dear friends,

on wednesday I celebrated my birthday by renting a boat and going on a 3 hour sunset ride along the Bosphorus strait with my partner, dog, and a few friends. it had been a dream of mine ever since moving to Istanbul — that my birthday would be lived on water, floating in the liminal space between two continents.

what I did not expect was that the Bosphorous would be so rough, our wine glasses would slide off the table, the doors would slam open and shut, and the constant smell of petrol smoke would induce a nausea that meant I struggled to eat dinner, and spent a part of the evening trying not to think about the possibility of throwing up.

dear friends,

I tripped and fell during a morning run today, on the side of a busy road in Istanbul, during rush hour. I experienced the fall as if in slow motion, in chapters, as my body rearranged itself to try and prevent the collision, and failed.

by the time I was facedown on the ground, my first thought was: did any of these cars or people see me? how embarrassing. I got up as quickly as possible, and then my body tried to keep running. it took me a few seconds to realize there was blood on my elbows and knees, and that I was in pain. I turned around. I walked home.

-

it was the first time I fell in Istanbul. before this, I fell once, in 2022, while getting out of the shower, in winter. I fell three times when I lived in Berlin — twice slipping on ice while walking at night by the Spree, and once from a bike, in a lush, green summer. ten years ago, I fell while on lunch break from my day job in Manhattan, on the corner of Lafayette and Grand St. a guy across the street shouted at me and said he caught it on video and would post it to Youtube, then tried to soften it by calling it a swan dive.

dear friends,

I am not a night person, but lately I’ve been finding so much comfort in working in the dark, sometimes until 3 am. after days of noise, thoughts, people, plans, talk, there is a soothing silence that settles in my body after 10pm.

I like working best when everyone in the house (whichever house I’m in) is asleep. even if I spend my days running around, it feels as though the entire night still belongs to me. I feel rich in time, and I want to spend it indulgently — on the projects and things I love.

or, if my day was haphazard, pleasurable, or tumultuous, then sometimes I’ll spend my nights responsibly — doing client work, sorting chaos into jars. my nights must balance my days. this is my interpretation of autumn equinox.

dear friends,

the phrase “ambushed from ten sides” came to me, suddenly, today, while I followed friends through in a crowded farmer’s market outside of Izmir; the kind of place where you cannot even stand still without feeling overwhelmed, accosted by the senses, or asked by a Turkish auntie to move aside, please, if you’re not planning to buy those cucumbers.

then, I remembered that it’s the title of a classical Chinese piece for pipa (listen here), and, of a Zhang Yimou film I loved as a teenager. the phrase alludes to an ancient Chinese battle in 202 BC — and describes the feeling of being surrounded by an enclosure of enemies (or obstacles) in all directions.

the hardest thing about feeling ambushed from ten sides, I think, is resisting the bodily urge to run, or to totally give up, roll up in fetal position, and wait for it all to be over. standing one’s (quickly diminishing) ground feels so difficult, if not nearly impossible. these days, I feel this accutely.

dear friends,

after what seemed like years of savoring a simple, sweet peace, this summer has brought me more ruptures than even I would have wanted, or expected.

and so, I’ve been reacquainted with some chaotic, stormier version of myself that I thought I’d outgrown and archived away — locked into some filing cabinet in the back of my psyche. she is in my daily life again, asking me unthinkable questions, as sharp as swords, and reconnecting me to a sense of mystery, and sublime, terrible uncertainty. she is familiar, but also changed.

these days, I find myself relating to my creative work and business as the most stable, grounding thing in my life. it’s as though a decade of walking in the dark, continually reimagining, making things up as I go — how to share my work on the internet, build systems, create offerings, make a business, be true to myself, as an artist — all of it has coalesced into something that feels… unexpectedly solid.

dear friends,

on hot summer nights, this city feels like a clamoring of monsters — with seven varieties of smoke, the noise of constant conflict, and the extension of claws, tentacles, and jaws. if it weren’t for the wind and the sea, the air would be unbearable.

