In the varied concatenation of life's experiences lies its essence-a journey full of joy and pain. Man comes with pristine qualities of truthfulness, simplicity, and the wonder of nature. In his birth lies his religion. It is his passage through the world that is often full of struggle; in response, he looks for a God to help him. A Beautiful Pain presents a collection of poems ruminating on joy, beauty, and the wonder of life. Meditating on life's meaning, it explores the range of human emotions, from the pain of first heartbreak to a study of the quintessence of inner luminosity. Poet Maharaj Kaul searches for the truth of life in this collection, which like life itself is multi-faceted and has a few grand themes running through it. There is a road in front of us smoother than any highway we have seen, There is music beckoning us more rapturous than we have ever heard, There is faith in us stronger than a million facts we have known, There is a light within us more luminous than the thousand exploding suns, We were born with a spirit thirsting for the infinite. -from "Quintessence of Inner Luminosity"

Warning: This book is not for the faint of heart. If you deal with triggers, please read this book with caution. Material consists of adult content and BDSM. I was sent away for protection. Pulled from a world and forced into another, I lost myself on the way. No emotion. Only walls to hide feelings that were now masked behind a barrier. Matteo Santos opened my eyes. He helped me see through the darkness that consumed my soul. He breathed life into my lungs, gripping my heart until it beat again. With a darkness of his own, it haunted him, turning him into a beautiful Master of seduction and pain. Through trust and love, we would battle our pasts together. Before they took control...completely. "Not everything is as it seems." ~ Beautiful Pain

Beautiful Pain is collection of poetry that shows the intimate views inside the authors world. The poems reflect the joys and pains that were endured in her life. This 5 chapter book is an expression of Beauty, Pain, Pleasure, Love, and Truth. Her testimony starts you out with seeing the world as the beauty it is. Then it takes you on a roller coaster ride into the pain. While carrying you into the pleasure and love she seeked then lost. Lastly, she shows you her rebirth into the truth of her heart and the happiness that was found again. So take a little trip with her through the beautiful pain in which is her poetry.

Kematian ibunya menyisakan luka yang teramat dalam bagi Rafel. Keluarganya yang dulu begitu hangat, berubah menjadi dingin dan luluh lantak dalam sekejap mata. Setelah tahun-tahun kelam yang dilewati, pembunuh asli dari kebakaran yang menewaskan ibunya akhirnya terungkap. Seorang Gadis Belia-keponakan dari penjaga Villa-nya lah tersangka sebenarnya. Kecuali kemarahan yang menggelegak, tidak ada rasa apa pun yang ia temukan ketika melihat sepasang mata bulat itu menatap horor ke arahnya. Sungguh, ia bersumpah akan menghancurkan hidupnya, persis seperti yang telah dilakukan gadis kecil itu pada keluarganya. "Selama napas masih tersangkut di tenggorokanmu, maka selamanya kamu hanya boleh dihancurkan olehku. Hingga tidak bersisa. Hingga kamu berpikir, bahwa kematian adalah hadiah teristimewa. Aku akan mengenalkan, apa itu rasa sakit sebenarnya." -Rafel Erden Hardyantara

A New York Times and USA Today Bestseller...They agreed on three months... but their love knew no boundaries.Jack McLachlan is a winemaking magnate and easily one of Australia's most eligible bachelors. His success and wealth makes him no stranger to the complications of romantic relationships and that's why he goes to extreme measures to avoid the hassle. He prefers simplicity in the form of a beautiful female companion with no strings attached. He arranges relationships like business deals and they're always the same. No long term relationships. No real names.It's his game and his rules. He's content to play as usual, but when Laurelyn Prescott enters his life, his strategy must change because this player is like none he's ever encountered. His world is turned on its head after he begins a three month affair with the beautiful American musician. Nothing goes according to plan and as he breaks more and more of his own rules for her, she's exceptionally close to becoming something he never thought possible. His ultimate game changer.

For over 150 years, Tlingit women artists have beaded colorful, intricately beautiful designs on moccasins, dolls, octopus bags, tunics, and other garments. Painful Beauty suggests that at a time when Indigenous cultural practices were actively being repressed, beading supported cultural continuity, demonstrating Tlingit women’s resilience, strength, and power. Beadwork served many uses, from the ceremonial to the economic, as women created beaded pieces for community use and to sell to tourists. Like other Tlingit art, beadwork reflects rich artistic visions with deep connections to the environment, clan histories, and Tlingit worldviews. Contemporary Tlingit artists Alison Bremner, Chloe French, Shgen Doo Tan George, Lily Hudson Hope, Tanis S’eiltin, and Larry McNeil foreground the significance of historical beading practices in their diverse, boundary-pushing artworks. Working with museum collection materials, photographs, archives, and interviews with artists and elders, Megan Smetzer reframes this often overlooked artform as a site of historical negotiations and contemporary inspirations. She shows how beading gave Tlingit women the freedom to innovate aesthetically, assert their clan crests and identities, support tribal sovereignty, and pass on cultural knowledge. Painful Beauty is the first dedicated study of Tlingit beadwork and contributes to the expanding literature addressing women’s artistic expressions on the Northwest Coast.

Have we become beauty-blind? For two decades or more in the humanities, various political arguments have been put forward against beauty: that it distracts us from more important issues; that it is the handmaiden of privilege; and that it masks political interests. In On Beauty and Being Just Elaine Scarry not only defends beauty from the political arguments against it but also argues that beauty does indeed press us toward a greater concern for justice. Taking inspiration from writers and thinkers as diverse as Homer, Plato, Marcel Proust, Simone Weil, and Iris Murdoch as well as her own experiences, Scarry offers up an elegant, passionate manifesto for the revival of beauty in our intellectual work as well as our homes, museums, and classrooms. Scarry argues that our responses to beauty are perceptual events of profound significance for the individual and for society. Presenting us with a rare and exceptional opportunity to witness fairness, beauty assists us in our attention to justice. The beautiful object renders fairness, an abstract concept, concrete by making it directly available to our sensory perceptions. With its direct appeal to the senses, beauty stops us, transfixes us, fills us with a "surfeit of aliveness." In so doing, it takes the individual away from the center of his or her self-preoccupation and thus prompts a distribution of attention outward toward others and, ultimately, she contends, toward ethical fairness. Scarry, author of the landmark The Body in Pain and one of our bravest and most creative thinkers, offers us here philosophical critique written with clarity and conviction as well as a passionate plea that we change the way we think about beauty.