fresher pastures, or new
sensations to fill their insatiable minds with.

"Where do you want to go now?" Simon asked.

"I don't know?  What do think?"

"Hmm, how about the Towers?" He thought peeping would be cool then.
Hell, he thought peeping anytime was cool.

X wasn't as captivated by the Towers as Simon was.  "No.  Back to the
girls?"  They both shook their heads no in agreement instantly and
laughed.  "Nah...I know, let's go to Laird's and see what he's up
to!"

"Yeah!"

This wasn't too difficult to do, so they headed right for Laird's
room, one floor down and on the opposite side of the building.  It
was natural to want to go there then.  Laird loved toys, and his
newest would be a real pleasure as well.  Sony introduced their first
portable CD player, the D-5 Discman, a few months before, and Laird
bought one of the first available, along with one of those very
trippy demonstration discs that were all the rage when CD's were
still young.  They both entered Laird's room all smiles and giggles,
not exactly saying anything.  Laird knew something was up and figured
it out quickly enough.  He was not naive.  He said nothing, but his
face lit up with a mischievous smile as he powered up his "System,"
an all-encompassing word referring to his entire collection of
electronic equipment, and placed a CD in the player.  Simon and X
looked at each other, this time a little suspiciously, as Laird said,
"Have a seat."  They both lounged on the bed, the only thing
available to sit on.

The sounds started slowly, hesitantly at first, resembling a mishmash
of moans, getting louder as time progressed.  High, low, fast, slow,
the moans evolved into voices, distinct, yet blended together, saying
one thing, "Lions."  Over and over, engineered and mixed for maximum
neural dysfunction, the effect started getting to our poor,
unsuspecting heroes as Laird turned up the volume.  They were
delirious with delight as they reached the zenith of heightened
sensation.  How much longer could this go on?  Laird was now smiling
hysterically now, which was the equivalent of laughing for the rest
of the world.  Simon and X were lying flat on the bed, both staring
off into space, as the CD went on and on.

An eternity passed, the album finally ended, and the stoners got up
to leave.  Laird thanked them for the entertainment and they went
off, for the night was yet young.  They arrived back at Flute's room,
as they promised, and told them, "Let's go peeping."  The two girls,
on opposite sides of the room, both awoke slowly from their reveries
and two quizzical gazes greeted them.  "Huh?" they replied dreamily.
They looked at them, vaguely remembered their exodus and its purpose,
thought for a moment and understood.  A peeping session is a
spontaneous occurrence implicitly understood by all present.  They
all got up and headed for P&L, where they headed up East Tower first.
Now, it must be understood that these social gatherings in the
Towers, while not in any way atypical, rarely produce new writing,
and instead provide a prime opportunity to look for new writing and
gab about the writers and the goings-on in the Towers.  For every
peep there's always a story to tell.

Of course, peeps don't stay wordless for long in the wells, and
sometimes one will wander off on his own to think and write.  Diem,
Flute, Simon, and X soon split up into four groups and, well, peeped.

Stop a moment -

Think of all the thoughts exuded on these walls.  A fragmented tome -
a shattered War and Peace in twelve languages written by a genius
lunatic, with attacks of triteness, pretentiousness, and inanity.
Brilliant humor and contagious melancholy expressed in a fugue of
symbols by twelve characters with only flat surfaces as their common
bond.  Put us in a room together and in an hour we'd separate out
into groups of two and three - or one.

We sweat words like a fevered child, and linger in the dark ward,
inhaling the warm, cloying fog.  Or we simply pay heed for lack of an
audience elsewhere.
The Pedant 3/12/85

X would write long deranged diatribes inspired by the character Alex
in A Clockwork Orange, berating all he saw as evil in society,
especially poofty, giggly, airheaded blondes named Heidi.  He was
nearly obsessed with her and her "bracelet of conquest," as he
derisively referred to it.  She dated more men than Simon (or for
that matter, X) thought possible, and wore this inane girl's
friendship bracelet, which, so he claimed, she used instead to mark
her conquests, but he also regarded her as a tease, because that is
all she ever did.  But her biggest transgression, what bothered him
most of all was that she didn't respond to his advances.

[X's piece from P&LE here if exists, else description of writing]

Although he kept abreast of the punk and progressive music scene, he
was perfectly harmless and a hell of a lot of fun, if a little
girl-crazy, and was definitely antic-directed in his activities.  He
was a sometime-peep at best, with his heart really dedicated to other
pursuits, but the Towers fit in as a nice distraction.  After
finishing his newest masterpiece, the foursome headed over to P&L
West Tower.

The two towers are quite different in character.  East is open at the
bottom, and thus is permanently accessible to all traffic 24 hours a
day.  It has a gritty, streetwise atmosphere, and a lot of tourist
traffic.  West is sealed, with a door at the bottom, and consequently
the only traffic at night, which is prime time for both tourists and
peeps, is peeps, because they are the only ones who know how to get
in then.  This tower, except for the very top, is sparser than east,
but also much cleaner and aesthetically pleasing, in Simon's eyes.
Simon has a particular fondness for West Tower, since that is the
first tower he found, and associates many of his fondest memories
with it.

At the top of West, as they were looking for new or unread pieces, of
which there were many because of the sheer density of writings here,
they heard a loud popping sound, and then the lights went out.  Of
all the luck!  To be caught in a completely dark tower, at the top,
mind you, stoned out of your mind, with two squeamish girls is simply
not a pleasant thought by any stretch of the imagination, and the
peeps were well endowed in that regard.

"OH SHIT!"

