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[gollymollie]

I feel surpisingly lovely. Not physically - I still feel a bit degenerate and foul - but my heart is light. Life has been kind to me lately.

That's it.

Comments

a rara avis to behold

[claracter]

You *are* surprisingly lovely. ('Surprisingly' being an operative word only because so many people--violent, teeming throngs, really--are not.) There clings to you such an understated and unadorned, accidental and oblique elegance--and this is the most covetable kind. For orchestrated beauty can seem so aggressive, the formulaic face so commanding. 'You are ravishing' should not be an imperative, but an irresistibility.

These are ideas that at least I am entertaining, in an oh-so-cavalier manner. I can hear Dorian Gray's exuberant applause, but I'm still harboring skepticism about the a priori triumphant value of beauty.

Re: a rara avis to behold

[gollymollie]

That's so nice of you Claire. Over the years I have sort of noticed how much better (in a way) pretty people look when they are wearing jeans and t-shirts than when they are going out at night. But tell me, how does this idea of understated, unadorned beauty you are toying with fit in with you and your perception of yourself?

[claracter]

I suppose the features of my appearance that I appreciate the most are those that remain understated and unadorned. Of these there are few, but still there are aspects of my body that suggest unequivocally against 'correction' or 'modification.' Also my inventory of beauty, while deeply entrenched with pervasive societal norms, has its idiosyncrasies. (Not that they are self-manufactured, but simply slightly deviant from standard expectations.) I do not, for instance, covet deep bronze tans or heaving, pugnacious breasts; the most alluring beauty is untainted by cosmetics and artifice. From a strictly aesthetic (not philosophical, moral, sociological, anthropological, or even academic) view, however, certain features can seem so atrociously askew that there is nothing left for artificiality to corrupt

[gollymollie]

you are more of a philosopher than I am....but nevertheless I ponder your question (if question is the right word). I always like to imagine things in the societies of Australian Aborigines(sp?) and little communal farming villages in Mexico years before the great civilizations came into power. Perhaps that is a flawed manner of thinking; I suspect it is, but I always turn to it anyway. If you look at the mythology of ancient (non-patriarical) cultures, some stories have to do with the beauty of a woman, but others present women in an entirely different light - not as the diminuative pretty little sex objects we have been tought to see - but as powerful, wrathful and clever , and often as loving and motherly and gentle as well, as giving birth to the world. If you take a look at goddesses from ancient south/central america, they are terrifying but motherly, like lions. There beauty is usually not adressed.

So, I think it seems like beauty and concern about beauty has its place, but shouldn't be as important as we make it

[jadugar]

Do you ever feel like you're in love but there's nothing that you know of that could make you feel that way? Love with no target?

[gollymollie]

indeed I do.

[jadugar]

Doesn't that drive you insane?

[gollymollie]

sometimes

a bitty inquiry

[claracter]

I meant to ask earlier: in what ways would you say life has been kind lately? (I'm not disagreeing with or challenging the suggestion, mind you! I'm just curious)

Re: a bitty inquiry

[gollymollie]

I like my job, school is almost over, the weather is mostly nice.....I am not sick at all, mostly I have gotten on with my mom well lately, I have felt sort of healthy and strong, there are some people I am sort of flirting with, you and I are talking a lot, I have other friends. It's just sort of nice.

happiness

[claracter]

I'm quite happy to be part of life's kindness for you right now--and in the future. Your casual account of your days does sound colorful. And I endorse the coqutry--even floundering flirtation, if that's what it becomes.

[claracter]

'Coquetry,' that is!