When you get older all you seem to have left is your memories. Hold onto those…
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Photo credit (above): Instagram.com/enriplantey / Instagram.com/trianaserfaty / Instagram.com/sexistomas
Sex Talk: Love, Lust and Disability
PSA: Disabled people like sex, we talk about sex and yesss we can have sexxx! When you find out you’re going to be disabled one of the first things you may think about is sex and dating. “How is this going to work?” is not a question specific to curious prying eyes from strangers yet also an internalized one that burns deep within you…
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Lately
I’ve been pretty weak lately and it's discouraging. Maybe it’s heightened from the stress of all this division and misunderstanding and how this division permeates personal life and relationships but either way, it’s there — achingly reminding me with every little movement…
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Invisible
“... this lack of representation I literally thought I was white. In fact, I was stunned at a tender age of 11 when I finally realized I was Asian while looking back at myself in the mirror. And it was a weird mix of emotions... Lack of representation feeds everything...”
Read MoreHistory of How Disabled Were Treated, Black Panthers and the Disability Movement
October is National Disability Employment Awareness Month. This year is also the 30 year Anniversary of ADA (American Disabilities Act). I wanted to share a little history on how disabled were treated from the beginning, to the disability movement and the less-known fact that Black Panthers and disabled black activists were intricately involved in the success of the famous 501 sit-in; the longest non-violent occupation of a federal building that helped paved the way to the ADA. To celebrate all that has been achieved we Chair Deviled disabled activists Judith Heumann and Bradley Lomax.
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Reviews of Books on Disability
“When you grow up in a world that doesn't see you or welcome you or include you or represent you, you believe the world isn't for you." / “Physical Visibility is an important step toward political/social freedom and equality.”
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What’s In A Picture?
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but often times a photo omits the reality. After all, it’s a millisecond snapshot in a day of 86,400 seconds…
Read MoreLost Time
With a progressive disease time is always nagging me because how I am physically today won’t be my reality next year. This can make me feel powerless, and documenting is a form of savoring what is...what was. Perhaps it’s also a way to have some kind of control in an uncontrollable situation…
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Rock-A-Hoola Water Park, The Abandoned and my thoughts
I’m drawn to the abandoned; the stories lost in time, the unheard and the silent loneliness sitting in injustice. I always have been. The abandoned consumed my mind as a child. Abandoned places provoke questions; a lost battle ending in scattered relics of what could have been. It’s a place for imagination, a game of fill-in-the-blank. It’s about feelings of regret, nostalgia and the memories left behind…
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Chasing Isolation
Connect with the living 🌱 A little chasing of isolation today with not a person in sight.
Our holiday weekend consisted mostly of work but we managed to sneak in some nature. We took a stroll in an isolated neighborhood admiring everyone’s carefully pruned lawns and beautiful quiet nature. After no makeup all year and months of wearing pajamas crusted with food and oily hair, I thought maybe I should try and look human for my audience of one.
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Noah Purifoy Desert Art Museum, 2015
Noah Purifoy: How Creative Voices Can Impact Change
Noah Purifoy was an African American visual artist, sculptor, founder of Watts Towers Art Center and one of the most known assemblage artists. After Watts Riot of '65, Purifoy dedicated himself to the found object, to the ‘junk...which had begun to haunt our dreams.’
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Wheelchair In the Room
People with disabilities often feel they have to do twice as much to prove themselves to a society who often views us as “crippled, useless, unable, incompetent and throwaway segments of society…Here is my personal account with job discrimination.
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my passport photo, 1983
Adoption Story: Mom Looking For Daughter For 44 Years
Here’s a little history of how Korean adoptions came to be and a little of my own adoptee experience. I hope you will take a read. To those who have traveled non traditional paths to motherhood and the motherless who gained mothers in unique ways, this one’s for you.
“It’s not uncommon for adoptees to wonder if their biological mother ever thinks of them...I know I have often. We, the lost children, were Korea’s most profitable export. We were the societal fallout post WWII era...My only connection to my past is my genes. My face, my eyes and this genetic muscle-wasting disease I’ve had for twenty years belongs to my biological family. One day I hope to see the eyes who gave me my eyes...and, who knows, maybe she is looking for me, too…” Read more…
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Golden Hour
thanks for the beautiful rays tonight, california. i love you.
Read MoreStudy of Dark to Light
knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people. -carl jung
Read MoreLate Night Thoughts
I’ve been struggling with intense insomnia for last couple years or so but more severely, and every single night, since January. It’s frustrating but especially for a doer like me because my disability already infringed on my productivity and all the personal projects and dreams I want to do and accomplish, but complete lack of sleep further exacerbates this quest…
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Love Your Home
“Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be..."
-William Woodsworth
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Josua Tree, 2011
Lost and Found
I began using leg braces in 2001. I hated it. I did everything to hide them and only wore pants...back in the day my options of leg braces were big clunky pieces of milky white plastic. I didn’t feel feminine. I didn't feel attractive and I wouldn’t dare let anyone see my braces, making sure to only remove them in private…
Read MoreHe Isn't My 'Carer' - He's My Husband | BORN DIFFERENT
“The disabled are often desexualized, ignored and babied, and if one happens to have a partner, then that person is deemed some kind of saint for even considering taking on the wounded—as if disabled individuals are incapable of inspiring romantic love or eroticism.”
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The Deserted and isolated
“To the complaint, ‘There are no people in these photographs,’ I respond, There are always two people: the photographer and the viewer.” — Ansel Adams
The forgotten. Couple weekends ago we dropped off some food door-side for friends near downtown LA. Afterwards we took a quick drive through downtown and I snapped this picture from the car. I always find pictures of our face or body receive the most and immediate engagement, which kind of irritates me a bit sometimes. I used to almost exclusively post scenery and candid pictures of strangers but people mostly want the “pretty” selfies. But I find these kinds of quiet moments are so much more real.
Before this self-isolation, on a micro level, there was always the isolated and deserted around every corner existing in their own silent crises. Crisis was always here faintly lurking; people were dying alone from diseases because they couldn’t afford healthcare. People didn’t have homes and became homeless because of gentrification, with greedy real estate buying up areas during financial crashes (corporations and bankers admittedly LOVE financial crashes because it creates the most opportunities for the corporate sector), raising the rent to ungodly levels to purposely force the poor out and onto the streets. To these people, this current virus crisis is nothing new.
If only we listened to the oppressed, the fringe voices who aren’t represented and those who live outside the mainstream paradigm. The least “popular”, from the homeless to people with disabilities, they have experiences and wisdom about humanity. But we don’t listen until it affects us.
My art gallery
Follow my wheelchair travels, art and mini-memoirs at Instagram.com/kamredlawsk and Facebook.