Baker And The Beauty Quotes

Books: a beautifully browsable invention that needs no electricity and exists in a readable form no matter what happens.

Sometimes he wakes so far from himself that he can’t even remember who he is. “Where am I?” he asks, desperate, and then, “Who am I? Who am I?” And then he hears, so close to his ear that it is as if the voice is originating inside his own head, Willem’s whispered incantation. “You’re Jude St. Francis. You are my oldest, dearest friend. You’re the son of Harold Stein and Julia Altman. You’re the friend of Malcolm Irvine, of Jean-Baptiste Marion, of Richard Goldfarb, of Andy Contractor, of Lucien Voigt, of Citizen van Straaten, of Rhodes Arrowsmith, of Elijah Kozma, of Phaedra de los Santos, of the Henry Youngs. “You’re a New Yorker. You live in SoHo. You volunteer for an arts organization; you volunteer for a food kitchen. “You’re a swimmer. You’re a baker. You’re a cook. You’re a reader. You have a beautiful voice, though you never sing anymore. You’re an excellent pianist. You’re an art collector. You write me lovely messages when I’m away. You’re patient. You’re generous. You’re the best listener I know. You’re the smartest person I know, in every way. You’re the bravest person I know, in every way. “You’re a lawyer. You’re the chair of the litigation department at Rosen Pritchard and Klein. You love your job; you work hard at it. “You’re a mathematician. You’re a logician. You’ve tried to teach me, again and again. “You were treated horribly. You came out on the other end. You were always you.

Who am I? Who am I?” “You’re Jude St. Francis. You are my oldest, dearest friend. You’re the son of Harold Stein and Julia Altman. You’re the friend of Malcolm Irvine, of Jean-Baptiste Marion, of Richard Goldfarb, of Andy Contractor, of Lucien Voigt, of Citizen van Straaten, of Rhodes Arrowsmith, of Elijah Kozma, of Phaedra de los Santos, of the Henry Youngs. You’re a New Yorker. You live in SoHo. You volunteer for an arts organization; you volunteer for a food kitchen. You’re a swimmer. You’re a baker. You’re a cook. You’re a reader. You have a beautiful voice, though you never sing anymore. You’re an excellent pianist. You’re an art collector. You write me lovely messages when I’m away. You’re patient. You’re generous. You’re the best listener I know. You’re the smartest person I know, in every way. You’re the bravest person I know, in every way. You’re a lawyer. You’re the chair of the litigation department at Rosen Pritchard and Klein. You love your job; you work hard at it. You’re a mathematician. You’re a logician. You’ve tried to teach me, again and again. You were treated horribly. You came out on the other end. You were always you.” "And who are you?" "I'm Willem Ragnarsson. And I will never let you go.

Beauty is something that is everywhere. The sunset is beautiful. Human connection is beautiful. Kindness is beautiful. Bodies are beautiful --all of them. Beauty is ubiquitous, inherent, and found in all of us: on the outside and the inside.

Everything in the world has its two faces, however. Weeds sometimes blossom into artful flowers. Beauty walks hand in hand with ugliness, sickness with health, and life tiptoes around in the horned shadow of death. The trick is to recognize which is which and to recognize what you're dealing with at the time.

I’m here to propose something that I believe too few of us realize: “Health” is our new “beauty myth.

Whatever is destroyed, the act of destruction does not vary much. Beauty if vapour from the pit of death.

I would like to visit the factory that makes train horns, and ask them how they are able to arrive at that chord of eternal mournfulness. Is it deliberately sad? Are the horns saying, Be careful, stay away from this train or it will run you over and then people will grieve, and their grief will be as the inconsolable wail of this horn through the night? The out-of-tuneness of the triad is part of its beauty.

When you see a beautiful loaf of bread, slow down, appreciate it, enjoy it, then give yourself a chance to think!

Homes should mean something to us humans. They are a basic instinct. A home, with a life that centers only on food and sleep, is not really a home, it's a house. Beauty and graciousness, joy of living, being used in every part, these are the things that make a house a home. (chapter header quote from Popular Home Decorations, 1940)

You are beautiful, sweetheart. All I did was draw what I saw." "No," Meghann said, awed by the beauty in the painting. "You painted what you made. I was pretty before you transformed me… nothing like that." She touched the vibrant, glowing face of the portrait. "You were always beautiful," Simon told her. "It wasn't transformation that enhanced your beauty." "It was love," Meghann said softly.

Sometimes he wakes so far from himself that he can’t even remember who he is. “Where am I?” he asks, desperate, and then, “Who am I? Who am I?” And then he hears, so close to his ear that it is as if the voice is originating inside his own head, Willem’s whispered incantation. “You’re Jude St. Francis. You are my oldest, dearest friend. You’re the son of Harold Stein and Julia Altman. You’re the friend of Malcolm Irvine, of Jean-Baptiste Marion, of Richard Goldfarb, of Andy Contractor, of Lucien Voigt, of Citizen van Straaten, of Rhodes Arrowsmith, of Elijah Kozma, of Phaedra de los Santos, of the Henry Youngs. “You’re a New Yorker. You live in SoHo. You volunteer for an arts organization; you volunteer for a food kitchen. “You’re a swimmer. You’re a baker. You’re a cook. You’re a reader. You have a beautiful voice, though you never sing anymore. You’re an excellent pianist. You’re an art collector. You write me lovely messages when I’m away. You’re patient. You’re generous. You’re the best listener I know. You’re the smartest person I know, in every way. You’re the bravest person I know, in every way. “You’re a lawyer. You’re the chair of the litigation department at Rosen Pritchard and Klein. You love your job; you work hard at it. “You’re a mathematician. You’re a logician. You’ve tried to teach me, again and again. “You were treated horribly. You came out on the other end. You were always you.” ― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

We almost bumped into each other. But your eyes were down so you didn't know it was me. And together we said it. "I'm sorry." Then you looked up. You saw me. And there, in your eyes, what was it? Sadness? Pain? You moved around and tried pushing your hair away from your face. Your fingernails were painted dark blue. I watched you walk down the long stretch of hallway. I stood there and watched you disappear. Forever.

Why are things beautiful? I don´t know. That´s a good question. Isn´t it pleasing when you ask a question of a person, a teacher, or a speaker, and he or she says, That´s a good question? Don´t you feel good when that happens?

The periods of spiritual ascension are the days and seasons of Mind's creation, in which beauty, sublimity, purity, and holiness — yea, the divine nature — appear in man and the universe never to disappear. -Mary Baker Eddy (SH 509:24)

Liberation is freedom from all outside expectations, even our own. Liberation is not having to love your body all the time. Liberation is not asking permission to be included in society’s ideal of beauty. Liberation is bucking the concept of beauty as currency altogether. Liberation is recognizing the systemic issues that surround us and acknowledging that perhaps we’re not able to fix them all on our own. Liberation is personally giving ourselves permission to live life.

think, again, of my mother opening her front door to a Swedish sailor, the stuff of fairy tales: Rapunzel letting down her hair, Cinderella sliding her foot into the glass slipper, Sleeping Beauty awaiting a kiss. All were given one chance to step into a happily ever after—or at least it must’ve seemed that way. But was it the prince who attracted them, or merely the opportunity for escape?

