The Alan Sondheim Mail Archive

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cancer

returning again to a writing space, blank screen, words messaged across
2000 kilometers. an occasion of cancers; it is surrounding us, killing our
friends and relatives, killing people we have known, many of them young.
suddenly, there are triple narratives coming in, triple stories of diagno-
ses, radiations, internal organs, contusions, exhausted on the brink of
death's seduction. the human condition always reduces to the same old
tired situation of wisdom come too late; the elderly are wise but organic-
ally weakened, and it is the stuff of young muscle, hormones, and force
that dominates the world. give the lie to this among elderly generals,
heads of states, murderers all. but young and broken we are with the heat
of revolt and the slaughter of innocents, and old and catastrophic we
become, sliding into inchoate silence and isolation, comprehending the
world, with no one to listen, less reason for speech. now cancer takes
away whole universes on the edge of understanding; messiahs are elderly,
silenced with truth bubbling from their tongues. everything is confused as
wealth buys power at any age. i am still, even now, surprised that it
cannot buy health, that slaughter takes rich and poor alike, that diseases
of long suffering cannot be siphoned off by technologies of the upper
classes. the world is increasingly lesioned; those who have cancer are in
the vanguard of devastation. it is our failure as a species that we have
not the time to grow wise, but only the time to kill, only the time to
die.


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the light on Burning Creek meets the reptile

spaads andlassly thrphgh my bpdy. thara ls npthlng pht-yph-ln-ma yphr-ma
mlnd. pna sacpnd: balng axqhlslta npthlngnass. :with crocodilian mind i
open my mouth. my mouth is open open. there is this open mouth. this
raptlll$n mlnd ls bl$nk. speeds.:l w$lt fpr yph wlth raptlll$n mlnd.
thara ls npthlng pn thls raptlll$n mlnd. thls raptlll$n mlnd ls bl$nk.
:: l w$lt fpr yph wlth raptlll$n mlnd. thara ls npthlng pn thls
raptlll$n mlnd. thls raptlll$n mlnd ls bl$nk.  transforms Your spaads
andlassly thrphgh my bpdy. thara ls npthlng pht-yph-ln-ma yphr-ma mlnd.
pna sacpnd: balng axqhlslta npthlngnass.  on me... Ah, get with  Reds
and Blues!lt's cphghlng, thls m$chlna, $s lf lt wara slckanad by tha
lnpht:breaking in the new machine:thls $nd th$t:and it could be
something catastrophic:and it could be something catastrophic thls $nd
th$t transforms Your lt's cphghlng, thls m$chlna, $s lf lt wara slckanad
by tha lnpht on Burning Creek... Ah, Beneath with  Levels and Blues!


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