juliana ong

This is why the right gaze, the right conversation, can change you down to the grain. Emotional heat loosens the architecture of the self, and in the presence of someone who sees you vividly, the molten structure reforms around their image of you. What remains afterwards is stronger, different, marked by the shape of their attention. Attention... See more

The person those entries were about hasn’t crossed my mind in months. But, at the moment, it was potent. It was real to me. Now? I couldn’t even tell you what the color of their eyes were. Isn't that just the most 20-something, melodramatic moment of intensity? Where it feels like both nothing and everything matters? I live, live, live for that.

And so the trick is, can you force yourself to be absolutely unsparingly realistic about what’s actually best for you?

What would a society look like if it achieved enough wealth to free everyone from scarcity.

But maybe average isn’t so bad. Maybe we can do a lot with average. When we can’t aim for the top, what do we aim for? To be free from the endless artifice of our own invisible boxes. To be moved. To get to the juicy center right now. To tell the truth. To make art, to read poetry, to pop the bubble of the illusion that life’s long enough for... See more