This was proving to be a surprisingly eventful night, Simon thought.
Flute was the first to react and announced she was scared.  Simon and
X gathered her with Diem, slinked slowly to the railing, and headed
down by following the railing all the way down and around to the
bottom.  It was very straightforward, but words cannot describe the
utter horror felt as even the ever present humming of the fans
silenced and a living, stalking, breathing darkness enveloped
everything within its midst and sought to swallow the unwelcome
invaders whole and spit them out in a thousand pieces.  They exited
safely of course, and took a fast tour of the campus to surmise the
extent of the outage, and it was soon apparent that the entire campus
was out, a strange and incredibly rare event, about as much as the
university shutting down for a day.  But there they were, with none
of the normal streetlamp illumination, and all buildings dark, a
looter's dream.  The only thing visible were the beams of hundreds of
dorm residents playing flashlight wars outside.  It soon ended with a
collectively uttered "Awww!" from half the campus obviously
disappointed with the inevitable return to order.

The very next night was the first peep party of the year, and the
first major one years.  Shadow and Benny bravely volunteered to act
as hosts, though truth be known that theirs was a house that could
see no worse, homey though it was.  The elder peeps of the time were
able to round up every peep then active.  It was a strange party,
assuredly dominated by third Family in spirit, even though their rule
over the Towers was definitely over.  A kind of melancholia pervaded
the whole evening.  It was the last great hurrah for third Family.
Soon, the few remaining active members would graduate, and those left
would simply dwindle away and assimilate into post-college society.
Being there was a treat for the fourth Family.  Seeing their
antecedents interacting actively gave one a sense of this is how it
must've been when they were all freshman and new at this too.  It was
fun, and parties that were as memorable and special as that simply
did not occur with regularity.

tenar with her entourage

Gil was there.  Maybe have peeps go out for a mission.  Gil, unlike
Shadow, was a completely unimposing, if large, figure.  Maybe have
Simon ask questions about peep history, while being in awe of her
presence.  She senses this and attempts to befriend him?  Talks about
how she found walls; banquet of 1980, infamous cryptic party of 1982;
family and how it comes about.

Gil happened upon the walls for the first time after quip and Venus
and everyone else of the Family had left.  The Towers were dead, and
yet the effect on her was powerful and profound, much like with Simon
later.  The Towers were painted over for the first time a month
later.  The only thing that survived was floorwriting and Gil's first
wall piece, a response to Quip and Venus, which she recorded in her
diary.

However, the walls were too good to ignore.  Gil wasn't the only one
to have seen the walls before they were painted.  That act galvanized
other people into writing who weren't so gregarious as Gil, but liked
the walls.  Nemo?  Max?  These people brought in all their friends,
and once again, the walls took on a homey, lived-in look, and the
second Family was born.  If the first Family showed that walls were
attractive, the second Family demonstrated the Towers' viability.

all the women massaging Cirbryn (ff, fr, diem, Flute, Benny, Gil)
also, later, pedant is writing the lyrics to graveyard bound

Still, the party was, as usual, a smashing success, what with all the
strange talk and beer going around.  The hosts did have their quirks,
as hosts are wont to do.  The exhortation written on the invitation
on the walls mentioned "no drugs," which was really an overt
reference to certain peeps' obsessions with mustard, a big wall
in-joke.  The subject of mustard came up laughingly often during
third Family's tenure in the Towers.  Its origin stems from Cirbryn
and 'Tim', both of whom loved mustard to the point of eating it with
chocolate ice cream.  An entire wall was covered with writings on the
subject.  Poems and stories were written in its honor.  The
excessiveness was crazy and contagious.

Well there's mustard in the box!  That's very nice.
But how to get at the magical spice?
Just lift the lid, that's my advice.
'Cause mustards a bargain at twice the price!

Oh I think mustard's mighty fine.
You might even call it a weakness of mine.
Snort it up quick through a hollow red vine
To expand the contours of my mind.
Cirbryn 1/26/85

Yah Benny.  My own ode!  Alright!
Here's the best answer I could come up with.
Sing a song of mustard.
Cirbryn's getting high.
Benny's leaving flustered
The minds' of passers by.
They can handle spots on dishes
And socks with static cling.
But did she really get in the buff
To write the silly thing?
      Cirbryn 3/20/85

Ode to Cirbryn, on a bun, with relish.
Mustard, Aye!  'Tis gorgy stuff!
Eat it nude, or in the buff.
Mustard ciggies, mustard snuff,
I can never get enough!
Mustard, AYE 'TIS GORGY STUFF.
      Benny (in the buff) 2/9/85

I came upon a little house
I opened up the door
And what I saw inside the place -
Should I tell you more?
There stood someone with frizzle-hair
A half-elf with wide eyes
Mainlining mustard through red vines
With moans and subtle sighs.
And as I stood, it occurred to me
Cirbryn was getting high
And in the buff, sure enough
Was Benny, standing by!
It was an awful, sad, sad sight
the mustard-junkies' sin.
The saddest thing of all, of course -
They wouldn't let me in!
      Firefox 3/23/85


Obviously, it was a big joke, and all the peeps loved it!  Here was
something utterly inane and senseless to the entire world outside the
walls, and they made it sound like mustard was worshipped as a
vision-inducing mystical herb.  Yet they were serious.  Which no one
could rightly object to, of course.  It just must have been Shadow's
nature.  He and Simon never hit it off after that night.  Simon
looked at him as a self-righteous dweeb with a holier-than-thou
attitude who preached his brand of amoral hedonism as the path to
happiness, and woe to the unbelievers among him.  Shadow looked at
Simon as a young pretentious geek who did not know where he was
going, but could, given a little needed help, be moved in the right
direction.

