elea in bits

Turns out deep grief pushes me towards making more art lately. I started a post about Fingol, but couldn’t finish it yet. I did, however, make a gold foiled red envelope last month and now a new illustration in time for Year of the (Fire) Horse.

Alice Wong was a prolific force to be reckoned with. I always wondered if we had the same 24 hours in a day.

With many people covering Alice’s impact and legacy, the Alice I want to remember is the woman behind all the bodies of work. The super blunt, funny, and empathetic human that I was able to be friends with for a little while (8 years?), who introduced me to the feeling of access intimacy.

Some random anecdotes:

• When we first met, Alice lived with her family, and she told me that while people often think of her mom as the caretaker, “I take just as much care of her as she does of me.”
• In that vein, Alice loved to host people and bond over food and drink (so it sucked once she had to switch to a feeding tube). Of course, she had plastic straws at the ready too.
• Alice hated when people got her pronouns wrong – she’s so careful with us, her queer friends, and it’s RIGHT THERE in her email signature (twice, even): she/her. She was proud of her womanhood and had entered a fashionista and lipstick era in recent years.
• Alice and I bonded over being the solo organizer of our respective orgs. “I’m just a person trying to coordinate and do all the things,” I explained. She nodded and repeated it back: “I’m just a person — Disability Visibility is just me.”
• Alice and I often felt the pain of collaborators suddenly ghosting on time-sensitive emails. And though I mainly sent Alice casual check-ins, she’d always respond within a day.
• Alice’s handwriting is a messy scrawl that I like to characterize as free and unconstrained, with a side of occasionally illegible. I don’t get much snail mail, so I was pretty sure when things came from her, but still had to reference older cards when the signature had extra flourish.
• Alice was very into Star Trek and got super excited when Star Trek: Discovery came out. When I said I hadn’t seen it, she offered to share her streaming password (though I didn’t follow up).
• The few pictures I have with Alice are all thanks to her asking / reminding me to take some. With our bodies being travel-adverse, in-person time was rare, as I’m in Portland and not San Francisco. Alice made sure we’d have photographic mementos.
• Alice and I were planning to hang out in 2020 when COVID hit and my flights were cancelled for lockdown. I did make it back to the Bay Area briefly in 2023, but she happened to be in the middle of moving chaos, and it was a no go.

Alice could have just been my friend, but she supported my work as well by boosting Disabled And Here on social media (the camaraderie of Disability Twitter was beautiful in its heyday) AND becoming its biggest patron over the years. She would just show up in my inbox and offer grants (PLURAL). And though Alice’s plate was always full, she’d still tell me, “Please reach out too anytime you need support or would like to vent.” It’s a level of trust and care that my C-PTSD brain still finds overwhelming.

Alice raged against an ableist world and never took her time for granted. I want to be thankful about the life she lived, but really, I’m just cycling between angry and bereft.

Alice, if there’s a next life, I hope yours is filled with culinary delights and an abundance of joy, along with some actual decent fucking rest. Sending all the love.

It’s not yet the end of the year, but wow, my first brush with COVID – it hit at the end of July – has taken over life / 2025 and sapped me of the already-limited energy I had. I’m now thankful for Corey having been laid off, because without that, I wouldn’t have gotten onto Oregon Health Plan and had access to decent healthcare at this time.

Currently:

• my ferratin level is low, though improving slowly with iron pills
• I have trouble with sitting up (rather than lying down) and talking feels like jogging levels of exertion
• I likely have POTS, but don’t get into a diagnostic appointment until June

[ at the urgent care reception ]

Receptionist: Now please sign here on the pad.
Me: …sorry, what am I signing for?
Receptionist: Just saying that we can bill your insurance for today’s care.
Me: [ notices that they don’t plan to give me corresponding paperwork, but signs semi-reluctantly ]
Receptionist: Now sign again.
Me: ??? And what is this now?
Receptionist: It’s about HIPPA.
Me: Shouldn’t I have…a copy of this?
Receptionist: It’s DIGITAL.
Me: Yes, so can I view it on my phone or through email or something?
Receptionist: [ barely holding back their annoyance ] If you SIGN IT, I can try to get you a printed copy after.
Me: [ gives up and signs, even though I know full well that this is not standard medical practice, but also I don’t want to give receptionists at urgent care too hard a time, especially at the end of the day ]

Anyway. I still need to be scheduled for my ultrasound, but all the tests are currently pointing to: yes, I may once again have a kidney stone.

Also, note to myself: sometimes your brain fog is because you’re running a light fever and your oxygen level is slightly low, and not just because of chronic fatigue.

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May 27 update: I passed the kidney stone with the help of Flomax and collected it for analysis. Somehow, the test ordered did the bare minimum and only gave me results of it being tiny, irregular, and gray, instead of what I expected (a chemical composition breakdown).

Together, We Mask 8.5x11” poster

Together, We Mask is a declaration for anyone invested in community care, public health, or disability solidarity. Let’s protect each other from COVID and airborne diseases as a whole.

Last August, I made signs for Disabled And Here’s Together, We Mask shoot. I realized since then that people might be interested in downloading and printing their own versions, but wasn’t sure where to submit the poster until I came across justseed’s graphics library / activist toolbox.

The animatic pilot for I Don’t Want to be a Magical Girl just dropped this morning, and without spoiling the plot, I’m so on board for the protagonist’s brand of quick and practical problem-solving. Plus, it’s by a Black and Japanese creator, Kiana Khansmith!

If you like behind the scenes, here’s the time-lapse lettering video:

2024 was a year of Dealing With Things, and I’m skipping Affect & world events to keep this shorter. This is not a thoughtful post with takeaways; it’s more simple documentation.

A Brutal Beginning: Orienting Ourselves Amid the Shock and Awe

We must be willing to act & refuse to act on the basis of what we know is right. We must build a rebellious culture of care in defiance of a death-making culture of greed. We must reject the disposal of our fellow human beings.

This seal ring holder took weeks. I used foil as the inner structure, covered it with air dry clay, covered it with more clay after I slightly oversanded, messed up painting the whisker & nose 10x, and finally finished with generous coats of glossy sealant for water resistance.