Life doesn't fit the Hollywood formula; there are no act breaks to orient you, no running times printed helpfully on the back of the box. So you do your best to line up each shot, each frame. You make sure that if this shot ends up being the last, it's damn well going to be bold or bittersweet or beautiful enough to go out on.

First, all I could see was this beautiful face, this beautiful girl's face; like a white, slightly luminous mask, swimming detachedly against enfolding darkness. As if a little private spotlight of its own was trained on it from below. It was so beautiful and so false, and I seemed to know it so well, and my heart was wrung. There was no danger yet, just this separate, shell-like face mask standing out. But there was danger somewhere around, I knew that already; and I knew that I couldn't escape it. I knew that everything [ was about to do, I had to do, I couldn't avoid doing. And yet, oh, I didn't want to do it. I wanted to turn and flee, I wanted to get out of wherever this was. ("Nightmare")

I know all too well how it is when the beautiful visions you’ve been fed don’t match up with reality.

Blood-red! What a useless adjective that is. Nothing is as beautifully , richly red as flowing blood on snow.It is strange that the eye can love what the mind and body hate.

Fat” is just the current catchall word for all the things that we as a culture are afraid of: women’s rights, people refusing to acquiesce to cultural pressures of conformity, fear of mortality. [People who hate fat people] see body love as a move toward people taking charge of their lives and choosing what they want to do, no matter what the culture says. This is really scary to a lot of people. The anger they express is actually toward themselves. A person who hates seeing a happy, liberated person wishes they had the strength to do that, but they are too entrenched or “bought in” to the way things are right now to see it as a beautiful thing. So they see it and they hate it . . . People have invested a lot of time and a lot of resources into this game that says “thin wins.” So when people see exceptions to that rule, they feel personally invalidated, personally stolen from, personally affronted.

This also applies to the beauty standards we were raised with. I’m going to challenge you to mentally pick up each rule that you’ve been taught and ask yourself: Does this bring me joy?

[Nicholson] Baker can't seem to get enough of the wisdom of Gandhi and cites at length an open letter he wrote to the British people on 3 July 1940. "Your soldiers are doing the same work of destruction as the Germans," wrote the Mahatma. "I want you to fight Nazism without arms." He went on to say: "Let them take possession of your beautiful island, with your many beautiful buildings. You will give all these, but neither your souls, nor your minds. If these gentlemen choose to occupy your homes, you will vacate them. If they do not give you free passage out, you will allow yourself, man, woman and child, to be slaughtered, but you will refuse to owe allegiance to them." I must say that everything in me declines to be addressed in that tone of voice

You’re a swimmer. You’re a baker. You’re a cook. You’re a reader. You have a beautiful voice, though you never sing anymore. You’re an excellent pianist. You’re an art collector. You write me lovely messages when I’m away. You’re patient. You’re generous. You’re the best listener I know. You’re the smartest person I know, in every way. You’re the bravest person I know, in every way.

Angel’s trumpet. Beautiful, in’it? Eating these flowers makes your troubles go away. Problem is, too much will kill ye.” She laughed. “It got its name because it’s the last thing you’ll see before ascending into heaven.

First rule: Don’t talk to strangers. Second rule: If you do, don’t follow them anywhere. Third rule: If the kind stranger has beautiful blue eyes, forget the first two rules, bid goodbye to your loved ones and let’s go.

The parent has been successful in providing the conditions for later growth. Not all flowers bloom early. Some flowers that bloom late in the summer, even in the autumn, retain all the beauty promised in the sowing of the seed.

It was the most beautiful sweet roll Bee had ever seen. A flawless circle, puffy from rising, it was studded with raisins and drizzled with pink icing. She could feel the hunger rake its claws along her stomach lining as she gazed at it.

In a romantic relationship, intentionally using the Law of Attraction is an amazing method. It is incredibly beneficial to speak beautiful and positive words into your partner. Especially when you're talking about them to an outside person. Speak and think what you want to manifest into your relationship.

But it’s not unprocessed grain and grape that we find on the Communion table, it’s bread and wine. Grain and grape come from God’s good earth, but bread and wine are the result of human industry. Bread and wine come about through a cooperation of the human and the divine. And herein lies a beautiful mystery. If grain and grape made bread and wine can communicate the body and blood of Christ, this has enormous implications for all legitimate human labor and industry. The mystery of the Eucharist does nothing less than make all human labor sacred. For there to be the holy sacrament of Communion there must be grain and grape, wheat fields and vineyards, bakers and winemakers. Human labor becomes a sacrament, a farmer planting wheat, a vintner tending vines, a miller grinding wheat, a winemaker crushing grapes, a woman baking bread, a man making wine, a trucker hauling bread, a grocer selling wine. Who knows what bread or what wine might end up on the Communion table as the body and blood of Christ. This is where we discover the holy mystery that all labor necessary for human flourishing is sacred. A farmer plowing his field, a worker in a bakery, a trucker hauling goods, a grocer selling wares—all are engaged in work that is just as sacred as the priest or pastor serving Communion on Sunday. The Eucharist pulls back the curtain to reveal a sacramental world.

And then he hears, so close to his ear that it is as if the voice is originating inside his own head, Willem’s whispered incantation. “You’re Jude St. Francis. You are my oldest, dearest friend. You’re the son of Harold Stein and Julia Altman. You’re the friend of Malcolm Irvine, of Jean-Baptiste Marion, of Richard Goldfarb, of Andy Contractor, of Lucien Voigt, of Citizen van Straaten, of Rhodes Arrowsmith, of Elijah Kozma, of Phaedra de los Santos, of the Henry Youngs. “You’re a New Yorker. You live in SoHo. You volunteer for an arts organization; you volunteer for a food kitchen. “You’re a swimmer. You’re a baker. You’re a cook. You’re a reader. You have a beautiful voice, though you never sing anymore. You’re an excellent pianist. You’re an art collector. You write me lovely messages when I’m away. You’re patient. You’re generous. You’re the best listener I know. You’re the smartest person I know, in every way. You’re the bravest person I know, in every way. “You’re a lawyer. You’re the chair of the litigation department at Rosen Pritchard and Klein. You love your job; you work hard at it. “You’re a mathematician. You’re a logician. You’ve tried to teach me, again and again. “You were treated horribly. You came out on

Susan Baker and the Anne Shirley of other days saw her coming, as they sat on the big veranda at Ingleside, enjoying the charm of the cat's light, the sweetness of sleepy robins whistling among the twilit maples, and the dance of a gusty group of daffodils blowing against the old, mellow, red brick wall of the lawn. Anne was sitting on the steps, her hands clasped over her knee, looking, in the kind dusk, as girlish as a mother of many has any right to be; and the beautiful gray-green eyes, gazing down the harbour road, were as full of unquenchable sparkle and dream as ever. Behind her, in the hammock, Rilla Blythe was curled up, a fat, roly-poly little creature of six years, the youngest of the Ingleside children. She had curly red hair and hazel eyes that were now buttoned up after the funny, wrinkled fashion in which Rilla always

