dear stranger-friends,

happy almost new year! in this mysterious window between christmas and new years, I've been watching harry potter, playing stardew valley, and learning about human design (more below).

I also repeated a yearly ritual: making a year-in-review film, which I started in 2020. I wanted to share it with you, here:

2022 in 4 minutes, a film

hello kindred spirits,

thank you for signing up for guide.notes, a newsletter about the "how" of growing a creative ecosystem in the digital world.

my artist digest letters share my creations, but guide.notes is all about the process: of wayfinding, nurturing, building: creative things. digital ecosystems. soulful ventures that can sustain our worldly lives.

dear stranger-friends,

hello from a rainy week in istanbul. this letter is my artistic digest & weather report from the creative life. my last letter was about luna, and loving an animal.

this week, I wanted to share recollections from an adventure I went on at the end of summer -- a three week roadtrip, spanning an old land, ancient ruins, sleepy villages, lush mountains, and three seas. here's the route:

dear stranger friends,

I write to you eating my last watermelon of the year, thrilled that Istanbul finally feels like fall -- which means that my brain is working again. summer is good for some things: fruit, cold desserts, iced drinks, thunderstorms, and swimming in bodies of water -- but each year, I'm relieved when it's over.

this September, we did an epic, summery thing: we drove 6,570 km on a roadtrip around Turkey -- from Istanbul down along the Aegean coast, to the Mediterrean sea, then along the Black Sea. it's not my first long roadtrip, nor my first tour of a foreign country by car, but it is my first time traveling with a dog.

here's a photo of me and Luna, near Izmir, at the first of many beaches on our journey. I dream of, one day, taking her to a snowy place.

dear stranger-friend,

at the beginning of summer, I returned to istanbul after two weeks in new york, and wrote you a long letter about it -- the stark contrast between the two cities, how it felt to return to an old home, to see old friends, to remember past lives -- while starting a nebulous new one ... but that letter, somehow, disappeared before I could send it.

since then, I've sweated through the sauna of Istanbul summer (my least favorite season), painted my walls, hosted a childhood friend and her husband, experienced the city like a tourist, and continued to nest in my apartment, which feels like a different place each season.

then, a few weeks ago -- I adopted a dog, and my life changed overnight. I renamed her Luna. I will tell you the story in my next letter.

dear stranger-friend,

I'm sorry it's been an entire season since my last letter from that snowy day in istanbul. spring has felt sudden, loud, and heavy. I think seasonal transitions always feel hard in new places. you walk outside in the wrong clothes, and routines you became accustomed to no longer seem to fit.

today, I'm writing you from new york city, my old home of 9 years. I paused my istanbul life to return here for a few weeks. I landed yesterday. by the time I got out of the airport, rode the airtrain, and entered the subway -- I felt the internal click that told me I was back inside the clockwork machinery of this city, pressing "resume" on my parallel life.

I think once you give a decade of your life to a place, it will always feel like home - those years were like a blood payment.

dear stranger-friends,

it's been 2 months (or 2+ years) since I've written most of you. at some point in the last 5 years, you signed up for my letters.

I'll reintroduce myself again, and of course, please feel free to unsubscribe, visit my digital house, or write me back.

dear stranger-friends,

it's been 2 months (or 2+ years) since I've written most of you. at some point in the last 5 years, you signed up for my letters.

I'll reintroduce myself again, and of course, please feel free to unsubscribe, visit my digital house, or write me back.

dear stranger-friends,

the sun arrived in istanbul today - after days of darkness and wetness - and it feels like i'm slowly emerging from an underwater cave.

i spent christmas and new years here, alone -- with chaos machine of a black cat -- working on two films: an animated love poem about sleep, and a distillation of my 2021 in 119 seconds. this last week, i've been simultaneously apartment hunting in this spiderweb of a city, concocting a new course on daily self-care rituals (art of wellbeing) - and reviving an old one (creative circle).

in case you'd like to join, this winter season of creative circle will begin in 3 days - on monday.

dear stranger-friends,

I won't lie, I lived most of this last week in tired tornado weather - while it's been rainy and windy on the island - and I try to decide what to do, where to go next. I guess I'm not meant to be in a tiny house, alone, forever. I think i'll be in paris by friday, then amsterdam, then back to istanbul.

this week: some reflections on the process of leaving, saying goodbye to my cactus fruit, and a five minute PMS animation that felt so cathartic to make - just to remind myself that feelings don't last forever. other things:

• I binged dogs of berlin over the weekend and it made me so nostalgic for the feeling of berlin - so much so that I think I'll resume my deutsch studies, and go back next summer. I definitely recommend this show for its complexity of characters, unpredictablility, and for tangibility of racial, cultural tensions.

dear stranger-friends,

i am writing to you from a very windy, dark week on this island. i went offline for three days - and it felt like three weeks - and returning to the world was like returning from a submarine. i'm not sure i liked it (the return, that is - i loved the submarine). in those three days, I threw myself into language learning -- learning a language is like unveiling a world - albeit very slowly - and adding a new veil to yourself. more on this eventually. this week: notes on still lifes, windy days, old man in a bird shack.