After all these events happening in quick succession, the school year
slowly, inexorably, wound to a close.  UCSD is on the quarter system,
so by the time Spring Quarter comes around, everyone has already
taken two sets of finals, and a third set in June seems a little
batty.  Spring fever is in the air.  Simon was getting a little
frustrated with life on the walls.  He felt, and this was nothing
new, that he wasn't getting respect.  He was 18, a little childish,
and definitely naive at the time, so he was invariably an odd man
out.  He just couldn't shake the image.  Still, he decided when he
started writing that he was going to take his stand here. Although
things went well when he first met Shadow and Benny, their
relationship soured and took a nose-dive after the party.  Simon was
a pretentious geek, Shadow had concluded, and once he made up his
mind, it was impossible to change.  Flute and X, seemed much more
comfortable with themselves and the strange directions their lives
were taking.  He felt ganged up on.

There are many instances of people coming in to write and take it
quite seriously that all the same have found yet another place they
do not fit in and are not accepted by the peeps.

I feel like I am intruding
My words like a bloody gash, protruding
I do not belong in these halls
My words not worthy of these walls
I turn them back to their masters
In whose care they will remain forever after
I do not belong here
The fear of intruding brings fear
So I will return to a midday tourist
And leave these hallowed halls to the purists
Silver Rainbow

Some people accept the rejection and move on.  Others stick it out.
Some of these persevering ones do get accepted, and some just
continue to be ignored, or do outrageous acts to elicit responses.
In either case, those who stick it out may try an unusual tactic.
Multiple personalities.

[Trog, Ranger, Cosma, Simon]

Simon wanted to be a peep, but on his terms.  Still, his reaction
started as a lark, really.  Firefox had written a one line ditty on
the walls -

Dust is a terrible thing to taste.

and Simon, almost mischievously, responded -

Lust is a terribly thing to waste.

Only he wrote in blocky black as opposed to his by now habitual
haphazard blue, signed it with a thick black line, and promptly
forgot about it.  Three days later, Firefox responded.  It just went,
and grew from there.  The Black Line was totally abusive in a
righteous sort of way, in that if you were okay then that was that,
but if you messed up in the least (and who doesn't?) then you were
dog meat.  He made sure every single peep knew he was out for them.
Especially Shadow.  Hey, if one peep can be on a crusade, why not
two?  It was a crusade against crusaders for amoral hedonism!

He continued to write as Simon, but decided to pursue some new
avenues of identity with this character.  [go into digression at top
on mult personalities] He became somewhat gregarious, and most
definitely obnoxious, to the other peeps, flinging insults, and
reveling in anonymity.  No one would possibly suspect that little,
childlike Simon was capable of such nastiness and insights.  And it
worked.  First that the Black Line commanded instant respect and
acknowledgment, and second that casual confidence emerged slowly from
within Simon, eventually gaining him the respect that came so readily
(quickly?) to the Black Line.

While Simon didn't view the peeps as deviant, or wallwriting as
deviant behavior, when first told about multiple personalities, he
thought that it was worse than deviant, possibly even psychotic, and
he wondered if he was getting in over his head.  So it was with some
irony that he came to see why people pursued such tacks only after he
saw a need himself for that very same device.  However, because of
his own reaction, he knew that if he ever introduced anyone to the
walls, that was one aspect better not discussed initially.

The fact is, many peeps have adopted new wall personas, sometimes
keeping  their previous selves around, sometimes abandoning them
completely, for many different reasons.  Simon sought respect.
Shadow sought justice.  Floorwriter, in attempting a short-lived and
very obscure presence, desired, even craved, anonymity.  Cosma, who
was viewed as narrowly concerned with sex, abandoned that persona
altogether for Woodstock, who was met with refreshingly wide
acceptance.  Blue Wraith had two alter-egos for two quite different
reasons.  For a while, she received frightening death-threats
[digress] on the walls, where her trademark sign, an upside-down "U"
with eyes was vandalized to the form of a phallic symbol.  A very
disturbing trend for the peeps.  And also when the amorous
intentions of one writer proved too much, she temporarily pursued a
different tack.  The most amazing thing one would observe about these
occurrences is that they would truly seem unique people, often with
completely different writing and conversational styles, sometimes
even conversing together.

Flute almost seemed pleased when Simon revealed his secret to her the
next year, but by then the Black Line, as he came to be known, had
mellowed out, and continued to appear off and on for years to come.
The damnedest thing about the whole episode was that not only was
completely unintentional in initiation, but Simon was sure he would
stop using this new character almost immediately.  He started writing
as Simon, and dearly wanted to find acceptance as Simon, who he
viewed as the most direct expression of himself.  So the Black Line
was viewed as a game, a distraction, on the way to fulfill his
ultimate goal.  That eventually happened, but an interesting
evolution took place, where towards the end of his career as a
student, Simon wrote less and less often, and eventually was
completely usurped by the Black Line.

