COLORFUL WOMEN THOUGHTS AND STORIES - SERIES 1
SHE’S ALWAYS RIGHT Which skirt should I wear? Red. Black. Flower pattern? This one still has the tag on it. It’s beautiful, but too revealing. I’ll wear the black one with a yellow blouse. No…I will look too much like a bumble bee. Black blouse and black skirt will match. No…this isn’t a funeral. I REALLY DON’T KNOW. Let me call her and see what she thinks. Ring…ring. Hey. I just sent you a photo of the skirt and blouse. Just open the message. Click it to make it bigger. What you think? I know it is not a funeral. Can I pull it off with yellow accessories? Red skirt? That was my second choice. With a purple jacket?!!? I will look like a complete clown. I rather look like I am going to a funeral. I don’t want…huh? Okay – red skirt, black blouse and purple jacket (sigh) I will try it. Bye Ma. (15 minutes later) She was right. She is always right.
SHE’S BETTER FOR YOU Hmmm, I hoped that you pick me, but I took a look at her. She is beautiful. She is a go getter. She is smart, focused and driven. I put her photo next to yours and even I had to admit you look good together. I am on Facebook and I see that you like her status, over and over and over again. I do too. She is amazing and I cannot help but compare. I am amazing too, but I am not good at telling my narrative. Not enough photos, events, posts or successes to brag about. I sit every day in my meditation chair and your face always comes between the gaps of nothing. I think…one day, when time is right, we will cross paths and share paths – but fear that may never happen with such beauties, like her around. No, I am not jealous. I was disillusioned to think that I had a chance. My beauty only peaks outside of my bodily shell every once in a while. It can go unnoticed and it has. No, I am not jealous. I am sad. My relationship with you is just as real as the one I have created with you and her but if I was God and I had to use my magical powers to connect people in human bliss. I would pick her for you.
I KNOW YOU WANT TO TOUCH IT You want to touch my hair. I get it. It’s different. Tightly curled, strong, springy and spongy. Soft and scratchy. It may seem a little wild. It shoots up in the air, connecting with the world around it, taking in the power of the universe. You want to touch it. Become one with it if only for a moment. It is exotic and beautiful. It’s rawness brings you in. Let me tell you how it makes ME feel. Confident in a world that makes me question myself every day. Real. Uniquely beautiful. Rooted in my skin and in my heritage. It makes me spiritual and free. Do you think its beautiful? Weird? Sexy? Free? Some call my locks exotic – others call it nappy. You may say its beautiful – others call it un-tidy COMB YOUR HAIR? You look crazy! WHY YOU WANT TO WALK AROUND WITH NAPPY HAIR? That is UNPROFESSIONAL.You look ghetto, street, urban, HOOD. Why does this world question and deny me beauty and freedom? POWER. It fears the power of my tresses and miss-understands them. I learn not to care and stand confident in my natural beauty. BUT You. I know you want to touch my hair. and one day, I will grant you the privilege.
DID YOU SEE ME? You read a lot. A LOT. I know. Put the books down and LIVE you say. Write the BOOKS – Don’t read them. You don’t know. Reading helps me live. See, the last book I read, told me not to sweat the small stuff. The book before that, showed me how to think BIG. Two weeks ago I was reading this novel and I learned how to tell someone you love them AND then how to murder who I love and get away with it. Being shy (and sometimes shy still) Books open me up and help me form words when nothing else would Stories connect me to people. They have connected me to you. What is your favorite book? Google.com isn’t a book What am I reading now? A Shakespeare play. My favorite. King Lear. Fathers and daughters and bad relationships. No, King Lear doesn’t remind me of my father. You say good bye and walk away I look beyond the pages of my book to see you get further away from me. What would our novel be about. A girl in love and a guy with no clue. Oh my gosh. He looked back! Did he see me gazing? Does he see me at all?
