Abjection Sustained

[steepholm]

I wonder why, of all diseases, cancer is the one most often characterized in terms of an alien entity, an invasive enemy one is expected to "fight"? People "beat" cancer or "lose their battle" with cancer, phrases far less often invoked with reference to, say, measles, botulism or pneumonia, even though all those conditions really are caused by alien entities, and their treatments involve massacring the little blighters by the thousand. Whereas most cancers, as I understand it, are merely our cellular selves gone haywire. Why do we (or at any rate the newspapers) turn to the language of the abject for their discussion? Is our bodies' betrayal so horrible to contemplate that we would rather think in terms of a siege than that the enemy is within the gates?

Laying these lugubrious thoughts firmly aside and turning to the Burlington Arcadia... I leave early tomorrow, and will be arriving at Logan around 7pm, so I doubt I'll be up to much socializing that night. But Friday, d.v., will find me perky, and probably pink too.