Dull Ache

I feel a dull ache whenever I think of all the ideas running through my mind; ideas I just don't have the time to develop into full fledged poems, and short stories and novels. But the thought that they still exist is a comfort in itself.

I recently finished reading a blog about a man's recalled teenage desire to have a particular hairstyle and it was an amusing read. It was. But then I started thinking about current hairstyles among black people. I've seen 2-3 black men with relaxed hair and they did make me look twice. The thought, to my disappointment, crossed my mind that they were somehow "less than" because they had such "feminine"-textured hair. Why shouldn't they choose to have straight hair if they wished? Still, (ignoring Andre 3000's leaps and bounds within his world of "fashion") I wonder if I could find someone attractive with that type of hairstyle? The rest, however, I find have bald heads, dreds, or 'fros. With women, however, the choice is a little more "free". Note the quotation marks. The majority of women I encounter have straight, straightened, or artificially straight hair. Considering our black ancestry, there are very few of us with natural hairstyles. There are those with locs and there are those who do what they please with their natural tight/loose curls.

I grew up having my hair cornrowed--it was washed and immediately braided. If we were back home, we could frequently have the option to have either cornrows or "plant". (Plant is/was similar to the french braid). I preferred cornrows. The minute I sat between my mother's/cousin's/older sister's legs, I would drift off into la la land--aka semi-consciousness. My hair is the type of hair that will break combs if the person trying to get the knots out isn't careful (I've left quite a few snapped-in-two and toothless combs in my wake, ;o) ). The pain was never an issue for me, but once I grew older, I figured out that combing the hair before washing it helped to ease it somewhat. However, as far as I was concerned, pain was part of the process of: taking the old braids out, combing the hair, washing it, then drying it; combing the damp strands, oiling the hair and the scalp. Then started the process of parting the hair (using the comb with the sharpest point to get the straightest parting--oooh!) and combing each section to create my favourite style--cornrows travelling from my hairline to the top of my head and ending in a miniature crown of braids. Depending on who was responsible for my cornrows (my mother in one country, my cousins back home and my older sister here) I could pick from any number of styles around me. These braids were expected to last for at least 2 weeks before we had to take them out. Then the process of undo-to-do would be repeated to end in the new hairstyle of the fortnight.

Growing up, having your hair braided was part of being a girl-child--there was nothing fashionable about it. It just was. Some teenagers (or younger kids if their parents agreed) and women had Jheri Curls and relaxed hair (this was the 80's after all). In our house, one cousin had relaxed hair (her hair was already naturally longer than everyone else's) and the other (with shorter hair) had Jheri Curls. Sometimes, I wanted relaxed hair and other days I dreamed about having JC's. However, because I thought that reading and playing with my sisters & cousins was more important than anything to do with my physical appearance, I was perfectly content to have my mother pick my clothes and to have my hair cornrowed. And if my mother was being especially kind (and she had the time) we could have our hair "threaded".

Nowadays, I look around me and know that most people haven't grown up the way we did. There are many black girls these days who see cornrows as a fashion statement, and not something that is part of their heritage. Granted, as a child there were very few women around me who seriously considered having cornrows--these were for children and women too poor to be able to afford the chemicals to artificially curl or straighten their hair. But this is how we grew up. In most cases, relaxing chemicals did not touch your hair till you were in your teens. Your hair was given the opportunity to grow as you grew. With the rise in influence of Western ideals these days there are little girls as young as five with relaxed hair--why?

The environment we live in does not always (in most cases we are simply not "allowed to be") encourage black people to choose how to physically express themselves. Most black women start relaxing their hair at a young age, and most will continue to do so till they are little old ladies. Fine, but what is lost when we allow ourselves to give up part of our "self" because it does not conform to an accepted physical ideal (i.e. straight hair--the straighter the better, then if you wish to include curls, don't do anything that will make you look too "black"--whatever that is)?

(As an aside, I remember reading an article in Elle(?--or was it Vogue?)written by a 20-something year-old woman about natural hairstyles. I was shocked by the level of ignorance she displayed with regards to caring for natural hair. She had relaxed hers for so long, that it had become the natural state for her and to top it all, she couldn't think of any "famous"/well-known black women with natural hair--Jill Scott, Angie Stone, Erykah Badu, Alice Walker? Actually, the thing that shocked me most was the fact that one of these magazines had invited a black woman to write about black hair at all--spitefully, it crossed my mind that this would probably be a "blue moon" occurrence. And as far as I can tell, it has been.)

