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a selection from:
Intoxicated By My Illness
by Anatole Broyard
Part I: Intoxicated by My Illness
SO MUCH OF a writer's life consists of assumed suffering,
rhetorical suffering, that I felt something like relief, even
elation, when the doctor told me that I had cancer of the
prostate. Suddenly there was in the air a rich sense of crisis –
real crisis, yet one that also contained echoes of ideas like the
crisis of language, the crisis of literature, or of personality. It
seemed to me that my existence, whatever I thought, felt, or
did, had taken on a kind of meter, as in poetry or in taxis.
When you learn that your life is threatened, you can turn
toward this knowledge or away from it. I turned toward it. It
was not a choice but an automatic shifting of gears, a tacit
agreement between my body and my brain. I thought that
time had tapped me on the shoulder, that I had been given a
real deadline at last. It wasn't that I believed the cancer was
going to kill me, even though it had spread beyond the prostate
– it could probably be controlled, either by radiation or
hormonal manipulation. No. What struck me was the startled
awareness that one day something, whatever it might be,
was going to interrupt my leisurely progress. It sounds trite,
yet I can only say that I realized for the first time that I don't
have forever.
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