month at a glance

by early december i’d have submitted research applications and entered “afterlife”. in this feverish celebration festival, i entered two rabbit holes: to convert the development/swarm biology readings to packages to friends who are interested but not in the field, and to band with the chinese surrealist mothers in my childhood and dreams through some very convoluted but unconsciously sensible moments together.

I. the embryo umwelt

start of the Talk to Cells reading club

what is the Talk To Cells reading club? I have been reading and talking to so (too) many biologists in the loose sense of the word in the past 1.5 years and piecing together the updates to my world because of this. here is the start of the reading list / annotations curations around the themes of organoids, cell migration and how they live or be, talking to cells, health and exploration in this assembly terms, possibility of engineering and stewarding and being with, as well as some quakeries and anthropological views of the whole mixed vitalist-mechanis-holist-reductionist scene in biology or the definition and action of life.

Illustration: “how do cells talk to each other?” link

for now, i made some “playlists” as the outline of readings I would want to hold reading clubs on:

“look, each species of cell have a different sensory organ and dialect!”

II. wild mothers and forest dreaming

Over the past two years, I’ve been exploring the intersection of science and art through studying certain people and their ways of living. There are multiple perspectives - dreaming or sacred viewpoints - to approach what might also be interpreted as neurodivergence or socioeconomic states of being. This interest might stem from my belief that perspectives are also a form of religion. Faith is a subtle presence among people of different ages and regions around me, yet this need still subtly manifests in places like science and art. My guess for why the reality-learning and the expression (through words, speaking, drawing, building) is connected is: sometimes presenting your reality in a piece that others filter through you - but which is inevitably filtered from the mass that passes through you - feels safer. The key terms grounding this exploration include: surrealism, Jung, rebirth, wildness, pregnancy, Le Guin, forests, ecosystems, breaking free, movement, abnormality, fantasy, dreams, various futures, divinity, faith, how to coexist with deities and ghosts, EMDR, organ emotional memory, rehabilitation training, and surgery.