Most of the teenage girls I see have straight hair--it is either relaxed or has a weave attached (or they have braided extensions). This is the norm. And that is a shame. Alicia Keys' entrance into the world of music was a breath of fresh air--image-wise. Girls started experimenting with different styles that were not limited to something which could only be created with straight hair. Yet, even this was a blip on the radar and, in most cases, we are now back to business as usual.

I have locs, but for a relatively short period regularly relaxed my hair and understand the pressure that forces girls and women (and in many cases men) to conform to ideals that will not allow us to just "be" . Yet, it is still a shame to see the heads of so many children and young adults subjected to harsh chemicals at a time when their bodies have yet to complete their development. Depending on age and means, someone is buying the chemicals for them--wouldn't it be better to give them the time needed to let their hair grow so that it is strong enough to withstand the effects of harsh chemicals? At some point, a child as young as five has to be encouraged to believe that as they are, they are beautiful. If at a later point they choose to relax the hair, Jheri Curl it (ha!ha!--just kidding), use braided extensions, weave it, etc. then they can make that decision from a position of strength and not from years of conformity (and "hair-abuse"--my hair has never been as strong, as thick and as black as it once was. What is the effect of long-term use of chemical relaxers on our hair and our bodies?).

The above may seem like an unrealistic ideal and a desire to restrict the choices open to young and older women with regards to their hair styles. But, recalling the quotation marks around the word free, how free are we--young and old--when the norm is to artificially create what we do not have in our natural state?

(c)

Moonlit Hamlets

I realised today (Friday) that every other thought in my head is either an irritated one, or a worrying one. So, I'm going to focus on something that reminds me of more pleasurable times.

As stated in my profile, I love travelling and wish I could do more of it when possible.

Years ago, we travelled by train from school to home. It took a couple of days to get there by train. Before then, I loved flying. There was nothing better than sitting back in my seat, looking through that small window and watching the ground disappear, being replaced with blue skies and clouds (and stars, if we were lucky); and enjoying the anticipation of picking my own dinner--I know, I am one of the few people (children) on this planet who, at times, liked airline food--the idea that I could choose to eat rubbery chicken never ceases to amaze me. Flying was it for me. I always felt safe in the sky and couldn't understand why anyone could feel fear soaring through the night air. Of course, nowadays, flying has become a little more hazardous since the last time my beautiful butt settled itself in a plane seat, but still...

Second came long car drives. I remember one night, on the way to a restaurant with my father and sisters, I started falling asleep as soon as we left the house (moving vehicles are a brilliant way to rock babies and little kids to sleep) and only woke up 10 minutes later because my subconcious had caught some 80's soul song I loved on the radio: Chaka Khan's "Ain't Nobody"--on the way to the beach, perfect timing!; Tina Turner's "What's Love Got to Do With It", Dennis Edwards "Don't Look Any Further"; I could go on... (Pandora to my rescue: http://www.pandora.com ). I remember, we were on the street with the traffic lights that led off from Pademba Road (can't remember the street's name, but it's the one that you join if you're coming from Mountain Cut). I remained partially awake feeling calm and happy because we were going out, the night was nice and cool (rather than muggy), I could see the stars (if I bothered to open my eyes), and the music was just right. Perfect.

Anyway, with all this experience behind me, I didn't think there was anything else that could possibly beat long distance flights or night-time car rides. Until we had to travel back home, by train, in the middle of winter. On the surface, there was nothing special about it: you got into the train and stayed on it till you got to your destination two days later. In fact, as a t(w)eenager, this seemed like the most boring thing ever on earth (after the novelty had died down). Especially if you had to share your space with your older (bossier) sister--a real teenager. When we first started making these journeys, that's exactly how I felt--I slept mostly and read a lot without really thinking about my surroundings. I got older, and finally became a teenager myself. I was used to the journeys by then and didn't find them such a chore.

Travelling during summer was okay, but once you saw one open field, no matter what country we were going through, they all started to look pretty much the same. Once you saw your first "double-decker" train, well...actually, I tell a lie ;oP, those always fascinated me, regardless of how often we passed them. Anyway, basically summer travel was just fine. The weather was mostly nice and strictly speaking nothing exciting happened.

