“If you have withstood the fall of an empire you are invincible.
You know that you can survive.
You are strong, you have needed your strength and you are proud of it.
The only thing that could drag you under would be a completely different kind of fall.
Which plucks you gently.
So you fall gently and very far.
So gently that you do not make a sound as you touch the bottom.
No more sound than you would if you were to pronounce the word disappearance.”

—Genevieve Jurgensen


New Yorkers Camden Sylvia and Michael Sullivan “disappeared” on November 7th, 1997. It is presumed that their landlord, Robert Rodriguez, killed them after they asked for heat and building repairs, and perhaps for having knowledge of his iniquity.

Camden and I met at Hunter College in New York in 1992. I was expecting to see her just around the time of her disappearance. That never happened. What follows are texts that I authored in the aftermath of her departure.

Talking To Ghosts
This is a long memoir that I began the week I learned that Camden and Michael had disappeared.
I revisted the texts throughout the following five years and entered annotations along the way.

Talking To Ghosts: Five Year Anniversary
Highlights and new work compiled for a reading on the fifth-year anniversary of the disappearance of Camden and Michael.

Photo by Camden Sylvia.
Jurgensen, Genevieve. The Disappearance. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, Inc.: 1994.