🗺️ making space for monsters
dear friends,
recently, work has felt like a many-headed hydra. the more I do, the more heads it regrows. I find myself obsessing, late at night, about which rhythms, rituals, and spells can keep the monster happily satiated. my intention is not necessarily to do less — to tranquilize, or slay the beast — but instead, to live a life illuminated, immersed, and bathed in art. to make art my empress hydra.
I continue to make space, every morning, to write and paint a little. for all my projects, I use pebbles to measure time. the small, flat white ones are 0.5 hours. textured round ones are 1 hour. sea glass is special.
I attempt to not work after 7pm, but this is much harder than it sounds. many nights, there is nothing I’d rather do than sit in darkness with a notebook, imagining something new. it takes work to keep my mind off work. this week, I did watch a film alone, and it was so beautiful that I wrote a film diary entry about it.
~
🍊 this week: I dissect the anatomy of a digital world, finished a monstera jungle painting, wrote about this 1991 film, and continue in the rebirthing of house on the webs.
🪴 monstera jungle snake study
my first time painting in gouache in nearly 5 years. many in-process photos inside.
monstera jungle snake study — kening zhu
real monstera, imagined snake
🎙️ the anatomy of a digital world
I deconstruct and translate the idea of website as world into concrete design elements, and give you a poetic reframing of how to think about each piece of your website.
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the anatomy of a digital world — kening zhu
dissecting the website world into parts
🎞️ film diary: the double life of véronique
this is the movie I watched alone on wednesday night. it lingered with me — a portrait of a mystical female solitude.
film diary: the double life of Véronique — kening zhu
a mystical kind of female solitude, a double-portrait
🔮 messages from the archives
curations of the week
find one thing that feels good
instructions: repeat daily (2020)
find one thing that feels good — kening zhu
finding momentum in anything
a creative digestion flow map
mapping all the ideas moving through me (2024)
a creative digestion flow map: how ideas are born — kening zhu
a map of all parts of the creative process
growing in circles
growth as walking the same circle, with new wisdom (2020)
growing in circles — kening zhu
reliving the same struggles again
how to grow a vision: a cyclical path of unfolding
from seed to tree (2024)
how to grow a vision: a cyclical path of unfolding — kening zhu
the lifecycle of nurturing a vision, from the beginning
📝 notes (what's rolling around my head)
minimize the middle - last night, I realized that I have remarkable energy for starting & finishing projects (birth & death / my aries moon & scorpio stellium), but the long, middle part is where I get bored, tired, and restless. how to deal with this? somehow, I need to reshape my relationship with time so that I create the illusion that there is no middle. so I’m only always starting or finishing projects — helping them birth or die, like a doula.
human design investigations - I used to play youtube videos and podcasts about human design in the background, while I did other work. but these days, I’ve been feeling annoyed / bored / dissatisfied with what’s out there somehow feeling too shallow, trendy, or generic. while I have zero intention of becoming a human design anything — this is a system that continues to transform how I work and exist in the world, so I have a hunger to collect and digest insights about it.
money energetics & shadow work - I have the feeling that the next course I’ll create, after I finish house on the webs — is going to be about money energetics & shadow work. shadow work is something I’ve done compulsively, my entire life, and I didn’t believe that “it worked” for the subject of money until… well, it did. this is close to my heart because it means grappling with what it meant to choose myself — to be an artist coming from an scarcity-mindset, immmigrant Chinese family. it means knowing how to swim in the rivers of shame, and grow gills while doing so. maybe, I can teach others how to swim, too.
jellyfish tattoo - it struck me this week that the first tattoo I want is going to be a jellyfish on my left (or right?) forearm. jellyfish is perhaps my favorite creature, because of their bioluminescent occupation of an otherworldly, liminial place.
🍄 inspiration log
since devouring gone girl a few weeks ago, I’ve been satisfying my mystery mood.
reading: the bloody chamber & other stories - by angela carter I’ve only finished the first short story (a retelling of bluebeard), but wow. I’m eager to unravel the meanings behind this fairy tale, which is mentioned in Women Who Run with the Wolves, by Clarissa Pinkola Estés
read: sharp objects by gillian flynn - I read this in a few days. an unsettling mystery that got under my skin and stayed there for a few days.
watching: sherlock (TV series) - I watched this ten years ago, but watching it again with my partner in the evenings, and truly savoring each episode. ten years is the right amount of time to forget everything that happened.
watched: death on the nile (2022) - an agatha christie movie adapation. perhaps a bit predictable, but lush and pleasurable, like a jungle flower.
🪄 incubating your digital world
this month, I’m working through rebirthing my website world-building course, house on the webs — completely recreating the course, from the ground up.
last week, I released Day 0: Incubations, as a free resource.
I hope it helps you in the beginning phases of birth.
🌸 goodbye for now...
until next week, my friends.
sending gentle jungle dreams,
🪼 kening
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🗺️ this is guide.notes 47, a weekly letter on creative alchemy & growing digital worlds.
🍃 find me on my podcast: botanical studies of internet magic.
🪷 explore working with me via my 1:1 containers: advising, mentorships, and creation services.
💧 send me a gift. water my world.