as if this were a performance

[Alan Sondheim]

as if this were a performance

CATALYST >> which it is not. it is
a cyclone of performance, you have it all, there are
no images, no sound coming through, no interactive,
no audience.
nothing but the typing as if there were,
as if i were somewhere else. look, for example, out of that
window, there is nothing, but perhaps would be, at anothertime. inside my
mind i woke up this morning, terrified,
of starvation, this drives me, thinking about Sam Harri's book on
religion and rationality and terror as well, it is brilliant, but perhaps
not as brilliant as that man walkin on the roof of the church
or was it a factory, visible
from the back window here where we live, then figured
perhaps if i kill myself azure will survive, better,
then how selfish that would be, she would inherit what i have,
but then i wouldn't be around in my moody neurotic self
which is stressed to encompass death, i think, at every moment, or am
hypochondriac, perhaps that is spelled wrong, i am reason a novel by
the partner of my daughter and it is brilliant, but what can i do
in the world
nothing, i will aNSWER	 that, of no audience here, money is everything,
we would use momney against them and keep just enough for ourselves,
welived on azure's students loans last semester, just that, and soe small
extras but small, i think perhaps thirteen thousand altogether, we have
to pay back, the cost of this place, my life, is less than a cannon
or a car, less than a vacatoin or a spa,
more than a country or a village, but we have our ecological footprint
reduced as much as possible, it is recyling all the way except for
equipment which strangles me, yesterday found a book for two dollars
in german on the current state of scientific research into elctricity
at that point which was 1781, there it was waiting for me, now
there is money all around me, if i could only take it
i'd heal myself heal the world, another book, a dictionary from 1848
french into english and english into french, many words i have not known
in either language, i am working through the archives of the world
i will reach the end
i will die at that point and all the archives will die with me
and wittgenstein
azure will continue and my relatives will continue and my friends
there are some friends who are already no longer continuing
i should consider muyself lucky
the radio is on there are no problems to encounter in new jersey
heavy traffic on the westside highway those people
have cars and other vehicles, they couldn't be there
if they didn't so i read parts of orwell's
down and out in london and paris and got stuck on the image of the jew
just there just like there, a storm is heading our ay, reading zipe's
translation of grimm's fairy tales, did you read the one
about the jew in the thornbush, i remember that
somewhere along the line when i was a kid
when i wa a kid a read
a book about a cocker spaniel
the nuremburg war trials volumes 1 and 2 the mediacal trials
the fairytale about the jew in the thornbush
a magazine i got from the american foresty association
the greek and roman plays in trnaslation
i liked antigone who i proncounced, well i pronounced her name
anti-gone, as if, just wait, i'll be around after you,
i'm gone "but also' anti-gone, yes, yes, yes
i take dismal pleasure in that a piece of my work
i don't know which, aybe just a word like codework
will surivive a century from now
(now they're talking about the oscars
so that i'll drag the memory of culture family famly ciulture
beind me, in won'd be around to know or see but i have my dreams, of
course
yes yes yes i have my dreams, theywill go on until
the money goes out or i go out or the oney and i go out, not that we
'go out' together, there's no one
to go out, just realized, as if this were a performance, no images!
video! real sound! to hold on to, the demons come out to play
in my brnai, there they are, there's no other eal, these demons
and the radio and the man on the roof and a fairly silent sunday morning
in the iddle of the city snow coming it's gonig to be an oscar party
day
someone said i was raw in my job betging i have no other gifts to give
and not even that what is an encounter between teaching
and being taught and both are taught and are teaching
we don't know how to listen, hoave you evder heard that,
thank you time for questions wait
i'll get the lights on, or someone will
i don't know where to find the swithc


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