dreadlock love

i haven't done a dreadlock post since i first got them...mostly because i've been doing youtube videos of my progress and haven't really had much to WRITE about them. but today i do. one of my artist lovelies, connie at dirty footprints, recently cut off her dreads...just about the time i was falling deeply in love with mine. i adore what she wrote in her post {alongside the most incredible self portrait sketch} "sometimes hair is just hair."

i've been thinking a lot about this journey i've been on to find my true path and live my authentic life...it sounds all oprah-y onscreen, but it is truly how i've felt over the past year. when i decided to commit to dreadlocks i hoped that they would teach me about patience, about trusting the process, about the spiritual journey toward truth.

but some days, they're just a mess of knotty hair.

i have learned to love all their loopy madness, the frizz and itchies, and altogether craziness. i have learned {again} that life is beautiful in its imperfection, that although i still get anxious about the future, i still worry and obsess and become impatient for everything RIGHT NOW...it will all work out in the end.  i trust that in a few years i will have gloriously imperfect locks, that i will have finished the book, that life will still be messy and i'll still have to tell myself to breathe when the yucks come rushing in.

i am only two months into my dreadlock growth...i have a long road ahead of me. i know that it is just hair. but i also secretly hope that i can take all this love i feel for them today and spread it out into the world.

things that tingle my happy places....

pelicans soaring along the bridge        

                    blue moon drafts with an orange slice

                                        climbing the tree along the highway

                         fresh paint

                            the smell of charcoal from the grill

                                    no line at the post office

                        reconnecting with my inner student

super dooper dreadlock loops        

             legs dangling over the seawall, licking ben & jerry's off the same spoon as my baby

      a hug from my patient when i leave the house

                                          driving along the ocean, windows open wide

                           painted toenails

     shaking my booty at Nia dance class

                                       ripe raspberries that remind me of grandpa

i am not a monster...

i have been wanting to go to the rosenberg library since we moved to galveston...and finally had the chance to go!  i was just wandering the memoir section (my mind and reading habits are all in one place these days!)...and stumbled on My Invented Country by Isabel Allende. i was having a really rough day and decided i needed a glass of wine and a seat overlooking the crashing waves with my lovely new book. i could not have prepared myself for what she said to me in those few moments of peace...

from My Invented Country:

Once I heard a famous Afro-American writer say that from the time she was a little girl she felt like a stranger in her family and her hometown. She added that nearly all writers have experienced that feeling, even if they have never left their native city. It's a condition inherent in the profession, she suggested; without the anxiety of feeling different, she wouldn't have been driven to write. Writing, when all is said and done, is an attempt to understand one's own circumstance and to clarify the confusion of existence, including insecurities that do not torment normal people, only chronic non-conformists, many of whom end up as writers after having failed in other undertakings. This theory lifted a burden from my shoulders. I am not a monster; there are others like me.

time flies...

i cannot possibly believe that it's been almost a month since my last post! i've been writing almost every day and taking pictures and so much is going on...but i just haven't (wanted to?) taken the time to post. so...in an effort to recap on all the goodness of the past month, i'm going to include some pictures of the things i've been inspired by and my latest dreadlock update. enjoy!

 my niece...

 the color we chose for our bedroom in the RV....

and the sunsets....i am absolutely enamored by the sunsets.



life is good.