A month ago, I reached out to my energy coach Maho again. I had last worked with her two years ago, as I prepared for my gap year. We meet over Zoom for an hour every two weeks, but it’s not just us communicating. It’s our spirits, and our spirit guides. She helps me identify problems with my energy: blockages, imbalances, leaks. To heal these weak spots, she has me envision rooting myself to the earth, scanning up my body, and sweeping a gold healing light out and above me. I imagine myself entering a new, sparkling world. We set intentions for what I hope to attract, and plans for our next session.
When I worked with Maho two years ago, I ushered in a period of huge personal transformation, inner harmony, and synchronicity. I’m already feeling some of that ✨ magic ✨ again after our initial sessions.
I run into friends moments after they pop into my head. We keep meeting other people who are in relationships with someone named Nick?? In a stroke of kindness, the workers closing the airport Panda Express for the night scooped us a heaping box of chow mein and broccoli beef. I had been looking for a pair of embroidered Chinese shoes for months, and while walking through the Lunar New Year Flower Market in San Francisco’s Chinatown, I finally found a pair: black with red twin dragons.
Along with all of the above, the days lately have just felt good. Full, true, and electrifying.
I’ve been leaning more into the Chinese New Year as my annual reset. Especially during my first winter in New York, something about starting anew on January 1st, amidst freezing weather and dark days, didn’t sit right. But New York at the end of February is on the precipice. The weather is warming, the sun is shining brighter. When we got home from a long trip to the West Coast, Nick’s chives, which we thought had all died from the cold, were sprouting up out of the pots on our windowsill.
2024, the Year of the Wood Dragon, is all about transformation, growth, creative abundance. On the other hand, this year is also about balance. I’m feeling both of these things. The set of seeds that I’ve been nurturing the last few months are finally emerging; opportunities are everywhere. At the same time, I’m battling the temptation to overcommit, to fall into old patterns.
After several friends recommended Stephen Mitchell’s translation of the Tao Te Ching, I finally read through it last night. One quote on balance stuck with me:
“If you let yourself be blown to and fro, you lose touch with your root. If you let restlessness move you, you lose touch with who you are.”- Tao Te Ching
It’s helping me remind myself to stick to cultivating my own garden, to deepen my existing roots.
Here’s a peek into what’s blossoming in my 🪷 garden 🪷 lately. If any of these things resonate with you, hit me up!
Climate, Justice, Organizing
After an eye-opening past few months at protests for Palestine, I’ve been eager to go deeper in my climate and justice work. I’m educating myself and looking into how to develop my organizing skills.
Education
Although I love to read, and I take thorough notes whenever I read nonfiction, I’ve rarely (maybe never) shared what I’ve learned from that reading as an essay or social media post. Notes are a great reference, but they’re a shallow form of engagement, so it’s also harder to internalize the main points. This year, my goal is to publish at least four essays on things I’m learning in books.
The first book I’ll write about is Siddharth Kara’s Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives. Online, activists referred to Sudan and the Congo, but I couldn’t find much information explaining the situation. I decided to learn more about the Congo first, since the Congo produces 70% of the world’s cobalt, an essential component of lithium-ion batteries in electric vehicles. More than 80% of cobalt is dug by small-scale, “artisanal” miners, whose working conditions are not monitored. I’m hoping to come out of the book with ideas on how we (as individuals and as people working in the EV industry) can keep more of the value in the hands of the Congolese people.
We’re also doing a book club with other friends in the climate/energy space for The Value of a Whale: On The Illusions of Green Capitalism. That could be a cool collaborative post or social media recap! Some things we'll be thinking about include: pushing for sustainable practices and commitments inside of our climate companies and sussing out places that are greenwashing.
