🗺️ diving guides for the dark
curated treasures from scorpio world
dear friends,
in honor of scorpio season, this week’s letter is a curated list of things I’ve created over the years — about working, making art, loving, and living within the deep & darkness of the under/inner world.
scorpio energy, for me, is about practicing fearlessness and tenacity, 100% commitment to the end, embracing emotional work as alchemy, and living life in service of integrity, beauty, and, above all, truth.
for me, spiritual systems like astrology, human design, or gene keys have been deeply validating in giving me permission to be more myself. to not apologize or feel embarrassed by the ways in which I’m too intense, too emotional, too sensitive, too obsessive, too stubborn, too all-or-nothing, too extreme. my journey through these systems have been a portal to embrace my individuality, in ways that have felt both empowering, and lonely.
but, I’m a scorpio sun/rising/mars/pluto — all in the 1st house of ego & identity — and I know that being 1000% myself, even if it means morphing into an otherworldly creature, is precisely what I’m here to do. this is my destiny.
and perhaps, regardless of whether or not you have scorpio in your chart (or care about astrology), you can consider this season an invitation to wander into the underwater caves within you, and see what it would feel like fully commit to something. even if — especially if — it terrifies you.
~
💌 table of contents:
I’ve divided this week’s letter into 3 parts —
Part 1 - Lonely Work as Creative Obsession
Part 2 - Tsunami Weather is a Gift
Part 3 - Treasure Hunting in the Abyss
🌊 PART 1 - LONELY WORK AS CREATIVE OBSESSION
when you’re obsessed, it’s like being in love — in that you don’t get tired, hungry, or discouraged that easily. I’m not saying this is a good thing (sometimes I even forget that I have a body); only that, when wielded properly, obsession is a power that will take you to the ends of the earth, looking under every rock and stone until you find that which you seek.
for me, creative work is lonely work — because it’s about learning to swim in your oceanic, psychic waters. diving into your own habits, rhythms, rituals, processes, and being in conversation with creative spirit; being devoted enough to continuously channel it, in public.
lonely work is swimming in the ocean alone
on committing to the perils of creative work, alone. this is probably one of my favorite pieces I’ve ever written.
lonely work is swimming in the ocean alone — kening zhu
the joys & perils of working for yourself
make art in the void
a reminder that as much as community support, friendship, feedback, and mentorship is wonderful, expansive, and life-giving… the void is also your greatest friend and teacher.
make art in the void — kening zhu
share your work like no one cares.
make art for no audience
a podcast episode in which I deconstruct the role of an audience, and reframe who you’re making art for, and why.
make art for no audience — kening zhu
letting go of the pressure to build an audience
scorpio work secrets
a short list of reminders for how to work like a scorpio — and a simple magical mantra that I need to make stickers of, or just tattoo on my hand.
scorpio work secrets — kening zhu
a distillation of what I learned about working in deep flow
how I share my work as an introverted artist
my personal instructions for sharing creative work on the internet — anti-FOMO, and anti-overwhelm.
how i share my work as an introverted artist — kening zhu
a challenge which took me a very long time to solve
my creative immersion deck
a tactile & modular project management system I use to facilitate deep-focus dives. (this is iteration 2.0 from March, I’m on 3.0 now)
my creative immersion deck: how I organize creative energy — kening zhu
a tactile system to help me travel through creative wormholes
💎 PART 2 — TSUNAMI WEATHER IS A GIFT
between 2015 - early 2023, I spent the majority of my public practice mostly writing about wellbeing practices and processes. in those years, I quit jobs, relationships, countries, cities — and each change felt like a sudden and violent death, like falling off the Tower, again and again, into the rocky ocean below, where it was always thunderstorm / tsunami weather.
learning how to ride out tsunami weather was a process that took me all of my twenties and into my thirties. but in that decade, I sharpened all the blades within me: of resilience and resourcefulness, of learning how to fight and tame inner monsters — until they morphed into docile little birds that I kept as pets in my pocket.
embracing tsunami weather is about cultivating an appetite for transformation: through seeing tumultuous, inner journeys as a gift.
remember that you have the compass within, always.
a moody creative’s guide to work overwhelm
on riding emotional cycles, while showing up to your work commitments
a moody creative's guide to overwhelm in work — kening zhu
on growing a creative business as an emotionally-driven artist — dealing with moods and energy, creative procrastination, paralysis, inertia, constipation, and guilt.
