La Folie Beautiful

My name is Yaa. This is a collection of my thoughts and inspirations.

[greek-lovers]

Zoë Lianne

[wholeheartedsuggestions]

whatever it is you need good luck for, i wish you good luck. tests, job, home life, social life, mental health, physical health, love life. you name it. this post is wishing you good luck on all of that.

[thrillingsentience]

your scientist looks gnc as fuck

psst.... i drew the full outfit... 👀

[staringatcandles]

creating a perfect day simply by waking up and choosing to live

[nasfera2]

Les Nubians - Makeda

[rozieramati]

[artemisiasea]

“While we can participate in beauty, we can never possess it. If we attempt to own beauty, we corrupt it. When soiled or damaged, beauty can turn negative and destructive. It is ultimately a sacred manifestation and should not be trespassed on by our lower hungers. In the presence of beauty, we are called to be gracious and worthy.

Greed damages what it desires. When we abuse the sacrament of abundance, we drive away graciousness. Since classical times it has always been recognized that beauty demands proportion and balance. When they are neglected, beauty and graciousness recede and the flow of gifts dries up. Graciousness dignifies human presence and when it is present, it brings out the best in people. It opens a perspective which enables us to see the gifts that we have. It creates an atmosphere which awakens nobility of mind and heart. A gracious mind has compassion and sensitive understanding. It is without greed; rather than concentrating on what is absent or missing, it is able to celebrate and give thanks for what is present.”

John O’Donohue, Beauty: The Invisible Embrace

[artemisiasea]

"I had heard the spiritual teaching that a person must be in a state of grace in order to receive grace. That rang true for me, so I tried to apply it in my words and actions with pregnant and laboring women. That mother's demeanor, throughout her quick, intense labor (often the most painful), was calm and assured—as long as everyone in her presence maintained the same sense of gratitude, courage, and surrender to something higher than all of us, which she was holding. As I attended more births, I could see how choosing to be grateful could help a woman in pain begin to move away from doubt, fear, paranoia, anger, resentment, blame, or shame in moments of crisis. It can certainly take a huge leap of faith to move to gratitude when we feel that we are being crushed by circumstances beyond our ability to bear anymore. However... when we can come to a moment of gratitude in the middle of a greater storm than we've ever experienced, we may be able to relax a little, and surrender ourselves to receiving help. Choosing gratitude, moment by moment, opens the channel for grace." Ina May Gaskin

[lukwata]

Glenealy, Hong Kong

[julytrees]

Kerry Washington hugging a tree, ca. 1990s.

[tylerspangler]

Artwork Copyright © Tyler Spangler

Shop: shoptylerspangler.com

[voluptama]

everyday life

© Chris Niedenthal

[thoughtkick]

“Whatever you’re meant to do, do it now. The conditions are always impossible.”

— Doris Lessing

[artemisiasea]

“Without poetry, without song, without dance I would not be alive. Nor would any of us. We come from root cultures in which song, poetry, stories, art was something that belonged to all of us. They were not “spectator sports,” as they are mostly in this over-culture. Everyone sang, everyone, danced, made art. It was/is integral to being human. Now it seems reserved for the elite, for those who can afford the time. We need expression to feel connected, not just to our communities but to who we are down deep, past the eyes and the gullet, to the heart and the incredible depth past it.”

— Joy Harjo, Soul Talk, Song Language: Conversations with Joy Harjo 

[artemisiasea]

I’ve been thinking about this quote recently and how overwhelmingly true it feels right now. How can anything profound arise if there’s no space or depth for it to do so? Constant streams of images and expression and what is actually being said or communicated? The message is always to speed up, consume more, say more, work more, don’t stop, don’t leave room to linger, don’t take a break. Don’t take a break at all costs or you will die. But none of this is natural and the relief of reveling in saying nothing is to refuse this machine that works against the body— and to finally make room for the spirit and soul to integrate experience, listen deeply, and speak.

[luxe-pauvre]

Reading shaped the modern mind. Its disappearance will reshape it. Cognitive scientists are starting to understand what these changes might look like. I asked a dozen of them what happens to our brains when we stop reading. Several were amused by my rudimentary question. “Everything that happens to you changes the brain,” Dan Willingham, a professor at the University of Virginia, told me. “Literally reading a word changes your brain for a few hours at least—and, if you know how to measure it right, for much longer than that.” He was trying to reassure me: If everything changes the brain, then almost no single action matters all that much. But what if you consistently replace one kind of action (reading a word) with another (watching an Instagram Reel)? One of the most robust findings in neuroscience is that people’s brains master what they practice. If we fill our time with short-form videos instead of books, our reading skills atrophy. We have less background knowledge to aid comprehension. There’s no danger of spontaneous mass illiteracy, but the complex cognitive skills that reading fosters start to degrade. The library of the mind falls into disrepair. Reading books is a workout for the attention span. The more you read, the easier it is to read, and the more you’re rewarded with new understanding. Eventually the process is more pleasurable than it is challenging. But as with physical exercise, the converse is true as well: The less you read, the more difficult it is to read, and the rockier the path to acquiring knowledge.

Rose Horowitch, The End of Reading Is Here

[persianmom]