This did actually make sense.  Simon never really changed, apart from
growing up in the expected ways.  He still was pretty inexperienced,
and naive by the time the Black Line had begun to supplant him.  His
ways were more accommodating and less reactionary than Simon, and he
was much more diplomatic in relating to the other peeps.  Simon
always laughed at the irony of that one, especially when he dwelled
on the origins of the Black Line.

winding down of spring quarter
air band contest - rampage room with miss marianne

Although home for Simon still meant LA, he had already developed a
strange but intense fondness for San Diego.  While it seems most
people just go to school, get their degree, and go back from where
they came or go on, Simon preferred to develop roots, regardless of
where he was or how long it was for.  Many peeps, seemed to establish
roots wherever they were also.  Flute and Laird both stayed in San
Diego after that first year.  They never went back "home" except to
visit.  So he went back to LA - home, as it were.  He attended summer
school, something he hated to do, but felt necessary, bought a car,
and got a crappy, low-paying job, thus setting himself up for
destruction the following year.  Through the whole summer though, was
this longing to get back to San Diego and the walls.  He knew without
even going that the walls were more or less dead during the summer.

But he missed San Diego also.  Simon developed a strange fondness,
even love for the city, that had little to do with it, and much to do
with what he did there.  Still, he already knew that he wanted to
live there year-round.  It was practical as well.  Since he had to
support himself to a large extent, he didn't want to have to look for
a job in LA during the summer and then one in SD during the school
year.  Especially if he wanted to find something, eventually,
hopefully, please G-d, that had anything to do with computers.  Simon
tried unsuccessfully to stay in SD for that summer, going to about 50
interviews.  He never thought of movie theaters or restaurants, only
that big break.  His experience was limited, and the time was not
right, so with no job in sight, he had to go back.

The next year started innocently enough.  Simon enthusiastically
returned to San Diego after summer vacation, looking forward to a new
year and the adventures they promised. But certain signs loomed
immediately.  Once again he was living on campus, since he enjoyed
his first year so much, but this time he didn't meet anyone on campus
to turn to.  Never adept at making friends, his loneliness was
compounded when Flute decided at the last minute to live off campus.
Now Simon and Flute were not exactly close friends, but they were
soul mates of sorts, and she was one of the few people he could turn
to in time of need.  X did the sensible thing and transferred to
Santa Cruz.

Simon was expected to increase his montary contribution to his
higher education, what he refered to as parental inflation.
He still hoped for the big break, so instead of doing the
sensible thing and looking for any kind
of well-paying campus job, he attempted to leverage his ownership
of a computer and printer and started an on-campus typing service.
It seemed like an easy and lucrative way to make money.  This
was true, if you only needed snack money.
He advertised regularly in the Guardian, but most of his business
came from his dorm.  It was never enough money.  He also got the
dregs of poorly written freshman writing.  Most were incredibly
sloppy, barely legible, with many spelling and grammatical
mistakes.  But the worst nightmare was Miguel.  He was not an
immigrant and English was his first language.  His papers were
completely devoid of any capitalization or punctuation marks.
The only saving grace was that he crossed his t's.  Simon
cringed whenever he would bring him a paper to type.  He
couldn't afford to turn him away.

Wiglaf and Flute move off campus, Laird drops out and takes a
low-paying job as a computer programmer and administrator at a
start-up biotechnology firm.  They throw in an incredibly generous
options plan.

The expected new peeps weren't as forthcoming as he had predicted and
only Flute, Simon, Claudius, and occassionally Wiglaf continued.  Plus,
several Third Family peeps graduated, and most of the remaining peeps
from that year just stopped.  It really was Fourth Family in name
only; it never really achieved the status of Family.  The group
lacked a critical mass of peeps and interactions that previous
families possessed.  [FR, FF  were still around]

The walls were so great that new peeps would "pop up like maggots in
a dead goat's ear," as Pedant had so delicately put it, he thought,
but Simon was still new and not quite tuned in to the rhythm of the
walls, which becomes quite apparent as one continues writing,
especially year after year.  Fall Quarter is invariable quiet.
Writers from the previous year don't always continue, or the time is
spent adjusting to yet another year in school.  Freshmen do the same
adjusting to an even greater degree due to the newness of the
situation.  Occasionally, intrepid people encounter the walls early
on, finding it during summer orientation or through searching for
classes.  So it starts out as a trickle with a few new peeps, some
serious, some not, and then winter break starts.  Also, most new
people who start live on campus.  It's the nature of the beast, as
living in the dorms provide quick on-demand access to the walls at
all hours.  Still, in hindsight, Mandeville's origins were more acute
than would be expected.

When the new year starts and Winter Quarter is thrust upon the
school, the writing, if it is to be an active year, explodes with no
warning save the trickle at the end of the previous quarter.  Winter
quarter is the darkest time of year, with emotions volatile and
sensitive, which is the best explanation Simon could ever think of
for the periodic nature of the walls.  The writing isn't necessarily
or habitually downbeat, but it ties in nicely with the time of year.

After the rapid euphoric emotional ascent that Simon experienced in
the waning months of his freshman year, it was difficult for him to
discern just where his life was to go next.  In a way, he had lost de
facto control of his life by coming to depend in a dangerous way upon
the walls.  Simon was an introvert, not always adept at meeting new
people in unfamiliar situations, and the walls played perfectly to
that character trait.  It was easy and natural to meet people on the
walls, but only when they were forthcoming, and this was at the same
time the walls' crowning achievement and Achilles heel.  The peeps
chose the walls, not vice versa.  The thorn here was the fact that
new peeps weren't always forthcoming, and more often than not
signaled the demise of a Family.  Third Family met its ultimate end
after the 82-83 school year, though death was slow and painful, when
most current active writers simply stopped or graduated.

Behold the towers
  and the memories they echo,
Sounds of laughter half muffled
  in cotton.
Behold the Family
  only half at home here.
The river a trickle.
  What have we forgotten?