Sometimes he wakes so far from himself that he can't even remember who he is. 'Where am I?' he asks, desperate, and then, 'Who am I? Who am I?' And then he hears, so close to his ear that it is as if the voice is originating inside his own head, Willem's whispered incantation. 'You're Jude St. Francis. You are my oldest, dearest friend. You're the son of Harold Stein and Julia Altman. You're the friend of Malcolm Irvine, Jean-Baptiste Marion, of Richard Goldfarb, of Andy Contractor, of Lucien Voigt, of Citizen van Straaten, of Rhodes Arrowsmith, of Elijah Kozma, of Phaedra de los Santos, of the Henry Youngs. You're a New Yorker. You live in SoHo. You volunteer for an arts organization; you volunteer for a food kitchen. You're a swimmer. You're a baker. You're a cook. You're a reader. You have a beautiful voice, though you never sing anymore. You're an excellent pianist. You're an art collector. You write me lovely messages when I'm away. You're patient. You're generous. You're the best listener I know. You're the smartest person I know, in every way. You're the bravest person I know, in every way. You're a lawyer. You're the chair of the litigation department at Rosen Pritchard and Klein. You love your job, you work hard at it. You're a mathematician. You're a logician. You've tried to teach me, again and again. You were treated horribly. You came out on the other end. You were always you. On and on Willem talks, chanting him back to himself, and in the daytime - sometimes days later - he remembers pieces of what Willem has said and holds them close to him, as much as for what he said as for what he didn't, for how he hadn't defined him. But in the nighttime he is too terrified, he is too lost to recognize this. His panic is too real, too consuming. 'And who are you?' he asks, looking at the man who is holding him, who is describing someone he doesn't recognize, someone who seems to have so much, someone who seems like such an enviable, beloved person. 'Who are you?' The man has an answer to this question as well. 'I'm Willem Ragnarsson,' he says. 'And I will never let you go.

And then he hears, so close to his ear that it is as if the voice is originating inside his own head, Willem’s whispered incantation. “You’re Jude St. Francis. You are my oldest, dearest friend. You’re the son of Harold Stein and Julia Altman. You’re the friend of Malcolm Irvine, of Jean-Baptiste Marion, of Richard Goldfarb, of Andy Contractor, of Lucien Voigt, of Citizen van Straaten, of Rhodes Arrowsmith, of Elijah Kozma, of Phaedra de los Santos, of the Henry Youngs. “You’re a New Yorker. You live in SoHo. You volunteer for an arts organization; you volunteer for a food kitchen. “You’re a swimmer. You’re a baker. You’re a cook. You’re a reader. You have a beautiful voice, though you never sing anymore. You’re an excellent pianist. You’re an art collector. You write me lovely messages when I’m away. You’re patient. You’re generous. You’re the best listener I know. You’re the smartest person I know, in every way. You’re the bravest person I know, in every way. “You’re a lawyer. You’re the chair of the litigation department at Rosen Pritchard and Klein. You love your job; you work hard at it. “You’re a mathematician. You’re a logician. You’ve tried to teach me, again and again. “You were treated horribly. You came out on the other end. You were always you.

Maybe Jane was right. Maybe he was wrong to have filled her head with tales of Bessie Smith and Josephine Baker, let alone take her to see Jackie Wilson, Etta James, Tina Turner and the Ikettes. Maybe it wasn’t right to wake up to Chico Hamilton, Lee Morgan, Charlie Parker, and Art Blakey in the morning. Watch the sunset with Miles Davis, Cecil Taylor, and Little Willie John. But Greer didn’t know what else to offer that was beautiful and colored and alive, all at the same time.

Here’s some news for you: Without Him, you’ll never be good enough. I’ll never be good enough. We are nothing without our God. He takes our little lives, laid down at His feet in the dirt, and He wrecks us with His love. When we see Him in all His beauty and let Him reshape us and fill us with His Holy Spirit, we no longer look at our failures and faults, because our eyes are drawn to see only Him. Unless He fills me, everything is impossible. When He fills me, nothing is impossible.

Of course! It’s just around the corner,” Cinderella replied gratefully. She pointed at the cobblestoned path that led to the garden. As Cinderella walked back into the house, she heard another knock—this time coming from the back door. She hurried to answer it. “Now surely that’s the baker,” she said as she ran back to the kitchen. “I hope Stepmother didn’t hear the second knock. I don’t want her to come downstairs until all of the cakes are gone—and the new rosebush is planted!” Sure enough, the baker was standing at the kitchen door. He looked very nervous. “Hello,” he said. “Is the dessert ready?” “Yes, it is,” Cinderella replied with a smile. “Come in. I hope you’re pleased with what we’ve done. I think that it really turned out wonderful! The baker stepped into the large kitchen. His eyes grew wide as he took in the sight: dozens of beautifully decorated cakes that almost looked too good to eat! “How—how did you do it?” he said with a gasp. “It’s not possible . . .” “Oh, I had a little help from some very good friends,” Cinderella said. She glanced over at Gus and winked. “May I try one?” the baker asked, pointing to one of the cakes. “They look delicious.” He licked his lips in anticipation.

Sometimes he wakes so far from himself that he can't even remember who he is. 'Where am I?' he asks, desperate, and then, 'Who am I? Who am I?' "And then he hears, so close to his ear that it is as if the voice is originating inside his own head, Willem's whispered incantation. 'You're Jude St. Francis. You are my oldest, dearest friend. You're the son of Harold Stein and Julia Altman. You're the friend of Malcolm Irvine, Jean-Baptiste Marion, of Richard Goldfarb, of Andy Contractor, of Lucien Voigt, of Citizen van Straaten, of Rhodes Arrowsmith, of Elijah Kozma, of Phaedra de los Santos, of the Henry Youngs. "You're a New Yorker. You live in SoHo. You volunteer for an arts organization; you volunteer for a food kitchen. "You're a swimmer. You're a baker. You're a cook. You're a reader. You have a beautiful voice, though you never sing anymore. You're an excellent pianist. You're an art collector. You write me lovely messages when I'm away. You're patient. You're generous. You're the best listener I know. You're the smartest person I know, in every way. You're the bravest person I know, in every way. "You're a lawyer. You're the chair of the litigation department at Rosen Pritchard and Klein. You love your job, you work hard at it. "You're a mathematician. You're a logician. You've tried to teach me, again and again. "You were treated horribly. You came out on the other end. You were always you. "On and on Willem talks, chanting him back to himself, and in the daytime - sometimes days later - he remembers pieces of what Willem has said and holds them close to him, as much as for what he said as for what he didn't, for how he hadn't defined him. "But in the nighttime he is too terrified, he is too lost to recognize this. His panic is too real, too consuming. 'And who are you?' he asks, looking at the man who is holding him, who is describing someone he doesn't recognize, someone who seems to have so much, someone who seems like such an enviable, beloved person. 'Who are you?' "The man has an answer to this question as well. 'I'm Willem Ragnarsson,' he says. 'And I will never let you go.

