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Café chats

July 17, 2012

Santiago Ramón y Cajal, physician, scientist, artist, and writer

From Benjamin Ehrlich’s translation of Café Chats by Santiago Ramón y Cajal, in the current issue:

Glory is nothing but delayed oblivion. . . .

 ••

. . . In the effort to defend ourselves against attacking microbes and perpetuate our existence, millions of our own cells (such as glandular, blood, and phagocytic corpuscles) must be destroyed continuously. Without noticing it, without even suspecting it, we are consuming our own bodies. . . . Thus, nothing seems more natural than death, given that we kill ourselves regularly. Yet, nevertheless . . .

••

Man, it has been said, is the favorite of Providence. It would be equally right to declare that he is the darling of microbes. Beginning at birth, his trajectory proves to be a mad dash across a battlefield, where missiles rain down from the sky. . . .

••

[read more]

Filed Under: Nonfiction Tagged With: Café Chats, Santiago Ramón y Cajal


Vol. 43, No. 2

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Rosalie Moffett

Writer’s Notebook—Hysterosalpingography

Rosalie Moffett

Many of the poems I’ve been writing lately are trying to figure out how to think about the future, how to reasonably hope, and what we must be resigned to. How can you imagine the future when the present is so slippery, so ready to dissolve?

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