The Alan Sondheim Mail Archive

March 3, 2003


::write boulders herohero::

:my best friend
listens all the time to the radio and television, she knows what the war
is all about, i don't know what the war is all about. so i ask her and she
tells me and it's all right. we decide the only thing that would work is
some other person being president fast and we can't remember how far down
people would have to die before that person brings an end to the horror.
and i can't sleep at night now and no one i know has a job and we're
victims and we repeat the same old stories all the time and nothing takes
away the pain. this country has nothing to do with us, this is a new
country and an old assyria country. please help us and tell us what to
do.:saviorsavior:saviorhero

:you can't do anything
now, you have to know that. thinking about people dying is against the law
and our president will live forever and no one will have to vote again
which is okay because very few voted before if you remember. almost no one
voted before but those who did had to brave the weather. now we have to
brave the war under our president but that is easy because our president
tells us what we have to do. please remember there is no horror and there
will be no horror. this is a new country and an old hittite country and
our president is our servant and we are his presidents.

:thank you for your point
of view, i now can sleep easier and i know my best friend is wrong, and
thank you for making the radio and television. we know what the war is
about and she is not speaking now and she has left. it is all right and i
cannot sleep because of worry from her but i sleep soon and i will not
have to speak to her.


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February - March 2003

News at the Museum of the Essential and Beyond That:

At http://arteonline.arq.br - find (page-bottom) -

News at Digital Poetry Gallery:
Alan Sondheim & Regina Célia Pinto.

Text by Alan Sondheim; Regina was inspired to use the text with a land-
scape of her own; she created the work Ice Landscape & Tropical Landscape.

- Alan and Regina

state of mind


"the carrier is ready to leave, with thousands of americans ready for
war." (WCBS)

my friend and i think we will die in the next two months, from some as yet
unknown violence. new york is under furious regimens, the alert level
remaining high in spite of the rest of the country. almost everyone i know
is out of work. george bush rides hard with the shield of his presidency
into other countries; we have become a traditional 19th-century colonial
power overnight. i fear disappearing, the sudden knock at the door, the
brute force of anonymous men. every text i write points to my guilt in
this and every other matter. america has transformed within the hour;
there will be no next election, as the country is placed under trumped up
emergency powers. the soldiery already sides with bush; every evening,
patriotic soldiers, who have never voted anyway, appear on the evening
news. new york will have the highest building in the world, in five years,
another target, as the city continues its doomed path to armageddon. we
are certain there is nuclear material here, ready to explode. i no longer
sleep at night, instead replaying the rhetoric of massacre and slaughter i
hear daily on the radio. the government has become monolithic, the
president listening to three or four men at the most. the cadre is
inspired by god and the mission of god. the country is held captive, as we
protest, realizing only violence will end violence, only slaughter will
end slaughter. as citizens we live in confusion and anxiety, watching our
nightmares turn real. we have abandoned the community of the world, the
internet a pale reminder of what we might have been. smiling earnest
troops are filmed leaving on enormous carriers. we offer billions in aid
to countries that accept our troops, while the stock market continues to
crash here, and the number of homeless rapidly increases. the nation is
thrown off balance, all formal energy tending towards military action. it
is hard to focus as we walk in fear of domestic terrorists from above,
other terrorists from within. for the first time we live in absolute
impotency, speaking to ourselves, waiting for everything and nothing at
all. this morning i saw two flashes, then nothing. sometimes there are
sounds. the meaninglessness of the world asserts itself at every turn. we
will not have to wait much longer, we will wait forever. the cadre has the
names, and dates. the cadre is absolute, and every absolute is evil.


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