I felt this when I first visited Istanbul in 2021, and four years later, I still feel it now. this is probably why I stayed — the chaos felt familiar, like a womb, as if what I saw in the external world mirrored what I felt inside of me: a clamoring of monsters, waiting to be fed, placated, or released.

it’s terrifying, of course. creature-like creative force doesn’t know timelines, schedules, or planning. it doesn’t care about quality of sleep, regulated nervous systems, responding to emails, paying bills, or the commitments it said it would do. even if I let it swallow me whole, I’ll then feel the urge to spend days or weeks trying to clean up after it, control it, tame it, make it arrive and depart on schedule.

dear friends,

after I came back to Istanbul, for over a week all I could do was binge read mystery books on the couch. it seemed that sinking into fictional worlds was so much easier than trying to hold the tangled threads of places and past selves my body had reinhabited, and left behind.

reality felt like a strange, fluid, rupturing tapestry, and I had slipped and fallen into its folds. after these months of feverish creative momentum, what I was experiencing, now, was a feeling of amnesia — the inability to remember who I was, what I was doing, or what my job was. what is my work? what is my art? or, as Wendell Berry wrote, in an excerpted prelude to one of my favorite poems, “the world is full of places. why is it that I am here?”

I sat down to try and plan my new course — sharing space camp — and felt a flickering static in my head. my brain was completely offline, but I had things I needed to do; emails to answer, newsletters to write, client projects to manage. I felt sloth-y and melancholic, disturbed and existential.

dear friends,

I’ve been waking up and finding myself hesitantly wanting what you’re supposed to want, at this age — a wedding, a baby, a house.

the wanting feels quiet.

the fear of “not-ready” feels loud.

hello friend,

since the last time I wrote you, there was an earthquake in Istanbul, the city where I live. the ground shaking woke my dog Luna up from her nap, while my partner K lathered on shampoo and paused the water, and people around the city panic-jumped from their balconies. it was terrifying, and it wasn’t as bad as we expected — considering that we live in earthquake country. these are all second hand reports. I wasn’t there.

I was in China, in the green, ancient city of my birth — feasting everyday as a way of consuming the love of my relatives, re-absorbing my Chinese-ness as if sucking it from a tiny straw, attempting to disappear into a sea of faces, like an imposter; like a foreign object on blood soil.

hello friends,

on friday I had my first spring picnic in the park with Luna — and I felt briefly enchanted and shaken out of my homebody/hermit inertia.

this week, winter seems to be repeating itself again, in a smaller variation, like a musical motif. this recursion makes me think about the nature of change — how we move in looping circles through the seasons of our lives; returning again, before every new departure. as if life is saying to us: now, are you ready for something different?

yesterday, on a restless monday, I made scallion pancakes for the nth time, using this recipe. when I was in high school, my mother used to make and pack them for me, cut neatly and layered with paper towels in tupperware containers.

hello there,

it’s spring and ramadan in Istanbul — which means holy month, and a daily bakery line at sunset for hot pide flatbread, straight from the oven. I don’t even love bread — but this I can eat plain, with just butter.

during this seasonal transition, I’ve felt like a vampire, over-exposed to light. I sleep in later and work till midnight, retreating to the comfort of darkness. I’m feeling both restless and private. I took Luna to the park yesterday, and found petals on her paws.

hello friends,

it’s been a little while. I sent my last letter in early November, then disappeared from digital life. in the meantime, I traveled to the US, got a small surgery — and spent the holidays with my family resting and recovering.

it’s taken me a long time to understand the value of rest and integration work — growing in circles, spiraling around deep truths that might take minutes to understand or explain, but many months or years to fully inhabit. this period of absence, for me, has been full of gold.

{💌 this is: my artist digest for October. I also send Friday letters (resuming next week) called guide.notes}

dear friends,

there’s a saying (attributed to zen buddhism, but who knows) that keeps coming to mind these days:

{💌 this is: my artist digest for September. I also send Friday letters (resuming next week) called guide.notes}

dear friends,