Читать книгу Anatomic - Adam Dickinson - Страница 10

anatomicThe keys touch me when I type. My breath smells because othercreatures live out their ends in my mouth. Wearing a waterproofjacket perverts my immune response. My throat is sore because of aminiature life form that, when magnified, looks like a string of pearls.My neighbour’s attempt to control dandelions leads to misspellingsin my adrenal gland. In my lower intestine, E. colireproduces, makingvitamin K and assisting with undigested carbohydrates. My fat collectssignatures from one of the most profitable companies in the world.In necessary ways and toxic ways, the outside doctors the inside.This is evolutionary history and this is a metabolic response to theenergy technologies of my historical moment. Petrochemicals brandhormonal messages that course through endocrine pathways anddrive my metabolism. I wear multinational companies in my flesh.But I also wear symbiotic and parasitic relationships with countlessnonhumans who insist for their own reasons on making me human.I want to know the stories of these chemicals, metals, and organismsthat compose me. I am an event, a site within which the industrialpowers and evolutionary pressures of my time come to write. I am aspectacular and horrifying crowd. How can I read me? How can Iwrite me? I collect my blood, urine, sweat, and feces. I send them tolaboratories to determine the levels and types of chemicals andmicrobes I find. I get tested for hundreds of substances that fall underthe following groups: Phthalates, Dioxin-like chemicals, pcbs, pfcs,ocps, pahs, pbdes, hbcds, Parabens, bpa, Triclosan, additional pesti-cides, and twenty-eight heavy metals. I also tune in to the signal ofmy microbiome by swabbing various areas of my body for bacteria –hand, genitals, ear, nose, and mouth. I obtain a deep metagenomeand virome characterization of a stool sample, plus additional markergene sequencing(srrna, srrnaand its) to characterize not justthe bacteria but also the viruses, microbial eukaryotes, and fungi inmy gut. I have some initial difficulty sending this sample across theborder. I am a spectacular and horrifying assemblage. I resemble abattery. I wear uranium from well water in the Canadian Shield and––