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Kameelah Janan Rasheed is a learner from East Palo Alto, CA


KJR Studios

Kameelah Janan Rasheed is a
from East Palo Alto, CA




© Kameelah Janan Rasheed. All rights reserved.
Index of Curiosities

Written in my Grade 3 end-of-year reflection book (1994). When asked what my favorite things were that year, this was one of the activities I chose.

An intense and immersive focus on a specific interest or activity characterizes hyperfixation. It is a common trait in ADHD, OCD, and Autism. While it is sometimes referred to as a “special interest,” hyperfixation is considered all-consuming, leading to 

While often cast as a disorder or disruption, I choose to think about my hyperfixations as a spiritual gift of deep curiosity that animates all parts of my life. These episodes of deep curiosity are often cyclical; maybe orbital is a better word. They are orbital in that I am circling or being gravitationally pulled toward something, and I keep circling until I get close enough to what I think I am chasing... something like a ring grazing orbit. I never get there - the point of sustained contact, but I ride the edge, and I think this is where the thrill is.  It is never about the object of fixation, but about seeing how far I can push my perceptive capacities to see from multiple points of reference simultaneously.  



Thank you to my mama, Gwendolyn Rasheed, for helping me “complete” this index beginning with 1990. I decided to remove the dates because I realized all these curiosities leak into one another.
Black Holes
Storyboard Weaver Software
Non-Newtonian Fluids
Multiphase Materials 
Photosynthesis (specifically, photosystem II)
Death Bots
Stellar Ingestion 
Orbital Patterns
Electron Configuration
Oregon Trail Software
Lisa Frank Stationery
Clifford, the Big Red Dog
Transhumanism, Post-Earth Repositories, Luxury Survival Bunkers 
Doomsday Millenarian Movements and Eschatology
Doomsday Millenarian Movements and Eschatology
Xerox Machines and Spirit Duplicators
Eruvs
Daphnia (Water Fleas)
Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
Dewey Decimal System
California Eugenics
UAPs
Exotic Matter
Gel Electrophoresis
Caterpillar to Butterfly Transformation