Immaculate Conception

by Ling Ling Huang

The internet stopped being a place to connect to others or to exchange knowledge, and became a way to perform belonging in the world you had inherited.

This was the first lesson Mathilde taught me: artists create works of art; geniuses curate an emotional response.

Is there anyone who knows a young woman’s body better than her closest friends? By way of love or comparison or some combination of the two?

People are wrong about imitation, anyway. It isn’t flattery but an attempt at closeness.

Is it even possible to really copy someone? If someone tried their hardest to mimic another person, their unique life experiences and skills would still yield completely different results.”

It seemed like the only power I had in the world was this: that I could withhold myself from someone who wanted to see me, even though I desperately wanted to see her, too.

there is no gifted. Only the gift of being fully oneself, and expressing oneself to the utmost.”

What an unbelievable scam it is to get everything you’ve been told to want.

“Don’t hold originality up on some pedestal, Enka. Who does originality actually serve? Not the public. The public needs to be shocked and reminded of their own feelings, which everything else in the world seeks to numb. Whatever the purpose of art is, it isn’t to be original for originality’s sake.”

A continuation of this peace is all I wish for. All my life I had chased after it, thinking it was something I needed to find or earn, instead of something to receive and accept.