Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.64.0811290334540.15235@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.aol.com>, Wryting-L <WRYTING-L@listserv.wvu.edu>
Subject: My greatest fears
Date: Sat, 29 Nov 2008 03:35:10 -0500 (EST)
My greatest fears That I will die. That I will die and not be able to help Azure or others I love, that doom hangs over everything. That I will slowly lose the use of my limbs. That I will be unable to walk and will witness my body splitting off from me, signaling back, permanently and to no avail. That there will be nothing to do about this, that it will be both intolerable and inexorable. That one day I will notice my piss turning red and that will be the start of a spiral downward, one that I will see clearly. That my mind will give out and I won't be able to work with originality. That I will harbor a tumor which will be other and it will attempt to welcome me as a friend, through masquerade, fraud, and duplicity. That I will never see how anything turns out. That my work will disappear unknown and unappreciated. That the unity and philosophical force behind my work will not be evident, that it will appear as if all I did was write scattered thoughts and bad aphorisms. That the brilliant excitement of working virtually within the real and really within the virtual will never be evident as well. That I will be treated as old and out of date, that my work will always already have been seen as such. That my fears will overtake me, and I will never have a pleasant or peaceful day again. That my sight will continue to grow worse until I am blind and feeble, and cannot read or think clearly. That my tinnitus will increase until I am deaf and no longer can make my thoughts and feelings, wants and desires, empathies and givings, known to anyone. That I will know I am dying and watch the darkness seep down and drown me. That my mind and body will become a shell of the fear of dying. That I will not have the time to take pleasure in the small amount of success I am now having. That I will notice a sore that will not heal. That I will find things permanently slipping away. That forgetfulness and absent mindedness will turn into wooly and suffocating thought. That I will be seen as an object of pity or one whose talent remains unfulfilled. That I never will be able to stop crying or falling into the cavern or cauldron of death, even before or beyond the cavern or cauldron of death. That I will no longer be able to breathe. That I will no longer be able to play music or sound with the skill I now possess. That I will no longer recognize musical instruments as a source of pleasure or a source of music or sound. That I will repeat myself without knowing I am repeating myself. That I will repeat myself as if I were in prison without recompense, creativity, or originality. That I will die slowly of cancer, unable to eat, starving myself, slowly withdrawing from the gaze and concern of others. That I will not be able to stop this withdrawing. That I will die in such pain that thought itself will be cauterized. That I will go insane wondering what Azure sees, even just moments or seconds, after I am dead. That I will be forced to continually recognize the absence of spirit and the absence of care I can no longer give, well before, and up to, the moment of my death. That I cannot give my death as a gift to others. That I will go insane in any case as time approaches a limit veering ever closer no matter what I do and how I live and think. That I will be lost in remedies that never work and never will work. That my death will foretell at the last moment of consciousness the meaninglessness of my life and the life of others, no matter how much meaning appears to be shored up elsewhere, elsewise. That my thinking and my work will be treated as without worthy of consideration. That my thinking and my work will be treated as of another and older generation already receding into the past. That my thinking and work will not be thought of as current or relevant to the work and thinking of others. That I will observe myself transformed into substance, losing sentience, mumbling without response. That my limbs and thoughts will become, without my knowledge, phantom limbs and thoughts. That I will be too old to learn anything new. That my learning will be repetitive, as if it were learning something new every time, but in reality only endlessly, uselessly, repeating. That my deepest fears are always already in a state of hopeless realiza- tion. That I will die already having the fullest knowledge, not of death, but of dying, and that this knowledge is contributory towards my death through unfathomable darkness and depression. That I will be destroyed. That I will die a violent and painful death. That pain will invade my consciousness and I will beg for death. That I will never go beyond the suffering of the world. That every little thing will continue to reveal its suffering to me. That I will never see how things come out. That I will die.