Bush Spirits

There is a park, in San Francisco, at the top of a hill. There are trees criss crossing each other, stretches of forest you can’t cross without cutting your legs, unplanned flowers growing on the upward slope. It is a small wilderness: contained chaos.

There is a place, in our minds, where we keep our suffocated bush spirits. They bear their teeth at the walls around them, cry with anguish at trees falling; they can hear the whisper of storms in the pitch of the wind. There is no God but chance, no law but the rhythm of dance; a mass of unconscious existence.

The shape of our world defines our mind (or perhaps the other way around). In the daylight of consciousness, we tell ourselves that one plus one is two, tomorrow it will rain, trees belong in boxes on the street edges, I determine my fate, I am happy in my concrete box, my feet do not miss the earth. One plus one is two, next year I will still be alive, oil disappears from oceans when I am not looking, I am whole, I am in control, I am in control.

But the shadows are creeping closer.

2 million years, we have breathed with the forest. 200 years of smoke-choked intellectualism and we think we have tamed chaos, catalogued everything there is to know. Nature knows no rationality. It is a sickness creeping up the trunks of the hundred-year trees. We cannot subdue the forest - if we let it in it would take our breath away and remind us how to breathe. My body is of the earth. My body is from the insects and damp grass. I am bamboo, swaying, it is the only way to survive the earthquakes.

There’s a little bird on the tarmac by the side of the road. It bobs its head, pecking mindlessly at the concrete, but there is no warm, soft soil underneath. It doesn’t know any better.

Listen. Your bush spirit is beating against your heart. Listen. Let it in. It knows when the storm is coming.

Substance

It is, my dear, about moving through the world and acquiring weight. Substance. Solid bones that displace the atoms around you. An opacity that firmly resists anything moving straight through it. A heaviness as the soles of your feet nestle into the Earth. The slow-blinking self breathes out and settles into the space it inhabits.

Meaning Makers

Right on cue, the wisps hiding in the garden coyly emerged and spiralled into the dimming light. They caught in the edges of her sight and stirred her to her feet. It is time it is time it is time the air whispered. 

Death

One day I will die. As will we all. What will matter as I lie on my death bed and the truth sinks in – the finality of the end of my existence, the gnawing realization that my life will flicker, grow still, and cease? We, I, self, mind, consciousness, is-ness, will be no longer. Can we even comprehend what it means to no longer be? Do we ever really let in what that means?

Let the World Break Your Heart | Dear Penn Freshmen

Read the published article here

Dear little me,

I can see you sitting right now in the little room you were so excited about with the blue duvet and bookshelf waiting to be filled, looking at the next four years like they contained more time than you could imagine. I know you're feeling wonder and fear and trepidation at the mountain in front of you, with no idea who the person who comes out the other side will be.

Communion

Last night I took communion with the stars. They danced with their flames, I with my eyes, our bodies perfectly still. They reached out to me, and showed me the veins that criss cross the universe. 

Some Learnings about Learning

These thoughts are based primarily on reflections on my undergraduate degree at the University of Pennsylvania. They’re concepts that I’ve noticed have helped me learn, and for which I’ve had to do most of the work myself (they’re not prioritized or talked about frequently at college). This is not comprehensive, but is a beginning foundation of my thoughts on learning that will develop as I continue to learn.

      1. Personalization
             1.1. Ownership of your worldview

             1.2. Learning to improve your life

             1.3. Freedom to choose your intellectual agenda

             1.4. Consolidation of learning

      2. Build the trunk first
             2.1. Add more angles

             2.2. Examine the paradigm assumptions

     3. Mental models and critical thinking tools

     4. Prioritizing construction

Career Frameworks

As a college student, the question of career direction is on my mind a lot. After spending a few years bumbling around in confusion, I realized: 

1. How much value I got from good, strategic, introspective conversations 
2. Having these conversations was haphazard, and depended on me having friends who were good at asking strategic questions.

Based on this, I started running Life Mapping sessions at my college. I wanted to share the thinking behind this initiative. If you have any feedback on these questions and frameworks I discuss, or suggestions for frameworks that you've found useful, I'd really love to hear it – you can contact me here.

1. Motivation
2. Overarching framework
3. Questions
4. Frameworks
5. Worldview Questions

Gardener

I have become Gardener
planting seedlings in mulch
fermented from blood and the sap of
cracked bones,

given life with salty tears.
Hyacinths, orchids, birds of paradise,
forget-me-nots, and an almond blossom
tree (I place the seeds, I watch the ground breathe)

Project Community

This is a manifesto on community I wrote in my sophomore year, outlining something I felt that I was missing and wanted to create. It took a few years to cultivate, but it manifested in The Meraki Collective. I wanted to share one of the early visions I had for a community I felt I was missing.

that chair has been waiting for you

There are glinting filaments in the corners and seams around you. They whisper
how many heartbeats can you hear? An elbow bumps an arm, the table tips, overeager

lips stumble over consonants

The Beginning

For V

I want to tell you a story.

The story begins one morning, the first morning. He wakes up and smiles at her through half-closed lashes. Overnight, every color has shifted ever so slightly – the teal of the bedcovers holding them has a sheen he has never seen before. The last drops of rain patter on the window, and tendrils of sunlight drift in and settle on a strand of her hair.

Serendipity

Parlez-vous anglais? He asked, and the adventure began.

Let me show you the places where artists go to share ideas… the modern day Salons. Let me show you the best bookstores and coffee shops in Paris. And, what’s your story? He asked, as we meandered down the bustling street.

The Leaves are Beginning to Fall

The leaves are beginning to fall and there’s a feeling in his chest that reminds him of happiness.

There’s a slight chill in the cafe he waits in. His foot taps a little too fast to the music playing through the speakers – white rubber earbuds sit loosely in his ears. People trail past the brick wall he faces – tall, tall, short, couple, child, dog – only the dog has its nose pointed away from the ground, sniffing the air as if looking for a long-lost scent.

Mystery

It’s a dark night, the kind of night where everything except the flicker of light inside your home is muffled. Outside the windows, everything that used to exist has lost its hold on its outlines – there is nothing left but a thick silence and wisps of dissipated forms. Your room, with its table edges and yellow wallpaper, is the small haven of reality that remains. In the kitchen the radio plays gently, and a speckled cat warms itself against your thigh. There is a book on the chair beside you but this world right here is too present, too heavy to lose yourself in another.