The Nanny + Sparkly Outfits

“I sometimes think that if love didn’t exist, what would people talk about otherwise? Love is one of the strongest subjective feelings that exists. Everyone’s always known that - it’s why in books, in plays and tragedies, you have love as the driving force. You must take an interest in all that appears as the great passions of humanity - which means the big commitments of human subjects which, for whatever reason, go beyond man’s immediate concerns. It’s in these great passions that mankind creates its future, and it’s there that it can get out of its present state and create something new. So, it’s something that deserves to ask that simple question: where are we today with this question of love? Today, it’s necessary to defend love. Love is the most powerful way known to humanity to have an intimate relationship with another. It places you in a state of dependence on another. Which is something that is fundamentally against modern individualism. If the sole motivation for human action is to satisfy one’s wishes and interests, which is after all the dominant idea of the modern world. If that is humanity, then love can indeed be seen as a danger. We should be wary of love, and in particular, what happens on dating sites, where we try to guarantee a romantic encounter in advance by ensuring that anyone you meet is just like you; they have the same tastes, the same wishes and the same determination. I think that goes against the very definition of love. Because it means there’s no element of adventure, no risks are taken - mutual satisfaction has to be guaranteed, like some kind of business contract - and that I think is a serious threat to love. You need to defend love as a real, risky adventure against this individualistic, even egotistical vision. Because the truth is that love can’t be reduced to individualistic egoism. Love is, in a way, a lesson in courage. In arranged marriages there is no risk. The same with dating sites. You try to avoid risk. Avoiding risk by calculating how to maximise a relationship with another. I think that all creation, all truth with any real significance, is always linked to an event. Anything else is just a normal consequence of the everyday world. It’s neither a creation nor an invention, just a continuation. What does it mean to start something? If you want to consider something beginning, you have to consider there is an element of chance. If there isn’t chance involved, then it’s not a start because it’s something that already exists and is pre-determined. So when I focus on risk, I focus on the fact that love, as a creation, as an invention, is closely linked to a meeting. A meeting which is risky. And can be a meeting with people from completely different worlds. It’s precisely because of the role that chance plays that love can have a creative dimension that is really interesting and universal. True love, intense love, makes possible what was previously impossible. The modern individualist world is a world which presents humanity as a collection of single entities. Each is ‘one’. In its purest sense love is this passage from one to two in the experience of life itself. Love creates a perspective and an existence in the world which is not from the point of view of ‘one’ because it is the perspective of ‘two’. The passing from one to two is a revolution. A great revolution. It’s as if we are putting things in perspective, as if suddenly the world has an extra dimension. And it’s an absolutely fundamental experience because it shows us, makes us realise, that the truth of the world is in fact sustained by the multitudes, not by the atom that is you personally. Many people give up love. People don’t understand clearly enough that love is a creation. A modern tendency, when there’s an obstacle is to let go and move on to something else. If we settle on the idea that as soon as something is hard we have to give it up, we will settle for an uninteresting life. I don’t deny the existence of love’s sadness. Abandonment or disappointment can be terrible emotions. But if, because of this pain, you renounce love, then you reject the greatest experience of another that you can have in your existence. 'All that is true is rare and difficult’ Unfortunately, that is true.”

— French philosopher Alain Badiou on love

Mahmoud Darwish, from Almond Blossoms and Beyond; “Like A Smaill Café,”

Love in the Time of Cholera

“He was still too young to know that the heart’s memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good, and that thanks to this artifice we manage to endure the burden of the past.”

— Gabriel García Márquez, from Love in the Time of Cholera (Alfred A. Knopf, 1988)

“Discipline is getting up at six A.M. in Hollywood when you’d rather be in New York waking at eleven. Discipline, too, is learning something new and strange or refusing a second piece of cinnamon toast. Discipline is not putting things off until tomorrow. If today is for buying spring clothes, you buy them. If now is the time to take singing lessons, you take them now, not next year. Next year you can take singing lessons, too, but they are next year’s lessons. There’s a time for everything.”

— Grace Kelly on self-discipline (Photoplay - February 1955)

“I like how sleeping next to someone means more than sex sometimes, the body’s way of saying ‘I trust you to be by my side at my most vulnerable time,’ you have no defenses when you are asleep, you tell no lies”

— Eric Shaw

Part of Your World

The Little Mermaid Reprise II deserves the Oscar MS Halle Bailey did her thing on that song. I need either an extended version of reprise ii or a complete album of Halle singing around 17 different versions of Part of Your World

Reprise 2 the is one of the Best additions to the soundtrack then comes For the First Time.

How I Increased My Confidence to the Point Where I Can’t Stop Looking at Myself in the Mirror!!

1. When I felt bad about myself, I would sit in front of a folded mirror in the dark for 5-10 minutes at a time. I felt so self conscious about my reflection staring at me from 3 angles that I felt exposed. I realized it’s not me who feels bad about myself, it’s the others who feel negatively about themselves to the point that they’re inflicting their self hatred on me!

My mood and self esteem level changed instantly! I couldn’t believe it. From middle school to my junior year in high school, I didn’t hate myself, it was other’s energy!

2. Don’t ever care about the negative comments or backhanded compliments others say to you directly/indirectly. Literally, ignore it unless you’re being threatened. I laugh at anything anyone says at me. At the same time, don’t allow anyone to talk about you and you take it.

“If they can dish it out, they can take it.”

You’re too pretty to insult yourself and pick out flaws about yourself. You’re too pretty to waste your energy and eyesight on picking out flaws on others. They’re them and you’re you.

3. Unlearn stage fright and the feeling of being cornered. For my graduation practice, I walked in the field in my favorite fitted dress, waist ⌛️⏳ (I had on a waist trainer but no one could tell) and the vintage Louis Vuitton bag I just bought. They people I had issues with kept staring at me to antagonize me or to get me to look down/away but I really, really didn’t care.

My waist captured everyone’s attention and I was going to go have fun afterwards while they rushed to work and gawked at me.

(My graduating class really thought I got my waist done 🤣)

I didn’t appear as and really wasn’t the same meek girl they saw before the pandemic shut everything down. Know that you’re better than whatever others are giving out.

You don’t have to prove anything or have a revenge “‘“glow up’”” on anyone.

4. Never stop learning about how to improve yourself. I discovered femininity when the change happened and it was a life transformation. Wake up earlier and have a healthy drink or meal. Watch makeup tutorials and hacks while walking on the treadmill. Find out your personal style and measurements.

5. Think about your confidence this way. Your self esteem levels are like a dimmer switch. The more you notice how attractive and lovable you are, the higher the switch goes up or more the knob turns. You see your inner & outer beauty even more as the brightness increases.

Now, I’m pretty euphoric and I keep a mirror on my nightstand. I’ve had to hide mirrors from myself and buy more to place in my surroundings!!

it’s easy for hobbies to turn into things we avoid because of the pressure we put on ourselves. but i promise, u have nothing to prove. if u enjoy drawing, draw!! it doesn’t have to be museum worthy. ur baking doesn’t need to be master chef worthy every time you do it. hobbies are hobbies because they make you happy and u enjoy doing them. there is no pressure for u to become a professional in everything u enjoy; enjoy it for the lack of pressure. try and let yourself participate in things without tying ur worth to the final products. if it makes you happy, anything that comes from that is worth it.

Sensuality is to be responsive to and in touch with your senses, to feel deep pleasure in the consistent shifting of life. Sensual people are in tune with the world around them, it is not only sexual pleasure. It’s a presence, an energy.