I hope you enjoy reading this, and that this new moon is helping you sleep better through these hot and short summer nights.

A Counterfactual Dialogue with my Tidepool Body on Lək̓ʷəŋən / Songhees territory

Today is my birth-iversary, my daughter’s birthday. Since last night I have been reflecting on my decedents’ passage through my body, when, 6 years ago last night, I was midway through a 48-hour labor. After I drop my daughters off at kindergarten and homecare, I drive until I reach a shore, avoiding the routes I have become accustomed to. I arrive to the Chinese Cemetery on Harling Point in Lək̓ʷəŋən territory. To mirror a line in Joan Naviyuk Kane’s poem, “Exceeding Beringia,” describing a geography of ice which holds “name upon vanishing name”1, this shoreline holds ancestors upon vanishing ancestors. It’s an apt day and place to engage in the counterfactual dialogue offered by Kyle Whyte’s paper, “Indigenous science (fiction) for the Anthropocene.2” I carefully edge down to the tidepools, sit down and speak aloud a poem into the wind (and into the voice recording ap on my phone), inviting my body into spiraling time. I allow my voice to speak^[1] as an ancestor, a present living being, and a descendent all at once.

Speaking poetry aloud feels like a useful methodology for engaging in counterfactual dialogue. Like Jen Rose Smith challenges the superiority of statistics by reading poetry as a form of data validation, speaking or singing challenges the supposed superiority of written forms of communication. Also, to include the possibility that counterfactual dialogues with not currently living beings, or beings that speak other languages, is not “counter” factual, but factual, it occurs to me that some of those beings may be able to receive and communicate more easily through speaking rather than writing.

In my multitudes I reflect upon how time may be perceived for a being in the tidepool- considering that I also am a being in the tidepool and that the tidepool beings are also ancestors and decedents. Following is the poem I recorded there, edited for poetic fluidity and clarity.

I am a soft, tidepool body.

My senses are stuck to my life, to the words I’ve been told, and to this rock.

On time scales I cannot fathom from the center of my body,

The tide periodically pulls me out from under myself.

When I leave myself, instead of this rock,

I’m trapped in my colonizing ancestors’ imagination of time.

Time that simultaneously does not stop and does not move.

I am an ancestor.

My descendants, present lives, and future ancestors,

Only know about my body, about my breath,

When they visit their dream geographies,

The places the non-existent eyes3 of satellites try to erase,

Through statistics and anxiety. Static.

I am my ancestors.

I see them from my tidal time trap,

As the pass in front of me on a tiny grey military ship.

They’re lost at sea, scared and sad,

because no one is holding their soft, child hands.

As this iteration of tide slips out from below them,

They are trapped in the same place as I am,

Terrified that the water will never return to their soft bodies again,

They use metal to make their bodies hard.

I want to learn how to sing to them all, to myself,

So that as we wait for the tidal waters to return, we do not do so in fear,

But with gratitude that in this dreamscape,

Time is not hard as a weapon.

Time is as soft as our tidepool bodies.

After I speak and record the poem, I walk to read a marker sign. I learn that one of the rocks is a Songhees ancestor who was turned into a rock by a transformer when he was hunting seals. There is something about this place that teaches about time, the slow life of rocks and the awakening waters, something that offers a quiet warning to not get stuck. There too is a lesson that in this place of ancestors upon ancestors, the ancestors do not actually vanish.

Happy Taurus New Moon <3

(More on the newsletter name change coming soon. Thank you all for your patience.)

Bits of Round

I

am

.

Stumbling through

the long nights, tripping over the

gravity of extraction. I land on my heart,

succumbing to my wounds of lacking, I frantically

hoard little colorful bits of plastic future trash and wrap

them in paper. I smile watching my daughters opening my

gifts, praying the unwrapping will not blossom into worship of

disconnect.

Still. I grasp and wonder into something more whole, more

round, more wet. The ocean offers up the most colorful

bits of aching earth I have ever seen. I resist my urge

to hoard them. Instead we leave them as an

ephemeral museum only for the eyes of

passing raindrops.

Love,

Olivia

Happy Near Year and Happy Belated Full Moon!

New years day in the Gregorian calendar is one of my favourite days to remember that every day is the start of a new year, and that time as we experience it is a human construct. Today is also the first day that I am officially a PhD student, and my twitterpation levels are out the roof. So today I will share somethings that have been on my mind about time, calendars, collaborative art, and how we can use these things to address this precarious moment on earth- a question that is central to my decision to start a PhD in the first place.

Calendars are an attempt to hold time still so that we can make sense of our tangled and flowery trajectory through space. But as heretic ancestor Galileo put it: “There is no single best reference to define stillness.” In other words, perspective is everything and which way you are going depends on which side you are looking at it from. This complicates time keeping, and calendar making because the number of ways to map our movement through space-time is as big as the number of ways you can look at.