NECK ROLL A short walk around the corner and I was at my fav cafe with a hot coffee and a book. It was after lunch but before dinner, so not that many people were there. Just the way I like it. A guy on his laptop was watching video smiling and silently laughing. A couple having a quiet conversation and one other person on the phone.The girl on the phone was beautiful. Long hair – most of it hers, flawless makeup and dressed to the nines. She sparkled. Her boisterous laughed filled the cafe. Every now and then she realized that she was disturbing the rest of us and would quiet down. Whoa. Her demeanor changed. She got up out of the chair and walked to the door like she was marching to war. You could hear the anger in the syncopation of her sandals slapping the back of her heels. She didn’t get completely out of the threshold of the door before her hand went to her hip and she began to point as if a person was standing right in front of her. Her words became shorten and rough. She is mad. And then, I see it.The neck roll, moving side to side with each word she says as though there is not a vein or bone in it. “I don’t need you.” I don’t need no man. I am an independent woman. Who the hell do you think you are?” I was wondering what the guy on the phone was saying. We could only imagine. But we didn’t have to imagine her responses. They were filled with derogatory names and expletive language. After about five minutes of that, she pushed the red button on her smart phone, looked at it for a moment and with tears in her eyes she looked into the cafe. She realized we all saw and shame came across her face. She quickly turned her heard and with the same angry walk she left out the cafe with, she walked to her car. We all heard the car door slam and the screeching of tires out of parking lot. I sighed, glanced around at the other observers of that episode and went back to reading my book. She was hurt. How many times have I heard women say how independent they are and what man they don’t need. It is a mantra of a lonely and fustrated.What does independents have to do with wanting to be loved, honored and held. What do it has to do with sharing moments and life with anyone. Nothing. The neck roll tells no lies. She was mad. Maybe she will go home and have a good cry, or bitch to a girlfriend over red wine. She look like the kind that will take a bat to a car.
WALL FLOWER This world is not always kind to introverts. Us that sometimes choose reading a book at home over the bar or an intimate conversation with one person over hundreds in a room laughing, drinking and dancing. Us that are sometimes called party poopers when really we like to party differently. Though one day, we will rule the world, today, I wish I was more extroverted. Invitations to bars and clubs usually go in the trash. I have come to grips that most of that is not for me. I end up standing in some corner or sitting in some chair like a wallflower. I don’t want to be a wallflower at anyones even, but I could not trash this particular invitation. It was from you. I needed to go. I hadn’t seen you in months but have thought about you everyday. If I was an extrovert, I imagine that I could, without thought, go into this club looking amazing, smiling at everyone and, as I look across the room and see my friends, holler without fear of judgment, “Hey! Whadup!!” But instead, I have come to this club, alone and for the past 10 minutes have sat in my car. I must say, I look amazing in my off white dress and black heels, but even amazing can start to look terrible when you are nervously sweating. Time for the pep talk. I am a grown ass woman and I can do this! I have paid $20 for parking and I want my money’s worth. I got out of my car and into the bar I went. Actually it wasn’t as bad as I thought. It never is, but what is fear if not an over exaggeration of the unreal and untrue? I grabbed a drink and looked around for you. I did not see you anywhere so I did what most people like me do. Find a good place to stand or sit and look like I fit in. A few people smiled as they walked by me. Some said hello, but mostly I got stares. I am indeed wallflower-ing it tonight. I so wish I invited someone to just chat with, but I didn’t want to screw up a chance to talk to you alone and freely. I am crawling out of my skin. Every fiber of me is saying, “get the hell out of here” and it takes everything in me not to listen. If I do not see you in the next 10 minutes, I will call it a draw and try again next time. Will there be a next time? I took a sip of my drink and looked down at my shoes wondering why I picked them for this outfit and when I looked up, you were standing in front of me. A smile so wide and beautiful.You greeted me with a tight hug and warm kiss, and just like that, the anxiety, the nervous sweats, the fears disappeared. We talked for a few moments and then, someone grabbed you. I was alone again but smiling. An hour later, I am driving home and just as I put the car in park in my driveway, my phone beeped. It was a message from you. It was a picture that you had taken of me standing on the wall and underneath it you text “A beautiful wallflower.”
COLORFUL PEOPLE Close your eyes and see the world differently. We have removed the brown hues, olive skin, pinks and porcelain whites and traded them for reds, greens, blues and bright yellows. Can you see me with my green skin and magenta locks walking down the street with orange men, yellow women, pink children and purple elders. How can the world not smile and love and be happy with happiness walking around saturated in beauty.
Open your eyes.
