Diabetes and Distance

My problem in writing about experiences with diabetes lies with my complete lack of distance from diabetes itself. The daily routines are ritual: Multiple pokings of fingers, followed by measurement of blood-sugar; fussing over what to eat; dosing measurement and injection of insulin. What else can I expect from a chronic disease? Chronic, Khronos. Time. Diabetes is a disease set to time, like music, almost like jazz, but without the slightest pleasure or enjoyment derived from listening to it. The erratic beat persists either a few short years (for those diabetics unconcerned about the forthcoming destruction sugar will wreak upon their body) or a lifetime (for those stubborn, survivalist diabetics such as myself). There is never a moment of distance. I am always aware of this condition, the way a teenaged boy seems always aware of sex. The human body and temperament (regardless of the latter's nature) function poorly together when required to maintain manual control of blood-sugar levels. I cannot escape the center of the thing itself. I cannot escape to the periphery and look in upon it as an outside observer. I cannot see it with "a stranger's eye and a stranger's severity".

McGlynn

David McGlynn's essay Hydrophobia, at the Missouri Review.

Time For a New Post

Look at this picture. It's frightening, is it not? Just in time for Halloween, too. I have a small pile of books to get rid of. Among them is Descartes, a text called Teaching Grammar in Context, and A Teacher's Guide to African American English.

Now that I have finished the Comps, I actually want to read more poetry. The flow has resumed. Studying is one of the most loathesome and malignant activities one can undertake. I rank studying just below washing dishes and just above cleaning the litterbox.

Yes, I am a weblog. But where has everyone gone? No one has updated me in nearly a month. A month! Am I to be cast aside, forgotten, abandoned like 95% of all weblogs eventually are? Is this my fate? Answer me, please! Someone.