In addition to books, I’m taking two cool classes. One is a free 16-week in-person class on understanding capitalism that I’m doing with Nick. It’s entirely run by volunteers and spread by word of mouth. Our meetings are at the Francis Kite Club, a cozy East Village cooperative bar created by artists. We spend the first ten sessions reading and discussing texts on the blast radius of capitalism, and the final six sessions envisioning how to dismantle capitalism and create a better world. It feels really good to ground ourselves in education, to understand the system at work and apply it to what’s happening on the ground in Gaza and connect it to other movements. We’re making lots of new buddies in the class to go to actions with. If this class sounds interesting to you, reach out. :)
My second class is starting next week, and registration is still open!! It’s on The Politics of Climate Change, taught by the director of the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research. With this class, I’m hoping to get a broader understanding of the political landscape and practice articulating my own opinions.
Organizing
This song makes me happy! Another thing that makes me happy: I joined DSA (the Democrat Socialists of America) again. I appreciate how intersectional their working groups are, and they have a great track record of getting sh*t done. I’m getting involved with their Ecosocialist working group to build public renewables and green social housing, in addition to their Anti-War working group for Palestinian liberation. It was really energizing to check out a chapter meeting for the first time. It was even cooler to do it even person in the basement of our neighborhood library.
My goal is to attend actions every 1-2 weeks. I’m hoping to get involved with Asians 4 Palestine too. I want to spend more time on the ground at protests, and eventually join the teams organizing them. Some other areas I’m considering organizing in: Stanford alumni, and the 12-week Bluebonnet data fellowship for progressive campaigns.
Community: Exploring Third Places* and Hosting Again
*If you need a primer on third places, watch this fun video essay by Amanda Gordon. Or, in short, third places are where people spend time between home (‘first’ place) and work (‘second’ place). They are locations where we exchange ideas, have a good time, and build relationships.
I recently came across Patricia Mou’s masterlist of 3rd spaces in NYC, LA, and the Bay Area. Mou is the creator of The Commons SF, a space in Hayes Valley intended to be a “home outside of home” for its members (there are also public events and hours all the time).
My last visit to SF was steeped in nostalgia, but this time around, I was hoping to make new meaning in this city. Although I had lived in the Bay for several years, I was surprised at how few of the places on Mou’s list I had visited. We decided to see as many as we could.
Randall Museum: this museum is completely free! It’s tucked away a bit, above the Corona Heights Park. You can hang out at Cafe Josephine for a beautiful view of the city before the museum opens. Once you get inside, it’s buzzing with all walks of life, including many cute (human) babies . There’s a live animal exhibit, including a new raccoon Lyra. You can sign up for tons of classes, learning how to knit, do woodwork, and arrange flowers. In the basement, you’ll find a vast model train system that was created decades ago. A few old men volunteer there to add new trains and maintain the tracks. On our way out, we caught an animal demonstration. The caretaker brought out a hawk to feed, followed by a snake.
The Center: This place is right next to my old apartment, but I had never went. I had been scared off by some Google reviews that mentioned rats. I’m so glad we stopped by. You walk down a long alley to get to the entrance. The ambiance inside is magical. Comfy seating abounds. On our first visit, we experienced a 90-minute sound bath with Danny Goldberg in the yoga room. We came back again to work later in the week, and the pots of tea were perfect! A climate meetup group pulled up next to my table, and they let me join in.
Writing Club at The Commons: The Commons hosts a writing group every Sunday morning! Lo and behold, my friend Megha independently showed up. We spent two hours there huddled together on couches with new people, making friends while getting a lot of focus work in. Check out the list of public Commons events here.
Archimedes Banya: This place had been floating around for a while, a Russian bathhouse all the way out in Hunters Point. It’s quite an experience. The hallways are narrow, it’s clothing optional, and it’s pretty packed. We saw questionable things (and questionable sanitation practices) in there, including an extremely PDA naked couple in the cold plunge. But there were a lot of positives. You can wear a special wool felt sauna cap! There’s an amazing steam room. The steam can get so thick that you can’t see anything around you. People drop essential oils in there. We were breathing in peppermint for hours after.
It felt so good to come back home after our trip. We’ll be in town for the next few months, and I’m excited to continue growing my community. More and more, I’m bumping into friends on the street. So much has changed since I moved here last summer!