Sometimes he wakes so far from himself that he can’t even remember who he is. “Where am I?” he asks, desperate, and then, “Who am I? Who am I?” And then he hears, so close to his ear that it is as if the voice is originating inside his own head, Willem’s whispered incantation. “You’re Jude St. Francis. You are my oldest, dearest friend. You’re the son of Harold Stein and Julia Altman. You’re the friend of Malcolm Irvine, of Jean-Baptiste Marion, of Richard Goldfarb, of Andy Contractor, of Lucien Voigt, of Citizen van Straaten, of Rhodes Arrowsmith, of Elijah Kozma, of Phaedra de los Santos, of the Henry Youngs. “You’re a New Yorker. You live in SoHo. You volunteer for an arts organization; you volunteer for a food kitchen. “You’re a swimmer. You’re a baker. You’re a cook. You’re a reader. You have a beautiful voice, though you never sing anymore. You’re an excellent pianist. You’re an art collector. You write me lovely messages when I’m away. You’re patient. You’re generous. You’re the best listener I know. You’re the smartest person I know, in every way. You’re the bravest person I know, in every way. “You’re a lawyer. You’re the chair of the litigation department at Rosen Pritchard and Klein. You love your job; you work hard at it. “You’re a mathematician. You’re a logician. You’ve tried to teach me, again and again. “You were treated horribly. You came out on the other end. You were always you.

You’re Jude St. Francis. You are my oldest, dearest friend. You’re the son of Harold Stein and Julia Altman. You’re the friend of Malcolm Irvine, of Jean-Baptiste Marion, of Richard Goldfarb, of Andy Contractor, of Lucien Voigt, of Citizen van Straaten, of Rhodes Arrowsmith, of Elijah Kozma, of Phaedra de los Santos, of the Henry Youngs. “You’re a New Yorker. You live in SoHo. You volunteer for an arts organization; you volunteer for a food kitchen. “You’re a swimmer. You’re a baker. You’re a cook. You’re a reader. You have a beautiful voice, though you never sing anymore. You’re an excellent pianist. You’re an art collector. You write me lovely messages when I’m away. You’re patient. You’re generous. You’re the best listener I know. You’re the smartest person I know, in every way. You’re the bravest person I know, in every way. “You’re a lawyer. You’re the chair of the litigation department at Rosen Pritchard and Klein. You love your job; you work hard at it. “You’re a mathematician. You’re a logician. You’ve tried to teach me, again and again. “You were treated horribly. You came out on the other end. You were always you.

You reasoned it out beautifully,” I exclaimed in unfeigned admiration. “It is so long a chain, and yet every link rings true.” “It saved me from ennui,” he answered, yawning. “Alas! I already feel it closing in upon me. My life is spent in one long effort to escape from the commonplaces of existence. These little problems help me to do so.” “And you are a benefactor of the race,” said I. He shrugged his shoulders. “Well, perhaps, after all, it is of some little use,” he remarked. “ ‘L’homme c’est rien—l’oeuvre c’est tout,’ as Gustave Flaubert wrote to George Sand.” ADVENTURE  III.  A CASE OF IDENTITY “My dear fellow,” said Sherlock Holmes as we sat on either side of the fire in his lodgings at Baker Street, “life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence. If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs, and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the plannings, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chains of events, working through generations, and leading to the most outr� results, it

Subject of Thought Number of Times Thought Occurred per Year (in descending order) L. 580.0 Family 400.0 Brushing tongue 150.0 Earplugs 100.0 Bill-paying 52.0 Panasonic three-wheeled vacuum cleaner, greatness of 45.0 Sunlight makes you cheerful 40.0 Traffic frustration 38.0 Penguin books, all 35.0 Job, should I quit? 34.0 Friends, don't have any 33.0 Marriage, a possibility? 32.0 Vending machines 31.0 Straws don't unsheath well 28.0 Shine on moving objects 25.0 McCartney more talented than Lennon? 23.0 Friends smarter, more capable than I am 19.0 Paper-towel dispensers 19.0 "What oft was thought, but ne'er" etc. 18.0 People are very dissimilar 16.0 Trees, beauty of 15.0 Sidewalks 15.0 Friends are unworthy of me 15.0 Indentical twins separated at birth, studies of traits 14.0 Intelligence, going fast 14.0 Wheelchair ramps, their insane danger 14.0 Urge to kill 13.0 Escalator invention 12.0 People are very similar 12.0 "Not in my backyard" 11.0 Straws float now 10.0 DJ, would I be happy as one? 9.0 "If you can't get out of it, get into it" 9.0 Pen, felt-tip 9.0 Gasoline, nice smell of 8.0 Pen, ballpoint 8.0 Stereo systems 8.0 Fear of getting mugged again 7.0 Staplers 7.0 "Roaches check in, but they don't check out" 6.0 Dinner roll, image of 6.0 Shoes 6.0 Bags 5.0 Butz, Earl 4.0 Sweeping, brooms 4.0 Whistling, yodel trick 4.0 "You can taste it with your eyes" 4.0 Dry-cleaning fluid, smell of 3.0 Zip-lock tops 2.0 Popcorn 1.0 Birds regurgitate food and feed young with it 0.5 Kant, Immanuel 0.5

There was a man in Florence, a friar, Fra Savonarola, he induced all the people to think beauty was a sin. Some people think he was a magician and they fell under his spell for a season, they made fires in the streets and they threw in everything they liked, everything they had made or worked to buy, bolts of silk, and linen their mothers had embroidered for their marriage beds, books of poems written in the poet's hand, bonds and wills, rent-rolls, title deeds, dogs and cats, the shirts from their backs, the rings from their fingers, women their veils, and do you know what was worst, Johane – they threw in their mirrors. So then they couldn't see their faces and know how they were different from the beasts in the field and the creatures screaming on the pyre. And when they had melted their mirrors they went home to their empty houses, and lay on the floor because they had burned their beds, and when they got up next day they were aching from the hard floor and there was no table for their breakfast because they'd used the table to feed the bonfire, and no stool to sit on because they'd chopped it into splinters, and there was no bread to eat because the bakers had thrown into the flames the basins and the yeast and the flour and the scales. And you know the worst of it? They were sober. Last night they took their wine-skins …’ He turns his arm, in a mime of a man lobbing something into a fire. ‘So they were sober and their heads were clear, but they looked around and they had nothing to eat, nothing to drink and nothing to sit on.’ ‘But that wasn't the worst. You said the mirrors were the worst. Not to be able to look at yourself.’ ‘Yes. Well, so I think. I hope I can always look myself in the face. And you, Johane, you should always have a fine glass to see yourself. As you're a woman worth looking at.’ You

So before you pass judgment on this cake, maybe take a look at yourself and what's going on in your own screwed-up life that's given you a warped perspective on an innocent, beautiful, phenomenal in every way----" I lay a hand on Benny's shoulder and when he turns toward me, his mouth falls open in a perfect circle, dark eyebrows wrinkling his forehead under his cap. He is flushed and startled and so, so handsome. It's the first time I've looked at his face since we were on a city sidewalk and I was walking away from him and goodness, I've missed it. "Sounds like a pretty good cake," I manage with a soft smile. "The best," he breathes. I step closer still, just a few inches from him now. "I'm a little sweeter on the baker, to be honest." His eyes close and his chin tips down for just a moment, and he exhales on a laugh before looking at me with so much warmth and intensity. "You have no idea how it is to hear that," he murmurs, and then he's kissing me hard, one hand in my hair and the other wrapping around my waist to pull me to him. I bring my arms up around his shoulders, barely registering the cheers and applause in the packed kitchen before I pull the cap off Benny's head. I hold it up to cover our faces from the camera, as our kiss goes on much longer than I'd ever want my mama to see. When we break apart, Benny whispers, "I love you, Reese. And I'm sorry for not making that totally clear before now. I want to be with you, and support you, and fight for you----" "I love you, Benny." I hadn't said it out loud before, for fear that this would end and I'd be heartbroken. But it appears that will not be the case. And I'm so, so certain that I love him. "Woo!" he shouts, lifting me by the waist and twirling me around. Then, since the camera is still rolling---perhaps a sense of "what do we really have to lose at this point?" on Charlie's part---he yells, "I LOVE REESE CAMDEN! Who wants cake?

