Teratoma

There are always some dominant memories, luminous points
around which the remains create a vague fog.



more over,
something is or seems that touches me with
mystic gleams like something of
forgotten dreams -
of something felt, like something here, of something done,
I know not where,
such as no language may declare. (Tennyson)



On 20th June 2007 i under-went cardio-thorasic heart surgery to remove a teratoma tumor lodged between my heart and lung. Discovered only weeks before the operation i had felt perfectly well. Post surgery I had never felt so unwell. And now I convalesce.

I began documenting my experience the day I had my heart monitored. Using the camera as a tool to record what was to become an ordeal, the photographs are both evidence and tangible objects that helped to bridge the distance between experience and memory. Through the process of recovery I have stripped away most of the photographs that illustrate direct details of what actually occurred. In my time of reflection I have come to see that what actually happened bears little relevance to where the experience took me emotionally. Pain, loss and grief cannot be felt intellectually. How i felt was inherent to that of a broken heart and a broken heart is a universal epidemic.



Deliberately ambiguous the subject in the photograph could be a woman, a man or a child. We, collectively are susceptible to feelings of emptiness, of loss, grief, melancholy, nostalgia, romance...and will experience all of them in our time of living. Empty spaces and repetition convey loss of memory and the blurring of consciousness as well as the fluidity of feeling.

Nothing is permanent. Everything passes.



from under a crucifix fixed upon the wall i lay awake drenched in light and bewilderment. At this point i came to wonder; was this the after life?



n:Souvenir; - an object a traveller brings home for the memories associated with it.



on leaving my hospital bed for the first time in six days, i was now able to see with my own eyes the violence that had occured..



i woke up holding myself, sobbing. They called me stoic. My solution was to simply hold my breath...my left lung had been deflated and now needed to reinflate. Terror enveloped me....



The part of life we really live is small.
For all the rest of existence is not life, but
merely time.