We consign our words to long ago
Fearing present obscurity
  as the chaos wells.
But there was a time
  when we sought not an audience
We wrote only
  to express ourselves.
      Cirbryn 2/5/83

Cirbryn had written those words under very similar circumstances to
Simon's current predicament.  The Third Family had disbanded, and all
that was left were the writings, and Cirbryn and Firefox.  This was
his swan song to the Family that was.  There was only one thing for a
peep to do.  Wait patiently for new blood.

Eventually, all writers move on in some way, whether it is the
tangible mark of graduation or transfer, or a symbolic event that
marks a turning point in their lives, the way that writing once did.
Yet, almost single-handedly, Cirbryn and Firefox kept the walls alive
and plodded them through what would prove to be a most desolate year.
The contrast is striking.  There is never an in between.  This is
what the walls were like when Simon returned for his sophomore year.
His life reflected this externally, as well.  Many writers had gone
and none remained that lived on campus.  There was the occasional
tourist, someone who reads the walls, and would try his hand at it,
but they were by and large uninspiring and uninspired.  Simon and
Flute were in the same position as Cirbryn and Firefox.  Fourth
family as it was extant the previous year, just didn't have the
cohesion to continue.  To top it all off, several non-active Towers
were painted over, which was unusual since they were cement and never
had been painted before.

[conversation with Flute in top of P&L over winter break.  "The
Towers are so quiet," he says despondently.  She reassures him.]

X started writing letters about the wonderful
paradise of UCSC.  The student body was totally cool and hip and
the administration was much less onerous and dictatorial than
its UCSD counterpart.  He had lots of friends.  He even had a
girlfriend.  He still wrote long, deranged diatribes.  Only
now he directed his wrath not at Heidi, but at campus
fraternities, which were mushrooming in abundance.

Many of the applicants rejected from Berkeley saw UCSC as a very
attractive alternative, since it was easy to get in to, close to
the Bay Area and still provided a good education and so headed
there, along with their fraternal desires.

Flute, Simon, and Wiglaf were happy for X but sighed at their own
distress.

It was in this vein that winter quarter started, and the walls
suddenly exploded with activity.  During Winter Break, it looked as
if P&L East had been vandalized by drunken tourists.  There was
large, adolescent writing everywhere, particularly the floor.  Simon
was the first to see it and was upset by its haphazardness.  A
pattern did emerge however.  There were two distinct sets of writing,
one sloppy and immature, but the other was of a painstakingly
stylized script, done with much effort, the work of a real artist,
and written within was a yearning for expression and acceptance.
Sloppy did not come back, but the Floorwriter did, and went on to
become an integral part of the Family for all time.  The name was not
his doing, but a moniker earned from that initial night frolicking,
as it were, in the Towers, writing only on the floors.  Initially,
not choosing a name was part of his expression, to be complete and
nonexistent at the same time, and when Floorwriter became his name by
default, he sort of cringed at the association.

Floorwriter, it turned out was not a completely new presence.  His
father was a professor at UCSD, and like many such children, he
wandered about the campus often while young.  He found the walls on
one such journey as an eight year old.  Gil and co. painting and
finishing zodiac, getting high.  Hugh walks in.  More on Gil and
Floorwriter.

emergence of fool/reborn/Morgan/magic name changer, revelle gang,
Vail.

Vail wrote what was probably the longest piece ever written in a
single setting, ever.  It was extraordinarily long and written very
small in a ball-point pen.  It took a hell of a long time to read it.
It was very characteristic of someone with strong emotional needs and
a desire to blend in.

It wasn't as if scores of new writers came out of the closet and
brandished pens for the first time.  It wasn't that.  By the end of
January a very small core of hyperactive writers had emerged, and all
were experiencing similar emotional turbulence.  Actually, this would
prove to be an understatement.  It was as if this small group of
people were stranded on a life raft at sea, with gale force winds all
around them.  It was all they could do to stay afloat.  These are the
days of Mandeville West.

Then Challenger exploded.  had radio alarm set at 759 for 800 physics
class.  in bed oversleeping for physics, half-asleep not hearing
radio, then some muffled words.  challenger...unknown...possible
explosion...back to our regular program.  I bolted out of bed, turned
on the TV, and felt a sick feeling in the pit of stomach.  had to
write something, was so distraught.  Although there it would not be
possible to discern a causal link between that event and the
subsequent mania that overtook the walls, it was a definite signal of
the change of mood.

Challenger:
I mourn the loss of thee.
I now hope that
the destruction of the ship
and the death of the crew
were not in vain.
Continue the challenge.
The future of the human race itself
depends on the exploration of
Space (after all, it is the final frontier) now.

In memory,
Simon January 28, 1986

Simon was left dumbstruck by the explosion.  To him, it had all the
magnitude of JFK's assassination.  He was always an admirer of
"pushing the envelop," and he was a little dazed by it.  The wall
this short memorial was written on was blank, but he touched a nerve
among some of the more radical peeps.  Now, politics was never a
forte of the walls, because peeping has such a narrow audience, and
activism demands and needs a following, but that didn't mean they
were unaware or didn't care about what was going on.  They just used
the walls for different purposes, like the poetry and conversations
that it was well-suited for.  But opinions were expressed.

Simon's words sparked a lively debate that eventually overtook the
entire wall, and never was resolved satisfactorily in anyone's
judgment.  One of the writers ([?]) seemed to write only for this
debate, and he took a position even further than that of Simon, while
Morgan was definitely of the opinion that the striving that was under
debate was positive.