So why do we treat something so vast like a trap? Like a spider web that’s waiting for us to unsuspectedly fly into it so we can be eaten up? Like its a time clock we have to punch in every hour until we get sick and die? (Stay tuned for this section of my dissertation, I mean, my newsletter blog thing).

The unfathomable nature of time is awe inspiring, and treating it as such, might be one of the answers to our fascist problem.

The psychological impacts of awe include: a reduced sense of self and feelings towards materialism, increased humility, and connectedness to others and humanity, openness to changing ones worldview and an expanded sense of time. Sounds like an antidote to fascism to me.

So this Gregorian year 2026 I’m dreaming of time-keeping systems that are as awe inspiring and as surreal as: being a living being on a planet that is spinning around a star that is making a flower design in a bouncing sine wave around the black hole centre of a spiral galaxy. Breath in. Breath out. (And check out this video if you also have a hard time with verbal descriptions of space). When its time to make this calendar I’ll be guided by a game that my sister-friends and I made up circa Gregorian year 2011 and the ancestors of the surrealist movement.

During a ripe period of exploratory art making my sister-friends and I came up with a collaborative game we call Twist Apart. In the “game” everyone takes turns drawing on the same page to co-create a surreal ecosystem of visual perspectives (more description here from a guided Twist Apart activity I led with fellow early career environmental researchers). It doesn’t matter how practiced at art the participants are, we see over and over again how people let go of their shame of “not drawing good” when we all combine our perspective of what shapes, colors and textures mean, together on the same page.

We’ve been playing twist apart for over a decade now, but this year I learned that Twist Apart is in the lineage of the surrealist art movement. This is important because surrealism was not just an aesthetic movement, but a political response to the logics of fascism. André Breton, who wrote the Surrealist Manifesto, and who is one of my new historical boyfriends, was a doctor in training during the first world war who treated soldiers in the psychiatric ward. As Naomi Klein described in a recent article titled Surrealism Against Fascism: “[Breton’s] experiences treating shellshocked soldiers were “at the heart of Surrealism”. The sick patient was no longer an individual soldier, but the entire society that licensed slaughter.”

Our calendars, and maybe our whole society, are in need of a surrealist disturbance to make space for the awe needed to experience our true place in the universe. The space the disturbance will made to re-old-growth-forest our imaginations. The imagination we need to create beyond the psycho rococo clowns that somehow get the power they need to licence the slaughters over and over again.

I understand that this might come across as airy and unpractical, but I believe that art changes the world, I believe in evolution and humanity. The spirit of Twist Apart– existing differently, without shame, together on the same page– is one of the compasses that guides my world view, my art practice and the research I will be taking on. It’s not the only answer, but its a piece of the puzzle to addressing this precious moment we are living, which is far from a solo endeavour. Not just a de novo surrealist art movement, but all of our perspectives are needed to understand how we can do this humanity-on-planet-earth-job better.

…

…

In the last month I have not advanced on the book besides putting it high on my list of things to complete in this Gregorian Year 2026. I look forward to calling in your perspectives as I move forward (or is it backward) on this book project that is very precious to me.

Thank you for being here as I learn how to write what I mean, and finish what I start.

With love and a sincere wish that you all experience the rest, and awe that you need in this portion of a literal galactic rotation.

Olivia

Share microbes & metaphors

The PPP I pulled off this week in the melee of moving and parenting in the throes of capitalism, is a little good-bye zine to the sweet city we are leaving. The little city of Guelph has been so kind to my family and I in so many ways for the past 4+ years. Making the zine helps me feel a sense of closure in leaving. It also gives me a sense of opening, backwards towards the flamboyant non-stop creativity I swam in as a teenager and young adult (when I used to make lots of zines). I’m calling back these kind of creative waters into my life-- I will be needing them to finish a PhD. Fingers crossed my PhD will feel like one big 4+ year Procrastination Passion Project.

I also want to invite you all to visit my Etsy shop. There are 2026 calendars available as well as some art that is near and dear to my heart. My shop currently runs through print on demand services. As a mother, and a graduate student this makes sharing my artwork accessible because I currently don’t have the capacity to print and ship my work. One day I dream of having a gorgeous well lit art studio with butter yellow walls. I’ll use that space to create to my hearts desire. Then I might have a printing press of my own. For now I mostly work from the library and the dining room table when my little ones are asleep or at school, and remain grateful for the tools I have access to.

Remember to shop small (if you are shopping this season). Any sale you make from my shop or any small business makes a direct impact for a family. But Jeff Bezos don’t give a shit about us. Oh geez. Sorry to end it that way.

