Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.44.0201310050530.11854-100000@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.aol.com>,
"WRYTING-L : Writing and Theory across Disciplines" <WRYTING-L@LISTSERV.UTORONTO.CA>
Subject: the interview
Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2002 00:51:16 -0500 (EST)
- the interview last night i dreamed of blood again, red-brown blood drenching the dream itself, drenching everything. during the day my boss called in my co-workers, one after another, and swore them to secrecy. i lost my job, and i'm never to be told why. THE TERRIBLE SECRET. this place has a terrible secret. it's an institution that used to be an airfield. there are signs of the indigenous population in the thicket on the grounds. the administration wishes to tear down the thicket. nothing human will grow there. there is no one to trust, only the simulacrum. THE TERRIBLE SECRET gnaws at my breast. i will never rest or sleep again until i know THE TERRIBLE SECRET. i think there is chemical warfare here. there are mutations everywhere, ducks, hemiptera of various species, crawling vines in the back of the thicket. why did they burn the shelter down? in the center of the thicket, all that remains are several charred uprights. about 25 meters away, a cabbage palm, half-burned as well. the administration says nothing about this. the ground is pocked with solution holes, the limestone craggier than usual. at night i drive over to the buildings, crawl with flashlight and camera through the thicket. poisonwood sears my skin; spiders attack. the small pond on the northern side is almost out of reach. it's there, through the cattails. in the thicket i have developed a mysterious illness. even now i am feverish; there are strange welts on my arms. i develop chills late at night. i must discover THE TERRIBLE SECRET. you think to yourself, this is a text, a fabrication. you have not been here when my superior has ordered everyone to remain silent around me. i have become malignant. everywhere i walk i am accompanied by silence. but they do not follow me into the thicket, nor do they know my paths there. it is just about to happen, this revelation. i do know that, i can sense it in the atala butterflies, in the poisonwood, in the saw palmetto. i can sense it in a certain trembling of the ground itself, as if it were making room for something vast. my superior in everything will be decimated and no longer able to speak to her inferiors. the thicket will rise up, the pond become a great flood, the charred palm and wood matches igniting everything in the institution. nothing will remain but the thicket. the thicket will remain. beautiful atala butterflies with deep blue-black wings, orange bodies, the subtlety of embers... _