There were others, though, who seemed at best anarchic, and would
just as likely have been pleased to see the whole facade blown to
bits.

Reporter: Mr. Ghandi, what do you think of Western Civilization?
Ghandi:   I think it would be a good idea.

The Floorwriter introduced this apocryphal statement as part of his
position.  He has an interesting story to tell.

For many of the writers present, this would prove to be the most
difficult period of their lives, the only consolation being that it
was a shared experience, and no one was going through it utterly
alone.  Mandeville's West Tower was completely filled from top to
bottom with the prose of peeps on the brink.  Eventually, it would
prove to be the most legendary of the towers, most likely for its
dark and foreboding nature, which it really acquired after the year
was done.

Simon, plumbed the depths of his soul.  The initial giddiness from
starting anew at college had worn off, well before the first year
ended, and intense loneliness overtook him.  he found solace in no
one, and could not identify with anyone.  there was an explosion of
activity, but for some reason he never connected with a single person
in any lasting way.  He was also starting to ask basic questions that
he never really thought about before.  It was profoundly disturbing
to him and many other people when a very talented student musician
became a Hare Krishna overnight, and gave up his music and
possessions and hair to the organization.  people kept saying to each
other it was only a phase, something which became harder to believe
and more unlikely with each passing day.

Perhaps as a reflection of the utter despondency and depression of
the writers as a group, the walls transformed from the sleepy
quiet backwater of fall quarter to a super-manic writing frenzy in
winter quarter.  The atmosphere was moody and despondent, over-taken
by an all-pervasive melancholia.  The further the peeps descended,
the more introspective, thoughtful, contemplative, and downright
better their writing became.  They were searching for meaning, trying
to understand how the negative effects of their actions could be so
wildly amplified.  Even seemingly happy or uplifting events had a
subtle downside, almost ironic and cruel.  The peeps seemed nervous
or desperate at times, laughing hysterically at situations that
seemed hopelessly beyond their control.

At this time, Simon coalesced his objectives into more concrete form.
After living a life of solitude and loneliness, he desired a
connection to universal consciousness, but at first he thought it
would come right away.

this was also a unique period for the peeps, where there were several
distinct groups that emerged.  the normal family, the revelle gang,
and several anonymous stragglers that happened into the whole mess.
Always in the past, any distinct groups coalesced into a family.
unlike the typical group interactions, these three never mixed
outside the context of the walls, and almost never encountered each
other even within the Towers, which was too bad because it could have
provided Simon with some much needed companionship

Mandeville was also different in another way.  The peeps had been
around for over ten years by this time and were largely ignored by
the campus as a whole.  Once Mandeville went active though, it
immediately earned a legendary, even mythic, reputation among the
students.  A pilgrimage became a required part of student life.
There was a constant stream of tourist traffic, even though the
staircase was rarely used for its intended purpose.  It bothered the
peeps at first.  But no harm was meant.  They came to pay homage,
not to write anything, either
mundane or profound.  So they ended up providing amusement.  The
peeps loved playing games with them.  Spooking them, psyching them
out, playing tourists themselves.  The walls were special, yes, but
they knew each other too well to take the writing that seriously!
The peeps in Mandeville might have been down on their luck, but the
writings within were uplifting, soaring even.

I love this place.  Of course I love what's written, but I also love
the smell and the music downstairs, the quiet humming when the music
stops and even the snoopy tourists.

I remember I used to associate fear with this place.  And I would run
out of the top or through the "shroom room" if I heard a door open.
I avoided this area like the plague because here I was trapped if
someone came in that main door.

Now...now I come in that main door and I hope someone is here who I
know.  When I'm writing and a stranger comes in I just look up and
say "hi!"  I'm not doing anything bad, so I won't be ashamed.  But
most of all, when I hear a door open I look to see, hoping it's one
of those peeps who I can just sit and talk to.  I don't mind if they
intrude on my solitude here (even though I love it) - I want them to
intrude.  I never want my time here to end - sometimes I wish I could
stay so long and read everything - usually the time slips by as I sit
contemplating, occasionally writing something.  I really love this
place.
   Vail 5/14/86

Spring Quarter brought a respite after the debacle of Winter Quarter.
Winter quarter he hit rock bottom, and there was nowhere to go now
but up.  Simon still felt lonely and misunderstood, but much less
pigeonholed than before and more accepted.  There were activities
of a sort, Burger Bonanzas, Ren Faire (early meeting of Gil, Tim;
mix-up - Hands Across America)

Spring quarter is always winding-down time as the days get longer and
brighter, with San Diego showing off its best weather of the year.
The writing slowed down dramatically over spring quarter.
The healing had begun and he was more
relaxed than he felt all year.  By the summer, it had petered off
to a trickle, when writers seldom venture to the walls.
Mandeville was no different in this regard than other Towers,
and it provided Simon
with valuable insight into not only how the walls work, but people as
well, who are so attuned to the changing nature of the seasons, even
when they aren't aware of it.  He vowed never to fall into that trap
and get caught so unawares, unprepared, and unwary, ever again.  It
worked for a while, but there was one other thing Simon needed to
learn, that sometimes he only learned a lesson through experiencing
it twice.

The year ended and the peeps, without exception, emerged
from their collective depression.  The time
spent in Mandeville was inwardly directed, a highly cerebral
experience, very much like a nine month bad trip that had a happy
ending.  The writers moved on, but Mandeville remained, offering a
glimpse to the extremes experienced by the human mind, the heights
of ecstasy and the depths of despair, juxtaposed.

