membrane
umbrella palm
sky with clouds
Jingyu Li Holly Zhou
When the world shut down at the beginning of the pandemic, we cleaned out our households, perhaps to make room for the jars of peanut butter we hoarded. We threw away piles of accumulated notebooks, test booklets, and textbooks saved from too many years of schooling. It was strange, reliving our past lives as scientists and mathematicians in mere seconds, realizing how easy it is to forget an entire lexicon.
In this zine, we rebuild our old selves with new membranes. What do these textbook figures represent when we no longer understand the notation and equations behind them? What new truths can these geometries hold?
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The figures in this zine are adapted from Transport Phenomena in Biological Systems by Truskey et al. The original captions are paraphrased and kept as poem titles.
Read more of us at linktr.ee/twicecookedzines.
FIGURE 1 passive carrier-facilitated transport
my sadnesses lengthen with the contracting sun. i pretend to thrive on shadow, to keep a loose grip on the things that hold me. i arrow forward, maintain a smiling face. but i need a safe for my feelings. they keep escaping me, or i keep letting them go, but in the end, equivalence: the refracting light, my heart spilled over your kitchen floor, the leaking dishwasher, & your eyes, watching it run.
FIGURE 2 examples of porous structures
i daydream entropy into reverse. a sun that rewinds our tripwired minds to tapioca. squished, a bit, then neatly suspended, one beside the other, in likeness & darkness, unafraid of morning.
FIGURE 3 diffusion of ligand to a cell
it used to sound like this: a faraway silence. in it, a space cowboy, drifting from moons to planets to moon’s moon, chasing an unspeakable jazz.
FIGURE 4 random motion of a particle a splatter of points tighten this little life. their edges lengthen & contract like the music of bones. hear them sing the blues & pinks & oranges
FIGURE 6 measures of friction
i am told that two lines running in separate directions must intersect unless cut short. in the air of our hands almost touching, in the emptiness of potential, these minutes brush off like rough grass.
FIGURE 5 motion of fluid through a volume
my thoughts pass through me as if my mind were empty, boxlike. cardboard shadows of the unsaid. you ask what i’m thinking, your voice layered beneath an ocean. i don’t say i want to jump in, cradle your heartbeat beneath my cheeks. you carry on about the future. i swallow hard to keep from drowning.
FIGURE 7 diffusion of two molecules on the cell surface draw a line from you to me. draw it in footsteps. count those footsteps. there is no path shortest. look at the migration of wild geese. look for the chocolates i have left along the way.
