It’s also one of the first strong connections I remember being consciously aware of as a feminine ritual. I can remember my mom getting a box of a set of Amway nail polishes. She picked out an orange color (though I desperately wanted the bright blood red) and painted my nails with it. I can remember the cool feeling of the wet brush as she touched it down on my first index finger nail. There was me before nail polish and me after nail polish. I felt like I had been initiated wordlessly in that moment, accepted into an endless world of making pretty through art.

This all came to me tonight as I was painting my nails with this new Julep color from the Essence Beauty Box called Jess. It is a chocolate brown and it occurs to me that I have painted my nails every type of color you can think of but I have never painted them a chocolate brown. It really does feel like painting my nails with chocolate. Mmmmm! Imagine!?

LOL!

Painting my nails is a ritual that I never felt was foreign to me. The minute my mom painted my nails for the first time that day, I took to it like a duck to water and have never looked back. Sometimes I can barely wait for my next nail polish fix. I’ll do my nails a color I don’t even love just to be doing them. There’s something about the act of doing it that’s almost meditative to me, the whole process. It clears my head. It puts me in a zone. And at the end of it I have pretty, sexy shiny nails.

I know that my inclination towards being “artistic” counts for at least 60 percent of why I love doing my nails. I like to use sparkles and sprinkles on them as much as the primary color. But everything about doing my nails also feels sensual and delicate and beautiful, at least when it’s being done right which is most of the time when I’m doing it for myself. I do like my share of manicures when I have the time and $. I might be one of those rare customers who tends to watch every little thing my manicurist is doing and having paid close attention for years, I know who is really good, who is professional and who is an artist, hopefully all three.

I’m not perfect at it, but I’m pretty darn good. And it’s one of the few things I don’t compete against myself to be good at. I just do it for fun, because it feels good, because shine and colors are pretty and literally therapeutic for me. To me the makeup and cosmetics table at Sephora is a potential artist meet up. I go for the inspiration, transformation and creativity which is at the core of feminine energy.

Wouldn’t it be great if there was a kind of online morning ritual creator for non-morning types like me where you could type in a few of the things that would get you to look forward to rising in the morning, something that would just crank out the perfect morning ritual customized just for you? Ritualcreator.com?

I’m sure there will be soon. And until then, I will be creating my own.

I’m not a morning person, but this year I’m going to become one. Because this Mercury Retrograde month is finally making me realize that I can’t afford to be out here, getting up in the morning with no plan, no sense of what to wear, how to feel, just scrambling at the last minute and ejecting my half-awake self out into the cold world with nothing but random music to fuel me and yummy breakfast to look forward to.

Nah-uh. That’s not gonna work for me this year. This year has got to be about getting my life in the morning before I go out to face the world. I deserve that and so does the world.

My sistah at Soulsistah4real has had a great morning ritual down pat for a few years now. It’s evolved to where it is now and I’ve always admired and kind of envied her for it. But like I said, I’m not a morning person at all so I have come to this finally over a period of years and years of resistance. And since the time we hung having great conversations about nurturing, honing and evolving our feminine tools out at Spa Castle a week ago, I’ve been thinking about what kind of morning ritual would work for me.

First I think about why I hate getting up. I like being warm and snuggly and don’t like the idea of being pulled out of that. So I have to create another kind of warmth for myself that will make me look forward to getting up in the morning. Namely nice sounds, tea, and or warm water with lemon and a neat clean cozy living room. I’m thinking some movement and stretches should come first, since that’s the last thing I want to do in the morning. LOL!!

Then I will settle down with something warm to drink and do some journaling and intention setting. I’m still searching for some daily affirmations. After that I will start getting ready the way I normally do, shower, dressing, make up, cuddle the cat, pack my lunch and head out.

Let’s see how it goes. I’ll try it for about a week and report back. In the meantime I’ll do a little research on the morning rituals of other happily functioning people.

I’ve always had a thing for fathers, probably because I have such a great relationship with my own father. Ever since I can remember he’s been a friend, a comedian, a caretaker, and nurturer to me. He’s made me feel loved, safe, protected, valuable and beautiful always.

