The Alan Sondheim Mail Archive

"smile though your heart is aching"

i realized i was beginning to die when my foot began hurting two years
ago; i was teaching at brown university, walking across the pembroke
campus, and suddenly was hobbling. second event, when we put our cat
boojum down; she had been my companion for eighteen years, and azure's for
almost ten. and third, when i noticed a flash in my left eye and went to
the opthamologists, knowing something had gone wrong. nothing ends up
reversible but early on, the body pains would have been part of a phenom-
enology of healing, not disablement. now i'm on the slope towards death
and want it like this, suicide when i can't work any longer, when i become
a burden to azure. i live in the fear of death, watching my body drop out
from under me. buddhism doesn't help in the long run and even lyotard had
a fearful cry from the heart towards the very end. the world turns dark
and second life is no cure, just diversion from failing senses, failing
health. i'm preternaturally scared to the point of disability at times and
i wonder why everyone isn't like this, how everyone else manages to get up
in the morning and life seemingly goes on productively. i can't live in
the morning; i live in fear of the curtain falling rapidly and violently,
the curtain falling on nothing, nothing whatsoever. i woke up in tears
again; http://www.alansondheim.org/ flubb pngs and find i can barely work
through these.