DJ Future Series
This is a series of photographs I took while visiting my grandmother in Sichuan. We went vegetable shopping in the early morning one day. She has a lot of joint pain, and I injured my eyes a few days earlier, so both of us were having lots of trouble wandering about in the world that day. We ended up walking with our arms linked, trying to guide each other and laughing at ourselves a lot.
I think this series is about an imagined near-future -- the scariness of facing so many bittersweet tomorrows as a neurodivergent person, and the necessity of interdependence, intergenerational memory, Disabled elder wisdom, and laughter in our survival. I still often find it hard to imagine what a fully liberated world might look like. But we build models of liberation in our day-to-day lives. I hope the memory of that day with my grandmother can color the tomorrows that you and I imagine with each other.
Image Description:
Close-up photograph of vegetables at an outdoor market. In the foreground, there are dark green and purple fish mint leaves, beige fish mint roots, and a head of cauliflower. In the background, there are people and street signs. A filter has been applied to the photograph, to make it look like a rough-texture painting.
Text:
Tuesday, 6am
Today, we’re up before the sun. The market is quiet in the early mornings; it’s only the voices of young children and grandparents I hear. I’ve got my eyes half-closed. You’ve got a shopping list in your left hand:
Three carrots
Five tea egg & ten sticks of fried dough
Two handfuls of fish mint roots
Laughter (a little out of season)
We walk slowly, because your knees ache, and because the world looks like spilled watercolor to me, today.
Image Description:
Selfie of a nonbinary person with long black hair, closed eyes, and a smile. They are wearing a pink silk scarf tied around their head that covers their left eye. A filter has been applied to the photograph, to make it look like a rough-texture painting.
Text:
Today, your eyes are laughing, even though it’s the wrong season for laughter. Your body hurts, and I’ve got a tear in my left cornea. I wear your silk scarf over my eye like a pirate.
Our elbows linked, we inch forward. You are my sense of direction, and I am your stability. I can’t tell whether people on the street are staring at us, today.
I ask you what’s so funny.
My body is a disaster I cannot fall out of love with, you say.
Our elbows linked, we steal laughter from the crisp morning air.
Image Description:
Photograph of a bowl of noodle soup, topped with fish mint leaves and roots. In the background, there is a blue table, a green tissue box, and people walking past stores. A filter has been applied to the photograph, to make it look like a rough-texture painting.
Text:
Today, we sit to steaming bowls of noodle soup. I wish I could always feel this light in my own body. I ask you if it ever gets difficult to face the day, knowing that another day of the same will soon follow it.
This year has been a hard one. You only walk to the market on your better days. I feel crazy at night, and a skeleton in the mornings. Sometimes, it’s difficult to imagine waking up to a tomorrow, and a tomorrow after that.
You point at the fish mint roots in my soup. I used to hate the taste of this. I have been swallowing bitter herbs every morning since before you were alive.
Image Description:
Photograph of two people talking in an outdoor vegetable market. The two people are standing on opposite sides of a long row of tables, covered in white tablecloth with green vegetables over them. In the background, there is a wooden roof, along with more vegetable stands. A filter has been applied to the photograph, to make it look like a rough-texture painting.
Text:
I have been swallowing these bitter herbs, you tell me, but they taste sweeter to me each day. They remind me that I am not the first to do this, nor the last. When the herbs taste bitter in the morning, I think of my own grandmother walking beside me.
Today, we linger in the marketplace for hours. You have me with you, you promise me. When the herbs taste bitter each morning, you will remember me. I will be your sense of direction, and you will be my stability.
Our hands linked across the table, we steal laughter from the crisp morning air.
Image Description:
Photograph of a picture from a photo album. In the picture, a young child is in the arms of their grandmother. The picture is framed by the lined pages of a photo album. A filter has been applied to the photograph, to make it look like a rough-texture painting.
Text:
Wednesday, 9am
Tomorrow, I will hold your promise in the palm of my hand, the whole plane ride home. I want every tomorrow to feel like that day in the market – your elbow in mine, the two of us walking slowly past rows of herbs. I want my tomorrows to feel like power shared between us. I want to spin laughter from the cold morning air. I want to learn to love the taste of fish mint roots, and the bitter of my own body. I’ll keep your elbow in mine, tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and we’ll keep moving forward, one step at a time.