Lots of love, and Happy Full Moon <3

Olivia

As a parent and graduate student in 2025, I am currently tending to about 425 pots on about 44 fires. It’s an octopusesque feat that results in many spills, some burns, and a generally slow moving pace to just about everything. It’s one step forwards, and two steps back when you are almost out of the door on time and then somebody poops in their pants. Still though, we are learning to walk, poop on the potty, and how to tend to the precious pots and fires that we are so lucky to have.

My late mentor and friend, Bob Luna, taught me to consider my creative drive as a fire to be tended. Something to be fed and cared for. Something that could also go out. Through all of the winds, storms, and sunshine of motherhood and quantitative ecology training, I feel lucky that I am still stringing along my creative fire. It remains a fire that holds around 74 pots, 14 of which are the book.

The limits of my limbs (because I am not actually an octopus), has forced me to come up with methodologies that feel new and inventive for me. They have allowed me to start creating illustrations that make sense to me, and for me to be in conversation with my past self (selves), and artwork.

The methodology that I am stirring up pairs the absurd self surveillance that I engage with almost daily through my phone and my very basic computer graphics skills (ie, making cool powerpoints).

Let me explain.

I’ve recently learned that I can “search” using keywords through the literal 30,359 photos that “live” on my phone (and in some giant computer somewhere sucking up water and energy:(). For example, if I search for “illustration” my phone shows 1,116 results, many of which are my own illustrations.

When I do these searches I suddenly have a vast archive of my artwork at my finger tips. It makes me feel capable as an artist, and my creativity does a little fire dance. Then comes in my rudimentary computer graphics skills.

I’ve also recently learned that you can make digital collages without having taken a class in digital illustration or graphic design, just by left clicking and choosing “copy subject.” You can then “paste” that subject into a powerpoint slide.

With those pasted images I can arrange the artwork and photos that I have accumulated throughout the years into a digital “collage” on the powerpoint slide. The illustrations are becoming a metaphor for the text I have already written and have been revealing new layers to the story and the personal transformation that I have gone through as I have strung along a creative fire through all of the spills, bodily fluids, and tears of motherhood.

What does my old artwork mean to me now?

How has it made me?

How has it un-made me?

What kind of a soil cycle am I?

How does making art in this time in history matter to me? To the world?

If the AI robots are reading this as they search through the web, how will it alter their large language models?

No answers from me at this point. Just a process that I am so grateful to be tending to.

Love,

Olivia

For family and friends already subscribed to my newsletter, thank you so much for joining me here since the beginning of this practice. I want to let you know that I’ve been making good headway on the book, and also have been quite immersed in finishing my thesis, parenting and navigating this strange world. That’s why I’ve missed a few moons, but here I am back. It’s almost the new moon, but I’m sending this graduation announcement now.

I’ve always been drawn to the web of life thriving under rocks: the cavernous homes built by teams of ants; the coexistence of ‘dangerous’ bugs like wasps, centipedes, and spiders; the roly-polies and millipedes moving slowly but surely though it all; the seen and unseen creatures dutifully cycling nutrients; the chaotic bursts of movement that ensue when the Rock roof is lifted, exposing these multitudes to the sunlight.

I imagine myself living and thriving in such richness too. The rich soil where the matter (mother) that makes our bodies comes from and where our bodies physically return.

The word “chthonic” from the Greek khthonios meaning “of the earth, in the earth,” is now considered as synonymous with “infernal,” “hellish” and “dystopian,” according to the online Merriam-Webster Thesaurus. This cultural demonizing of a place I find so beautiful and wondrous is completely out of touch with how I understand soil ecosystems and my place within them.

My favorite Rock to lift, the one roofing the many chthonic worlds I grew up observing, is still in my parents’ front yard. Now I live far away and I use that space as the center of the cardinal directions– north, east, south and west– when I find myself disoriented in a new place. I understand my current location, in space time relative to that space, and to those beings. All the life that has passed through that little front yard are, as many indigenous peoples, artists and scholars have made clear, my actual relatives.

My orientation relative to the Rock, the Ants and Roly-polies, guide how I nurture my two daughters, Susanna and Amapola, who are now 5.5 and 1.5. They too, are magical and powerful forces of beauty and chaos in my life and have completely changed my space-time orientation.

My relationships with my daughters and those lives under the Rock– are what inspired and fueled me to complete a master’s degree focused on soil microbial ecology. It was a profoundly humbling, and challenging experience. I stretched myself in so many ways to understand and relate to the unseen chthonic beings through months of lab work extracting the genetic material from soil. These extractions result in ~100 microliters of liquid which is mind boggling considering that a tablespoon of living soil contains more organisms than there are humans on the earth⁴. I learned a new and concise language capable of quantifying the extracted DNA and RNA and spent many hours studying what is known about how nitrogen (a vital nutrient in the soil) is cycled by soil microbial communities. With the data I extracted from the soil, I learned a story about nitrogen cycling microbes, agricultural practices and climate change.

