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Onoma Oct 2014
Clutch this passing away...gold-fleck
with outpouring hands this sable
workspace.
Ruffle angelic feathers in a fit of
loving zeal...oblige them holiday.
Tear thy body to pieces of giving...
for lack of better place.
As there shall be places in store where
being may be moved.
It is right, as breath need not mind
to do so...as yet it does.
There's only rise in effortlessness...
and in that rise what is innate divulges
itself.
judy smith Jan 2016
Mikaela Lagdameo-Martinez has forged her way in and around the beauty industry. Starting out as a model at 15, she’s now started working as an entrepreneur and VIP sales manager for Stores Specialists Incorporated, one of the top names when it comes to bringing international beauty brands to our local counters.

With such a background and how she continues to grow her opportunities (she’s now started a scented candle business called Mink), you would think she’d have a million things in her everyday makeup stash, but the reality is quite the contrary. She still keeps it easy with tried and tested products that do their job efficiently. How else would she be able to keep up with all her work on top of being a mother and wife?

On a Thursday morning, Mika was kind enough to squeeze us into her busy schedule to share her favorite makeup and skincare products and how she doesn’t believe in going over-the-top when it comes to beauty.

Describe your approach to beauty

I’ve always been drawn to effortlessness. For me, beauty is in simplicity and comes in the most natural form.

What’s the best beauty advice you’ve ever received from your mother?

Always put lotion on! Ever since I was a kid, I knew that after every bath came lotion application. I was never allowed to get dressed without [applying lotion first.] I can say I was officially brainwashed until this day!

If you had to prioritize skincare or makeup, which would it be?

Skincare, definitely. When you take good care of your skin, makeup is secondary. Plus, I literally feel the weight on my skin when I have makeup on. It’s not the best feeling.

What is one beauty item you would always repurchase?

Moisturizer!

What is the first beauty or makeup item you even bought for yourself?

I think it was makeup remover when I started modeling.

Name five grooming items you would recommend to any man.

After-shave, hair gel, moisturizer with SPF, a good bottle of perfume, and hand cream.

What are five makeup items you never leave the house without?

Moisturizer, bronzer or blush, brow mascara, lip balm, and my favorite **** lipstick.

What is one makeup trend do you always do I always follow?

Neat brows.

What is one misconception about the beauty industry people should know about?

One brand fits all—it isn’t necessarily true. Most of the time you really have to take into consideration your skin type, lifestyle, skin sensitivity, etc. You really have to try them out and see what works best on you.

Who are your beauty icons? Why?

Cheryl Cole aka Cheryl Fernandez Versini. I never get tired of staring at her. She’s one face that never bores me.

One a regular day, which tube of lipstick do you reach for?

Make Up Forever in Mat 2.

On a night out, which shade of lipstick goes with any ensemble and occasion?

MAC Ruby Woo.

What are your top three favorite perfumes?

Jo Malone Nectarine Blossom & Honey, Hermes Pamplemousse Rose, L’eau Par Kenzo

Smoky eye or dark lip? Why?

Dark lip. Not a fan of heavy eyes.

Can you tell us about your nightly skincare routine?

Wash face with my gel cleanser. Moisturize and done!

What are the five best skincare products you’ve tried?

Every time I’m pregnant I run to my ever reliable Clarins Tonic Oil for my tummy and *******. It’s the best and most effective product for firming and avoiding stretch marks! Next would be Murad’s ****** cleansers. I alternate between the foaming wash and gel cleansers because they’re the best. Third would be Benefit’s Boo Boo Zap for treating zits! Fourth, Maui Babe’s browning lotion. Fifth, Kérastase Powder Bluff dry shampoo!

What is one thing that you think is lacking in the beauty industry?

Personally, I think everything we need is already available. What else do we need?!

Who is in your beauty black book (hair, makeup, skin, body)?

For my hair, I go to Alex Carbonell. He knows how to manage my wavy hair with the right layers, length, and color.

For makeup, my favorites are Gela Laurel-Stehmeier, Juan Sarte, Steven Doloso, and Angie Cruz. They know exactly what to do with my face and how much I dislike foundation. (Laughs)

For my body, I go to Marie France. I started going to them ever since I gave birth to my daughter almost 12 years ago. I actually enjoy their treatments because they work so well and I don’t even have to break a sweat.

read more:www.marieaustralia.com/vintage-formal-dresses

www.marieaustralia.com/****-formal-dresses
Ekym Reyotem Feb 2019
All too often the question is posed :
What has happened to all of the " Real Men"?
Do they even exist anymore, or have they succumbed to extinction?

