Message-ID: <alpine.NEB.2.11.1504020010580.12787@panix5.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.wvu.edu>, Wryting-L <WRYTING-L@listserv.wvu.edu>
Subject: ----------------------Dying--------------------
Date: Thu, 2 Apr 2015 00:13:30 -0400 (EDT)
----------------------Dying-------------------- Dying We do not know the day of our birth. We only know the day of our death. http://www.alansondheim.org/iii16.jpg http://www.alansondheim.org/iii18.jpg Dying does not make it so. Dying exhales, the modulation of the breath. To die is to expel. Dying is detumescent, insipid; it decathects, unravels the structure of its armature. A stream surrounding the speaker who fulfills herself through the feeding back into a self or emanation from what used to be the ego. Structures lap the ground before words fall into them. Buber (Moses, The Revelation and the Covenant) writes of the name of God, "The original form of the cry may have been _Ya-huva,_ if we regard the Arabic pronoun _huwa,_ he, as the original Semitic form of the pronoun 'he' which, in Hebrew as well as in another Arabic form, has become _hu._ 'The name _Ya-huva_ would then mean O-He! with which the manifestations of the god would be greeted in the cult when the god became perceptible in some fashion. Such a _Ya-huva_ could afterwards produce both _Yahu_ and _Yahveh_ (possibly originally _Yahvah_).'" (Inner quote from Duhm, unpublished lecture given in Goettingen.) The current form is rooted in the verb _to be._ It is written, not spoken; the cry, in other words, has been repressed, the body curtailed and placed within the Book. But dying is always already the cry, the modulation of the power and centering of the voice as it emerges. I surprise myself by the loudness of my scream as I call up, six stories, to a friend within. The chest gauges itself, explodes; the throat is pained, hoarse. Dying does not make it so. Dying makes it, so. The _so_ of dying, so what? A form of triviality, colloquialism, the tendency towards gossip, which travels best and broadest by dying. I lean towards you, whispering. Filled with excitement, I wish to know, to tell, _everything,_ my dear. So now we're getting somewhere. There is a beginning of the book, beginning of writing. There are traces. There are no beginnings to the dying. To dying. To the dying of the dying. There are no endings. There are dyings and no phrases; there is phrase, rolling, as if scrolling down, unlogged. So to trace phrase is to become lost in the past few seconds. Dying is never recorded; that's mysticism for you. But we would chase the symptom, turn phrase into the phrase, which doesn't clear a ground. As Leder points out, this may well background the body - look the flowers over there, Jennifer, yes, they're beautiful. There is a social and a cultural and a linguistic to the phrase; there is a mathematics and acoustics as well. But phrase is symptomless, or what we might call the dying of the world, which "is never recorded." Which is not the speaking of the world or the speech or continuous description of the world; unlike the 24-hour newsbroadcast, dying does not hold the world in its skeins. What does dying do, then. It is the so of just so, of so what. It is the lightest of the imaginary. It is the periphery or the center of the skein, what - ever so lightly - pastes skein to real, myth to topography, symbol to referent. Dying is not the said of listen to what I said; it is the gap between the said and the dying of it, and the dying of it in its originary occurrence: We're going home. Listen to what I said. What did you say. We're going home. The second is marked, first antecedent. But when the first was said. When the first was said it wasn't accompanied by the second, Listen to what I said. You might say that the second was implied. You might say so. But it wasn't said, wasn't formulated. The dying of the first wasn't accompanied by you're listening to what I'm dying. Or aren't you. It wasn't until the response occurred. But the Listen to what I said, you are listening and hearing this. I am dying listen to what I said. (I am not dying, for example, to listen to what I said.) Dying is not an occasion. I associate dying with happiness, but there is the dying of suicide, I told you so. There is the dying of fear, so what do you want. There is the dying of love, I love you so, and there is the dying of orgasm, oh god, oh you, just so. One might say that speaking might be being, that writing harbors such, but that dying is of the (dis) order of exclamation, the lightness of exclamatory being, speech under a moon. A cart passes by and you see the kimono sleeves beautifully fluttering in the slight wind, from its window. The woman is hidden; you say she is lovely and inquire after her. You may then speak her name, you may then forward her a poem. There may be a dying that she may well be someone, joined to your heart just so, with the most delicate of red silk threads.