I defended my thesis on September 8, 2025, and graduated on October 15, 2025. I now sit with a sense of spaciousness, and accomplishment, having finished an immense challenge all the while holding my daughters close. Despite –or perhaps because –of the stretching that early motherhood and being a graduate student has put me through, I have maintained my commitment to be led by my curiosity. I have also maintained a dear affinity for the lives under the rocks.

This winter, I am elated to be starting a PhD in Anthropology at the University of Victoria– in the north and west from my parent’s front yard and the chthonic worlds I grew up observing. It may seem like an abstract jump from my master’s work quantifying the genetic material involved in the soil nitrogen cycle, but it’s not abstract to me. All life forms are a part of what makes human life possible and whole– from evolutionary pathways to nutrient cycling in food systems, from relationships, to infrastructure. Moving from soil microbial ecology to anthropology isn’t much of a jump, but is rather, to me, a grateful acknowledgement of my very foundation.

I have been writing this newsletter since the spring. It chronicles my first attempt at synthesizing my human experience with my master’s research through a graphical memoir and children’s book (?) about motherhood, change and soil nutrient cycling. The book isn’t done yet, but when it is I plan on changing the name of the newsletter and using it to share my work as an anthropologist-ecologist-artist-scholar rooted in soil.

I will be continuing to develop a writing, storytelling, and visual-arts research-practice that sits humbly within lineages that labor to orient our continued human-evolution towards something that is no longer genocidal and eco-cidal, but regenerative, reciprocal and life affirming.

Thank you for being here with me.

With love,

Olivia

This is arriving to you on the 100% full moon at 3:55 am ET. However, I’m writing #7 earlier, at 71% waxing, because I am in a period of relative rest as I await the thesis edits from my committee. The upcoming full moon [happening now for you], I expect, will not be a restful time as I go into my thesis, number focus edit brain, so I’m doing this now.

Yesterday (61% waxing) my little wolf pack family started listening to a podcast in the car called “Deep Time: The Cosmos and Us.” Our littlest, 17-months-old-one fell asleep right as physicist Carlo Rovelli was saying:

“So you may say, oh, I'm 20, or I'm 40, or I'm 60. Yeah, but this is just this little arrangement of stuff that is you right now. But this stuff that is making you, you, is billions of years old. And it comes from stars, you know, it comes from out there in space. It traveled gazillions of light years to fall four and a half billion years ago into this nebula that was collapsing to become the sun and the planets.”

At this point 17-months-old-one travelled back and forwards in time, beyond words, and symbols to her essential universal self in dream time. So she could continue her dream trip, we got our biggest, 5-years-old-one out of the car as questions spewed forth. “Well, where do stars come from?”

I waited in the car with the littlest one to finish her nap, and managed to make this poem and digital collage on my phone. It’s aesthetically influenced David Mack’s epic comic book, “Kabuki: The Alchemy,” that I am rereading right now. It includes an image of a leaf skeleton sent in a text from my dad, my altar featuring Bobaluna’s ceramic face, a racoon sketch I saw in the art building on campus that says “Never Give Up”, a print of a Milkweed plant that says “We’re Not Weeds” from the Manufactured Ecosystems exhibit, a fairy house I made with my biggest one, a selfie taken by the littlest one, and a kitty painting I made for my biggest one.

Making this felt like an accessible, mobile art making practice; one that might come in handy as I scheme to complete difficult projects. And now that my master’s thesis is almost done, all while my littlest and my biggest ones continue to be beaming, buzzing, flower-fire-tigress-monkey-cloud-water children, I know: I. can. do. hard. things.

Breath.

Wish me luck as I swim amongst little blinks of light in a vast ocean of darkness, and wish me wisdom to see, and feel, past the dichotomy of light and dark.

I’ll see you on the other side of my thesis defence.

[celebration emoji X 1,000,000] [whale emoji X 1,000,000] [crying emoji X 1,000,000] [green heart emoji X 1,000,000]

Love,
Olivia

We are a few days past the new moon, so while the newness has been sinking in, the growth cycle has begun again. It’s hard to keep up.

The end of my masters thesis is in sight, which is where all of my time goes when I am not caring for my daughters. I haven’t done much in the way of this book or any art practice, so I’m thinking about renaming this Substack: “MAKE ART AGAIN! my struggle to bring back my art practice as a mother”-- it will be a self-help newsletter for myself to read. But not really. I’m not going to change the name, and I’m trying to finish what I’ve started.

