Mirror mirror on the wall | Perfumed Pages Mini #004

PERFUMED PAGES MAGAZINE

MIRROR MIRROR ON THE WALL

LOVE CHATS WITH RUTH

Self-Love – The Greatest Love You Should Ever Know In a world obsessed with appearances and perfection, there is a love that is buried. At the best of times, that love is fragile and foggy. It comes to some of us in sleep, during moments of blissful joy, reflected in the eyes of a new lover and then in time it vanishes. We pick up our phones, open Instagram, and the love we have for ourselves fades a little. Sometimes altogether.

We use filters, “great lighting”, make-up products that promise to deliver pore-less, High-definition skin. We want full lips and airbrushed cheeks. It’s been said before and it can be said again, we want to become something which we are not. We have fallen for a modern beauty myth.

I was born on the cusp of the 90s. Coming out of the 80s, my mother’s make-up collection was four items on the bathroom vanity. Pink pearlescent lipstick, a bottle of foundation, eyeshadow she never wore and lipliner she seldom applied. I fondly remember her use of minimal make-up and how she was not obsessed with her appearance.

My mother wore make-up, but she didn’t spend hours in the bathroom every morning. She did her make-up and got on with her day. Her beauty came from her voice, it came from the inside just as much it came from her effortlessness. It came in her sense of humour, her rustic cooking, her mannerisms. My mother’s style was relaxed. She was busy. I thought she was the most beautiful woman I had seen.

The problem is, when I look at myself in the mirror – I often see my imperfections. I find it hard to obsess over the things I like about myself. Most of the time – they are hard for me to see.

I flip between embracing natural French beauty standards (minimal, natural, relaxed) and then see celebrities on the red carpet in Hollywood and flip black to wanting a perfectly symmetrical face, smooth skin, a row of perfectly straight, white teeth.

I spend a lot of time focusing hard on self-love because the world in which I live in - the world in which we all live in – isn’t supportive of loving a natural, core self. Loving yourself doesn’t support capitalism. To be part of the machine, you are conditioned to hate yourself. Always on the chase for improvement, to look good, to have more, to be more prominent in your field, recognised.

The most important love I have ever known is self-love. It has pulled me through dark times, and it is a love that happens on my conditions only. That’s why it is the greatest love I have known. It has been mine, always. I made it.

I am better at conjuring it up now than I was in my teens and early 20s. I don’t need to try as hard as I used to, because I have learnt meditation and I have educated myself on true beauty expectations. When the demons of modern aesthetics kick in, when the Instagram filters surface across my screen, I meditate. I have a make-up free day. I eat something nutritious. I go for a walkin nature and notice the beauty of a tree, with its gnarled and twisted roots. I look at photos of old people smiling. I remind myself that beauty does come in many shapes and forms. Beauty can be felt, not just seen. Beauty can be heard. Beauty is in biology, just as much as it is manmade. It’s about balance and appreciation. Self-love is about celebrating yourself always and always listening to your heart and not the masses.

Self-love is true beauty and true love.

By Ruth Niemiec

by Enola

An Unrequited Love With Myself

By Tanushree Gogoi I search for books that have sadness in volumes but no poems that match my native language, that is grief.

It took me three heartbreaks to recognise my grief, that i had mistook for men who spat out my vulnerability over a table of four.

Numbness and confusion held my hands while they ate.

Not once did they look away from their plates.

I turn to trauma for poetic justice, It warns me of recurring religious motifs before I sin.

Trauma is more about a loss of a love you never felt And less about the love you could never find, Or maybe it's both.

My heart has the space for two.

My idea of love comes From the same place Where Patroculus kisses Achilles' heel And his mother titles it his weakness, Where 1 a.m looks like death under neon lights,

Or a tragedy just as wonderful.

God owns heaven but craves the earth and i own a body that yearns for just hands that promise me no violence, to wrap around myself like a piece of fabric wound around a child, falling asleep in a sinking ship.

