[syndicate] Progress Report

[Alan Sondheim]

Progress Report

My sleep has become increasingly chaotic; at this point, I last at best
for two to three hours. I go through cycles with melatonin, taking more
than usual in order to stop thinking, anything to stop thinking. Here in
West Virginia, I work constantly; I'm afraid to stop; I don't know when I
would be able to continue with any degree of security. Every image here is
an image recuperated, indemnified, if only for the moment. The tunnel
ceiling is a semi-oval. I worry that theory has already corroded me, that
whatever I say is monstrous, useless, I dream of machines devouring body
and space, transformed into pure light. I imagine the survival of light.

Nothing coheres to the mind or armature of the dream which devolves into
tatters. When I speak, my voice sleeps. I churn out image, sound, text,
jumbled together; I tend the files the way one should tend the earth,
kindly, defensively. At a deeper level there are the remnants of joy in
discovery; this or that hasn't been done before, hasn't been tried before.

But there really is this need to push myself to the point of collapse.
Azure notes I tend to forget more; I feel literally demented as I tear
into time and space. Physically I grow weaker; it's an experiment in van-
ishment. Voices and lights dim, images and sounds murmur on the periphery
of exhausted consciousness remembering Levinas. Immersed in death, in
quiescence, I wonder if this or that text or tape will be the last before
the stroke or heart attack. New and unknown symptoms are on the rise; the
tinnitus has increased in intensity and this weakness is worse than usual,
as are the odd headaches which flood and circulate as soon as there is the
slightest stress or tension, or in the morning, or in the evening, or the
bright light of day. I am carrying my body now, what remains of the I
shredded in a tattered world. My lack of sleep rises as a mountain before
me, behind me, veil of veil, shroud of shroud. I hunger more than ever for
truth, for a narrative which comes out or doesn't along an endless cycling
of paths. This is the flattening I fear, until I no longer feel fear, the
absurdity of poverty, exhaustion, dropping of limbs in gullies, valleys,
vales


http://www.asondheim.org/diganal.jpg in readiness
http://www.asondheim.org/lightning2b.mp3 corrected
(violent lightning vlf radio, filtered)