Tag: Eye disease

There Plant Eyes: A Personal and Cultural History of Blindness

About the Book From Homer to Helen Keller, from Dune to Stevie Wonder, from the invention of braille to the science of echolocation, M. Leona Godin explores the fascinating history of blindness, interweaving it with her own story of gradually losing her sight. There Plant Eyes probes the ways in which blindness has shaped our ocularcentric culture, challenging deeply ingrained… Read more

CERKL Gene: My Newly Identified Eye Disease Is Not an Eye Disease, Essay 10 of #52essays2017

Last week I visited my ophthalmologist and learned that my blindness is caused by a mutation to the CERKL (pronounced like circle) gene, which, it turns out, is oddly not specific to my damaged retinas. At Genecards.org I read, “CERKL (Ceramide Kinase Like) is a Protein Coding gene.” And on Wikipedia I learn that “ceramides are a family of waxy,… Read more

In the Beginning Were the Eye Doctors, essay 1 of #52essays2017

Before the base closed to make way for the National Park, Lucasfilm, and the Thoreau Center, my mother and I drove regularly through the Presidio to buy cheap groceries at the commissary or to the Letterman Army Medical Center for visits to the pediatricians and then many eye doctors. My dad was in the military, and as a dependent, I… Read more

Distillation Installation: With All Four Senses and Remembered Sight

Seventeen years of living in a three-bedroom Astoria apartment distilled into one art installation: so much lost and gained; so many things dismantled and recreated; so many memories… I lived and worked in every room of that home. Beginning in the front room with my first guide dog and the boyfriend whose munificence allowed me to remain long after us,… Read more

Helen Keller Quotes Explosion

You kneel on the floor with two loop pedals in front of you. Above you hangs a projected red curtain and an empty spotlight. you say, “Oh, fuck it,” and hit one of the pedals, which causes The Star of Happiness theme song instrumental interlude to play. “I was born with a degenerative eye disease called…” you hit the loop… Read more