Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.61.0411131714400.11128@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: For Iris Chang
Date: Sat, 13 Nov 2004 17:14:47 -0500 (EST)
If this were a suicide note, I would leave you my all. You would hear my voice in it, you would speak me as I have spoken to you, for the last time, and the words, the words would resonate in familiar tones uniquely my own. You would hear the silence after the speaking, and you would hear nothing else, nothing from me, but these words, over and over again. You might speak, but I would not hear. You might reach out to me, but I would not be there. I would not have known your new day, or the way you would read these lines, or even the smallest, simplest word, you might say, upon their completion. Such sadness, such anger, would not be mine, would not be of me, would not be anywhere. If this were a suicide note, you would read the lines and read between them, and even if I explained, you would look for a clue, for anything, that might give you guidance in these dark times. And I would not know what you have found, or the truth of it. I would not know your longing or your speech, or the day after the restless night, or the day after that. You would read these lines, perhaps, hearing me ever more distant, losing the accent, the intonation, the last intonation and the last accent, losing everything of me as time passed, as you passed as well. What of the next week, the next Thursday, the next Tuesday, the next 3 a.m. in the morning. What of the page and the paper, what of my tears perhaps, my despair perhaps, and my voice ever so longing as you would be longing, fading from the letters, peeled from them. You might speak, and I would not hear, and you might whisper to yourself, and I would not be beside you. You might call out my name, and I would be nowhere, and I would be nowhere and nowhere and nowhere. Perhaps you would want this note to never end, my voice to never end, but there is the passing, not of your choosing, but as if it were mine. And you would hear me, and you would not hear me. And longer, and you would not hear me. And longer, and there would be so much I would want to say, so that my voice would once again be lively and just so, just a speaking of something, perhaps, that we have seen or heard, something we have shared in common, or that our voices makes commons of us. Perhaps a sigh or even the uncanny silence of a smile, perhaps the silence still. For Iris Chang