I remember when I was in college being on campus with a man I was in love with and seeing him pick a little girl he knew and spin her around until her feet left the ground. I didn’t know it was possible to fall deeper in love with him but at that moment I did. He was the first person whose children I wanted to have, though that was not to be. But I knew he wanted to be a father I knew he loved children. And it was important to me.
When I was a girl I was in love with Michael Landon who played Charles Ingalls on “Little House on the Prairie” not just because he was handsome, solidly built with a great mane of thick dark curly hair and could fix anything. LOL!! But also because he loved his family and would do anything for them. It didn’t hurt that he shared a very special bond with daughter Laura which I understand now reflected my own father’s love back at me. He engaged her curiosity, imagination and love of play and learning. My other favorite TV dads Graham, from “My So-Called Life” and yes, Heathcliff Huxtable from the “Cosby Show” demonstrated the kind of sensitivity, humor, patience and courage needed to deal with children at various stages of their development with the help of smart, understanding, sweet multitasking, no nonsense wives.

My favorite reality tv dad? Rev Run. I could seriously watch “Runs House” all day. “Rev Run’s Sunday Suppers,” “Rev Runs Around the World.” I love it all.

This morning as I was getting dressed for work, Obama’s teary face appeared again on the news as they recounted his gun control speech and I just thought about the beautiful powerful message communicated in his ability to shed tears on camera, how powerful it has always been and will continue to be for future generations. He doesn’t try to hide his feelings or demonstrate a fake tough exterior. His toughness is real and so is his vulnerability. He is a father and tragedy that strikes at children anywhere is something he clearly responds to from a heart space because he is a loving father.

Good fathers are a blessing and an inspiration and as much as Obama is known for being the children’s favorite President right now, I believe that the powerful influence of his devotional example is still on the rise in ways yet to seen, heard and felt.

From the beginning it was clear that two principal elements informed Murakami’s fiction: a focus on some internal being or consciousness that worked with the conscious self, sometimes in concert, other times antagonistically, and the nearly constant presence of a magical ‘other world’ in which this internal being operated. 

-Matthew Carl Stretcher

The Forbidden Worlds of Haruki Murakami

This may sound a little odd but on occasion I go out with no definite goal in mind. I’m not shopping or looking to buy anything, not meeting anyone, not attending a talk or class or workshop. I just feel the need to go out and see what happens. In most instances this would be a nature walk with my camera but since it was too cold out today, I didn’t envision myself strolling through Central Park. I just wanted to get out and I had no idea really where I wanted to go. I just knew the sun, which seems to have taken a break for a few weeks was out. And I needed to get out while I could still see the color of the sky.

Continue reading Non-Categorical →

This Saturday we had a holiday party at our apartment. We had food, drinks, cookies, music, stimulating discourse and even games though we didn’t get a chance to play any this time. We were way too engaged in conversation. It was so nice. I had to let go of a lot my control issues over how I wanted things to appear in the pre-planning phase and what I wanted to make available that perhaps I couldn’t. I had to leave some things up to my husband and resist being critical of some  of his choices. Oh man, thank goodness for therapy. LOL!

But all in all it was wonderful! I was inspired to have this small party of about seven (one cousin had the flu and couldn’t make it so we were six) because of all the Holiday family gatherings on my husbands’ family side. I love them. I always have. I always look forward to being around the matriarchal holiday hearth, the food, conversation, laughter, children. So this was kind of an experiment in giving back. I definitely want to do it again soon and more often. I like being a host to people I really like. It feels good. And it feels even better to have help doing it, or rather allow someone to help and not stress myself out over trying to make things “perfect.”

But the real pre-Holiday party miracle is this:

I had no urge, not the entire time, not once, to take a picture of any of the party goings on. Not the food, not the guests, not the set up, not my sister in law loving up our cat, nothing. I was too engaged in the conversation, in cooking, in getting the door, hanging up coats, pouring drinks and what have you. There was no documentation of this party except in the collective memory of my guests. That’s kind of phenomenal, especially for a photo report fanatic like me. I guess I was way more present than I expected to be. People together, actually putting down their cell phones, breaking bread and enjoying stimulating discourse, in our apartment no less. Hmm! I’m a homebody who usually likes to be cozied up in my apartment during the late evening hours alone or with my boo but, this could become a thing.

