Histogram

self portrait from the streets of tehran

Happiness often feels like a golden cage, a soft anesthesia designed to make us settle for who we are instead of who we could become. We are taught that growth requires friction, that the blade is only sharpened against the stone, and so we begin to distrust peace as if it were a trap. But there is a terrifying math at play: at what point does the pursuit of a "better" self become a war of attrition against the soul? If every step forward is paid for with a piece of my joy, I have to wonder if I am truly ascending, or if I am simply becoming a more polished version of a ghost. The true danger lies in the shelf-life of our own sanity. We stretch ourselves thin across the rack of "progress," waiting for a finish line that doesn’t exist, all while the price of admission grows more expensive. If I arrive at the pinnacle of my evolution only to find that I have traded away my capacity to feel the sun on my skin, was the journey worth the arrival? It is a circular haunting, the fear that to be happy is to be stagnant, but to be "better" is to be broken beyond repair. We are caught in the middle, staring into a void that demands everything we are for the promise of a version of ourselves we may never be sane enough to inhabit.

detonation self portrait

from the previous month

part.projects June 3, 2026

self portrait at part cafe