After the end of that year (it was always "that year" after that to
all concerned) Simon once more made the trek to LA (Hell-A) collapsed
in his bed at home, and slowly emerged from his burn out.
In no time, Simon's mood turned around.

[have Simon meet with dad who insists on seeing his transcript.
Simon shows it.  In understanding, he show Simon his college
transcript.  "What're all those E's?  Why didn't you or mom
graduate?"]

He found
the first and simplest job he could, as an usher at a movie theater,
a job that paid minimum wage, but required no finesse and no more
thought than he cared to give.  The
job didn't just rejuvenate Simon, it revitalized him.  He paid off
his troublesome debts, even bought a car stereo.  He was even
meeting some pretty hip people at the theater.

The summer definitely did much good.
Simon returned to
San Diego at the end of the summer.

During the summer, Flute and Morgan were wed in a small ceremony in
Reno.  With these two figures ensconced happily in matrimony, there
really was nothing to bring the peeps down.

There was a lot of change in
the air for him back in SD as well.  His brother graduated from high
school and decided to join Simon at UCSD, something they were both
looking forward to.  The first order of business was the living
situation.  Off campus was the way to go.  He
knew after last year that he could never live on campus again (he
never did); he felt that had a large part to do with his descent,
though he couldn't quite pin it down.  Arrangements were made to live
with Wiglaf and some of his friends.  Simon made a
preliminary trip to SD with Wiglaf's friend Betsy and others
to find a place.  The goal was a five bedroom house - everyone wanted
their own room - in Mission Beach, a very hip beach area that
unfortunately was packed with very expensive two bedroom closets.  At
its southern tip was a selection of even more
expensive (grotesquely so) houses.  Mission Beach was soon off the
list and the trip proved unsuccessful if not enjoyable.  Wiglaf came
the next week by himself, decided compromise was in order, and
promptly found a respectable four bedroom townhouse in Mira Mesa,
complete with a wife-beating Indian landlord.

It wasn't much, but it was hell, as the saying goes.  But seriously,
the house was fine, and Simon (and Wiglaf too) both got singles, so
it was cool.  Mira Mesa, everybody would come to know, was somewhat
dreary.  The fastest growing area of San Diego, it was a hell of a
place, that stirred great controversy when first developed due to
lack of responsibility by the developer and lack of oversight by the
city.  It was originally a provider of cheap (in every way
imaginable) housing for military personnel stationed at Miramar NAS
(then home of Top Gun) immediately to the south.

Simon finally compromised and took a campus job.

Mandeville was history, and the writing moved to yet another
building.  HSS was painted about the same time as Mandeville, but was
only now becoming active, and not from a lack of effort on the part
of the peeps.  The previous year they would occasionally venture into
HSS' pristine whiteness and try to embellish it.  These were all very
small and easy to eliminate, but then during the summer after they
organized a commando squad, "invaded" HSS, and little evasive action
was taken on the part of the faceless administration.  It was a
success.  HSS was a much
different Tower than Mandeville.  It was a tall building, one of the
tallest on campus, with narrow wells, high ceilings, and metal
railings.  A bit impersonal, with its broad white expanse, but the
peeps were already on their way to rectifying that.

Mandeville started suffering immediately from the entropic effects of
abandonment.  It was a peculiar Tower, the only one prone to such
damage, perhaps because it housed the art and music departments in
this very avante garde university.  After all, P&L hadn't been
painted in six years, and after filling up
up, only got the occasional addenda within the framework of the
existent writings.  People in Mandeville were less considerate, for
the new contributions there were less addenda than outright
reinterpretations of wall-space.  It was sad.  The peeps who created
Mandeville could do nothing to arrest the decay that had overtaken
the place at an ever increasing rate.  They had left something
meaningful and thought provoking, that had taken time to commit to
the walls, and it would be obliterated.  While the peeps did elicit a
response with their work, it was not what they envisioned. This was
not the doing of the peeps, who had developed a concise but
all-inclusive code of conduct for their activity: think, then write;
don't obliterate or censor other's work without permission or
consensus; keep criticism constructive; use a permanent pen.

An interesting twist is that the more Mandeville decayed, the higher
its standing as a legendary Tower increased among the students
at UCSD.

Inconceivable as it may seem for a group that leans towards
pessimism, the walls took on a much lighter side, with much laughter
going on in the Towers.  Unlike Mandeville, HSS filled up with
largely joyous writing and art, celebrating life itself, in all its
myriad variations.  The Towers were flourishing.  The new peep home
in HSS was different, giving lie to the axiom that walls are walls.

Floorwriter -
I want to make love to you
while falling down a three
story garbage chute.
Crazy Cosma from the Planet Urrukku

Simon took one look at this and didn't really know how to react.
Looked at from a certain perspective, it was amusing.  It was also
the start of a major trend on the walls - Floorwriter worship.  It
was unavoidable.  Floorwriter always wrote in painstakingly elaborate
script, and many times it seems people overlooked the thoughts
contained within the writing for appearance alone.  This pained him
to no end, and he wrote about it often, for this is why he came to
the walls to begin with.

      [Floorwriter piece on his origins]

He did something then that absolutely no one knew about.  He assumed
another name and took on another personality, one that blended in
perfectly with his desire for anonymity and obscurity.  Quauraint had
messy writing, was shy and reclusive, and no one ever met him.  It
was only later, in a conversation of exchanged confidences, that
Floorwriter revealed his secret to Simon.  When he wrote, he could be
sure that people read him and responded solely because of the content
of his writing, and not the writing itself.  Still, it wasn't that
these people were completely, because they were serious about writing
too, and Cosma did eventually become a good friend of his.

