2.02 | 2.05 – You shouldn’t dwell so much on your looks, Anne. I assure you, it’s better to be plain. If you’re beautiful, you get stuck on one path, and that’s all that’s expected of you, whereas you’ll be able to go through life getting to be exactly who you are without calling too much attention to yourself. It’s a gift. Really.
“In 1907, the brilliant Colette caused a sensation at the Moulin Rouge when she appeared with her lesbian lover Missy (the marquise de Morny) in a one-act pantomime called Rêve d’Egypte (Dream of Egypt). Dressed in a costume… Colette played a mummy waiting to be ‘unpacked’ by the ‘male’ archaeologist, played by Missy. The performance provoked an audience uproar when they kissed; as Colette’s biographer Judith Thurman asserts, ‘the stage was immediately bombarded with coins, orange peels, seat cushions, tins of candy, and cloves of garlic, while the catcalls… and shouts of ‘Down with the dykes’ drowned out an orchestra of forty musicians.” —
Piya Pal-Lapinski’s The Exotic Woman in Nineteenth-Century British Fiction and Culture (2005)
A person with whom you have an immediate connection the moment you meet – a connection so strong that you are drawn to them in a way you have never experienced before. As this connection develops over time, you experience a love so deep, strong and complex, that you begin to doubt that you have ever truly loved anyone prior. Your soulmate understands and connects with you in every way and on every level, which brings a sense of peace, calmness and happiness when you are around them. And when you are not around them, you are all that much more aware of the harshness of life, and how bonding with another person in this way is the most significant and satisfying thing you will experience in your lifetime. You are also all that much aware of the beauty in life, because you have been given a great gift and will always be thankful.
We girls, born as four but live as one, Look curiously upon a world once familiar, Where we used to walk through open fields, But our souls have been taken captive.
Now all we can do is lie down and look up, Listen as the wind calls, Watch as the clouds gather.
The blue sky turns to black velvet, As the storm settles upon our Kingdom, And with our hearts and hands united We realize that it is as God willed.
It was our destiny to Love and say goodbye.
~ “OTMA”, Anna Thompson
“The Grand Duchesses were charming – the picture of freshness and health. It would have been difficult to find four sisters with characters more dissimilar and yet so perfectly blended in an affection which did not exclude personal independence, and, in spite of contrasting temperaments, kept them a most united family. With the initials of their Christian names they had formed a composite Christian name, OTMA, and under this common signature they frequently gave their presents or sent letters written by one of them on behalf of all.”
– Pierre Gilliard on the four daughters of the last Russian Emperor
persephone's corner 