And the answer is no. They are still very much alive, just fewer in numbers. These days, if you happen to come across one, chances are you will find him at what, from the outside, appears to be him at his worst. After having been so beaten down by life, that he hardly resembles a man any longer. (Or at least to what your un-natural opinion of a man resembles) This, as a result of standing up for what is decent, fair and moral. You know, being a "Man", while living in a world void of any morality. But do you know?

Do you really have the ability enough to be able to recognize some one for whom and what they really are? Where do your eyes stop when they peer at someone? Do they penetrate through the car window? Past the $20 hair cut? Can they keep going, beyond the glare of jewelry and through the named brand distractions of the accessorized apparel? And even then, past the last line of defense for this facade, the camouflage more commonly referred to as body art. Which, just like any other item one don's for a masquerade, it sole purpose is to distract others from the truth of what little substance lies underneath the skin.

Those aren't real men or in many cases women either. A tattoo, or any other equivalent of artificiality can never be as honest as a Scar can be.
An Emotional Scar does more damage than a superficial one. A wound speaks more of the individual who bears it. Who's suffered the pain which came with it and who is constantly reminded by it. That is what true sense is derived from, Lessons.

However, when it comes to the moral Man's personality,
the world today & the people in it tend to push these types of individuals into corners. These types of "personalities" suffer to hold on to their integrity and pay terrible prices in order to do so. They sacrifice their security, their psychological state of mind & their physical personal comfort for it. And living in this world, for them, is like torture. So many have had the things and the people they fought for, loved and held dear, snatched away from them, just because they do, not what is easy & popular, but what is right. And these days, the difference between those three are worlds apart.

The lethargic effortlessness of life has made men like me, obsolete and replaced us with the self-serving Narcissist. No longer Gods creation  but a new creation of the self. Void of any empathy, understanding, sympathy or human emotion. Synthetic, and machine like, a Frankenstein incarnate. Look around out there and if you have eyes to see with, you will see that humanity has traded who they were born to be, for what is in fashion to be. They have given up the now elusive spirit of the human heart, for the abundant trend of the human ego. Take a closer look, it is like "The Walking Dead" out there. Mindless, heartless, merciless dead things, only doing for them selves. Consuming whatever they can, how ever they can & who ever they can, in order to stay well supplied and well hidden among'st the rest of us. Lying in wait to ambush us, victimizing us, selling us out, draining us like Vampires.
Men and Women like myself, start to feel as though we are the last human beings on earth, being hunted by these consumers. Always weary and uncomfortable. Going through life trying desperately to hold on to that which is real within us, so that decency does not vanish from our lives, by being chewed up and swallowed whole by a dead eyed world gone mad.

A horrible existence. This way of living/surviving is completely unnatural & brings with it a new type of loneliness & attached to that is the worst kind of hopelessness. A dangerous state to be in if one does not keep his wit's about him. And have the given sense enough to know, that If it were not for a God in heaven, there would be no hope at all. No reason to suffer un-popularity or ostracism. No reason to do what is right, over what is convenient . No reason to not just give in to the temptation of an easy life. A life where all that matters is numero-uno. Where everything else and everyone else is just secondary.

I would rather be alone & miserable for the rest of my life, than to be a self-centered, backstabbing, bloodsucking son of a b¡tch like the rest of you out there.

Now, getting back to these "Men" that so many our Women are attracted to. The men that keep letting you down time and time again. The ones who's possessions make them look like they are worth something, whom you so easily swoon over like some kind of hypnotized harlot. My dear sister, eventually those things get stripped away. Either by time or the trial's of life. And then what you are left left with is whatever pathetic thing was hiding underneath.

And that is what you get, for being led by your eye's, your hands, your ears and your selfish little minds.You listen to & are led by, every other part of your body except your heart, which is the Apex O r g a n over all others. Which has been given charge and authority, by The Creator himself over all of those other things you are always so quick to bow down to. And that is a d a m n e d shame. And that is your d a m n e d shame. And it is no one else's fault but your own.

You want to see a mans character or a woman's? Then look for their Scars. They will tell you what kind of survivor they really are. The kind that is self reliant or the kind that feeds off of the flesh of his brother or his sister to survive. The opportunist, The scavenger, The rat.

But thankfully, there is a God. One God.
And there always will be. And so the rest of the world can go on doing what it does, and taking what it can.
But it will never get what it wants, not from me. My individuality is my soul and it is held together not with pride, or greed, or vanity, but with integrity. And that belongs to Him. And when it is inevitably brought back to him, it will be brought to him intact, un-molested &
Immovable-
Robert Ronnow  Sep 2023
Seaweed
Robert Ronnow Sep 2023
On one of the myriad bays
along the Maine coast. Keep the holocaust
at bay I said to Dave because
you’ll spend all day gathering
2,000 calories and still be miserable hungry.
An undiminished population of humans is risible.

