Message-ID: <alpine.NEB.2.00.1007220825170.16160@panix1.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.aol.com>, Wryting-L <WRYTING-L@listserv.wvu.edu>
Subject: Tomei
Date: Thu, 22 Jul 2010 08:25:32 -0400 (EDT)
Tomei sometimes a dream heralds, not the debris of the day, but the residue of the future. this afternoon i had such, discordant with my life in the narrowed interval of hours, weeks, months. my mother was in the back, by the dresser in the bedroom; she said she's 84 or 85; dressed in a maroon 1940's outfit, sleek, she seemed about 40. before this my father, in his brown bathrobe, was walking slowly through the kitchen, near the cabinets on the left - he's 96 (my mother died at 80), there were french legion- naires, in parade dress, surrounding him, emptying the cabinets, or perhaps looking into the cabinets 'already swept clean.' and i had walked down the hall to my mother, who said he was quite old, and near Tomei, or the cliffs of Tomei (pronounced toe-my), and he might have been lear, or shakespeare, and as for me, i was to flee the cliffs, the nubbed edge of the harsh sea, for that were death. and i woke, because my greatest fear is death, the thought of death terrifies and immobilizes me, i weep, out of control, i cry out, i turn to panic. and when i woke, i looked up Tomei on the net, and there were Tomeis in italy, seemingly without relevance, and less for those in madagascar. but there was a Tomei tollroad running near the sea in japan, and near tokyo and nagoya, and i followed it on the maps as it entered and left a mountain tunnel which seemed quite long. and i knew that something occurred in that tunnel, or would occur, or would have occurred, had i not already witnessed the name, that would have relevance for me. and now i am left with that, the name Tomei with no relation to the actress who was in a play by shakespeare to be sure, the name which so asserted itself as geographical, that i can only connect it to the nerve of the tollroad, and the unsupported, presupposed, event, already never happening, already lost, to me, already unaccountable.