my cancer archive
The 20th of October 2023 I received a diagnosis of triple negative breast cancer.
It seems daft to spell it out, but my life has never been the same. My body and my heart are not the same, and my mind is definitely not the same.
Having cancer has been a trauma, and like it happens for most traumatic experiences, it was impossible for me to really live it while it was happening: I was too focused on the sole act of surviving.
But, as Derrida brilliantly put it many years ago, the form of recording (writing, archiving, storing) is capable not only of reflecting time but also of constructing it. Perhaps, then, archiving my disease will construct a meaning and a memory that can alter, modify, who knows even broaden, the meaning and memory of when I was experiencing it.
the archive produces the event as much as it records it
I have been surviving cancer for two years, now.
Along the way, between chemotherapy and radiotherapy, and across surgeries and again chemotherapy, and after all of it, I found solace in the written words, in art, in companionship, in data, and mostly in the magic mix of it all.
Here are some silly little things that kept me floating when I thought I was going to drown.