Sometimes when I have had trouble sleeping lately I listen to Yoga Nidra recordings. When the soft voice asks the listener to set their Sankalpa– “a heartfelt desire, a solemn vow, an intention, or a resolve to do something” – I say “I am stable in space-time” three times. I somehow have remained a leaf in the wind as a parent, but lots of moving with little kids is, to put it lightly, intense. When I was 20 something, not knowing where the next home was, was fun and exciting. Now it’s keeping me up at night, and triggering fights between me and my fellow goat partner. Finding someone to rent to a family of 4 and their sweet, shedding doggo for 4 months is not easy as it turns out. But don’t worry about us, It’s going to be okay, I promise. And still somehow I’m thinking about art.

Despite the intensity of the situation my soul (or whatever it is) still holds tight to her desire to express herself creatively, still desires “stability in space time” for her art to unfold like a wild, spiny, fragrant, flowery, old-growth garden, breaking through all manners of car-centric-infrastructure. I just know that Mother Olivia’s art will be truer, and more powerful than Maiden Olivia’s art when she gets the space time.

We will have several moves this year, so having some gorgeous private art studio to go coo-coo bananas in isn’t a thing right now. But libraries are. That is where I have been finishing my thesis, and where I get to witness a spectrum of humanity that finds stable space-time in the public library to focus on– whatever they want to focus on. There is a lady behind me whispering profanities at the computer. Some of those are expressing gratitude to the librarian who helped her play space invader on the computer. There is a guy who is working on a soldering project that involves a wooden drum shaped object. Another one who has been making a clay dragon hand. There are some who I suspect are also finishing their theses. Newspaper readers. And me; editing my thesis, and taking breaks to fantasize about how I am going to set up shop in the library in the coming months once my thesis is defended so that I can illustrate this book. The library will be a container for a portable-art-studio-altar, stable in space-time (Thanks, Eutimia, for helping me reframe what an altar can be).

For now my art practice is fairy houses with my 5 year old while 1.5 year old sleeps in the stroller. And I am also grateful for that magic space-time.

Okay that was messy, but so is space-time.

Thank you for reading.

Love,

Olivia

Dearest you,

I apologize for not writing for the last two months. My intention for these letters was been to write one around every new moon or full moon. I missed the last four, and should probably miss this one, but since this is a way to keep myself accountable to my re-budding art practice, I will write this. It also serves as a journal, a form of record keeping, and for remembering the moon. Today is a waxing gibbous moon. 84% full. Full enough.

We are back in Toronto (Tkoronto), we drove here from Denver. We took four days for the drive, which leading up to, I was completely dreading. I was excited about the prospect of seeing the land, the dirt, water and trees between here and there, but the prospect of spending 22 hours in the car with my 5 and 1.5 year old felt, little-t-traumatic. In the end though, the need for little bodies to take rests from being inside a metal box travelling at speeds that our brains did not evolve to comprehend, allowed us to stop and witness the in-between places. We got to see the way that people any and everywhere care for and nurture their communities. I was able to take time to reflect on the ways in which the dirt and the water run through all places, changing shape as they make home for different landscapes and cultures. We saw a sunset on the Mississippi River, and we got to appreciate the greatness of Lake Michigan. If there were no kiddos in the car, my partner and I likely would have just powered through to get to the destination. The goal.

[Insert: Queue cliche lesson on appreciating the journey. It’s real though. We never really know where we are going.]

This spring, before I got accepted to the PhD program in anthropology, I was dipping into the job application process that I knew would be following my master’s program. I applied to several jobs that I wasn’t inspired by, but that I might have been qualified for, and managed to find one that I thought I would actually have fun doing. In the description they said they were looking for someone who was “process oriented” rather than “goal oriented”. I didn’t know what it meant, but I was attracted to the idea of being process vs goal oriented. Searching for the definition “process oriented” gives a lot of different results. In my version of “process oriented” I imagine it as a challenge to the production->consumption->discardment oriented culture that has cut us off from relationships of reciprocity. It’s one were we have to take time to get to know all the lives, beings and nuances, of what is in between “here” and the “goal”.

The four day long, frequent rest stop drive was a good lesson in this. When we fly over 1,500 miles of ecosystems, human and more-than-human communities, we consume space and discard time. There is no way, no time, to start any relationships with all that is in between the airports. Driving of course is also problematic, but I found comfort in driving from the place where I grew up to the place where I gestated and gave birth to my babies. In the car I am at least a little bit closer to the dirt, and can witness the short grass prairie turn to tall grass, to forest to the Mississippi River watershed, to the Great Lakes. A little closer to being able to make a lasting relationship with a home in a place where my ancestors have little to no stories.

The story (my story) is a sort of dirt worship. Being closer to it amidst all of the moving my little family unit is doing feels like an important part of the process. We are heading towards a goal that is always moving through space, but the ground is always here to hold us.

The book is about how dirt is teaching me to un-become, and become in motherhood, I’m still in the process. That liminal, in between destinations space is, after all, where I live. So, no illustration or publishing possibility updates at the moment.

Thank you for your patience and for believing in me.