Those colorful people exist. On the outside our beauty has been tainted by judgmental and prejudice stories and beliefs. On the outside we may be brown, black, beige, olive, tan, white – but truly open your eyes and you see that real US. The inside that sparkles bright like rainbow colors. Our true source of our beauty. Do you see that.
NOW, you can enjoy the beauty of our browns, blacks, beiges, olives, tans and whites. We are colorful people inside and out. Uniquely and equally so. All we have to do is keep our eyes and hearts open.
YOU AREN’T A REAL WOMAN I found out the news the way most people do these days; on Facebook. He is leaving town with his fiancé who is expecting their first child. I didn’t know about the fiancé and of course I did not know about the baby. I was deflated and embarrassed. For years we were in and out of each other’s lives. Sometimes I would be in a relationship. Many times you would be with someone, but I thought the end result would be you and I. That is what I thought the universe wanted. Days before the truth came out, you lay next to me and said, “You look like a real woman.” Here we go with this again. You have accused me of NOT being a real woman so many times. What does that mean? Why did I let you get in my head and questioned my femininity. I didn’t wear things cut up to there and down to there. No, I didn’t really get the enhancements of silky hair and acrylic nails. No, I did not learn the magic of batting my eyes and getting men to do what I want. I was okay with the type of woman I am until you. If the lack of these things really makes me less of a woman why did I continually find you at my door? Your definition of my womanhood bounded my power and my love. I should have left it alone –but attraction is a monster that warps the senses. You loved my intellect and hated it at the same time. You admit that you would love to wallow nude in my intellect. It scared you and to compensate your fear, you would attack my womanhood and tell me that I could never tame you – “I am wild and free.” Well so was I. It’s too bad. You knew me deeply, loved me deeply, but you could not commit to me. Maybe you knew you couldn’t live within my standards, which were simply, live fully, love fully, and be open and honest. LOVE – Love is easy and natural. Commitment? Well, that takes courage and determination. For days after reading that post I felt less beautiful, unwanted, unloved and alone.Time, understanding and prayer raised me above that, but I cannot help once in a while to go back to that memory and ask how can you love so deep and treat someone so conniving. The good of it all is if I didn’t get the message before, I got it now. Hope you found the real woman you wanted. Me? Still looking for that real man.
STAY WOKE Colorful Women is not about skin color. It is about the colorful personalities and experiences of women. But, the last few months have been filled with racial and prejudice events that I must use the Colorful Women platform to speak on the subject. Sometimes having dark skin in America can be hard. It can be the difference in living an amazing life or not. It can be the difference in life or death at times. I kind of tear up thinking that someone may think less of me because of my skin tone which God the Creator gave me. It could not be wrong or bad if it came from the universe. For me, my skin has been beyond a blessing. Everyday, I live beyond the definition this world has placed on my skin. I am lucky to have family and friends and the upbringing that says be proud to be Black, be proud to be human and to be most proud that I am a child of God. We all are children of God, equal and just as important as anyone. I know there are many people of color that did not have my upbringing and have been torn down by the American narrative of the Black person. How can we change what is going on in the world. Easy. Love is the answer.Treat others as you will have them treat you. Be proud of who you are inside and out and live respectively and a Black person or whatever type of person you are blessed to be. We MUST – all of us, know our history and how we became the country we are so that we can fix it. We MUST share our knowledge to other generations. We MUST stay aware. I love the saying STAY WOKE. They are amazing words. It is like the Matrix. Once you take the pill there is no looking back.Your eyes are open, keep them open. My eyes are open and with each day, each book, each conversation, each newscast, my eyes are open wider. WOMEN: A special request for you. We have gotten to a place where we tear down each other, men, our loved ones. Let us go back to our nature and comfort our children, our men and each other. Let us TEACH love.That is our womanly power.We have given it away to show our independence and some weird type of strength that really has created a toxic space. We can be independent and nurturing at the same time. I write this with peace and love – STAY WOKE my friends.
Colorful Women is a series of illustrations and paintings of women. Through color, shape and the use of the human female figure, this series’ objective is to open viewers eyes to feminine beauty that is beyond the curves, clothes, make up and teased hair. These images convey a beauty that comes from the colorful nuisances of women’s personalities, emotions, and experiences. WWW.DMJSTUDIO.COM/COLORFULWOMEN
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