For my final paper, I had a few different ideas on what I want to write about. I'm pretty sure I want to address the first topic I'll discuss, but I'll talk about my other idea a little bit because I'm a little worries about writing 3000+ words on just this one topic. So I might do two shorter papers, one on each topic! 

The Healing Properties of Nature

This week, I was super excited to learn about my Chinese Zodiac sign and the Hox Zodiac project. Priorly, I knew that I was born in the year of the Dragon (2000), but I knew little to nothing about the stories behind that and what that actually meant. 

This week made me consider noise and how my world is constructed around noise in a way I never had before. I've given some thought to how noise is used in movies and TV: a pounding heartbeat in medical dramas to amp up the tension, ominous minor-key music in thrillers. A recent horror movie I watched, Muted, in which the protagonist is deaf and to highlight how this impacted their experiences in the movie most of the movie was silent, made me especially conscious of how noise or the lack of noise impacts life and interactions.

My favorite thing about this course thus far has been the emphasis on connectivity of all things. Nothing exists in a vacuum, everything is interconnected, and this class has truly made me appreciate this. I tried to reflect this in my image, using images from the course as symbols to display the ideas addressed in the lectures and reflections, and adding some key words. The words and symbols, while they may connect more heavily to certain lectures or subjects that we covered, do apply to all the material covered thus far in one form or another.

At first I was hesitant about this week’s assignment. Los Angeles doesn’t exactly foster the climate nor the access to nature to find a lot of mushrooms. But after completing this week’s readings and the meditation, I found that mycelia and connections to mycelial networks are far more abundant and present than I could’ve ever imagined. 

It has always been my opinion that there are two kinds of bakers. The first is the scientist, meticulously measuring out quantities, wielding teaspoons and tablespoons and measuring cups. They follow the recipe to the dot as though it were a lab procedure. The second is the artist, using the recipe as more of a suggestion and measuring quantities by heart, by feeling*.

*Note: This dichotomy may imply that I see art and science as separate: that science isn't itself an art and art isn't itself a science. This is not true. 

Since I live near UCLA right now, I decided to use this project as an opportunity to rediscover some of the beauty of our campus. UCLA is one of the most beautiful places I can think of, and yet I spend most of my time there staring at a computer screen or just getting from point A to point B thinking about my assignments rather than really seeing the nature around me.

So I pulled up a map of UCLA, closed my eyes, and put my finger on a random location. I ended up at the corner of the patio near Pauley Pavilion.

My first thought while drawing and reflecting on this week's content was wow am I rusty with a pencil. Over the past decade or so, I've gone from primarily using pencils in day to day writing, to using mechanical pencils, to pens, to now relying predominantly on typing. I can't tell you the last time I used a classic wooden HB2 pencil to write anything down.