Message-ID: <alpine.NEB.2.00.1312171114260.16254@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.wvu.edu>, Wryting-L <WRYTING-L@listserv.wvu.edu>
Subject: So what happened to them?
Date: Tue, 17 Dec 2013 11:16:37 -0500 (EST)
So what happened to them? They moved from the city. They moved to another downtown. They bought a place. They live there. What do they do there? They're living off capital. There aren't any jobs. They sit there. They do their own work. Friends? Sometimes people stop by, usually one at a time. He explains it as a kind of filter. Filter? A high-Q filter. Nothing really disturbs them. They stop by and leave. He says it was different in the city, low-Q. There was a lot of background. It was more active. The background now is passive. A lot of silence, gray skies. A lot of shadows. Music? He's thinking of stopping. They play by themselves for themselves. It's an odd situation. He feels he's practicing for nothing. He always thought of audience and people. He sits there with some instrument or other and plays, runs scales, things like that. For nothing. How do they survive? They have some money. They'll run through it. He doesn't really know. He's depressed. He feels he has no structure. There's no reason to do anything. There's nothing required. Good works? He feels his good works are his arts. He's losing his arts. He sees no reason to continue them. Sometimes he looks out of the window and thinks of jumping but he figures he's already jumped. That thought accompanies him. He dreams like that. Of being lost, returning nowhere. And she? He's the one writing this. She works brilliantly on arts and craftwork. She's less depressed. He would do anything for her. She practices music less. He has a hard time practicing. Neither of them really see any reason to continue. She encourages him. He wallows. He sounds awful. All of this revolves around him. He's waiting for the flood to come. He's self-absorbed and self- hating. He sits there and types this. He feels a circulation of spirits. He can't get into anyone's head. He's full of self- pity, loathing. He's lucky to be alive. He doesn't feel that way. He's a remnant. His tinnitus grows worse. He hears the world through himself. She has infinite patience and kindness. They're enduring the world? She doesn't feel that way; he does. He wants to do good acts but he's caught. The music is disappearing. He writes dead theory. He's trapped. It won't last forever. He can't speak for her. He can't write for her. He can barely write for himself. He thinks language is painful. He writes only for himself. The net is distance flesh. He takes vows of silence. He breaks them. He thinks of his addictions. They'll travel. They'll move from place to place. They'll leave things behind. They'll have disappeared before all appearance. Their words are vanquished. Their thinking is the world's murmur. The world is disappearing. At one point he thought mathematics, physics, would save him. That there are hard obdurate structures, that even though he lives in isolation, their beauty is eternal, classical. Now he thinks there are limits, that cosmology has reached the fuzzy realm of the deeply unknowable. The multiverse interrupts his sleep. Particle schemes transform into nightmares and cartoons. And she? She thinks differently, networking, family, art, skein, fabric of existence. She puts up with him. She doesn't see it that way. They're four stories up in a building fronting onto a main street. There's almost no traffic. The street is narrow. On the other side are federal offices, Homeland Security. They look into the windows of Homeland Security? They're preserved forever. They look out of the windows and move about. They look into the windows. They look into the windows of Homeland Security. The television and radio are on. The computers are on. That's what they do there. They live. This is it? This is what he writes about? This? Just this? This privilege?