Beauty Junkies is the title of a recent book by New York Times writer Alex Kuczynski, “a self-confessed recovering addict of cosmetic surgery.” And, withour technological prowess, we succeed in creating fresh addictions. Some psychologists now describe a new clinical pathology — Internet sex addiction disorder. Physicians and psychologists may not be all that effective in treating addictions, but we’re expert at coming up with fresh names and categories. A recent study at Stanford University School of Medicine found that about 5.5 per cent of men and 6 per cent of women appear to be addicted shoppers. The lead researcher, Dr. Lorrin Koran, suggested that compulsive buying be recognized as a unique illness listed under its own heading in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the official psychiatric catalogue. Sufferers of this “new” disorder are afflicted by “an irresistible, intrusive and senseless impulse” to purchase objects they do not need. I don’t scoff at the harm done by shopping addiction — I’m in no position to do that — and I agree that Dr. Koran accurately describes the potential consequences of compulsive buying: “serious psychological, financial and family problems, including depression, overwhelming debt and the breakup of relationships.” But it’s clearly not a distinct entity — only another manifestation of addiction tendencies that run through our culture, and of the fundamental addiction process that varies only in its targets, not its basic characteristics. In his 2006 State of the Union address, President George W. Bush identified another item of addiction. “Here we have a serious problem,” he said. “America is addicted to oil.” Coming from a man who throughout his financial and political career has had the closest possible ties to the oil industry. The long-term ill effects of our society’s addiction, if not to oil then to the amenities and luxuries that oil makes possible, are obvious. They range from environmental destruction, climate change and the toxic effects of pollution on human health to the many wars that the need for oil, or the attachment to oil wealth, has triggered. Consider how much greater a price has been exacted by this socially sanctioned addiction than by the drug addiction for which Ralph and his peers have been declared outcasts. And oil is only one example among many: consider soul-, body-or Nature-destroying addictions to consumer goods, fast food, sugar cereals, television programs and glossy publications devoted to celebrity gossip—only a few examples of what American writer Kevin Baker calls “the growth industries that have grown out of gambling and hedonism.

There is an art to the business of making sandwiches which it is given to few ever to find the time to explore in depth. It is a simple task, but the opportunities for satisfaction are many and profound: choosing the right bread for instance. The Sandwich Maker had spent many months in daily consultation and experiment with Grarp the baker and eventually they had between them created a loaf of exactly the consistency that was dense enough to slice thinly and neatly, while still being light, moist and having that fine nutty flavour which best enhanced the savour of roast Perfectly Normal Beast flesh. There was also the geometry of the slice to be refined: the precise relationships between the width and height of the slice and also its thickness which would give the proper sense of bulk and weight to the finished sandwich: here again, lightness was a virtue, but so too were firmness, generosity and that promise of succulence and savour that is the hallmark of a truly intense sandwich experience. The proper tools, of course, were crucial, and many were the days that the Sandwich Maker, when not engaged with the Baker at his oven, would spend with Strinder the Tool Maker, weighing and balancing knives, taking them to the forge and back again. Suppleness, strength, keenness of edge, length and balance were all enthusiastically debated, theories put forward, tested, refined, and many was the evening when the Sandwich Maker and the Tool Maker could be seen silhouetted against the light of the setting sun and the Tool Maker’s forge making slow sweeping movements through the air trying one knife after another, comparing the weight of this one with the balance of another, the suppleness of a third and the handle binding of a fourth. Three knives altogether were required. First there was the knife for the slicing of the bread: a firm, authoritative blade which imposed a clear and defining will on a loaf. Then there was the butter-spreading knife, which was a whippy little number but still with a firm backbone to it. Early versions had been a little too whippy, but now the combination of flexibility with a core of strength was exactly right to achieve the maximum smoothness and grace of spread. The chief amongst the knives, of course, was the carving knife. This was the knife that would not merely impose its will on the medium through which it moved, as did the bread knife; it must work with it, be guided by the grain of the meat, to achieve slices of the most exquisite consistency and translucency, that would slide away in filmy folds from the main hunk of meat. The Sandwich Maker would then flip each sheet with a smooth flick of the wrist on to the beautifully proportioned lower bread slice, trim it with four deft strokes and then at last perform the magic that the children of the village so longed to gather round and watch with rapt attention and wonder. With just four more dexterous flips of the knife he would assemble the trimmings into a perfectly fitting jigsaw of pieces on top of the primary slice. For every sandwich the size and shape of the trimmings were different, but the Sandwich Maker would always effortlessly and without hesitation assemble them into a pattern which fitted perfectly. A second layer of meat and a second layer of trimmings, and the main act of creation would be accomplished.

They killed everyone in the camps. The whole world was dying there. Not only Jews. Even a black woman. Not gypsy. Not African. American like you, Mrs. Clara. They said she was a dancer and could play any instrument. Said she could line up shoes from many countries and hop from one pair to the next, performing the dances of the world. They said the Queen of Denmark honored her with a gold trumpet. But she was there, in hell with the rest of us. A woman like you. Many years ago. A lifetime ago. Young then as you would have been. And beautiful. As I believe you must have been, Mrs. Clara. Yes. Before America entered the war. Already camps had begun devouring people. All kinds of people. Yet she was rare. Only woman like her I saw until I came here, to this country, this city. And she saved my life. Poor thing. I was just a boy. Thirteen years old. The guards were beating me. I did not know why. Why? They didn't need a why. They just beat. And sometimes the beating ended in death because there was no reason to stop, just as there was no reason to begin. A boy. But I'd seen it many times. In the camp long enough to forget why I was alive, why anyone would want to live for long. They were hurting me, beating the life out of me but I was not surprised, expected no explanation. I remember curling up as I had seen a dog once cowering from the blows of a rolled newspaper. In the old country lifetimes ago. A boy in my village staring at a dog curled and rolling on its back in the dust outside a baker's shop and our baker in his white apron and tall white hat striking this mutt again and again. I didn't know what mischief this dog had done. I didn't understand why the fat man with flour on his apron was whipping it unmercifully. I simply saw it and hated the man, felt sorry for the animal, but already the child in me understood it could be no other way so I rolled and curled myself against the blows as I'd remembered the spotted dog in the dusty village street because that's the way it had to be. Then a woman's voice in a language I did not comprehend reached me. A woman angry, screeching. I heard her before I saw her. She must have been screaming at them to stop. She must have decided it was better to risk dying than watch the guards pound a boy to death. First I heard her voice, then she rushed in, fell on me, wrapped herself around me. The guards shouted at her. One tried to snatch her away. She wouldn't let go of me and they began to beat her too. I heard the thud of clubs on her back, felt her shudder each time a blow was struck. She fought to her feet, dragging me with her. Shielding me as we stumbled and slammed into a wall. My head was buried in her smock. In the smell of her, the smell of dust, of blood. I was surprised how tiny she was, barely my size, but strong, very strong. Her fingers dug into my shoulders, squeezing, gripping hard enough to hurt me if I hadn't been past the point of feeling pain. Her hands were strong, her legs alive and warm, churning, churning as she pressed me against herself, into her. Somehow she'd pulled me up and back to the barracks wall, propping herself, supporting me, sheltering me. Then she screamed at them in this language I use now but did not know one word of then, cursing them, I'm sure, in her mother tongue, a stream of spit and sputtering sounds as if she could build a wall of words they could not cross. The kapos hesitated, astounded by what she'd dared. Was this black one a madwoman, a witch? Then they tore me from her grasp, pushed me down and I crumpled there in the stinking mud of the compound. One more kick, a numbing, blinding smash that took my breath away. Blood flooded my eyes. I lost consciousness. Last I saw of her she was still fighting, slim, beautiful legs kicking at them as they dragged and punched her across the yard. You say she was colored? Yes. Yes. A dark angel who fell from the sky and saved me.

