All archives are, to some extent, narratives: edited stories of the self or others. What I kept then was a story of myself that felt precious and still, at that point, untold. I wasn’t saving in the hopes of someone else discovering who I was. I think it was much more of a case of ensuring my future self’s attention. The artifacts were the grammar that made the story readable.
We are so much more than what we keep. But what we keep anchors us when and where memory inevitably fails. You don’t need a mom’s basement to put aside the things that make you feel like you – to begin or to continue to preserve the language that future you will one day read. – Anne Helen Petersen
