Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.63.0608020026370.19836@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.aol.com>,
Wryting-L <WRYTING-L@LISTSERV.UTORONTO.CA>, WRYTING-L@listserv.wvu.edu
Subject: Progress Report
Date: Wed, 2 Aug 2006 00:26:57 -0400 (EDT)
Progress Report My sleep has become increasingly chaotic; at this point, I last at best for two to three hours. I go through cycles with melatonin, taking more than usual in order to stop thinking, anything to stop thinking. Here in West Virginia, I work constantly; I'm afraid to stop; I don't know when I would be able to continue with any degree of security. Every image here is an image recuperated, indemnified, if only for the moment. The tunnel ceiling is a semi-oval. I worry that theory has already corroded me, that whatever I say is monstrous, useless, I dream of machines devouring body and space, transformed into pure light. I imagine the survival of light. Nothing coheres to the mind or armature of the dream which devolves into tatters. When I speak, my voice sleeps. I churn out image, sound, text, jumbled together; I tend the files the way one should tend the earth, kindly, defensively. At a deeper level there are the remnants of joy in discovery; this or that hasn't been done before, hasn't been tried before. But there really is this need to push myself to the point of collapse. Azure notes I tend to forget more; I feel literally demented as I tear into time and space. Physically I grow weaker; it's an experiment in van- ishment. Voices and lights dim, images and sounds murmur on the periphery of exhausted consciousness remembering Levinas. Immersed in death, in quiescence, I wonder if this or that text or tape will be the last before the stroke or heart attack. New and unknown symptoms are on the rise; the tinnitus has increased in intensity and this weakness is worse than usual, as are the odd headaches which flood and circulate as soon as there is the slightest stress or tension, or in the morning, or in the evening, or the bright light of day. I am carrying my body now, what remains of the I shredded in a tattered world. My lack of sleep rises as a mountain before me, behind me, veil of veil, shroud of shroud. I hunger more than ever for truth, for a narrative which comes out or doesn't along an endless cycling of paths. This is the flattening I fear, until I no longer feel fear, the absurdity of poverty, exhaustion, dropping of limbs in gullies, valleys, vales http://www.asondheim.org/diganal.jpg in readiness http://www.asondheim.org/lightning2b.mp3 corrected (violent lightning vlf radio, filtered)