Impulse

WALDPORT, Ore. -- This seaside village, a pastiche of lighthouses, tidal pools, and cedar-shingled bed and breakfasts, does not look like a source for new members in a UFO cult.But Aaron Greenberg remembers the day when he and about 150 people -- one quarter of the town's population -- eagerly packed a motel hall to hear Marshall Herff Applewhite, who was called Bo at the time, lecture on the topic "UFOs -- why they are here, who they have come for, when they will leave.""There was this compulsion," Greenberg recalled of the standing-room-only crowd that attended the September 1975 lecture.

FROM WHENCE springs the creative impulse? It is a question that has puzzled poets, musicians, philosophers and artists themselves from time immemorial.On one level creativity is the process by which the self engages the world. On another it is a marker for the self's struggle to overcome early childhood pain and trauma.That, at least, is the suggestion of Barbara Young, whose dual careers as psychiatrist and photographer have led her to conclude that creativity is an innate and universal characteristic of human development that is evident in earliest infancy.

"The Sky Fisherman," by Craig Lesley. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company. 304 pages. $22.95 Sweetness isn't one of the usual ingredients of modern fiction, if only because it has become unfashionable, or, worse, it can't be appreciated by what is called (sadly enough) the modern sensibility. The genuine article is an informed innocence that exists in spite of a lot of evidence of the human condition doing its worst.It is this sweetness that one brings away from Craig Lesley's "The Sky Fisherman."

Washington. -- The Tennessee marble on the side of the Morgan bank building in lower Manhattan still bears, defiantly, scars inflicted on September 16, 1920, when a horse-drawn wagon loaded with sash weights exploded amid a lunchtime crowd. Among those blown to the pavement was Joseph P. Kennedy. He was among the fortunate. The blast, which shattered windows over a half-mile radius, killed 30 and injured more than 100.There were no arrests, or explanations. Someone probably had taken too seriously some socialist critique of capitalism, but the incident fed J.P. Morgan Jr.'s many phobias, which included: ''The Jew is always a Jew first and an American second, and the Roman Catholic, I fear, too often a papist first and an American second.

"When I was a teenager," novelist Rosellen Brown writes, "I used to think about august figures making love . . . my teacher! the president! of course, my parents!" Later she realized that the truly intimate scene, far more impossible to imagine, was not the act of sex but the act of imaginative creation. What thoughts occurred to the noisy storyteller chewing on a pencil? she wondered. What about the flirtatious poet at midnight?Daniel Halpern -- poet, writer, and editor of Ecco Press -- had similar questions.

LOS ANGELES -- The actions of O. J. Simpson reveal a man out of control, in denial, on the verge of killing himself and genuinely distraught over the death of his former wife -- even if he was responsible for it, said psychiatrists and psychologists interviewed Saturday.These experts said that Mr. Simpson's behavior on Friday -- the goodbye letter, sudden flight from arrest and aimless freeway drive -- suggests a personality that is impulsive -- one that may react instead of thinking things through.

MANASSAS, Va. -- A jury today was weighing the evidence against Lorena Bobbitt to decide if she acted deliberately and maliciously when she cut off her husband's penis with a kitchen knife last June 23, or whether she was temporarily insane.Mrs. Bobbitt's case went to the jury yesterday afternoon, and deliberations barely began before adjournment.Earlier, in closing arguments, the prosecution told jurors that Mrs. Bobbitt had acted with intent and rage when she mutilated her husband. Defense lawyers countered that she was seeking to protect herself from an abusive husband and had snapped psychologically, yielding to an "irresistible impulse."

The trial of Lorena Bobbitt has led more to low humor than serious thought, but it does raise an important and controversial legal issue: the insanity defense.After John Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity after shooting Ronald Reagan in 1981, Congress passed the Insanity Defense Reform Act, making it more difficult to use insanity as a defense in federal cases.A number of states followed suit, but in Virginia, where Lorena Bobbitt is now on trial, "irresistible impulse" is still a legitimate defense.

THE 1995 mayoral election will be a troubling one for Baltimore City in general and the African-American community in particular if the projected Democratic primary battle between incumbent Mayor Kurt Schmoke and City Council President Mary Pat Clarke actually takes place.AIn exactly two years, black voters face an election in which race loyalties will be strained, and the soul-searching has already begun. Many blacks favor Ms. Clarke but don't want to vote against a "brother," even if Mr. Schmoke emphasizes his color neutrality.

What's it like to live in a neighborhood where the sound of gunfire outpoints car horns honking? Where kids shoot other kids? Where they don't baby-sit or mow lawns to make a few bucks, they just sell crack?You wanna know what it's like? HBO gives a taste this weekend, and it's enough to make you reassess all those stereotypes about the 'hood and its inhabitants. The movie "Strapped" (premiering Saturday night at 8) takes us onto bad-news Brooklyn streets and into the heart of the projects -- where in the movie's opening scene a 12-year-old gets wasted in a stairwell by another 12-year-old who's got a petty grievance and a handy gun.That's just for starters.