The beauty is in the mystery, don't you agree?- Hayden

I have asked one thing from the LORD. This I will seek: to remain in the LORD's house all the days of my life in order to gaze at the LORD's beauty and to search for an answer in his temple.

Lord, all I need to do is look around to see how You have blessed us with beauty and wonder. I can’t imagine what heaven is like, but it must be truly awesome.

For those of us who have come to believe that unless we are thinking we are wasting time, it may be challenging to simply linger with a beautiful sunset, an exquisite painting, or an arresting piece of music. The intellect often reacts to the seductions of beauty by attempting to recapture us.

Because of sin, good desires become warped and twisted. When you look closely, you can often see that wanting to be excellent doesn’t come from a heart that longs to show others the beautiful perfection of God. Instead that desire shrinks and the focus becomes self-centered. You find you want to do all things with excellence because you want others to think highly of you; you want to look good to others or feel good about yourself.

You float like a feather," sings Radiohead, "In a beautiful world." I've listened several times to the Radiohead songs, because it was nice of Raymond to say he heard a bit of them in what I sang. I'm not sure I hear it myself, but I am pleased and touched. Sometimes that's what you need, just a quick casual word of knowledgeable encouragement. Radiohead reminds me a little of the songs in Garden State soundtrack. Now, that's a soundtrack. They were all songs that Zach Braff liked, so he put them in his movie. And there's that beautiful moment near the beginning where Natalie Portman hands him the headphones and she watches him listen to the song and she smiles her huge, innocent Natalie Portman smile.

Her eyes were closed to the sunlight flickering past the window, her ears plugged with tiny white buds, slender fingers tapping a steady moderato beat at odds with the easy sway in her shoulders. I couldn't hear the music, but as I watched, her body coiled around a deep breath, and the rhythm accelerated through the flat of her hand, and then her hips rocked to four powerful chords, and her head dropped loose on her shoulders, and she squeezed her knees together and drew in her feet, her calf muscles tautening and her ankle bones turning and then tendons in the back of her hand thumping time and the cords of her neck pulling the skin tight over her collarbones as her body snaked through what I heard in my head as Hugh Burns's guitar solo in "Baker Street" clear as day. And though confined to her seat, she danced unselfconsciously and without restraint, and every small movement in every small part of her—the life in her—was the most beautiful thing I thought I'd ever seen. I wanted to cup her gently in my hands and carry her home and keep her forever but, mindful of the probability that she might have other ideas, instead I closed my eyes and turned up the music in my head and, in spirit if not quite in body, danced with her instead.

Everything in the world has its two faces, however. Weeds sometimes blossom into artful flowers. Beauty walks hand in hand with ugliness, sickness with health, and life tiptoes around in the horned shadow of death. The trick is to recognize which is which and to recognize what you’re dealing with at the time.

Elsie caught herself staring at it with a kind of craving that transcended hunger. She knew every cherry dimple, every beautiful chocolate curl. For her, the cake was a reminder of all that had been and a pledge of all that she’d have again.

Then the vulture swooped down and away, racing the LeTort spring to the Conodoguinet Creek from there to the Susquehanna river and from there to the sea. Same river my ancestors took to reach the places where they hunted and farmed and buried their dead.

In another life, we might have spent this evening nestled in a corner table at some café, drinking good Bordeaux, listening to Chet Baker, discussing hypothetical trips to the Greek islands or the construction of a backyard greenhouse where we would consider the merits of growing a lemon (or avocado?) tree in a pot and sit under a bougainvillea vine like the one my mom planted the year I turned eleven, before my dad left. Jazz. Santorini. Lemon trees. Beautiful, loving details, none of which matter anymore. Not in this life, anyhow. That chapter has ended. No, the book has.

Hugh, you never knew about our lives before you arrived, and that was my fault. I spent so much time making money and gaining power, I never spent time with you. I regret that every day.” I met your mother while we were still in our teens. She was very beautiful even when she was sixteen. You may not believe it, but she was also very vivacious.

I sweated, I froze, and I returned. I was home—home to making, home to the movements of my own hands, transforming flour to bread and then letters to verse. In this space are all the joy, renewal, and beauty I need. Here I will stay, ready to live in my making space. For baking and creating are nothing if not our will, our stories, and our love made manifest. Here I will stay at my home hearth. I am a baker, and flourishing.

Molly holds the coat up, inspecting it. It’s interesting, actually, sort of a military style with bold black buttons. The gray silk lining is disintegrating. Going through the pockets, she fishes out a folded piece of lined paper, almost worn away at the creases. She unfolds it to reveal a child’s careful cursive in faint pencil, practicing the same sentence over and over again: Upright and do right make all right. Upright and do right make all right. Upright and do right . . . Vivian takes it from her and spreads the paper open on her knee. “I remember this. Miss Larsen had the most beautiful penmanship.” “Your teacher?” Vivian nods. “Try as I might, I could never form my letters like hers.

I skip down the driveway, hurry up the road, linger on the bridge for a moment, looking down at the reflection of the sky like mercury on the dark water, the foaming white suds near the rocks. Ice glistens on tree branches, frost webs over dried grasses in a sparkling net. The evergreens, dusted with the light snow that fell last night, are like a forest of Christmas trees. For the first time, I am struck by the austere beauty of this place.

Over dinner, he elaborates that while he’ll certainly miss specific people, what he’ll really miss is a culture that values interaction. I think about how people here live modestly, in houses that have been in families for generations. They drive beat-up cars. They work jobs that provide for basic necessities— gardener, barista, baker, without feeling the need to do more, have more, or be more. Instead of striving for more, they relax into what they have. Time.

We are gorgeous Asian girls offering both in call and outcall massage services to gentlemen in and around London and the baker street area. We offer a variety specialized massage treatments which include, we have a range of stunning Asian masseuses available for in call or outcall, selected for their charisma, charm, elegance, beauty and character. They will provide you with the fun times and the most enjoyable ways you can take time out of your busy life to relax and unwind.