scorpio self-care: an ongoing guide
an SOS emotional guide I wrote for myself, because I couldn’t find anything more helpful on the internet
scorpio self-care: an ongoing guide — kening zhu
on dealing with extreme feelings & darkness
simple shadow work for psychic decluttering
a process to clear giant shadowy lurking monsters and turn them into bird-shadow-hand-pets.
simple shadow work: a practice for psychic decluttering — kening zhu
a simple journaling practice for clearing space
deep journaling: a brief guide
a process to untangle knotty feelings, on the page. this got me through most of my twenties.
deep journaling: a brief guide — kening zhu
unpacking difficult emotions
put your tsunami in a jar
two years ago exactly, I told my partner K that I can’t work, I’m feeling too many tsunamis, and he held me tight and said — can you save it? can you save this feeling and channel it, in your art? do you know how the Japanese prepare for tsunami weather? can you learn from them?
at that time, we had only been together for 10 months. I was so stunned and impressed by his response, when most other men I’ve known would just nervously laugh, or look dumbfounded/quizzical.
after he said that, this is what I wrote and drew that day:
put your tsunami in a jar — kening zhu
put the snooze button on your storm
🗝️ PART 3 - TREASURE-HUNTING IN THE ABYSS
even if you’ve fallen into an abyss-hole (big or small), and you know that it’s temporary, the work is to treasure hunt while you’re down there.
it’s while wading through murky, swampy, tangly situations — that you can stumble upon your shards of truth and deep, embodied knowing. these are the treasures that will carry you; propel you into the future, forwards, like an inexhaustible fuel of a personal rocket ship. these truth-shard-treasures are what make up your integrity, values, and principles.
as always, the first practice in this process is presence (this is making art). here is some work I made from those moments — both in the diving in, and coming out.
there are dark holes everywhere
acknowledging my psychic terrain — the feeling of being constantly in danger of falling. the moment I drew this, I could feel my psychic landscape shifting.
there are dark holes everywhere — kening zhu
these months i am existing in a terrain of my life which is full of dark holes — each varying in depth, gravitational pull, and intensity. they feel like bombs scattered throughout time and space, triggered by anything: a tiny fragment of memory, a thought, an image. I could step on a crack, fall in
heartbreak is grounding
in a way, it felt more real than anything I felt in that relationship, and for that, I was (and still am) grateful.
heartbreak is grounding — kening zhu
variation on the word sleep, by margaret atwood
an animated poem about love as presence through liminal worlds. it took me years to understand, appreciate, and feel grateful, now, to have this kind of love in my own life. this was a wedding gift I created for my friend Amelia Hruby — the same month I moved to Istanbul.
variation on the word sleep by margaret atwood - animated poem — kening zhu
this is a labor of love / wedding gift for my friend amelia - an animated love poem
truth is a glittering glacier
to look at truth without looking away, even if you can’t see the whole thing, even if you must paddle a boat around its waters, even if it’s in danger of melting. your looking keeps it alive.
truth is a glittering glacier — kening zhu
truth is not a double-edged sword. truth is a glittering glacier
🌑 goodbye for now...
I’m closing this week’s letter here, my friends.
this week, actually, was a scorpionic tsunami week for me. a coffee shop my partner is building with two of his close friends (in which I had invested money/energy/time in, from which both of was excluded from) finally opened for business, and I felt such strong pools of grief and loss — in that it’s what we wanted, but nothing at all like what we dreamed of.
this coffee shop story is the perfect example of a self-projected Projector’s absolute inverse recognition / nightmare story. I’m certain that I will sort it out in my own incubative darkness, and write about it, later this season.
hence: this is why I’ve been behind on podcast and posting new work (and finally bored of my own editorial last-minuteness), so this will change soon.
next week, I’ll send a monthly artist digest, and then you’ll hear from me again, here, in November.
the opening party is this sunday, which I’m half-anxious-excited / half-dreading.
I’m sending you a cup of coffee.
with infinite light,
🪼 kening
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🗺️ this is guidenotes 52, a weekly letter on creative alchemy & growing digital worlds.
🍃 find me on my podcast: botanical studies of internet magic.
🏔️ explore my course: house on the webs.
🪷 inquire about working with me: advising & creation services.
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