Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.44.0207170412030.11322-100000@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: Self-Ex
Date: Wed, 17 Jul 2002 04:12:20 -0400 (EDT)
Self-Ex A loudmouth and depressive to boot. A programming and hacking fraud knowing less than a ten year old. Absolutely no reason to believe that things are getting better. Always afraid of losing my friends. As if quantity established meaning in the world. At the age of 59, I can't get a decent university job. Avatars save nothing and hardly speak to me. Azure brings light and a small comfort into my life. Azure has been so good for me. Azure was enfolded in my arms. Believe I am a genius yet I don't know what that means. Can't imagine what she finds in me. Carry books as a security blanket. Constantly afraid of starving to death, being unable to work. Constantly feel I let her down. Couldn't stop thinking about them. Disordered of everything these memories. Don't deserve so much beauty. Don't know how they can stand me. Don't want to have anything attributed to the wrong person. Dreaming of iceflows, Inuit dreams. Ended up in the hospital with a panic attack in Miami. Every day I face my own failure, economically, artistically. Everything is flows and chance, randomness. Everywhere I live seems like a holocaust that I bring with me. Fading and evanescent avatars. Hard to accept that Azure loves me. Hold onto my work as a drowning man. Hold onto small hopes of employment like someone terminally ill. I'm writing this and sorting this to defend myself. If it reaches a point when I can no longer function, I wish to be put to death. It doesn't matter that I'm an excellent and inspiring teacher. It's as if my name meant something somewhere. Jealous of people who can take the day off happily. Jealous of the money people have when I can't afford clothes. Looking around the corner, Nikuko watching. Migraines are increasing. My relations with other women have been terrible. My relatives tolerate me at best. My sister is my father's favorite; my brother was my mother's. My work will last millennia. My worry is that I produce quantity, not quality. Nothing in my life beyond Azure, my friends, my daughter. Nothing is attributed. Police circling the neighborhood again in the middle of the night. Preparing to grade GREs and frightened out of my mind I won't pass. She has to be faced with my failures, my depressions. She tolerates me and loves me and I have no idea why. Since my mother died, my family relations have been harsher. Sleeping is a horror show. Sociable, which is the final grace. States of mind in deliberate dissolution. Stress is killing me. Stupidly add up my search engine hits day after day. Terrified of losing myself as hunger and homelessness seeps in. The other day I had to suddenly stop typing and lie down. There's never enough in my world. There's no end to it. They protect me against the rest of the world. They see no point in the work I do. They were dying. This is a sign of depression as the world melds away into horror. Today I saw tiny turtles for sale in the hot Chinatown sun. Too much television and not enough instrument practice. Took Celexa and Valium, hoping for the sleep of the dead. Turn the video camera and audio on us, stripping us naked. Violence sits on one shoulder, pain on the other. Warning lights reflected on the ceiling. Was very close to passing out. When I'm not writing, I'm ripping myself apart. Worried about driving her away. Would die for her and am trying to live for her. Writing every day is obsessive-compulsive, and guarantees nothing. Writing now after trying once again to sleep. _