Sketchbook snippets
My world is anchored by friends in each place working hard to make joyful lives there. (from graph bandit lab statement, 2025 spring)
How do we really FEEL the fact that we were once a clump of cells?! (from Wild metaphysics for us embyos)
In face of rapture I would like to be present with uncertainty and shape change. (from How to herd sheep)
Living
I spent 3 weeks visiting friends in several places then settled down back home in China for the next 3 months.
- At Villanueva, I feel proud of my friends for having learned and taught and made so many things amid a uncertain multidirectional ship of food, medicine, education, organization. I want to be always in conversation with the farmers and never aiming for a group to help then not finding the expertise to help them really. It was great to spend this time with my friends Michelle and Maya. I was recovering from food poisoning by eating delicious porridge, kookoo sabzi, hawthorns, herb teas, steamed eggs. We dehulled black walnuts to dye my sweater and cracked them with a gigantic cracker to bake wedding cookies. Maya inspired me to use the zine format to synthesize the recurrent themes in my big sketchbook, so I made Embodied practices for the body like a plant (compilation of embodied practices I played with), and Wild metaphysics for us embyos (notes on development, regeneration, collective intelligence of cells, parts and wholes).
- I also had fun recording a podcast/voice diary with Sunshine about our time learning to herd sheep on Black Mesa with the Lanes family. (see How to herd sheep).
- When I visited friends in San Francisco, I couldn’t stop laughing at the neighborhood acapella and dance circle. It’s an extreme happiness.
- I returned home to China after feeling grateful for the good times with friends in many places. I felt an urge to start summarizing and updating my big picture & wish list, based on the learnings this month and looking forward to the 3 months ahead. graph bandit lab statement, 2025 spring
Reading
- Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction,” 1989
- Paulo Freire, “Pedagogy of freedom. Ethics, democracy, and civic courage”, 1998
- Toni Bernhard, “How To Be Sick - A Buddhist-Inspired Guide for the Chronically Ill and Their Caregivers”, 2010
- Ivan Van Sertima, “They Came Before Columbus - The African Presence in Ancient America”, 2003
- Donna Haraway, “Crystals, Fabrics, and Fields- Metaphors that Shape Embryos”, 1976
- Noema (2025). The Prospect of ‘More Than Human’ Intelligence - The evolution of computation will render AI “life-like.”