Just washed and re-twisted. I can't wait to show the pictures of my journey- so far it's been a year and some change. No, I don't count down to the day like some of my fellow dread heads, but a year and some change is good enough.
I've stumbled upon a quick and easy way to get a nice, tousled daytime look. If I can do it- you can do it! Low maintenance is the reason I started locs.
3 Easy Steps + A Few Simple Ingredients: You will need:
3 strong hair ties, a spray bottle with water and olive oil (mix in about a tablespoon of olive oil and fill the bottle about halfway with warm h2o), and Carol's Daughter Tui Hair oil (optional)
Step 1: Spritz hair lightly with olive oil water mixture *i like to rub some Carol's Daughter Tui into my locs for a fresh smell and for a little extra conditioning
Step 2: Section hair into 3s
Step 3: Coil hair in a tiny bun or knot, then place hair tie over it, and...
Voila!
i throw a scarf around this bad boy and call it a night. p.s. i would def rock this as a daytime style too!
in the morning, I take them down, and I have an easy, tousled look:
I have always been a VH1, MTV, BET, junkie. I used to get my fix from programs like MTV Diary, VH1 storytellers, and Rap City, whose basement freestyles with Big Tigger always gave my inspiration fodder. I craved anything that could give more insight into the process behind the product. I imagined myself backstage with the artists, holding my tape recorder to their stories, dreaming of myself on Oprah. She'd ask me to recount my rendezvous with Mariah at the Ritz, and marvel at our chummy connection marked by our laughs and lip-stick covered glasses of Moet. Then, she'd introduce me as the writer who's able to capture the artists' energy and emotion unlike any other writer. So when, Toure, a music journalist, novelist, tv personality, and essayist, someone who I've admired since my high school days for his similar background and upbringing, came out with his new book, I indulged, and was rejuvenated in new ways.
The book, Who's Afraid of Post-Blackness: What it Means to Be Black Now is a necessary and relevant addition to the conversation on identity formation for Black Americans. Just as Toni Morrison notes the complexity of race as it pertains the Black writer in her essay "Home", Toure notes the complexity of race as it pertains to Blacks in this post-civil rights, Obama era. While Morrison pushes to create a space where we can articulate race free from "deceit, blindness, ignorance, paralysis, and sheer malevolence," so that "different types of perception [are] not only available but [...] inevitable," Toure offers the notion that Blacks must exist beyond previous boxed definitions. So long to the idea that Blacks can't speak articulately and grow up in the hood. Goodbye to the idea that authentic Black means loud, violent, and drug dealer. I'm happy for this book because it screams out: Blacks are a heterogeneous, diverse group. As Henry Gates Jr. insists, if there are 40 million Blacks, then there are 40 million ways to be Black. Similarly, the artist William Pope adds,"'Blackness is limited only by the courage to imagine it differently.'" In the book's dedication, Toure pulls at my most sensitive and internalized experiences by dedicating "it to everyone who was ever made to feel 'not Black enough.' Whatever that means."
Thanks Toure; I enjoyed every bit of it.
Here, he reads excerpts and chats it up on Media Beat:
Keeping the conversation going is one of my role models, and I'm sure one for many others, Tracee Ellis. Through her character, she begins the conversation with her daughter about the ramifications of getting that first relaxer.
As of late, I’ve wrestled a great deal with my writing. Of course I continue to do it everyday, but the focus, the joy, the diligence, is not as consistent as I'd like it to be. I’m
blaming this block on self censorship due to the fear of failure. As a response to my
block, or apprehension more aptly, I decided to rummage through my library, but after careful perusing, I could only find faces I've already read, the faces I've memorized and recited too readily before. So, naturally, I hopped in the Jetta and cruised route 4 to b&n for a fresh jolt. Welcome my three new additions: Narrative of Sojourner Truth, The Heart of a Woman, and remembered rapture. I’ve decided that step one in unblocking the writing must include burying my face into the words of female writers before me. This will not only give me something I've been craving, but reveal a necessary network, a family.
Bell hooks’s book of
essays, remembered rapture, offers frightening,
but bolstering familiarity and a touchstone that not only validates my
apprehension, but also elucidates my sentiments by articulating her own so
cleanly. Her words tickle me, giving me
the same giddiness that started me writing years ago, the same jollity that
threw me to the floor in my room as a little girl, stomach pressed to the
carpet, urging me to tell my journal all of my crazy ideas, even if no one cared to read them.
Refusing to let this block own me, I’ve found release in
hooks’s prose. In her first essay,
“writing from the darkness,” she opens with an anecdote from childhood.
Recounting the words her granddaddy shoed upon her as she made her way to the
outhouse before bedtime, passing through the darkness, she writes, “‘there is light in the darkness, you just have
to find it’” (3). His advice resonates. The
oxymoronic phraseology reminds me again that the act of writing is fluid, shape
shifting inside and outside bounds of what we think we know. It floats, almost weightlessly
between the realms of imagination and critique. My own process is swimming
fervently against the current, pulling away from the critic, so I can get
something down on the paper.
Perhaps the second step in unclogging my block is an attention to space. Maybe if I
spruce up the place, I thought to myself, I can get the ideas flowing, clear the air and make room
for creative energy. Hundreds of dollars and two trips to Ikea later, I’ve a
new space. Together, my imaginative and critical self carved a space where the
three of us can co-exist. Perhaps, the critic can lounge in the new, cubed bookcase,
while the imagination explores the autumnal afternoon sunlight, and I can
write. Seems to have done the trick, at least for now.
With a little advice from the experts and a rejuvenation of
space, I’ve words to paper.
Step 1:
