At the ful­lest expres­sion of its treat­ment, breast can­cer is near total strike : stri­king hair, stri­king eye­lashes, stri­king eye­brows, stri­king skin, stri­king thought, stri­king lan­guage, stri­king fee­ling, stri­king vigor, stri­king appe­tite, stri­king eros, stri­king mater­ni­ty, stri­king pro­duc­ti­vi­ty, stri­king immune sys­tem, nega­ted fer­ti­li­ty, nega­ted breasts. Self-manage, the boss that is eve­ryone says : work har­der, stay posi­tive, draw on eye­brows, cover your head with a wig or color­ful scarf, insert tear­drop- or half-a-globe-sha­ped sili­cone under your scar­red skin and graft on pros­the­tic nipples or tat­too trompe‑l’œil ones in pubes­cent pink or have flaps of fat remo­ved from your back or bel­ly and…

Every movie I watch now is a movie about an entire cast of people who seem to not have can­cer, or at least this is, to me, its plot. Any crowd not in the cli­nic is a crowd that feels cura­ted by alie­na­tion, all the people eve­ryw­here loo­king robust and eye­la­shed and as if they have appe­tites for din­ner and solid plans for reti­re­ment. I am mar­ked by can­cer, and I can’t quite remem­ber what the mar­kers are that mark us as who we are when we are not being mar­ked by some­thing else.…

Doing the dishes is not like free­dom. Freedom is wha­te­ver we notice because it isn’t like doing the dishes. The ordi­na­ry is ordi­na­ry because it ordi­na­ri­ly repeats : taking care lacks freedom’s enter­tain­ments and its excep­tions. For any author of doing the dishes, the best part of the sto­ry would be the sto­ry of mis­sing out on eve­ry­thing else while the dishes are being done. Or a per­son could be a moder­nist of the dishes and make a stream of conscious­ness account of an attempt to flee dish-sink rea­li­ty. But it would be easy for any of those accounts of doing…

Some people believe to know the fin is to know a shark, but this is an incor­rect belief. The fin is not a fin of a shark at all though it is a repro­duc­tion shark fin strap­ped on a boy’s back, and the boy with the repro­duc­tion fin does very much want to be a shark, wishes it a great deal, dreams some nights of being a shark in a great fleet of sharks in some unex­plo­red sea where sharks are in fleets and somew­hat even more power­ful that the sharks of the day­time world have shark banks full of…

Other things that cause dis­com­fort : people picking through the trash for their food. There are those who want “only the best” and those who believe only-the-best is immo­ral. I would talk about these two impulses, one for com­fort, the other for jus­tice, and how one appears ani­mal, the other not that ani­mal at all, for what dog says of her lit­ter, “It is not only my own that should have my milk, but I will suckle the world”? I would like to meet that dog. I am the dog who can never be hap­py because I am ima­gi­ning the unhappiness…

There is no super­io­ri­ty in making things or in re-making things. It’s like eve­ry­thing else, old men who go fishing, hair exten­sions, nail art, indi­vi­dual false eye­lashes glued on with semi-per­ma­nent glue, sewing clothes and re-sewing clothes, sket­ching, sket­ching ani­mals, sket­ching human faces, sket­ching flo­wers, gro­wing flo­wers, flo­wers, flo­wers that might even be mari­golds and petu­nias, per­fume that smells like par­ty girls, per­fume that smells like dowa­gers, per­fume that does not smell like flo­wers or more like flo­wers mixed with the urine of jungle ani­mals and some tobac­co smoke, per­fume that does not smell like men, one faux-Chanel ear­ring, sunglasses…

History is full of people who just didn’t. They said no thank you, tur­ned away, ran away to the desert, stood on the streets in rags, lived in bar­rels, bur­ned down their own houses, wal­ked bare­foot through town, killed their rapists, pushed away din­ner, medi­ta­ted into the light. Even babies refuse, and the elder­ly, too. All types of ani­mals refuse : at the zoo they gaze dead-eyed through plexi­glass, fling feces at the human faces, stop having babies. Classes refuse. The poor throw their lives onto bar­ri­cades. Workers slow the line. Enslaved people have always refu­sed, poi­so­ning the feasts, abor­ting the…

the stu­pid logic of din­ner We were not inno­cent. Our edu­ca­tion was autho­red by our senses. Our lamb­ness was writ­ten into our bodies with the vio­lence of the world as it is, yet our inter­est in unders­tan­ding the lamb’s edu­ca­tion, in the lamb’s way of kno­wing, began to take the form of the bird of prey’s pur­suit. We were at once for­med by grudge and nar­ro­wed by desire. In eve­ry­thing we wan­ted, all we acqui­red, and in how we could not want, how we could acquire nothing, we were simul­ta­neous­ly lamb and bird of prey. Our mixed nature was not innocent.…

1. Notes Toward a Theory of the Crush, Crush’s Discourse, Ma Vie en Crush. 2. Tableau vivant of extant crushes with pos­si­bi­li­ty of sexual consum­ma­tion deter­mi­ning cen­tra­li­ty. 3. Tableau vivant of for­mer crushes, all asleep on the floor. 4. Hidden track of emba­ras­sing crushes on an other­wise unlis­te­nable album. 5. Regarding the crush of never-to-be-lovers, these sub­ca­te­go­ries : the never-to-be-lovers of who is alrea­dy spo­ken for ; the never-to-be-lovers of geo­gra­phi­cal impos­si­bi­li­ty ; the never-to-be-lovers of sexual incom­pa­ti­bi­li­ty ; the never-to-be-lovers of the nar­cis­sism of small dif­fe­rences ; the never-to-be-lovers of asym­me­tri­cal desire. 6. Some spe­cies of crushes : the crush of inter­sec­ting research inter­ests, the crush of good…

The tears are auto­ma­tic. They drip down the cheeks, dam­pen books, key­boards, din­ner plates, post­cards, stee­ring wheels. I don’t weep from sor­row. I weep as a symp­tom. I don’t want to cry, but I do because of a medi­cine. It is as if my body weeps on its own behalf. My body has rea­son to weep – more rea­son than I do – but there are times I join my tears in their crying, adding to the tears of side effet the tears of cause. Disease has bul­lied me into Cartesianism, but the mixed tears undo divi­sion through liqui­fi­ca­tion. Can…

The harm will come : it never doesn’t. It will open up our chests and enter here. Some days it will come by for­tune, some days by no agent in par­ti­cu­lar, and some­times others will bring it to us, either will­ful­ly or on acci­dent. Those others might trip, the harm spilling out of their arms onto us. We might all look at each other start­led. We might all have the harm then and eyes full of tears. The others might take one look at us or many looks at us and decide we deserve the harm. We will look back at them…

Think of the way one per­son can make you feel, also the way that one per­son is only one. Why want that one per­son who is only, after all, one per­son, and why wake up lon­ging for a per­son and fall asleep lon­ging for the same per­son and who knows if anyone else in this is lon­ging ? You don’t know if that one per­son is lon­ging, too. the over-deter­mi­na­tion of each thing unheld That per­son who is only one per­son is just as over-deter­mi­ned as any­thing else unheld, over-deter­mi­ned like an ange­lic realm or the com­mune or wha­te­ver else you never…

Consider the cate­go­ry of desire that is the desire to make a sto­ny expres­sion break. Think of those humans who are attrac­tive for the pri­ma­ry rea­son of how the pre­sen­ta­tion of their face and body is impe­ne­trable or broo­ding or fierce or impas­sive with broo­ding fier­ce­ness. This cate­go­ry of desire is simple, slight­ly mecha­nis­tic : to pene­trate the broo­ding, fierce, impas­sive, impe­ne­trable pre­sen­ta­tion. There are seve­ral ways to make a sto­ny expres­sion break. These include to enrage, to sur­prise, to humi­liate, to sad­den, and to give plea­sure. The experts at impas­sive expres­sion, howe­ver, are not so vul­ne­rable to sad­ness, rage, or…

Tu tombes dans un trou, et tu dis « ouais non c’est pas ma tombe, je me tire de ce trou », tu sors du trou qui n’est pas la tombe, tu tombes de nou­veau dans un trou, et tu dis « ouais non c’est tou­jours pas ma tombe, je me tire de ce trou », tu tombes dans un autre trou ; des fois tu tombes dans un trou à l’intérieur même d’un trou, ou dans plu­sieurs trous à l’intérieur de trous, et tu sors de l’un puis l’autre, et puis tu retombes et tu dis « c’est pas ma tombe, je me tire de…

There are people who feel bad in their bodies and do nothing about it, and there are people who feel bad in their bodies and sub­mit their symp­toms to search engines and stop there. Then there are people who can afford to cir­cu­late what hurts bet­ween pro­fes­sio­nals who will offer them com­pe­ting diag­nos­tic bids. This group of people fol­low a set of symp­toms toward a pro­mise, ask for tests, ques­tion ans­wers, tra­vel long dis­tances to visit spe­cia­lists who might be able to reco­gnize what’s wrong. If symp­toms are cir­cu­la­ted long enough, a set of dis­com­forts might be allo­wed the mercy…

To be decla­red with cer­tain­ty ill while fee­ling with cer­tain­ty fine is to fall on the hard­ness of lan­guage without being given even an hour of soft uncer­tain­ty in which to stea­dy one­self with preemp­tive wor­ry, aka now you don’t have a solu­tion to a pro­blem, now you have a spe­ci­fic name for a life brea­king in two. Illness that never bothe­red to announce itself to the senses radiates in screen life, as light is sound and is infor­ma­tion encryp­ted, unen­cryp­ted, cir­cu­la­ted, ana­ly­zed, rated, stu­died, and sold. In the ser­vers, our health degrades or improves. Once we were sick in…

I am sick and a woman. I write my own name. I am han­ded at each appoint­ment a prin­tout from the gene­ral data­base that I am told to amend or approve. The data­bases would be emp­ty without us. Receptionists dis­tri­bute forms, print the bra­ce­lets to be read later by scan­ners held in the hands of other women. The nur­sing assis­tants stand in a door­way from which they never quite emerge. They hold these doors open with their bodies and call out patients’ names. These women are the para­pro­fes­sio­nals in the thre­sholds, wei­ghing the bodies of patients on digi­tal scales, taking…

There is no more tra­gic piece of fur­ni­ture than a bed, how it falls so qui­ck­ly from the place we make love to the place we might die in. It is tra­gic, too, for how it falls so qui­ck­ly from the place where we sleep to the place where we think our­selves mad. The bed where anyone makes love is also—and too clear­ly for anyone stuck there because of illness—the grave, as John Donne des­cri­bed it, from which they might never rise. In ver­ti­cal life, when you are well or most­ly and wal­king around, pre­ten­ding to be, the top of your…

I think of the medie­val Islamic phi­lo­so­pher Avicenna’s floa­ting man, who, denied all sen­sa­tion, still knows, as proof of the soul, that he exists.1 I am not sure I believe him. A bet­ter ans­wer is found in the Roman poet Lucretius’s argu­ment in his epic poem, De rerum natu­ra, that we can die inch by inch. Every cell is a king­dom of both sub­stance and spi­rit, and any king­dom can be over­thrown. Our life force, like our flesh, never seems to issue away from us all at once. Anyone who has been half dead can attest to this. What we…

I come across a head­line : “Attitude Is Everything for Breast Cancer Survivor.” I look for the head­line “Attitude Is Everything for Ebola Patient” or “Attitude Is Everything for Guy with Diabetes” or “Attitude Is Everything for Those with Congenital Syphilis” or “Attitude Is Everything with Lead Poisoning” or “Attitude Is Everything When a Dog Bites Your Hand” or “Attitude Is Everything for Gunshot Victim” or “Attitude Is Everything for a Tween with a Hangover” or “Attitude Is Everything for a Coyote Struck by a Ford F150” or “Attitude Is Everything for Gravity” or “Attitude Is Everything for the Water Cycle”…

I wan­ted to write about exhaus­tion the way I used to write about love. Like love, exhaus­tion both requires lan­guage and baffles it, and like love, it is not as if exhaus­tion will kill you, no mat­ter how many times you might declare that you are dying of it. Exhaustion is not like death, either, which has a plot and a rea­der­ship. Exhaustion is boring, requires no genius, is demo­cra­tic in prac­tice, lacks fans. In this, it’s like expe­ri­men­tal lite­ra­ture. I was once not exhaus­ted, and then I was. I got sick, and then the late effects of treat­ment made me…

Des pan­ta­lons de yoga en plas­tique recy­clé, Tik Tok, et le com­plexe mili­ta­ro-indus­triel ; on en était là, c’est-à-dire nulle part, même pas en nous-mêmes. On s’était mépris quant au com­men­ce­ment du monde. L’Éden n’était pas sur terre mais dans les plaines célestes, et bien qu’effectivement tenté⋅e⋅s par le fruit défen­du, Adam et Ève s’étaient aus­si mépris sur la nature du fruit. La pomme ne confé­rait pas la sagesse. C’était le seul fruit du para­dis qui, une fois dégus­té, ne se dis­sol­vait pas. Pourtant, chez ce pre­mier couple humain, la faim et les intes­tins étaient illi­cites dans un para­dis dépour­vu de…

L’agneau n’est pas inno­cent. L’agneau sait inter­pré­ter le fris­son­ne­ment de chaque agneau voi­sin, et deve­nir, dans la for­ma­tion de la rela­tion agnelle, non pas un agneau mais un nombre d’agneaux, chaque dos d’agneau presque indis­cer­nable du dos du sui­vant. L’agneau sait inter­pré­ter la sen­sa­tion de la forme qu’ont cha­cun et cha­cautre tous ensemble, les plai­sirs et les peurs et les neu­tra­li­tés de cha­cun, ce qui s’exprime dans un bêle­ment ou un tres­sau­te­ment quand l’agneau est avec le sui­vant, et jamais ne se trouve un seul agneau tout seul. Un phi­lo­sophe, celui qui chez l’agneau n’appréciait presque rien, a écrit un jour :…