Homes should mean something to us humans. They are a basic instinct. A home, with a life that centers only on food and sleep, is not really a home, it’s a house. Beauty and graciousness, joy of living, being used in every part, these are the things that make a house a home.

I went with her to the dentist when she had her wisdom teeth out. Afterward she slept curled for a long time, a small beautiful person; there on her desk in a glass of water were the two enormous teeth. They were like the femurs of brontosauri. How those giant teeth could have fit into her head I don’t know.

It’s time to own our years. It’s time to own each year and baby and change as beautiful as the body of the tall, wild, wonderful oak so comfortable in her skin.

Life isn’t meant to be lived perfectly…but merely to be LIVED. Boldly, wildly, beautifully, uncertainly, imperfectly, magically LIVED.” ― Mandy Hale

More is achieved by love than hate. Hate is the downfall of any race or nation.’ Josephine Baker

Israel became a content powerhouse, often without anyone around the world knowing that their favorite TV show actually came from that controversial tiny sliver of land somewhere in the Middle East. A new industry was born. I don’t have enough space to credit each and every creator, writer, producer, network, and actor who’s been a part of this revolution, but I’ll mention just a few shows you may know and love. There are the shows adapted from Hebrew to English, such as the hit HBO show Euphoria; the reality TV music competition The Four: Battle for Stardom; and the comedy Beauty and the Baker. And the shows streaming in their original Hebrew, such as Shtisel, Srugim, Teheran, and

It's very important for women to build healthy bonds with other women. Those are connections that will nourish and love you for a lifetime. True sisterhood is beautiful.

Bohr also argued that the very word "observer" is wrong because it conjures up a picture of an external viewer separated from the world that is being watched. A photographer... may capture the natural beauty of the Yosemite wilderness, but is it really untouched by man? How can it be if the photographer himself is there too? The real picture is of a man standing within nature not separate from it.

Bohr also argued that the very word "observer" is wrong because it conjures up a picture of an external viewer separated from he world that is being watched. A photographer... may capture the natural beauty of the Yosemite wilderness, but is it really untouched by man? How can it be if the photographer himself is there too? The real picture is of a man standing within nature not separate from it.

Next year, I'm developing my green thumb even more. I wish for a beautiful and thriving garden.

While intense, challenging, and tough, grit and persistence are beautiful and will give your journey meaning.

La Revue Nègre was a bold statement, drawing from the long history of both Black American vernacular dance and the minstrel and vaudeville theater in which Baker had performed in the United States. It contained elements of the shimmy and the shake, and challenged traditional Western European ideas of dance. “All of these moves that in the European mode would have been considered awkward become beautiful, sexy, silly, and savvy at the same time,” explains Dixon Gottschild. Later, as the performance evolved, Baker incorporated her famous banana skirt and, eventually, a pet cheetah who regularly made his way into the orchestra pit—elements that played into the idea of Baker as an exotic creature and added notes of vaudeville humor. Baker’s performances were complex, as are their legacy. Some have characterized her as a twentieth-century Sarah Baartman, another Black woman put on display for the titillation of fascinated, scandalized bourgeois white spectators. But she is often also criticized for exoticizing herself, knowingly participating in her own exploitation, playing into African stereotypes with her nudity, the banana skirt, and the cheetah. Others interpret La Revue Nègre as a means of reclaiming those stereotypes: Baker enthusiastically, and freely, participated in the performances and made lots of money doing it, and she surely understood that she was engaging with, and even subverting, stereotypes of Black femininity. She was also funny, and her performances always contained elements of humor and parody. From her early days as a chorus girl, she would add an element of knowingness by feigning being a bad dancer onstage for a laugh. She may have been sexualized and objectified by her largely white audience in Paris, but she also maintained significant control over what she was doing.

Baker’s love of the Essex landscape is already clear, and, long before he is following peregrines, he is rehearsing some of the writing that appears in his later work: ‘The loveliest country of all lies between Gt. Baddow and West Hanningfield. Green undulating fields, rugged, furrowed earth, luscious orchards, pine clumps, rows of stately elms – all these combine and resolve into a delicately balanced landscape that can never become tedious to the eye. One cannot get far from people – from the little rustic cottages that huddle in the winding lanes. Yet the very proximity of these dwellings seems to give an impression of remoteness. / As you walk across these fields – Danbury stands all green and misty blue in the late afternoon of declining summer. Everchanging – sometimes assuming truly mountainous grandeur – it fascinates the eyes and brings an exaltation and a faith. / These last days of summer are delicate poems in green and gold – the clouds unfurl in unsurpassed magnificence and move me to tears for their passing. / This country with its little fields and murmuring streams that basks in its waning summer gold will still be there when you return – it is for you and all men, for it is beauty.

The recipe for beauty is to have less illusion and more Soul,

Love, redolent with unselfishness, bathes all in beauty and light.

Man is God’s reflection, needing no cultivation, but ever beautiful and complete.

Mind is not necessarily dependent on the education process. Mind possesses of itself all eloquence, beauty, and poetry. Mind has the power to express prose. Spirit, God, is heard when the human mind’s noise is silent. We are all capable of more than we do. The action of Soul confers the freedom that explains excellent impromptu speeches, admirable movie scripts, or meaningful texts.

the derivative of experience.” When toward the end of the chapter “Prayer” in Science and Health Eddy writes, “Christians rejoice in secret beauty and bounty, hidden from the world, but known to God,” one senses that her words were rooted in her life.

Nothing is truly black or white, beautiful or ugly, and bad or good. Perception is truly key.

After studying the various forms of Angels and angelic beings, that has always existed across many cultures and biblical texts, I have found them to be even more divine and beautiful than what I have previously known.

Bertrand Russell was pithier: A combination of Einstein and Mary Baker Eddy.

Sometimes, Gerald, people break the law so clearly you can hear it crack like a tree branch snapped in two. But other times, like a baker twisting a roll of dough into a pretzel, you only bend the law. You don’t tear it. You don’t break it. You end up with something better than the ingredients you started with. And the final result is beautiful to behold.

We must fight, not to make a temple but to become His temple. To become a resting place for His beautiful, holy habitation. To be fully possessed by the glory of the Lord. He is calling us not to run harder but to lie down. What is your destiny? Is it to go to a university, be in a hospital, live on a garbage dump or go to the nations? Wherever you end up and whatever you do, your destiny is this: to be fully possessed by God’s presence. To carry His glory. To be recklessly devoted. Then, if you are at a university, a hospital or a garbage dump, you are His resting place, and all that can exist there is life and beauty. Remember, you are a presence carrier. Immerse yourself in Jesus’ presence and allow Him to spill into every situation in your life. You are His dwelling place. His temple.

It was pouring earlier, great sheets of rain, and now the clouds outside the window are crystal tipped like mountain peaks in the sky, rays emanating downward like an illustration in a children's bible.

