Dana

Last year, I became a certified forest therapy guide. I’ve mostly been too shy and wracked with my own perfectionism to take that show on the road. Still, it was an honor to write about this practice I have found to be so truly therapeutic and tender, and to share some of the kind voices creating space for these experiences. Extra fun to do it for @voguemagazine , amidst all the glam. You don’t need to go to the forest to practice forest therapy! But you could… and you should definitely try a forest therapy walk (especially if @ournaturealways is leading). In the meantime, go for a stroll and let your wonder guide you. Then stay a while. Link in bio!!!

SOLD OUT - We’re delighted to announce our first workshop at Anda - an intimate Forest Therapy experience guided by writer and certified forest therapy guide @danamolly . Forest therapy is a sensory-based mindful nature practice that brings people into deeper kinship with the natural world, each other, and themselves. Inspired by shinrin-yoku, translated to 'forest bathing' in Japanese, forest therapy has been shown to reduce stress, boost creativity and mood, and foster a greater sense of belonging and well-being. Neither a hike nor an aimless stroll, forest therapy offers a series of accessible sensory invitations that help us drop into our bodies, connect to our senses,  and experience a sense of wonder and connection with the world around us. It is enough to show up and see, smell, and feel what there is to see, smell, and feel. This practice is equally gratifying when attended solo or with friends.  We'll close with tea and reflections in the Anda garden. Length: Approx. 2 hours Sign up - link in bio.

Trends are never just material(istic) phenomena! They tell us about our collective consciousness, about our longings and our enduring loves. It was so fun getting to explore the who/what/why of this shift I’d been noticing. Thankful to editors who see the vision and help make the thing real (@cozy.spice ❤️) and allll the artists and designers who not only spurred this story with their EPIC work, but also generously shared their insights. I even spoke to a medieval manuscripts curator at The Getty ✨ I genuinely love trend pieces because they tell me that we’re not as alone as we often feel ~ so many shared wavelengths and kindred souls. Link is in my bio if you wanna read more 🕯️ Last slide is the scrappy moodboard I threw together to make sure I wasn’t totally tripping. Before that is me totally tripping at my first Ren Faire, a lifetime of loving fantasy in the making.

can you believe we live on a planet with cool rivers, and plants, some we can eat, and hot springs, some just the right temperature for our aching earthly bodies, and light that glitters on the surface of water, and sunrises that reach, every day, slowly over the mountains? to be in perpetual awe would be the most natural thing. and so

To be a ceramicist is to be something of an alchemist or mad scientist: navigating the controlled chaos of the fiery kiln, the fluctuating moisture in the air, the fickle chemistry of glazes. It is also to be a somatic worker: lifting, pushing, pressing; working heavy masses of clay by hand to draw out form and perspective. For Ren von Hasseln, the practice of ceramics lives at this intersection: an experimental yet rigorous discipline that pushes the boundaries of scale and embraces the visible artifacts of making. Before founding @renceramics_ , von Hasseln trained in architecture, and earlier still, biology. She began a PhD in molecular genetics before realizing that she was more drawn to the beauty of the images emerging from the electron microscope than to the data they contained. Architecture and science are exacting disciplines, grounded in precision and long timelines. Ceramics offered her a way to work iteratively and autonomously; to test, respond, and even surrender to imperfection. Von Hasseln’s oversized vessels and sculptural forms carry an unmistakably organic presence, with a distinctly Brutalist streak. Built entirely by hand, her pieces foreground process and material: linear vertical textures formed by thumb-joined coils, subtle warping, surface irregularities that remain visible. “Instead of smoothing out these marks, I refine and highlight them,” she explains. For von Hasseln, these are not flaws to be corrected or hidden, but records of touch and impulse, material evidence of the journey a piece has taken… continued on page 20 of Issue 05 ✍️: @danamolly 📷: @cynthia.ammann read the full interview in print by subscribing at thepanafold.com 🏺

