But this sense of being able to open yourself up to wonder is something you can do at any age. You just have to open yourself to it. Frankly, for me, it's a whole lot easier to do that when you're out in the middle of nowhere, you're cold and you're hungry.
I imagine the full picture of me in scrubs and Danskos, being an MRI technician and then coming home and writing. Somewhere in an alternate universe, MRI technician Sari exists. I already have the Danskos.
Lucy Ives has proven herself to be one of our greatest under-the-radar geniuses, but an achievement like Life Is Everywhere demands attention. The systems have long been in place, but everyone will see them now.
Practicing deep curiosity and close observation is fundamental to writing essays. We need only to look at our small children to teach us these lessons.
So many of the metaphors we use that come from the body and bodily experience are ableist and predicated upon a notion of “normal.” In educational systems, that idea of “normal” has led to serious accessibility issues, to separate and unequal classrooms.
“When you look at the colonial system, one of the things they want to eradicate is the native language, because they don’t understand what’s going on and they can’t control it.”
Being disabled in higher education takes a psychic toll, whether you are faculty or a student. Yet most institutions do the bare minimum to remain “compliant” with the law rather than doing the work to make their spaces accessible and inclusive.
. . . to witness the world is always to participate in it, to make choices about what to see and what to ignore, and also to be worked upon by forces of differing scales.