But every silver lining must have its cloud.  Azorin and Poet and
incident with Metzger.  Written off as irrelevant.  Peeps always have
their thorn, who make it their personal mission to go after them,
especially since no one else will, and this infuriates them even
more.  Metzger was one mad professor.

All the peeps who had written in Mandeville were disgusted with what
was going on there.  People came in, liked what they saw, thought
they understood what was going on, and thoughtlessly obliterated the
peeps' carefully crafted efforts.  The first was the white squares,
where someone had come in one day and so callously painted white
squares, some hollow and some filled, willy-nilly over whatever was
underneath the locations that were picked.  Big squares, small ones,
it didn't matter, and nothing of any importance was spared.  Then
some cad came in and painted the entire basement floor in orange and
yellow flames.  The only saving grace in this case was that you could
see through them to the writing underneath a bit, and they were
remotely attractive.  This was only the beginning, and within a year,
Mandeville would be completely covered in multiple layers of art
projects with none of the original work visible at all.

Still, Simon was thankful and amazed that Mandeville was totally
spared of these problems while active.  It was their home then.
It was weird how suddenly it happened only after they
"abandoned" it.

The four writers decided to have a painting party and white out the
flames at the bottom, serving two purposes.  First, to get rid of the
garish thing, and second, to open up some space for writing.  Since
Crazy Cosma was interested in meeting Floorwriter, Simon informed her
of the time and date of the happening.  Flute, Morgan, and Simon were
waiting around for Floorwriter, which was nothing unusual since he
was always late, sometimes to the point of not showing up entirely,
when she rolled in, quite literally.  A mop of curly brown hair, all
giggles, laughs, and smiles, bounced in on roller-skates.  Flute and
Morgan both glared at Simon much like parents would to a child when
they bring someone home who they disapprove of.  Simon glared back,
and then told her that it was nothing unusual, that he was late, and
that nothing could be done until he arrived, since he was bringing
the painting supplies.  The four of them sat around nervously for a
little while, as if they were in an elevator, and then all of them
left.  Cosma gave Simon her address on campus.  This chick was a
Resident Advisor for the Third College Apartments.

She was eventually
able to meet up with Floorwriter through other channels.  At the same
time, she continued writing introspective poetry and prose that was
mostly ignored, and no one in hindsight could understand why.  She
wrote one highly suggestive comment to a tourist.  Just one little
double-entendre.  Nothing much, right?

Simon found it immediately.  Not that she tried to hide it at all.
Why not?  By then the peeps were famous for their efficient and
catchy innuendo from Mandeville days the year before.  Who would
think that so few words could pack so many meanings?  And so he
responded.  And she saw it and responded back.

Simon wanted to pay tribute to "The Tomz," the corridor that was the
entrance to HSS West Tower.  He happened upon it once his freshman
year before the painting, and along the south side of the twenty foot
long corridor was written in multi-colored ink, "The Tomz."  It was
reminiscent of a tomb, yes, but the precise origin of the term was a
mystery.  No matter, for it was something that was uniquely the
peeps' and he wanted to preserve that.

He obtained some small cans of oil and acrylic paints.  He spent
several hours working spontaneously, with no plans, letting the
letters flow.  He was no artist, but when he was finished he saw he
had created something the peeps would be proud of.  In front of him
was a huge mural-like sign, with whirling, wavy letters.  It stank of
paint.  Simon left for some fresh air and badly needed sleep.  When
he came back the next day, already someone had seen it.

I came in for a respite from the cold and I was smacked in the face
by the noxious fumes of fresh paint.  Then my eyes came upon this.
Thank you for your efforts.  Just one question.  What is "The Tomz?"
Nightshade?

Everything was going great, really great.  Woodstock decided to
welcome in the spring quarter with a bang.  All the peeps then
writing were right there at her place.  The Third College RA,
sponsoring illegal activities, and garnering noise complaints,
playing everything from Cat Stevens to Devo.  The party was so
euphoric, and everyone just forgave and forgot the negatives of the
last two quarters.  Metzger was ignored.  They were ready to take on
the world, and little did they know that they were really going to do
just that.

The party was on a Friday evening.  Everyone left by three am.  A
small contingent went over to the Towers, of course.  Floorwriter
started and almost finished a large mural of a surfing eyeball.  He
came back Monday morning to finish it.  It was his senior year in
high school, and he missed a lot of classes.  He had the tendency to
get caught in his work, and could be hot-headed at times.  [Out came
Metzger, who hadn't been seen since fall quarter with Azorin]

Then the arrest, the publicity, the petition.  The topic was assigned
in some composition classes.  More students were doing papers on the
walls than there were peeps.  It was ironic.

something like never could have happened in Mandeville.  Staff
members constantly ran into peeps there, but the reaction was either
to ignore it or to urge the peeps on!  nobody thought it was wrong.

No one was going to let a little thing like that bring the whole
thing down though.  The Grateful Dead were coming to town.  Or at
least as close to town as they got - Irvine.

But it did affect the peeps after all.  The writing slowed down, and
some peeps just disappeared altogether.

Floorwriter was really affected by it.  He really loved the Towers
and put tremendous effort into beautifying them, and bringing in more
people from his school to do the same.  The arrest was bad for him.
He was caught in the middle with the administration and Metzger on
one side, and the ni collective on the other. Floorwriter became more
despondent and cynical.  He tried playing the martyr, the ni's
preferred role for him.  They totally used him to further their
goals.  The petiti