“Sometimes the slightest things change the direction of our lives, the merest breath of circumstance, a random moment …lives have swiveled and changed direction on the strength of a chance remark.”
– Bryce Courtney
Writing changes lives.
Tag: blogger
Let the Truth Be…
..like fire shut up in my bones, sizzling on my tongue and falling from my mouth let it enter my throat like singing and into my bones like oil let me bathe in its humility and cover myself in its wisdom
Emotional Hair
“Can you remove your hood in the store ma’am?”
That was the last I heard of the store clerk after removing the hood. I’d stepped once more into a sea of misplaced smiles, the check-out line occupied by a mixture of awe and wonder, of marvel and disgust alike. And it all started six years ago.
January 3, 2009
My husband and I were in Norman Oklahoma for a documentary production to which we were preparing to premier that summer. Meanwhile, I’d become fed up with the perm and decided I was no longer going to be engaged in such a one sided relationship. I was tired of complaining about what to do with it and tired of it not growing much in return. What did this hair think it was anyway? I was supposed to spend money on perms and braids while it just sat there. Nope. I was not having it. And so while at my sister’s house, letting her husband and mine occupy the office while we did girl things, I decided right then and there to let her twist my hair.
It was the beginning of a beautiful relationship. I had no idea how deeply I would fall for this new thing in my life, or how much emotion something as seemingly unimportant as hair, would garner.
It was easy in the beginning. Like any other relationship the “newlywed” phase was going smoothly. While I mostly kept it covered with head wraps to which I had also fell for, my selfie game was tight. This was before Facebook though and I wasn’t really into MySpace, so most of these pictures were not published online. That was ok though because this was just the beginning. I couldn’t be sharing this new love of my life with everyone. It was like I had met myself for the first time. I felt alive, strong, and free.
Eventually, I could not keep my hair under wraps for too long. I loved the head wraps but they had become hot and uncomfortable. My hair was growing faster than it had in my life and was attempting to crawl down my back. In addition, I started to enjoy the look of myself without the head wrap even more. My hair was no longer just a combination of DNA strands emerging from the follicles of my scalp, but it was part of everything I did. I had to take into account the way my hair looked when I got dressed, and when I added accessories. “Does this hair go with these shoes? Hmmm”. Now, I was ready to hit the streets.
No, not like that (get your minds out the gutter). I mean I was ready to take on the world. That is when I noticed it. This hair took on more attention than I did. It stopped people in the streets. Stopped them mid-sentence. It even momentarily stopped women from shopping (now that’s serious!) How could they risk going on without asking me how I got my hair like that? Men too marveled, “See I want my hair that thick”, they would say. It was really something and opened the door to deeper questions of identity. I often get questions concerning where I’m from. They think I’m going to reply:
“Nigeria”.
Instead I say, “I’m originally from Chicago”.
“Oh”, they say and continue to stare. I smile because I get it. They are confused because I don’t look like an American. I like that.
Trouble in Paradise
Not all of the attention brought on by this hair is good. There are a lot of people who look at me like I disgust them. In truth it is because they’re curious about me. It is not just my hair that is different and they can sense it. This brings me to the beginning of this post.
“Can you remove your hood in the store ma’am?”
It was the last thing I heard before my feet was crossing the threshold out of Family Dollar. The few customers present bathed me in eyeballs and the employees spoke in whispers among themselves. After ringing me up the man didn’t bother to inform me on the final cost of my products. It was as if he thought I could read his mind. Good thing I can count. I peered over the computer screen and paid what was due. With that I walked out of the store. No one ever said a word.
First you get people all excited, then curious, angry, surprised, and even fearful. Look at you turning heads and opening minds, you emotional hair you!
Tasting Life
“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.” ― Anaïs Nin
Let’s Talk Womanhood…3.31.15
What is Womanhood? The question hangs over the head of our daughters with anxious anticipation. The youthful mind dividing itself into sections of experience: first date, first love, marriage, and children. We split ourselves into portions and gamble off pieces that do not fit. We grow old and still we find this question lingering against the frontal lobe of our minds, and occupying the mental space of our thoughts. “What is Womanhood?” It is a question we believe can be answered inside the quite deception tugging away at the purchase of cigarettes, the buying of liquor, the entering of the club scene or the mixing of our flesh with another’s. What does it mean to truly become a woman?
It has never been so exciting to ponder these questions in a time such as now. In just two weeks, together we’ll get to experience the questions themselves, and like short poems that tease our taste buds with instant melody, how delicious is the involvement.
This is not just a collection of poetry, but of inspirational quotes, and raw experience. It is the story of her.
Her Love. Her Man. Her Children. Her Womanhood.
Available 3.31.15.
theliterarykorner.com
Blogger Conferences?
This may already exist, making this post completely irrelevant in which case you could be doing something more valuable with your time. Though I do hope you’re sacrificing a minute or two to hear this amazing idea of mine that probably already exist. 🙂
What if someone could organize a Bloggers Conference? I know there are a lot of them, but this is not just any conference. Not just a community of writers sitting around tables listening to boring PowerPoint presentations from “professionals” that cost you rent money to attend, I’m talking about a fun meet-up of the bloggers you interact with daily. A stream of writing activities, individual business workshops for you to sell your material, and exciting activities against the backdrop of a relaxed atmosphere. A place where bloggers, who may not be writers in the organized sense, can come together and meet face to face. And to top it all off this is an event that is funded & supported by….you guessed it: Bloggers. We can set a date (preferably in the summer) and vote on a central location that could better assist our goals for this event. We can set up committees to assist with food, funding, transportation, activities, & promotion. A conference like this can even give us the opportunity to have an Award ceremony in which we are able to give each other tangible awards. Depending on its success, this can be something for bloggers to repeat once a year and be less expensive to attend.
The Twins Had a Brother
dem twins lived around the corner
boys
chocolate
tall and smooth skinned like
dem twins
didn’t know they had a brother tho
till word got round bout the mind he left on his mother’s front porch
that ain’t a metaphor
his brains divided itself between the concrete and front porch of his mother’s front yard
I heard the dice did it
the way it be running across the concrete
acted like it didn’t know better
than to come walking out the palms of hands
like it didn’t smell the misery of struggle between the cracks
like it ain’t hear the whispering of people on top the rocks
feel the oppression slipping outta the hands of wanna be gangsta’s
why it ain’t just stop before turning up numbers
maybe dem twins woulda still had a brotha
it was a block of them that seen it
almost as normal as a street fight
the way lives don’t matter in the hood
all because of dice
and dollar bills
ain’t know dollars were so expensive
till it expended ole boys life
I wonder if he rolled a seven or eleven
Wonder what he ate for dinner last
Or how that dolla ended up in his pocket
Or if the dolla knew what was coming
But anyway it was a block of them who seen it
some got carried off to hide outs from ole boy
and some was taken out of school
I wanted to go too
go away from the stench of prophecy behind my house
away from the Isaiah’s and Deuteronomy’s leaning against they mama’s voice
making it sound all crazy like
and dem Leviticus’s standing on the corner
akin like the ground wasn’t still warm from ole boys blood
just around the corner from my house
when I found out
that the twins had a brotha
The PBS Blog 