For years, we've known that not all bacteria are enemies — some are actually good for us, and belong inside us. That understanding sparked a boom in probiotics science and a multibillion dollar probiotics industry. But viruses? They still get a bad rap, despite quietly occupying our insides —and sometimes even helping us.
Not that scientists even agree on whether viruses are alive or not. There's so much we don't know, including just what they are doing in our bodies. What we do know, though, is that viruses are not, in fact, all out to get us. Not only are they not uniformly bad news for our health, but many viruses actually live with us in a symbiotic and evolutionary relationship. Viruses exist in healthy people, and some are even actively beneficial for human health. Not to mention that about 8% of our very own genome consists of ancient viral genes. So basically, viruses are in us, and are us. Although we have known a lot about a small number of heavily-studied "bad" viruses for decades, the vast diversity of these weird little guys that co-exist in humans is mostly unmapped, just waiting to be discovered and understood.
The tragedy unfolding that day shines a spotlight on an issue which, according to people working on Everest, has been ignored for far too long: the deadly risks and impossible safety dilemmas faced by Sherpas. The famous guides and porters of the Himalayas are, in the words of one Sherpa climber, often wrongly portrayed as "superhuman", as if they were untouched by altitude, effort and oxygen deprivation. But their legendary feats on Everest come at a huge sacrifice, as growing research, and interviews with climbers, doctors and officials, reveal.
So what exactly happened on 22 May 2024 — and what does it reveal about the bigger struggles over Sherpa health and welfare?
It’s morning, so I’m making coffee, which means forgetting to put in coffee grounds, forgetting to add water, or forgetting to turn on the hob. I talk myself through it. Today: success. Maybe there’s actually nothing wrong.
Dawn chorus clucks from our rescue hens squawk out the next reminder of the day. My senses, increasingly, are a memory-crutch. Sound, particularly. Smell helps, too. Which reminds me – have I turned the stove off? (The toxic fumes of a melting lunchbox alerted me yesterday that I had not.)
It’s 11:15 p.m. on a Monday. 30 Rock is on the TV, there’s a crushed can of seltzer on the coffee table, and I'm experiencing one of life’s great joys: hammering bowl after delicious bowl of Special K Red Berries.
Chronicle of Drifting enacts a surrealist crossroads, with lexicons spanning the natural, the bodily, the alchemical, and the oracular. The myriad sources of perception belie a mind in flux, embodying a desire to reimagine the mortal veil as more capacious and mutable than it currently seems. In this way, the poems move beyond the ornamentation of songs to the hard work of channeling grief in motion. As Tanaka forges through the uncanny waters of imagination, he reckons with what it means to wander the earth while longing for a less contingent existence.