*

i'm wishing you
the softness of
getting enough sleep,

dear stranger-friends,

I'm sorry it's been so long. at the end of july, I fell into a black hole, and I climbed out just in time to celebrate my 30th birthday last week -- alone, on the island of santorini, greece.

if you don't remember who I am, or why you subscribed to this newsletter, you can visit my world or journal or (my outdated) about.

please don't hesitate to unsubscribe!

dear stranger friends:

today feels like autumn in berlin - my favorite season - and i'm trying not to get too excited about baking rhubarb cakes and fermenting kimchi, one day soon, in my imaginary house by the sea, where i'll live with my lover-cat and maybe lover-man, if we are lucky.

i discovered a new joy: working late at night, on the balcony, with candles -- post-shower, post-skincare, between 10pm and 1am, as darkness falls slowly. it's the inverse of what hemingway described about writing early in the morning, in the cold and dark.

summer is not great for focus, let's say.

dear stranger friends:

these days, my mind has felt like a minefield, but berlin is beautiful and rainy. anxiety is: living with a bomb in your heart -- or getting your foot stuck in a beartrap and thinking it will last forever. I've been writing a lot of notes-to-self on my journal. I hope some of these tools might help you too. (here's an archive of them).

this week: on loving what you can't control, and living a nomadic life that feels like rowing through the open ocean. remedies from the soothing room: take a bath. a resolution to do simple things everyday.

sending you an afternoon by a berlin lake, with a glass of campari i drank yesterday,

hello again, stranger friends:

on friday I woke up in new york and went to sleep in berlin. to be in a time where two worlds can exist in a single day -- this is a strange feeling. i'm still groggy and finding my center again in this berlin summer -- where it's unrecognizably green and warm. here's a glimpse of the sunrise from the plane. sunrise like a laser beam.

this week: on cycles of death & birth, embracing the darkness, and a glimpse of new york city's sharp edges.

sending you a cold bottle of peach prosecco i drank in the park yesterday (because it's europe),

hello dear stranger friends,

sorry i've been silent for a little while. I've been swallowed into the black hole energy vacuum which is new york city, and feeling nearly ready to (1) disappear into a mountain house and never leave (2) sit by the sea and eat bento boxes and make seashell art for days (3) close my eyes and wake up in another life, another dream. I fly back to berlin in 11 days.

this week:

• a diagram of personal abysses
  
• circle animation of work as a labor of love
  
• from-memory drawings of new york city
  
• a 30 min centering ritual I use to keep myself sane.

dear stranger-friends,

i'm in harlem. staying with a friend with a thousand plants, and a cat that runs back and forth at night, chasing shadows. i wrote about my experience of getting vaccinated in new york, and feeling strangely at home here -- how new york city feels like my parent's house. everyday, i'm observing the fickle nature of my heart, and using a mood thermometer. and. it's springtime in new york. I'm dreaming of gardens with houses in them.

flowers to you,
kening

dear stranger-friends,

it's spring again and I'm in new york city - after 1.3 years away. I didn't write for a few weeks because it was black-hail-storming, tsunami weather inside of me. but I opened my eyes, and I'm on the other side of the atlantic, already half-vaccinated. I'll be here until end of may.

this week, i'm sharing

• excerpts of a travel letter: on leaving berlin
• art from a daily mood diary
• beginnings of the soothing room

dear stranger-friends,

today is blazing spring weather in berlin -- and for some reason, it makes me want to run inside. I think it's not the weather; it's the sudden swelling of people. I guess this pandemic has made me more of a hermit than I realized. I long for mountains, stars, sea, fish. starfish.

I started a website redesign last week - and it's still very much ongoing, but you can take a little look here.

here is the first journey I just opened (today) on starting a morning ritual (again, also ongoing).

hello!

sorry I didn't write last week - when I don't write it means I am either (a) incapacitated or (b) on an airplane or (c) feeling uncharacteristically lazy or (d) in a remote village where there is no wifi and I have to wave my phone around at the clouds in order to tell my mother that I'm alive. last week it was (a) zombie apocalypse week, but I survived.

a few things from my world:

• two ongoing illustrated maps of berlin
• a revelation on art as a darkness-vessel
• reflections on time in 3 scales
• some elon musk TED talk inspiration