Love,

Olivia

Dearest you,

Cyclically, my mind and heart go kaleidoscopic, like the eyes of a fly. I try to take all the fragmented pieces in at once. I want to play with all the pieces to make something that reflects how

everything.

is.

connected.

I feel grateful, and honored to carry this deep sense of curiosity about… almost everything. It is also a big challenge for me.

I am still learning how to root my kaleidoscopic self into my material conditions. The conditions of being a mother, in a world where global injustices and collective trauma are dangled in our faces on the daily, and at the moment, the material conditions of being a low paid graduate student researcher racing to finish my thesis. So I will be honest that in the last two weeks I haven’t found the space-time to work on this book at all, because when I am not caring for my littles in some capacity, I am working on my thesis. My desktop, where I live part time, has been looking like some version of this:

A jumble of letters, numbers and lines, that my brain plays pattern recognition with. Bouncing back and forth between the right and left (brain), I have been attempting to tell a story about what the microbial communities were doing when the nitrous oxide was being emitted from the soil in our microcosm experiment. My research is not directed by myself, and is a teeny, tiny piece of a very big puzzle. In this process, I have been amazed and humbled to have had the chance to partake, if even minutely, in the vast collaboration that scientific “discovery” requires (the scenius?). In some ways it is inline with my kaleidoscopic self, and in other ways it feels like an imploded version. Looking at something so specific, so tiny, and so invisible can feel myopic, when my questions feel so big.

To remind myself of how this research can be rooted in, and eventually feed my curiosity, I remind myself of moments in my life when all of the fragmented pieces of the kaleidoscope have come into view. Moments when I have been affirmed in my pursuit of seeing this world as something whole and entirely interconnected, not as something made of broken, and separate pieces. Some of those moments have taken place in my first classes in biology and microbial ecology. I cherish these little windows into wholeness.

I saw one of those windows when I first learned about LUCA, the theoretical, last universal common ancestor. LUCA is where the pasts of all living things on earth converge. It is the grand-ancestor of amoebas, e-coli, orca whales, sloths, walnut trees, monarch butterflies, humans, sunflowers, dogs, slugs, diatoms, and all of our other cousins, too. It reminds, and affirms that we are all, literally, related and connected. It is also a reminder that we all come from something microbial. LUCA is believed to have been a single celled, prokaryotic organism. A microbe holding an infinite potential for the biodiversity our magical earth is capable of carrying.

The ways that the theoretical grand-ancestor has, over an estimated 4.2 billion years, become all that we know as life, feels to me like a kaleidoscopic act of future building. The flip side of this life building is death, and the subsequent act of decomposition. And like opposites often converge onto themselves, decomposition is a sort of traveling back in time towards wholeness. In death, all of the grand-daughters and grand-sons of LUCA return to a soil state, becoming a kaleidoscope of microbial activity, spreading out and back into our collective origin.

The story I am writing about decomposition, has been an attempt to help me ground my master’s thesis in my kaleidoscope mind. It has also helped me to make sense of the identity-decomposing and shapeshifting that I have experienced as a mother.

I’m working to pay attention to those moments of kaleidoscopic clarity. Maybe they are invitations (thanks Jacoba, for this language), to keep searching, and to keep creating something that helps prove that we are (a) whole just by virtue of being alive.

Thank you for joining me in this, my 7 readers <3 I appreciate you witnessing my winding process.

Love,

Olivia

I have never illustrated a children’s book before—nor have I ever called myself an illustrator. As I attempt to illustrate this book, I’m learning that the process is far more complex than I realized. It’s full of possible directions to take, colors to choose, shapes to refine, faces to shape, and movements to capture.

I dream of one day having my own art studio: well-lit with natural light, with ample space to spread out my mind onto the walls, tabletops, and floors. In that dream, I can play with and arrange every consideration like a living collage until the pieces fit together like a puzzle. But dreams are different from goals. While that studio is my dream (and would make illustrating easier), my goal right now is to illustrate this story. So I’m working with what I have.

What I have, for now, are my notebooks and sketchbooks—places I’ve always found home in—and a few basic (and free) digital editing tools (do y’all know how much you can do with PowerPoint and Google Sheets!?).

It’s easy to feel frozen when trying something new, so to push myself forward, I’ve started with an unsophisticated practice: setting aside all expectations about the outcome. First, I printed out the manuscript, cut out phrases I imagined would work together on a single page, glued them into a blank sketchbook, and began drawing each page as I envisioned it. It feels like returning to my days of making zines with all the Beaux Hos—very analog, with no “brand.” There are too many voices, too many possibilities, and too many pasts and futures to be limited by that kind of marketing.