If i were ever in love with myself, I'd write myself a poem how misery is a snake Creeping up Eurydice's skin poisoning her to death And if i were ever in love with you, I'd sing you about Orpheus and his love Without the tragedy.

God begs for a heaven, Earth is The devil's masquerade.

by Nazli Abbaspour

The Patience of Ordinary Things After Pat Schneider there is love, in the way the night gently fades, to welcome the day; in the way an empty canvas invites brush strokes to cover up its plain terrain. there is love in the ordinance of how teacups are shaped so perfectly, for an evening’s tea to be poured into their depths; of the way the flowers wait, for dew drops to rain on them. there is love in the simplicity of ink; how it’s meant to be smeared across pages. and the in the movement of the waves, how they always, always return to come and kiss the sand. there is so much love in the romance of the writer and his words; how they never fail him, even when he’s at his worst. the patience of ordinary things is such, that it reeks of old-fashioned, true love. the way doors wait to be opened, to let strangers into their homes. the books sit on shelves of libraries

In hopes of seeing a reader pick them and devour their knowledge. and the sun? the sun waits, in patience, while giving its light to the moon to shine all night, and dulls its own. it’s love- plain, simple, and old the love of ordinary things. the arrangement of stars and the placement of countries, how they know where they’re supposed to be. and how wonderful are humans, then? waiting to fall in love, falling in love and falling out of love only to wait for love some more. love; plain, simple, old-fashioned love.

words by Muskan Kaur

by Nazli Abbaspour

by Nazli Abbaspour

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By Upanshu Das I read somewhere, love cracks you open.

"You're whole before you begin, and then you're cracked open."

I can't see more eye to eye with anything else.

Why not?

I fell in love.

My stars of fate as a crown on my head, I placed at your feet.

I laid my chest bare, "Do your best." I cried.

A curve at your lips, and a gaze so piercing made my bones shiver.

You tore me open.

You tore me open and scavenged out the rotting, pervading patch of black flesh.

You emptied me out, and filled me up like feathers of down in a pillow.

Filled me with everything I needed, Often with odds and ends of yourself.

You pieced me back bit by bit, with the gold of our love over the cracks just as the Japanese do with broken pottery.

You still keep tearing me open time and again, Pick out the carcinogens and fill in with the best of yourself.

And that is what love does.

Love cracks you open, and fills you with things you did not know you could have.

by Enola

Sea of Love

By Muskan Kaur Life hasn’t been the easiest lately, but what it has taught me with its unexpected circumstances is that I cannot keep waiting for my life to become my dream to fall in love with it. I have to fall in love with my life, for it to become my dream.

I never was one to spend time with myself, always looking for people to be with and friends to have fun with, so that I could love being alive. But if being on my own has taught me one thing, it’s that my own company is not so bad after all. Standing at the beach, listening to the waves crash against the shore, I realised how much I need myself to love me, when my life’s not the best version of itself. I need to love my life, for it to give me the love right back. I simply cannot keep waiting for my One Days to come true in order to be happy; I have to learn to do from right here, right where I am. I’d love for all the wrongs to right themselves right now, and I’d love to wake up every day, excited for what’s to come. But if that’s not what’s meant for me right now, then it’s okay. We love our loved ones at their worst too, right? Then why can’t we love our life at its worst?

Life will break you. Life will destroy your faith and your hope, and ask you to stand up again.

Solitude will break you with its yearning, and companionship will break you with its compromises.

You have to love. You have to feel. You have to tell your life you love it, no matter what happens next. You have to risk a broken heart and some shattered feelings. It’s why we’re all here, on Earth.

We are here to break down, get swallowed up and then give life another chance. It’s all about the four letters, one syllable Love after all. And when it so happens that you’re hurt, broken, hopeless or destroyed, sit near the sea and look at the waves retract and return reassuringly, as if their joy is to caress the sand. Listen to the flow of water, and tell yourself your love is enough.

And always remember that the beach, is always, always worth it.

by Enola