A subjective concept, Perhaps unachievable. Humanity groans for it But the answers to our endless questions are often inconceivable.
It's deceivable, truly. When we mold it to make it believable.
Freedom
A release from submission, The medicine to our condition; Funny how it can't be prescribed by a physician
Though we crave it, it's simply a delusion. When we stretch our hands towards it, we only feel confusion. The desire to be forever unchained is a mere illusion.
Freedom
Release from abuse. But what's the use? There's only so much optimism we can produce, Repeatedly being asked, "What's YOUR excuse?"
Nobody sees the battles we face, Our empty cries, The time we waste.
Nobody sees the scars we cover, The bruises we leave, How we treat one another.
the earth tells me i am too small and i grin back all bloody corners and chapped lips. i have never looke innocent a day in my life, i know, i know. my smile has always been too hungry to satisfy. i am continuing the long tradition of men i am wanting more than i can have i am biting off more than i can chew i am running faster than my legs allow me to.
the earth tells me i am too small and i know it's true, i have known since childhood that i am nothing, i am a single lamp in the cacophony of light that is a city. the universe is cold like a biting winter's day, you can feel it, i swear, from all the way inside, i can feel it just sitting on my bed sometimes the chill of the universe has seeped its way inside of me, the dust settling into my lungs like something we call allergies.
the earth tells me i am too small and i scream, scream until it feels like my lungs will give out.
I forgot about the milkweed. I forgot the divet in the creek, forgot that I can’t describe the sound the water makes. I forgot that wind tastes like freedom.
Dead flowers look stark, look more beautiful than I’d anticipated. Raindrops cling. The leaves let go.
I spent two weeks, twelve weeks, half a year between walls. More than six feet apart, but still not an expanse, not like here, edge to edge vision, farther than I can imagine reaching.
And I forgot there was this much sky, grey, white, orange and blue. It didn’t fit in my bedroom, so I was left staring at the stagnant ceiling, on cut carpet that doesn’t grow.
This place feels naive, as if someone forgot to tell it to become paved parking lots, square boxes of (masked) people, identical to the ones on the advertisements saying, “Give up the flowers.
There are boulders under my feet, songs with so much shape they can only be felt like they are the curved backs of our galaxy's multitude of suns.
The sun is inside the earth, the earth is inside my stomach. But the mountains, they break the horizon, shattering it like a flock of birds shatters our notion of what is whole.
I rise to my feet, to the window beside my bed, to the ocean beside my street, to the sky beside my ground, and I sing because the globe is too big for me to see.
Sometimes inspiration is derived from an unlikely source. That was the case in this particular work which features Ben Cayer and Mindy Brock, married nurse anesthetists in Florida. The couple shares a common duty of placing a breathing tube down a patient's throat for surgery, a particularly high-risk job during the coronavirus pandemic. Brock and Cayer have been married for five years and met in nurse anesthesia school in 2007. The couple says they hope the image inspires others during the pandemic. I chose to paint this image on a mask as I feel it serves as an inspiration for all of us during the pandemic. People like Brock and Mindy are a shining example of those who put themselves at risk for those who are less fortunate so that they can have their health, happiness and freedom.
Around the time this work was produced, a survey for the BBC by Ipsos MORI of more than 19,400 people in 27 countries found the majority of people in all but two countries felt their society was divided. In fact, seventy-six percent of people globally believed their country was divided, and 59 percent believed it was more divided today than it was 10 years ago. This sense of division is a symptom of the times as there has been a decline in trust in traditional institutions and a rise in the belief that the current system is broken. Citizens in general no longer believe that governments, politicians and other institutions can deliver on their promises.
As an international student, I have lived in a diverse social environment all my life. Having (and continuing) to live through this experience, Asian discrimination is nothing new to me. This project underscores the power of words and text and the impact that they have on our freedom. The purpose of this book design project, which is manifested from the context of Asian hate crimes as well as the power of linguistics, is to collect and display people’s daily experiences from the standpoint of an Asian living in a western country. This work functions as an opportunity for the Asian community to share their voice and to share their experiences. My intention is to provide those living outside of the Asian community an opportunity to empathize with what we as Asians are experiencing and how it affects our liberty. To best express this idea, text was extracted from the original book used for this work.
