The Alan Sondheim Mail Archive

Story, Dream, Foundation


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Framework for a story -

A group of characters, similar to rotifers, who have identical
cells, postures, gender (there is only one), appearance, etc.;
the story proceeds as the characters, drawn by differing events,
behave differently, without any change whatsoever in their
makeup, appearance, etc. The world is bent by the skein of
identity, what happens?


From a dream -

A dream last night in which Azure and I were with my father
(deceased) and brother and some other relatives (my brother's
children?) in an airport; I went to bring something back (a
drink? magazine? food?); and when I returned we began talking.
While we talked there were two moments when the sound cut out
completely, as if a speaker were disconnected; each moment
lasted at best one or two seconds; when we were audible, when
the world was audible again, I asked if the others had (not)
heard the same; they did; I had a great terror; I said we must
get out of here; we began leaving; I woke. What interruptions
occur that pass unnoticed, that come from elsewhere, or appear
to? What plots dissolve, bringing us along in their wake?



From Sappho in Loeb, translated Campbell -


' Sappho to an uneducated woman: But when you die you will lie
there, and afterwards there will never be any recollection of
you or any longing for you since you have no share in the roses
of Pieria; unseen in the house of Hades also, flown from our
midst, you will go to and fro among the shadowy corpses. '


' . . . foundation . . . small-voiced . . . '