BLOOD AND LIGHT

1 2 Y B L O O D A N D L I G H T K A R L K I R C H W E Y Photopheresis involves the removal of blood from the body and separation of its component parts. Red blood cells are returned to the body; white blood cells are treated with a photosensitizing substance and then irradiated with light prior to their return to the body, where they will convey to other cells the memory of a programmed rather than a traumatic cell death. One use of photopheresis is in treating graft versus host disease, in which the body’s immune system turns against itself. You can do it only with a great machine fashioned of mental gray in Mississauga or Raritan, something the color of syncope. First you must separate one from the other, mindful that apparent unlikenesses are not the most profound di√erences of all. The majority you may reintroduce to the place where they usefully dwelled. But now, by ine√able degrees, leaving no consent to withhold, you must mix with those that remain a quintessence activated only by light as it was divided from darkness once, until they yield to it – or rather, their belief must succumb, that they have been under siege by an oppressor with no name serving only death’s advantage, 1 3 R and they transmit to others this revision of strife into a kind of solace, and so pass out of life teaching the stubborn body it need no more resist, inculcating in memory an unexpected trust, the reviled, contested thing now carefully handed on, and imperceptibly, without arguing, with only the sublime deception of the light that enables and justifies, as it daily walks the scarred earth in its contest against reflexes too deep to be reasoned with. In memory of Tony Anderson (1981–2015) ...