Their rapid, shifting, dancing motion had been so deft and graceful that it was difficult to believe that hunger was the cause of it and death the end. The killing that follows the hunting flight of hawks comes with a shocking force, as though the hawk had suddenly gone mad and had killed the thing it loved. The striving of birds to kill, or to save themselves from death, is beautiful to see. The greater the beauty the more terrible the death.

e myth of the Kashmiri women’s dazzling beauty is nowhere more present than it is here in Srinagar – notwithstanding the massive popularity of Katrina Kaif. Women are in large part absent from any real public presence. As and when you see glimpses of them through uttering dupattas and burkhas, it remains a preview to hungry eyes. Where women are beautiful and hidden, there the callous display of their men is intriguing. I see them unmasked as butchers, woodcutters, bus drivers, vegetable vendors, oarsmen, bakers, wool dyers, in the old and the new. Men in a laborious mien. No one is re ned, there is no polish, no nesse; these men are designed by a living that makes no small change for vanity.

In Western culture, white womanhood is held up as the epitome of beauty and desire. Part of the machine of size discrimination is stripping white women of that status as punishment for fatness. There is a way in which body positive movements both reject the notion of the body as object while reclaiming it as beautiful by dismantling the definition. Black women’s bodies have always been objects in the social sphere, but are never exalted as beautiful. The fat Black woman’s body has been rendered as an object of service, whether for food, advice, care-taking, or other areas, but it has never been something to aspire to, not a thing of beauty.

I wanted something for myself, a cake that was complicated and beautiful, a cake that would take up time I didn't have with enough tricky steps to keep my mind completely off of the matters at hand. I thought about a chocolate layer cake with burnt orange icing and the orange in the icing made me consider a Grand Marnier cake instead. Finally, in a complete non sequitur, I settled on a charlotte. I would make a scarlet empress. I closed my eyes and imagined myself making a jelly roll, the soft sheet of sponge cake laid across my counter. I spread the cake with a seedless raspberry preserve and then I rolled it up with even ends. I was nearly asleep. My parents were floating away from me. I took a knife and started slicing off the roll, but I didn't let it end. No matter how many rounds I cut, there was more there for me, an endless supply of delicate spirals of cake. It was the baker's equivalent to counting sheep, lulling myself to sleep through spongy discs of jam. There were enough slices of jelly roll for me to shingle the roof, to cover the house, to lay a walkway out to the street. In my dreams I made the house a cake, and inside the cake our lives were warm and sweet and infinitely protected.

This morning, outside Nordic Fisheries a couple of delivery guys are unloading lobsters and crabs by the case, pausing in between loads to sip coffee from Styrofoam cups. Across the street, on Penn Avenue, the green grocers are busy stacking crates of vegetables and fruits, arranging them into a still life to showcase their most beautiful produce: heads of red romaine, their tender spines heavy with the weight of lush, purple-tinged leaves; a basket of delicate mâche, dark green, almost black, and smelling like a hothouse garden; sugar pumpkins of burnished gold; new Brussels sprouts, their tender petals open like flowers. At this hour the world belongs to those noble souls who devote their lives to food. Cook, grocer, butcher, baker, sunrises are ours. It's a time to gather your materials, to prepare your mise en place, to breathe uninterrupted before the day begins.

While positive thinking and optimism are beautiful and required for a life of both success and achievement, there are times we must dig into the darker emotions we experience and use them as a creative source of power.

A lot of people want to know ‘How do I get my hair to look like so-and-so’s?’” Jeri observes. “They go to their hairdresser with a picture and say, ‘I want to look like that.’ Now, first of all, styling hair in the television industry does not necessarily have anything to do with a haircut. It’s styling, and the audience has to realize that this is a style that is maintained all day long. They don’t walk out of the trailer and never get touched again, like normal people in the regular world. They have somebody chasing behind them, making sure that every hair is in place. So to take a photograph of an actor and expect to look like that, they can cut your hair the same way, but if you don’t do the styling, all you’re stuck with is a haircut you don’t know what to do with. “I think the most important thing is that everybody needs to seek their own look, what makes them beautiful. It has nothing to do with what the actress looks like and nothing to do with wanting to be like them. You have to be yourself. I’m hoping that’s what has evolved on Buffy. She kinda looks like herself. She doesn’t try to create a hairstyle that takes hours to do. Fifteen minutes. Sometimes you have to work with what hair that you have. She is sixteen years old. I don’t want her hair to look like she came out of a salon. I’m hoping that we’re creating things that people can do, they’re not difficult to do. It’s a matter of really liking your face and being able to stand in front of the mirror and move [your hair] around until you balance your face.” Jeri Baker

Kate McDermott taught pie making around the world; I had taken her class several years before. It hadn't made me a baker, but it had given me some perspective on the art of pies. Mostly I had been taken by her attitude. "I make ugly pies," she told me. "They don't have to look perfect." That day Kate had ably patched ripped piecrust, shoring up weak spots where the dough had been rolled too thin. She didn't think it needed to be perfect. "Just fix any mistakes you make," she said without concern. "It doesn't matter." Kate's approach was breezy and relaxed. She barely followed a recipe. "See how it feels," she told me. "Trust yourself." As I ran my hands through the butter cut into flour, I felt emboldened. Things didn't have to be perfect. Kate seemed at peace with imperfections, her pies beautiful in their rustic uniqueness, no two ever the same. Perhaps the secret was finding comfort in the way things were: a process of accepting rather than hiding. The irony was that I liked it when other people let me see them as they truly were: less-than-perfect houses, disordered garages, overdue library books. The imperfections in my friends' lives didn't make me like them any less—they made me like them more. I felt more comfortable with the flaws in my own life, more intimately connected to them; it made me feel like family. I knew this intellectually, but it was harder to apply. I might be able to appreciate rustic charm in a pie, to enjoy the comfortable clutter of a friend's house, but I held myself to a higher standard—one I never managed to achieve. I just couldn't give myself that same compassion. But rolling out and patching the rips in my pie dough that afternoon, as Kate had shown me, I began to wonder if there might not be another way. And when I pulled the pie out of the oven, bumpy, irregular, burnished and glossy and smelling like raspberry heaven, for a moment I thought it was beautiful. My beautifully imperfect pie.

Globally, the statistic of women that would call themselves beautiful is 4 percent.3 Four.

you responsible for your willpower or lack thereof. It puts the onus on you to master the ability to unlearn old lies. It binds us with the opposite requirements of self-hatred, but it’s still binding us. When we tell each other to love your body and with the implication that if you don’t, you just need to try harder, we’re not necessarily empowering anyone; we’re just regurgitating logic we learned from weight loss and from diet culture. Liberation is freedom from all outside expectations, even our own. Liberation is not having to love your body all the time. Liberation is not asking permission to be included in society’s ideal of beauty. Liberation is bucking the concept of beauty as currency altogether. Liberation is recognizing the systemic issues that surround us and acknowledging that perhaps we’re not able to fix them all on our own. Liberation is personally giving ourselves permission to live life. Liberation is slowly learning how to become the best version of our whole selves—body included, yes.

In 1937, [James Laver] wrote that the same costume will be Indecent ten years before its time, Shameless five years before its time, Outre (daring) one year before its time, Smart - (in the present day), Dowdy one year after its time, hideous ten years after its time, Ridiculous twenty years after its time, Charming 70 years after its time, Romantic 100 years after its time, beautiful 150 years after its time.