Black spruce and balsam fir,
you can eat the inner bark
in a starvation emergency.
There’s plenty of Cornus—bunchberry—
each orange pith around the stone
worth maybe a quarter calorie.

Lots of sarsparilla but the fruits
not out yet and to date I have not
savored one. Let’s see—dandelion
of course and huckleberry but
the most important source of sustenance
would be seaweed.

Learn your mushrooms! for the protein.
Accept the situation
come the apocalypse.
I struggle against my insignificance
but it would be better to struggle
against my ignorance.

Less effortlessness, more fishermanliness.
That’s the lesson of this Maine vacation
there’s a lot you can eat when in need—
the hips of roses and the pips of grasses.
And an endless supply of seaweed—
bladderwrack, dulse, kelp and thin green lettuce.
Ira Desmond Sep 2023
Our trajectory is unknowable, you tell me: the planet
corkscrews around the Sun, sure,

but the Sun corkscrews around a black hole at
the heart of the Milky Way,

and our whole galaxy travels on some mysterious,
incalculable vector. But sister, I saw a photograph

in which two whale sharks were brought to
heel by men in simple reed boats just

off the coast of the Philippines. All that they had
to do was often feed

the sharks many gallons of grocery-store frozen
shrimp, poured from plastic garbage bags into

their yawning six-foot maws to portside.
Gargantuan, sure, but still

as obedient and eager for food as backyard
squirrels. I remembered a grainy

internet video—I saw it probably seven or
eight years back—in which

a captured whale shark was winched
ashore in Madagascar, or

maybe it was the Philippines again—no matter—
the thing still had life left

in it and struggled to breathe while a crowd of
people gathered around—there were

women carrying babies, girls holding baskets atop
their heads—and then the

men came with a long slender blade and sliced clean
through the whale’s spine, vivisected it

right there on the dock, and the onlookers stood there quite
unfazed—I remember

being shocked at the effortlessness of the cut,
the pinkness of the whale’s blood,

and the boredom in the onlookers’ eyes. Our father
took us down to San Antonio

on one of his business trips there when we were five
or six—I think

you were probably too young to
remember it—

it was when you and I saw the ocean for the first
time. We drove down to the Gulf

of Mexico, and we saw waves breaking
out near the horizon in pale

sunlight. I kept scanning for a dorsal
fin off beyond

the breakers, thinking that I might spot one—
sandy brown, mottled with

cream spots and glistening—so that I might be able to
say to you, pointing, “look,

sister, there is a whale shark!” Years
later we would learn

that he traveled down to San Antonio so
frequently because he was a philanderer. As

a child I believed that whale sharks
crisscrossed the ocean following

paths that we couldn’t fathom, that
their concerns were somehow

beyond our comprehension, but then
Keppler pinned down

the shape of the Earth’s orbit over four
hundred years ago,

and the lives of ancient sea
titans are sundered

effortlessly
by men with indifferent faces.
Jimmy King Oct 2013
A tattoo is just a scar;
A person is just a human being-
Not much more than a Wendy’s bag
That looks like road-****;
Not much more
Than a series of frames in a film
With a blackness in between
That our minds remove,
Creating an illusion of motion
Similar to the illusion of effortlessness
Created as we drive up a hill,
Pumping fossil fuels into the air
As everyone breathing outside the car
Rings like the aftermath of a gunshot
Or a screaming plea in an unfamiliar ear
“Stab me some more, dear,
Let the ink flow,
The film is running out
And I can see the blackness finally
Of the space that’s in between”
That smell isn't around anymore.
I didn't even realize it until I could barely remember it.

It's the smell of the old place I used to live
alone.
The smell of the doors at night
and the corn patties in the cupboard
and the leather sofa
and my old cat.

It's the smell of the doubt.
The lack of the light.
Being stuck in the middle of the tunnel.
The smell of the tunnel vision.
The smell of the fact that it was
midnight after the journey through the tunnel.

The smell of my heavy chest,
that I smelled with my head hung,
nose close to my heart.

Straight ahead, it doesn't have that heavy smell.
Now it smells of ethnic food.
And breath always on the side of my neck.
It's warm.

