Isabelle Gan
1 followers · 1 following · 283 views
on the atlas — 4
- I want to do everything, be everything - Sherry Ning1 savers
- How to fall in love - by Antonia Bentel - ANTO AESTHETICS1 savers
- Option Rot5 savers
- Just do whatever you like - Sherry Ning8 savers
highlights — 37
I’m a greedy, bratty child, a cat down to its last life, a woman with her hands full of dust and diamonds. I want to do everything, be everything, to burn up and to endure. It is not enough to live—I must devour. I must create and transform and destroy and create again, with hands always reaching, then holding on too tight.
I want to do everything, be everything - Sherry NingI want to love without limit and lose without grief. I want to split myself into a thousand lives each burning at both ends, I want to never stop moving, never stop reaching, never stop wanting—even if I get nauseous from the unbearable lightness of being—because the minute I stop, the minute I choose which fig to pick, I will have killed every other version of me and buried them without a name.
I want to do everything, be everything - Sherry NingI want to write and to be read, to be alone and to be adored, to slip away into the woods, and to sit at the head of the table. I want to feast until I am merry, to sleep until I am new, to run and return, crying tears of homecoming.
I want to do everything, be everything - Sherry NingI want to keep my eyes open so wide they bleed because if I blink even once I’ll lose it, the world will vanish like sugar in a cup of tea, like a dream I forgot to write down, and I’ll be left alone on the platform chasing after a departing train, waving goodbye and blowing kisses at a man I love being sent off to war.
I want to do everything, be everything - Sherry Ningsing karaoke in a foreign city where nobody knows my name and laugh so hard that my stomach hurts and every time I think about it I’ll smile like an idiot in line at the grocery store
I want to do everything, be everything - Sherry Ningshare a bowl of cherries with my best friend in the heat of late July
I want to do everything, be everything - Sherry Ningsee the northern lights from a rooftop hot tub
I want to do everything, be everything - Sherry NingI want to speak seven languages fluently and invent one myself
I want to do everything, be everything - Sherry Ningpour champagne in a silk dress at midnight in Paris
I want to do everything, be everything - Sherry NingI want it all: the limelight and the laurels, the cold steel of ambition and the soft hands of love, the honking of cars and the music of birds.
I want to do everything, be everything - Sherry NingI want to be so full of stories that when I open my mouth, they spill out like coins, like jewels, clattering and bright.
I want to do everything, be everything - Sherry NingNotes from a quasi-journalistic, occasionally poignant, deeply subjective investigation into love, jazz, and toast crumbs in the butter
How to fall in love - by Antonia Bentel - ANTO AESTHETICSYou fall in love when you stop holding back—when you stop editing yourself in real time.
How to fall in love - by Antonia Bentel - ANTO AESTHETICShow you fall in love is in the moments when, say, the other person reads a book you told them you liked in passing
How to fall in love - by Antonia Bentel - ANTO AESTHETICSThe feeling for me isn’t quote-unquote “fireworks.” It’s a deep exhale. It’s the moment I notice my own pacing change. Like—I’m slower. More deliberate. I want to listen more. Ask questions I don’t already know the answer to. I think that’s what love is, for me. A new curiosity. A softening.
How to fall in love - by Antonia Bentel - ANTO AESTHETICSFalling in love is like entering a room you didn’t know existed in your own house. You think you know the layout—you’ve lived here a long time, you’ve opened every drawer, rearranged every piece of furniture in your head—and then someone says, ‘What about this door?’ And they open it. And suddenly there’s light you’ve never seen before. A corner of yourself that feels both new and familiar.
How to fall in love - by Antonia Bentel - ANTO AESTHETICSTo sum it up, I know I’ve fallen in love when I smell someone’s T-shirt and the thought of not being able to smell their T-shirt again makes me want to eat drywall.
How to fall in love - by Antonia Bentel - ANTO AESTHETICSFalling in love—love in general, really—it’s rare. Most of us are trying so hard to seem like we’re not trying. But when someone sees you in the absolute mess of it—your pain, your pettiness, your unpaid parking tickets—and they stay? That’s the beginning.
How to fall in love - by Antonia Bentel - ANTO AESTHETICSI fall in love when I don’t feel like I’m performing competence
How to fall in love - by Antonia Bentel - ANTO AESTHETICSI also think we fall in love with people who let us be stupid. Playful. Less performative. It’s anti-branding.
How to fall in love - by Antonia Bentel - ANTO AESTHETICSBut also curiosity. The right person makes you want to know yourself better. And then, paradoxically, forget yourself entirely.
How to fall in love - by Antonia Bentel - ANTO AESTHETICSI fall in love when someone sees me in a way I didn’t know I could be seen. Not just compliments, but like—recognition.
How to fall in love - by Antonia Bentel - ANTO AESTHETICSit starts with the fourth conversation. The one that veers just a little too personal, a little too weird or revealing
How to fall in love - by Antonia Bentel - ANTO AESTHETICSIf we’re not supposed to dance, why all this music?
How to fall in love - by Antonia Bentel - ANTO AESTHETICSWhich is maybe what love really does—it changes your internal architecture. Even when it doesn’t last. Even when it breaks you. Especially then.
How to fall in love - by Antonia Bentel - ANTO AESTHETICSThe inexplicable holiness of a night where all you did was talk about your childhoods and then brush your teeth side by side.
How to fall in love - by Antonia Bentel - ANTO AESTHETICSI fall in love when I want them to fill all my pauses. That sounds weird, but, like, you know what I mean, yeah?
How to fall in love - by Antonia Bentel - ANTO AESTHETICSYou fall in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, then all at once.
How to fall in love - by Antonia Bentel - ANTO AESTHETICSa voice that ruins your entire sense of linear time
How to fall in love - by Antonia Bentel - ANTO AESTHETICSThe one that makes you feel like you’ve handed them a small, warm animal and asked them to look after it. The small, warm animal? That’s your life. Your innermost self. The “you” your mother and elementary school English teacher and bestest and oldest friend know you to be.
How to fall in love - by Antonia Bentel - ANTO AESTHETICSWhile the world obsesses over accumulating options, the impactful are busy eliminating them, channeling their finite energy toward the few things that compound over time.
Option RotThe difference between those who succeed and those who stagnate isn’t access to options — it’s the willingness to exercise agency over them. To say: “This matters enough that I’m willing to let other things go.”
Option RotThe best things in life — love, skill, interest — compound over time. But they only compound if you let them. If you commit. As you go deeper you build your competence, your insight, your network, and your confidence in the decisions you make. You get to play your own game.
Option Rotit’s simple—do you want it or not?
Just do whatever you like - Sherry NingIf you let it all go, what would you even be?
Just do whatever you like - Sherry NingYou’re scared of having what you want because that thing, alive and pulsing, would require something of you: honesty.
Just do whatever you like - Sherry NingAnd that’s the part that scares you the most: it’s not the wanting—it’s the having.
Just do whatever you like - Sherry Ning