Through tears I transcribed this untitled poem spoken aloud by US poet laureate Tracy K. Smith and did my best with punctuation. It is the most miraculous, potent expression of these most miraculous and potent times. 🤲🏼 Sometimes I dream of a steep hill dotted with trees where we — But who do I mean by “we”? — Will one day find ourselves sitting, staring out onto evidence of the end. It won’t be sad. Nothing will have ended but what had already revealed itself to be insufficient. Small fires will burn, Mounds of ember and ash. I keep trying to touch the name of the feeling that will have settled in our bodies by then — After knowledge and regret, After hope and steadier, More certain because more honest, More honest because we will, by then, have seen our biggest lies — The final and most dire — Shatter above us In the common sky, Taking away everything with them that needed to go. I see us there on the hill — Who do I mean by “us”? — Some combing fingers through long tufts of grass, Others leaning back on our hands or hugging our own bent knees, Watching in the same direction — Out and down upon the passive distance. All of us? All, I guess? Nothing remaining to battle over. Nothing to hide. No rewards for what we’ve long prized. I see us astonished, finally, And each, differently — Some of the forest of us at home in the silence, Others talking softly in our original voices.

devotional practices devotional practices ♾️

For the last two months, I’ve been taking a course on the heartening teachings of #joannamacy with @schoolforthegreatturning . It has been a balm. During last week’s class, we spent time with some of the Rilke poems Joanna translated. I got to read I:59, which I didn’t know by its number, but turned out to be this piece, one of my favorite written works of all time. I love reading out loud and I rarely ever get to do it. I even clumsily made a reel, the words ringing in my body and ears for hours after the class. I somewhat bashfully share it with you now :) Beauty and terror, friends. Give me your hand. 🕊️

I want to tell you how the river flowing over rocks empties my mind. How in that hollowed space, my eyes and smile soften like a happy idiot. Hand me a piece of fruit, I’ll peel it for you and pocket her hallowed ribbons as we sit like lizards in the sun. 🌞

Peter Shire is standing across from me in his studio—a capacious, skylit former auto repair shop in the Elysian Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles’ Echo Park—reciting lines from a poem. “Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee, and I’ll forgive Thy great big one on me… Do you know it?” he asks, eyes a-glitter. “Robert Frost.” He provides no more context, flitting off to a nearby bookshelf, where he is trying to find a particular volume to share. Interviewing Shire is like trying to catch a hummingbird with your bare hands. He articulates himself through allusions and aphorisms, stories of childhood friends, personal anecdotes, references to movies (he’s a major cinephile). It’s all connected—and Shire tacitly expects you to keep up. “You’ve seen it?” he asks several times about various films (some of his favorites include The Horse’s Mouth, Mon Oncle, Pygmalion, and Greaser’s Palace). I invariably have not, but the fact that I have a master’s in film studies seems to please him. Within ten minutes of my arrival, we are scrambling up a steep, dusty hillside to pick the engorged lemons from a neighbor’s tree for the day’s team lunch. We scrub them with sponges, the sink splattered with paint. While we never find that book, we do come across a pair of red and green curly wigs in the style of Harpo Marx; Shire quickly dons one and hands me the other. He is constantly moving, buzzing about, come-let-me-show-you-this-ing. Until, that is, he settles in with a paintbrush or a pencil or a lump of clay—at which point time slows and organizes itself around him. His face changes, impishness giving way to a placid focus. “Painting is when I’m my best self,” he once shared in a 2018 interview with Surface Magazine… continued on page 66 of Issue 04 🚀 ✍️: @danamolly 📷: @lauren_lotz subscribe at thepanafold.com to read the full story in print💥

Inside Shin Okuda’s furniture design studio, on a quiet residential street in Los Angeles’ Atwater Village, there’s a wall lined with planks of colorful laminate plywood. Mossy green and goldenrod. Lilac atop crimson. Yves Klein blue, robin’s egg blue, the perfect shade of buttercream. These are off-cuts and scraps from past projects, but the effect is akin to an Imi Knoebel or Blinky Palermo composition. In Okuda’s workshop—where material use is treated with the same thoughtful reverence and curiosity as form—waste is almost a moral offense. For the last sixteen years, Okuda—the designer behind the furniture brand known as Waka Waka (@wakawakainc )—has been amassing a distinct yet discreet cult status, in L.A. and beyond. His handcrafted furniture and functional objects convey a devotion to minimalism, conscious proportion, and craftsmanship—punctuated by the surprise of a cylinder here, a block of saturated color there… continued on page 08 of issue 04 🪑 ✍️: @danamolly 📷: @gretavanderstar subscribe at thepanafold.com to read the full story in print 📖 #printonly

A FEVER DREAM many miles traversed on foot forest shrine after forest shrine trains & busses onsen villages & odd shower arrangements smiling faces & kindly elders individually packaged everything a toothbrush as a parting gift much schlep & sweat portals portals everywhere you simply must step through Arigato 🥹💚