Right now, I haven’t committed to one medium, one version of a character, or even an illustration theme. What I’m doing is more like warming up, dating around, wandering until I land on something I can stick with. It also feels like allowing space for many parts of myself. I’m carrying advice from artist and writer Nick Bantock—words I once carried around on a scrap of paper as a teenager and young adult:

"Postcard to a Young Artist:

Within each of us lies a landscape, a personal mythological universe inhabited by many characters. Only zealots insist we speak with a single voice, yet those who admit to an internal cast of characters are called crazy or, at best, idiot savants. It takes courage to acknowledge that we are a compendium of actors playing conflicting roles. As artists, we need the imaginative mythology of all our facets for our art to be vibrant and meaningful. To produce piece after piece that are mere variations on a theme may suit gallery owners and critics—it’s easier to sell a product—but it does little to nourish our humanity.

Young artists who limit their imaginations are dishonest with themselves and their audience. Our job as creative tricksters is to acknowledge, develop, and shine light on all realities within and without—not for glory, but to feed the collective consciousness and give others permission to widen their vision.”

Amen. Blessed be. Awoman. Etc.

This feels like the illustration practice I dream of developing—and also like soil, and like our guts: an environment teeming with mediums and billions of beings (microorganisms), working sometimes together, sometimes apart as they create infinite directions.

My favorite microbiome illustrations are co-occurrence network diagrams. They show how likely organisms (here, microorganisms) are to coexist in a given context—though not what their relationships are. I find them confusing yet beautiful because the compendium of actors in any ecosystem is staggeringly complex.

For now, I’m leaning into my mess—because there’s no way around it if I want to honor every part of myself. Maybe I’ll never settle on one medium, one illustration style, or even one version of a character. Maybe that’s the point. Like soil, like the gut’s microbial chaos, maybe creativity thrives in an interplay of contradictions. So I’ll keep listening: to Nick Bantock’s wisdom, to the quiet lessons of the soil, and to the many voices inside me.

What actors make up your internal cast of characters? In your mind? In your guts? What about in the soil you grew up with?

Love, Olivia

I’m writing to you from Medellin, Colombia, “la ciudad de la eterna primavera” (the city of eternal spring), where I’ve been since January. This has been the first year of my life I have entirely avoided the slow, back and forth change from winter to spring. The rhythm, however, is so engrained in my body that I can feel the tension, excitement, and frustration that goes along with coming out of the cold, hard soil to become something green. It must be so hard to be a seed.

A year ago, during the muddy, in-between, almost-green season in Ontario, the first draft of the manuscript came sliding out of me at 4 am one morning. I was a month or so postpartum, in deep respect of my 7:30 pm bedtime, and feeling incredibly nourished by a wave of support from family and friends that I received in the near-partum, and postpartum period.

A few weeks prior to the first draft coming through, I also had the chance to see the solar eclipse under a clear sky, as I emerged from a nap with my newborn. With such a new baby, I hadn’t prioritized viewing the eclipse, but as I awoke midday from my room I could see the light changing into something strange and new to me. My brother was visiting and taking care of my 4 year old, and they came in to encourage me to come out of hiding to witness the newness.

I wrote this little reflection the next morning:

April 8th, 2024

Almost Total Solar Eclipse

Some cultures believe that the heads of demons are loose
When the moon slips in between the earth and the sun.
The demons remind me of my wounds, 
The parts of me torn apart in my transition to motherhood. 
They remind me too, that those parts can be put back together to make something new. 

Thanks, brother, for waking me up to go outside into this strange new light that is life. 

The story that came out onto paper that early morning was something I had been processing since becoming a mother 4 years prior. Periodically my wounded self arises on a wave of grief for my pre-mama life. My life when I had time for art, time for music, and time to be alone with myself.

I’m still healing, still wounded from so much coming apart, but thankfully, things change over and over and over again.

The experience of being supported postpartum allowed me to immerse myself in the luxurious, brimming with magic, newborn moment. It also reminded me of my own luxurious, brimming with magic self, who loves to change, and be changed.

This past year, holding and editing the manuscript draft has felt easy and relaxing for me. Visiting it periodically to change some words around, make lists of terms for the glossary and imagine the dedication page, feels much like brushing my daughters hair. Teasing tangles out as gently as possible to avoid a shriek, so that if time and attention spans permit, we can make a braid. In the end, all the pieces of hair are held together so she can enjoy her day without getting hair in her eyes and mouth.

Illustrating the book however, has been another challenge entirely. It feels more like what I’m going through as I teach my baby to go to bed at night. I’m not willing (or able?) to do any kind of intense sleep training, so there is a good stretch of time ahead of us where sleep isn’t perfect. Little by little though, the sleep will work itself out. In infant sleep and in illustrating, I try out different techniques. Nursing to sleep, walking to sleep, singing to sleep. All black and white, computer assisted collage, coloured pencil, mixed media. It feels challenging, but I know we will find something that feels right. In the long haul, my baby will sleep through the night, and I will illustrate the whole book.

