dear friends,

hello from marseille - where I am spending the summer in a sticky, sweaty state of sad, sinking solitude, passing my days alone in a house outside the city, cat-caring and garden-tending, while my host friends are away on holidays.

I have not written for a while, because the last few months have been incomprehensibly, excruciatingly hard. since leaving Istanbul, I’ve felt the presence of grief around every corner, as dark footprints, silent shadows, trying to tell me something I wasn’t ready to hear.

a year ago, I wrote about the feeling of acceleration: recognizing that I wanted all the things — a wedding, a baby, a house. a year later, it’s as though my life has accidentally accelerated in reverse, like a bad dream.

I’m now grieving the loss of all the things I loved, that held me with such tenderness, for four years — my relationship, my dog, my apartment, the city, the country where I found and made a home.

I find myself, now, in yet another foreign country, alone with the hollowness of wanting. I work on the slow, pained labor of creating my own containers. on many days, I wake up and feel like I have nothing.

but of course, I know that’s not true. I have my body. I have my inner resources. I have deep friendships, community, and family. and I have my art, and my worlds of abundance.

I bought 7 new notebooks, each with a different purpose. when I had a home, I was struggling to keep an analog sketchbook practice. but now that I’m adrift again, I can’t seem to stop the images and words from falling out of me, onto the page, as if each book is a landing I desperate need; a surface contact that allows the feelings to have body and shape — instead of only existing as free floating particles in the air, with an unbearable weight that sinks me to the floor, everyday.

I am a hermit homebody, but I force myself into the world — into the heat and mosquitos and crowds of tanned young beach people laughing and taking selfies. I go on sweaty sunset runs at 9 PM, and cool morning swims at 7 AM. I started to learn French, which feels like a clean, distracting container for my obsession. learning a language feels like fumbling around in the dark. sometimes I’m excited-motivated about it, and oftentime I’m sad-angry about it. when I open my mouth, all I want to do is speak Turkish.

3 weeks with baby talya

before this month of solitude, I spent the last 3 weeks with my dear friend Zeynep and her 18-month old, Talya, who is a sweet baby that makes me want a baby — in practice, not just in theory. Zeynep and I speak to her in Turkish, and I think Talya loves me more for it. mother tongue, as in, the tongue her mother speaks. I wonder what language I’ll speak to my child in, and I don’t think it’ll be English.

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at bedtime, we accompany her to sleep by pretending that we’re all going to sleep. at midnight, I watch her stumbling out of her bedroom, crying from the dark caverns of her unconscious, and I can remember how terrifying it was, to wake up from one hazy dream reality into the next. what makes this world more real than that one?

when she steps on hot concrete with her bare feet, I watch her cry and scream with terror, and I think: how scary and confusing it must be — to be in such pain, to be frozen, and unable to comprehend why. if only all pain was like this: explained by the logic of the sun, thermal heat transfer, and solved by wearing shoes.

my weeks with Talya were like having floaty tubes attached to my arms and legs, keeping me at the top of my dark pool, while monsters were waiting for me at the bottom. at all hours, she’d say my name, kening, and ask me to read her books, help her paint, brush her teeth, feed her food, put on her clothes and shoes, and lather on her sunscreen.

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once, on a windy afternoon, I laid down with her on a picnic blanket in the garden. I talked to her about the sky, the birds, the plants, the wind, the cicadas, the cats, the house, her mother, her father, marseille, france, istanbul, turkey.

then I asked her questions like — where did you come from? what’s that place like? do you know where we’re going, after this? she turned her face to me, very close, and just smiled. we laughed about it. oh well, I said. hayata hoş geldin, canım.

welcome to life, my dear.

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🌀 labyrinth library is open for season 3

labyrinth library is my seasonal creative community devoted to the nonlinear practice & process of creative wayfinding.

I’ll be resuming season 3, running August 10-November 30 for 16 weeks, from Leo through Scorpio — from the light of visibility into the darkness.

there will be: weekly live discussion sessions, artifact teachings, workshops, creative treks, experiments, and a nourishing community of magical multi-faceted creative beings, all walking our own paths.

read member experiences here

season 3 will be capped at 24 members. registration closes when it’s full

explore labyrinth library

quietly public interview with carolyn yoo

I was very happy to take part in this interview series by Carolyn Yoo of SEE YOU about being quietly public on the internet. explore more of her work, and read it here.

quietly public interview with carolyn yoo — kening zhu

on being public & alone in a good way

an itinerary from light to dark

here’s a sneak preview of our spiraling itinerary for Labyrinth, season 3 — moving from the light of Leo into the underworld decension of Scorpio season. we’ll use astrology as trailmarkers to explore creative cycles, textures, and practices for our lives.

grief camp — september 17-30, 2026

grief camp is a new offering I’m releasing as a part of kaleidoscopes — a 14 day guided creative intensive, with daily practices and prompts. it is a themed version of the creative treks we do in Labyrinth.

grief camp will be included in season 3 membership of Labyrinth, and also available as a separate offering.

well, first time I’ve ever cried while drawing for a class…

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library card memberships

library memberships are for solo wanderers who would like to immerse in labyrinth materials without the community structure.

it’ll be: ongoing monthly access to artifacts, a rotating mystery teaching, ask me anything, and other resources. you can sign up and pause anytime.

explore the library

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💎 artifacts from labyrinth

excerpted from season 2 of labyrinth

adrenaline shot: dosing your intensity

on embracing your need for creative intensity

adrenaline shot: activating creative intensity — kening zhu

conditions for peak creative aliveness

gasoline: lighting your creative fuel

on adding fuel to the flame

gasoline: lighting your creative fuel — kening zhu

being in relationship to your fire

the cord that binds us: practicing devotion

on ways to practice devotion

the cord that binds us — kening zhu

caring for our devotion

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📝 Notes & Misc.

• releasing: only this week did I just finished teaching my business class, digital abundance, to an amazing, inspiring group of beings. more to say on this very soon. the class will be available as a self-paced journey in the next weeks.

• working on: a language study diary project called multiversed, which I’ll share soon as a digital garden-esque shape of notes and half-formed thoughts.

• thinking about: resuming my podcast in varied experimental shapes — including conversations, inspirations, freeflow form, Q&A?…

• feeling an urge to: divide the day into six 3 hour chunks, starting at 6pm and ending at 12am, and creating supportive guardrails for each window, so that I’m not constantly feeling lost in time. also, maybe: alloting certain days to permission to lose time.

• listening to: Vois sur ton chemin (BENNETT) (deriving strange pleasure from this German DJ techno remix of a French choral song). tourner dans le vide by Indila (felt so comforted by her acknowledgment of the spinning void) and melekler by hayko cepkin.

• two tarot cards I’m pulling constantly: death + judgement

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goodbye for today, my friends.

until soon,

🌑 kening

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🍃 listen to my podcast: botanical studies of internet magic

🦋 join my community: labyrinth library

🏔️ self-paced classes: house on the webs | creative systems | sharing space camp | money juice cleanse | digital abundance

🪷 advising with me: 1:1 sessions, liminal leap

💧 send me a gift: water my world