The Impairing Curse
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Lady Knight Era
In workout classes I often think of Neal Stephenson’s The Diamond Age, in which bootleg copies of an sophisticated interactive device — A Young Lady's…
Jun 11, 2025
5
Well-ness
The chronically sick rarely get to enjoy wellness culture.
May 7, 2025
13
1
Speculation
I watched both seasons of Severance as one long domino, having been too sick when it first came out to watch TV or partake in cultural discourse.
Apr 4, 2025
8
2
Care infrastructure
Five years ago, I became the kind of ill that the medical system and our social safety nets are ill-equipped to handle; that loved ones turn away from…
Mar 6, 2025
14
2
Sweetness
Normally, the body breaks the carbohydrates you eat into glucose — from the Greek glykys (sweet) and gleukos (sweet wine).
Jan 30, 2025
9
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The Year of Doing New Things Badly
2024 was the Year of Doing New Things Badly, testing if I had regained the ability to (re)gain anything, to build proficiency, strength, skill…
Jan 15, 2025
8
Private practice
Last spring, I got COVID again tending a lover who got sick celebrating the birthday of her once lover’s lover at a raucous house party I did not even…
Jan 9, 2025
7
Death Becomes Her
Neither etiquette books nor necromancy texts cover rules for after resurrection.
Dec 30, 2024
7
2
We keep each other alive
Sit sweet-mouthed in the doctor’s office in your best ‘reliable witness’ costume, ghosts braiding your hair.
Dec 20, 2024
13
Auto-
There is built-in blame-laying in the “auto” of auto-immune, described as the immune system misrecognizing your own body as both threat and threatened.
Dec 16, 2024
11
2
The scientific passive
I am not the first to describe keeping a chronically ill body alive as playing biohacker or necromancer: a mix of prescription and over-the-counter…
Sep 27, 2024
8
1
4
Alternatif vu
The Clock Test is a common tool for testing cognitive decline in executive function (advancing planning, attention, etc) and visual spatial deficits.
Sep 19, 2024
5
2
Repair-ations
There are some things that repair on their own, or with time: a heated conflict cooling off, a sprained wrist glueing itself back together with…
Sep 11, 2024
5
1
Mourning ritual
Neither I, nor the band, made it through the launch party for Richard Laviolette’s All Wild Things Are Shy without crying.
Sep 7, 2024
3
1
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The Impairing Curse
The Impairing Curse is a long-form, serialized experiment in lyric essay, science journalism, and policy analysis, on being ill in a pandemic.
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