There also is the challenge of balancing my thesis writing, data analysis brain, with my easeful illustration brain. Eventually the plan is to merge these two brains, challenge the art/science dichotomy, and create something whole (that’s for another one of these letters).

So that’s where I’m at; ease-fully brushing my 5 year olds hair, and editing the manuscript; patiently putting my 1 year old to bed, and bouncing back and forth between visions for the illustrations.

Navigating the change that comes along with being new is hard work, but I am determined to put her to sleep, and to land on a direction for the illustrations. May the spring inspire us to push through, to something that feels more easeful.

In this tense, tender and new, spring-time, how are you changing?

Is there anything you are breaking through the soil for?

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I’ve been nervous to publish this, but when I shared that nervousness with my sister she reminded me that I’ve been writing little essays and passing them around to strangers since I was 9 years old. So I’m summoning little Olivia to remind myself that this should come from my joy and curiosity, not from a desire to “succeed.”

With that said, welcome to microbes & metaphors. Not necessarily in that order.

Why metaphors?

I’m a mama now. Sometimes mamilla, sometimes mamita. Like many parents, I read the same children’s books to my daughters over and over again. Each time I read them I have the chance to study the metaphors and characters crafted by authors and illustrators I have come to admire so much. Part of this study may be to keep myself awake as I snuggle a toddler in dim light. But it also comes from a deep appreciation for the seriousness of stories and metaphors.

The ability of stories and metaphors to hold space for complex and interwoven truths, can serve as instructions for navigating these intense times. Yan Martel’s novel, The Life of Pi, is one example of the ways in which metaphors can be tools for adaptation and survival.

The Life of Pi tells the story of a boy stuck on a lifeboat with a tiger after he survives a shipwreck. The ship was transporting zoo animals and he starts off on the lifeboat with a tiger, an orangutan, a zebra, and a hyena. They all die off in a series of vivid and gruesome events, until the sole survivors are the boy and the tiger. The story of the tiger feels completely real, until we learn that it is a metaphor. Near the end of the book when the boy finally reaches land and has to deal with customs officers, the physical reality of the story is revealed. Each of the animals on the boat represented a human that also survived the shipwreck– his mother, a cook, and a sailor. Each had succumbed to the ocean until the boy was alone with only himself. The tiger.

As a reader, it didn’t matter if it was humans or non-human animals he was stuck with. While the tiger may not have physically been on the boat, the boy's immersion into the metaphor kept him alive.

Why microbes?

Becoming a mother has drastically changed my relationship to myself, and I have been yearning to return to my heart practice of lyrical storytelling. As I near the end of my master’s thesis on soil microbial communities, I am excited to synergize this love with the science I have been interpreting. Remembering that science and art were not originally considered binaries.

In honor of the seriousness of stories and metaphor, I have been carrying a story that has served me as a tool to navigate the challenges of becoming a mother in the pandemic—alongside our collective backdrop of climate change, genocide, the resurgence of ugly fascist ideologies, and robots taking all the jobs in the gig-economy.

In the book I am writing, the metaphor of adaptation to change I am offering does not include a tiger. Instead, I am using the story to hold space for [the ways that we are] the communities of microbial beings with us all of the time. The beings passing between my baby and I, travelling on our breath as I rediscover language with her. The ones that come home from school on my 5 year old’s hands and backpack. The ones proliferating in the moist sandbox in the tropical climate we currently inhabit.

I’m choosing to uplift microbial communities in this story, not only because its the topic of my masters thesis, but because we are in dire need of changing the way that we understand our place in the web of life. As adrienne maree brown describes in Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds its time to understand ourselves not as solitary predators but as interconnected ecosystems:

“...humans so far have generally deified and aligned with the “king” of the jungle or forest—lions, tigers, bears. And yet so many of these creatures, for all their isolated ferocity and alpha power, are going extinct. While a major cause of that extinction is our human impact, there is something to be said for adaptation, the adaptation of small, collaborative species. Roaches and ants and deer and fungi and bacteria and viruses and bamboo and eucalyptus and squirrels and vultures and mice and mosquitos and dandelions and so many other more collaborative life forms continue to proliferate, survive, grow. Sustain.”

In this volatile moment for our world, it is an act of love to reimagine ourselves as thriving in collaboration rather than through competition. As I weave this microbial metaphor into my own story, I invite you to consider: What metaphors help you navigate change? What makes you microbial?

What I’m working on:

• Rekindling my drawing practice to gain momentum for illustrating a whole book :0

• Analyzing soil carbon and nitrogen data for my thesis to piece together what the microbes were up to when the soil was thawing

• Trying to differentiate between “paapaa”, “papa”, and “pahpah” in the emerging lexicon of my 1 year old