The smell of trying and failing.
I only smell success from effortlessness.
wa wa waaaa  Nov 2019
Nondoing
wa wa waaaa Nov 2019
nonmeditation
is the best kind of meditation
not doing,
just being
not listening,
simply hearing
simply here

How do I write poetry
simple by being?
effortlessness is effortful
How do I show to the world
the way my brain should work
so that I appear
                          smart
                          ­         articulate
                                                   thoughtful
                                                      ­                 d
                                                               ­        e
                                                               ­        e
                                                               ­        p
when really I feel like spurting a string of thoughts that would not make sense to anyone, including myself, in any moment but this one

**** appearance

here's me:

    -
  (      .     .  )
(           >    )        ()()
(          =      )  __ (   )
xxxxxxxxxx            )
Zabava  Dec 2013
gushing crushing
Zabava Dec 2013
you know
when i first beheld the icy greyness
of this giant sepulchral building
a giantness of Empty
a giantness of unrecognised surreal faces
a giantness of being sorta kinda lost
a giant lostness of slamming into glass doors
hurriedly breaking out
to a place i wanted to know

when i first beheld that giantness
i had never thought
imagined felt conceived
hell i had it all figured out
in what i thought was a deep deep experience

i had never thought
it would be that crisp
that quick
the creepiness of mounting heartbeat
pounding like a drumbeat
rising out into the rosiness of dawn
full of a wisdom of it's own experience

that it would be that supple
lifting me with effortlessness
like a wave of adrenaline
rush; gushing into my
guts; breaking out like
a furious river bent on
flowing with the vastness of the ocean
and the innocence of the sky

i had never thought
that is how you have a Crush.
Anna Skinner Apr 2015
I am desperate –  
     for all the effortless things

just so my blood has a chance to
     sing for something
          again

but out of all the open air that
     has kissed my skin
          and all the people who
                were lucky to love me

the only easement I knew
     was you
           and before, during, after

well,
     I was never enough for myself –
          not once, not ever

so I find myself
     aching for the effortlessness
          but not aching for you in the way
       I used to

I can’t find it – my effortlessness –
     without you
          because I believe they
               are one in the same

so I wander –
     a drifting soul –
          from progression to progression

congratulations

you seem so happy

I am so proud

all these tangible things –
     they will never bring me the
          easement I knew from only you
Hannah McC Sep 2013
I daydream of dreaming
a dream:
comfortable and surreal.
In it, an antique shop full of character
and the scent of mothballs and dust.
A haphazard maze of dark lit corners
pulls me to its depths,
where nestled in the back,
is a perfectly imperfect piano.
Ironic how the blatantly splintered key
is the most out of tune, no?
In this dream within a daydream,
I sit on a squeaking stool,
foot on a loose damper,
and play all that I know.
In this dream to be,
I know not,
or recognize what I play,
but know it's home
and find peace in knowing.
The name Chopin
would be the faintest
of underlying memories,
but the first upon waking.
All we are is what we are not,
and were I dreaming this dream,
that notion would live in my being;
in the pockets of my marrow
and in the pit of my throat.
No Steinway could produce
such a twang so unimaginably beautiful.
Only the physically appealing use the word ugly,
and only the true understand the word beauty.
In my dream to be,
I watch myself,
but feel the keys
as they disintegrate
after violently being yanked from slumber.
Would I dream,
I would gasp and reach in wake,
grasping nothing,
and yearn again
to live without
vivid self awareness.
Yet when conscious,
I seek lucidity,
despite the comfort
found in effortlessness.
So snap me out of it.
Slap the porcelain saucer
that is my cheek,
for I am no Poe,
and this no "dream within a dream"
but a waltz
with the idea of serendipity.
Kagey Sage  Jul 2014
Ludwig Van
Kagey Sage Jul 2014
“The trouble is, we think there’s time”
Buddha said it so urgent
Complete with Sanskrit contractions
The baby delivering doctor saying we all have a cancer, no matter how slow
so pick up your passions with a god’s effortlessness
Play a concerto that makes your hair stand on end
because the music was more important than a reflective surface
Looking like a you were born in a stormy garret
Writing, thinking, and plucking, as if the gods set you there
instead of the million hopeless mediocre ones
No, instead you are brethren to those gods
All competing for immortal kicks – like mortal tail
Until the game board perspective ceases
looking down on the plebeian pantheon
and it’s just you and what you lived for
Selena Jance Feb 2013
Maybe only slowly, can someone
come nearer, and closer, in thought,
where he might be a sliver

of painted visions on a glass
ceiling. Somehow, as thinking fades
and the colours take precedence. Blue

purple hues, taking place on the
pink of a lovely sight or thought. He felt he
needed to trample what I have come

to, shatter this illusion of a
benevolence. He cracked my gauges,
took the defenses right away. As my

last stroke failed, a broken lance of the
first. Silently he cuffed away his iciness, pursuing me
with a granite effortlessness. Then the impermeable

onyx kissed my mouth and went away.


© 2006

— The End —