Two new friends are building a library, gallery and community space out of their apartment, called Living Skin. I stumbled into their living room one day, hands covered in burger sauce, and it was fate. They’ve been hosting powerpoint parties, soup clinics, movie nights, and more.
For the last few months, another friend Ankit has been hosting a pop up meditation studio called The Treehouse in his Fort Greene apartment. Nick and I finally went this week. Everyone gathered on the floor meditation cushions to introduce themselves and share cups of tea. Sasha, who trained for two years under Thomas Hübl in meditation and mystical studies, led us through a 30-minute sit. We scanned our bodies, feeling the energy of the room, entering a deeply relaxed, connected state. Over Mediterranean food, we stayed talking with everyone until it was just us two and Ankit left. I took home Ankit’s copy of Bowling Alone, a third place classic, to read while he’s away.
Ankit’s an excellent host, and I applied some of his advice when we threw our first event in our apartment since the housewarming: Lotion Party. He told me how important it is to find your #2 for hosting an event, someone who can match your energy and “unweird” something. If there’s two people doing something, it becomes much easier for everyone to join in.
In SF, I had challenged myself to host one interesting event per month until I left. What came out of that period? A lettuce eating party, a cockroach art gallery, a centipede race, and a tender farewell dinner. The events had been a great success, but I’d felt a block about hosting since moving here. I was worried about nobody coming, about the themes not being “cool enough.”
But one night, the vision of lotion, many bottles of it, came into my head. I had a ton of lotion that I needed to use up. We made the Partiful, sent out the invites, and set the event aside, confident that the right pieces would come together. All I knew was that we would play Rachel Platten’s Fight Song, over and over again.
Two days out, a surprise venue fell into our laps, with the help of some code breaking. We bought a 20 foot plastic tarp from a hardware store and asked our friends Pat and Bonnie to help DJ and set the vibes for the first guests (so it didn’t look like we were about to murder them in an empty apartment).
Our guests brought so much to the table. Literally. Everyone brought bottle(s) of lotion to share generously. In a circle, Kaixi recited an ode to lotion, and others shared the miracles that lotion had worked for their skin problems. The room filled, and we rose up. I pulled out two identical bottles of lotion and split everyone into teams to play a game of lotion pong, where the lotion functioned as the ping pong ball. Lotion got everywhere.
I started spinning around in circles on the slippery tarp, Nick joined in, and then everyone else followed. We all embraced the weird concept, laughing and sliding around the room, rowdily welcoming in any newcomers. Sitting back on the windowsill and watching the party go down, I felt pure bliss. Together, we had created this transcendent moment. We ended the evening with buckets of beer at Carmelo’s and pots of pasta at Living Skin Space (thanks Jerome!!). Everyone set off for their own apartments, feet supple and souls fresh.
This hosting experience primed me for a visit to the Bathhouse in Williamsburg (also from Patricia’s list!). We showed up right when they opened. The baths didn’t fill up until an hour or so in. Like other bath houses, they have hot and cold pools and saunas, but one thing was different. I kept seeing the word “aufguss,” written on a sign in front of the tropical sauna with a list of times. I asked an employee, and he told me that I needed to experience it for myself. We namedropped the aufguss to everyone around us, and when 10:30 rolled around, the sauna was packed with guests, patiently waiting. When the aufguss dude came in, he was so touched. Normally, he has to call everyone inside.
His performance was life-changing. He was our guide for the next twenty minutes, leading us through the rising heat. One at a time, he placed a snowball into the stove, along with a different essential oil. He pressed play on the speakers, and with a gentle smile, began a spinning towel dance that spanned the whole room, all to diffuse the scent of the oil. We couldn’t look away. It was mesmerizing. Here are two of the songs that he played.
Although we won’t be holding a second lotion party, I’m looking forward to whatever we create next. Look out for a write-up of some learnings on event hosting from me and friends soon. I’m helping Nick cook his ten-course 27th birthday tasting menu for friends next weekend. After that, who knows??
Thanks for exploring a bit of my garden with me. Wishing y’all a bountiful beginning to your dragon year / spring season. Talk soon 💗🐲.