However, winter train nights were special. They were dark, and cold (outside--if you ignored the ice patches forming in the inside corners of the window) and everywhere you looked there was snow. Sparkling moonlit snow. The older I got, the more I came to look forward to being the only one awake late at night. I was lucky, most of the time I got the top bunk and as long as my sister didn't mind, I could have my night light on as long as I liked. And when I got tired of reading (or was told to switch off the light), I'd switch off the light (;op) and lie at the bottom of the bed looking out of the window. The moonlight on many nights was strong enough to see outside. We'd speed past these isolated hamlets made up of 3 or 4 houses and sometimes they had lights shining through the windows. And sometimes, all you saw was a solitary house surrounded by tall pine trees--I always wondered how anyone could bear to live so far away from their neighbours. As beautiful as these scenes looked, I always felt it was better to be within calling distance of the nearest house...just in case. Mostly, what I liked was the sound of the train moving forwards, the clean snow outside and the feeling that I was the only person alive. I loved it, it was soothing; I was warm, fed and safe. I don't think I'll ever experience anything quite as "magical" as that again.

Music-wise, the main song I associate with these train journeys was Paula Abdul's "Straight Up" (and The Cure's Disintegration album--cassette, of course).

(I used to stay up and read and read and read. A "few" of the books I remember were: Alan Sillitoe's "The Ragman's Daughter", "Ladies of Missalonghi" by Collen McCullough, Rita Mae Brown's "Six of One", "The Man in the Woods" by Rosemary Wells, "Razor's Edge" by W. Somerset Maugham--the only one of his books I truly like; M.E. Kerr's "Is That You Miss. Blue?" (and her: "Night Kites", "If I Love You, Am I Trapped Forver?", "I Stay Near You", "The Son of Someone Famous", --even though her stories were about 70's/80's white American kids I enjoyed her work); and countless Judy Blume books too!--a lot of these books were at one time published by Pan Horizon and I was a glutton for their collection of titles.) (c)

Look at me!

I was in the Tube a couple of days ago and a woman walked in talking loudly on her mobile--as you do because the world and her mother want to hear all about your oh-so-exciting exploits. She was talking to a friend about someone she'd recently met and proceeded to explain why she felt that this relationship felt right. Ho, hum. I try not to let people's (shouted) mobile conversations affect me because, really, they happen so often that if I don't calm down, I'll wind up with a damn ulcer. I digress... She talked, and talked..., for about 10 minutes, (well, until the train was about to enter a tunnel) before saying bye and turning to her book. By that time the rest of the people in the carriage knew where this man had gone on holiday, how handsome he was, how mature, etc. etc. I forget, before she rang off she did add, "See you tonight." ............ What?

Yesterday, again on the tube, a relatively handsome man (with friend) entered the train. I surreptitiously tried to check for any rings on his hand, before trying to check him out, and quickly decided that the flashy thing on his finger couldn't possibly count as a testament to any kind of serious relationship in his life. Anyway, towards the end, our journey was delayed and I found myself standing less than 5" away from him. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed that he'd put on one of those large earphones and every so often bursts of some old song, i.e. from the 90's, could be heard coming through. He talked and laughed with his friend and once in a while did a little dance move between myself and the other man. Call me presumptious, but if we were in primary school, I get the feeling that he would have tried to yank my hair (and I would have debated screaming my head off just to get someone else in trouble for once, ;OP).

Now, don't get me wrong, I didn't mind his behaviour (too much), but as the seconds ticked by (oh so slowly) the thought did occur to me that between the woman of the previous day and him, I'd witnessed at least 2 blatant forms of attention-seeking. No one needs to talk half as loudly as many people do when using their mobiles. Be it in the bus, train or tube, in most cases the conversations aren't worth the irritation of having to sit next to an annoying gasbag (or maybe I'm just unlucky). I had this conversation with my cousin, and he said he doesn't mind people being loud because he likes listening to their conversations (he's also a teenager). I tried taking a leaf out of his book and sorry to say, I couldn't understand why people can't make all their little inane comments in the privacy of their own homes (or outside the enclosed space a.k.a. public transportation)--No one has to prove that life is not made up of constant sexy, mind-boggling adventures. I already know this!! Sometimes it's a pleasure when someone speaks in a language I don't understand. At least I can fantasise that s/he is discussing the (positive) rise of female African writers on the international scene; or maybe poetically describing the feeling s/he gets when being kissed by the person on the other end of the phone..... I'm a sucker for a pair of well-shaped, full lips... Sorry.

Anyway, back to the quite-handsome-man (earphones and all): I did manage to "share" a nice 30 second bus ride with him sitting behind me, but the feeling was seriously tempered by the fact that I knew I'd missed my connecting bus and had to walk home. Stupid night buses!!