Beauty

As you know, I've been thinking a lot about beauty lately. I've read Vogue magazine since I was 16 (and I lurve it passionately); it's always been a given for me that there are "beautiful people" and then there are mere mortals and really, that's okay with me. I've always seen beauty as something more internal than external. I'm not going to tell you that I don't have those girls moments when I wish I had Giselle's body, quite the contrary; I've just always worked to believe that I'm beautiful in my own way.

Times that I feel beautiful:

When Tim looks at me like he's never seen anything more breathtaking than me.

When William touches my cheek with his little hand, giving me a look like he's never seen anything quite like my face, and says, "Mommy, you eautiful."

When I just wake up from a really nice dream and I'm still in that dreamy haze.

When I know that I've done something good or selfless for someone else.

While singing praises, and that totally indescribable transcendence falls over me.

There are other times, and as I am writing this, I'm getting the idea that I should start a beauty journal, not just of my beauty moments but of those I see around me. There is so much beauty in this world, and if we look for it, the decay and sadness around us doesn't seem so overwhelming. A photographic exercise that I find myself doing a lot is going to a place that from far away seems to have no inherent beauty (a dirty shoreline, an overgrown, grey thicket, a crumbling building) and find and photograph the beauty there. I never know what I will find, and sometimes I have to look pretty hard, but I always find something. Beauty is everywhere if you just take the time to look for it.

When do you feel beautiful?

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