it's like that business with the wings of the ilium all over again! i was enchanted when i learnt there was a blood disease called thalassemia. thalassa! thalassa! i thought of iris murdoch and xenophon and louis macneice's father rising from his seat as they came over the hill. i was sure it had to do with massive uncoagulated tidal waves of unstoppable blood-dimmed tides! but then i realised that would be haemophilia. so then i thought of that sonnet of millay's - since i cannot persuade you from your pale preoccupation with the dead - in which she talks about the rude sea of passion pounding in her veins.

"that's what thalassemia should be!" i cry to minyin. "it ought to be a disease where your blood is rushing madly about and striking and pushing on the artery walls! why isn't there a disease like that?"

minyin: "there is. it's called high blood pressure."

she goes on to explain that thalassemia is named for its high incidence in the areas around the mediterranean. i feel like a pricked balloon, she sighs.