However, I can’t promise I won’t always keep the camera away. This may have just been a freak occurrence.

LOL!!

The other thing I stayed awake for last weekend was an online class through skillshare with Brooklyn based street photograper Andre D. Wagner. I learned about him and skillshare, an online “global learning community for creators” on vsco where I hang out online weekly tending to my account and looking for inspiration. I was definitely drawn to the fact that Andre is a brother, and I’m also partial to Brooklyn based anyything (LOL!!!) but the great thing about Andre is that his particular shillshare class is very much like being in the streets with him. He narrates and talks with you through the camera. It’s not like a lecture where you stare at someone as they talk about what they do. You’re with him while he’s soing what he does and talking about his process, what he looks for, how he works and what the visual language of photography means to him.

Continue reading Photography as Visual Language →

Yesterday I took advantage of early holiday leave time and did something after work I have been wanting to do for years. I went to see the inflation of the Thanksgiving Parade balloons on 81^st Street and Central Park West.

As a native New Yorker, I have never been to the actually parade and have never wanted to but from the first time I saw a photo someone took years ago (maybe my dad’s?) of the balloons on the ground being inflated at night, I had it filed it away in my head as something I always wanted to check out. It’s the surreal feeling of being so close to things so large and colorful that injected me with a shot of pure childlike awe. And it was everything I expected and more.

I was amazed at how easy it was to get to. I wasn’t sure what to expect but I got the directions from a friend/co-worker before I left and I just followed them. There were already droves of families in the train car on their way so I figured I’d just follow them.

You see the first balloon before you even emerge at the top of the subway staircase! They’re all lined up across from the Museum of Natural History. I was just….a kid. My mouth fell open several times as I uttered the word wow to myself over and over. How had I waited so long to do this? The weather was perfect, the light was perfect and warm classical holiday music was being piped through speakers for the masses. I ate it all up. I needed it. I took a bunch of photos before my phone battery died just as I got to the last balloon in the line. But it was okay. I was just so happy to do something I had wanted to do for so long and that it was so incredibly energizing and fun and that anyone in New York can do! It was just what I needed to temporarily offset the sadness and shock of violence and terror that has been rocking our world lately.

I just needed to feel a moment of pure wonder and joy, instead of fear, anger and frustration.

Despite everything, I really do love New York.

Soooooo…if it hasn’t become obvious as yet, I like Drake.

A lot.

It’s rare that people “call me on my cell phone” and leave a message but when they do they hear my recorded voicemail announcement that I’m away because I’m probably listening to a Drake song. Which is more likely than not to actually be true at least half the time.

I guess I’m more out about my Drake love on other forms of social media than I am here at Urban Eve. I did write a article on Medium where I mentioned that I like his work but the truth is I have been listening to Drake albums for damn near months now. Listening to his collaborations, listening to his stories, listening to the sounds he makes, to his values, his emotions, his rythyms, his hooks, his hang ups, his devotions, his loyalty, his shout outs, his nastiness, his cock-suredness.

I get bored easily, and I’m not sick of Drake yet.

I’ve been steadily enjoying the free three month trial of Apple music so I’ve been on a Drake joy ride for some time. I’m not saying that all I do is listen to Drake but I do buy a new song to add to my Drake playlist like every other week. Because I like the way Drake makes me feel and I know that when I want to feel a certain way, 9 times out of 10, a Drake track is gonna get me there.

There’s not very much I do in order so I can’t say that I’ve started with his first album or mixtape and worked my way forward. I’m very random. I usually just listen to my Drake Pandora station to see what comes up and then follow my instincts. I can say that of all his albums so far, most of the tracks I’ve purchased have come from “If You’re Reading This it’s Too Late.”

The general feeling I like that Drake is unabashedly known for is just a bordlerline a-hole cockiness. Not for nothing, but when Drake says Omigod, Omigod, If I die, I’m a Legend I just think to myself, what’s wrong with saying that?

Only see the truth when I’m staring in the mirror, lookin at myself like there is there…”

I mean I never thought I could ever hear someone say that and not write them off as just plain conceited. Instead, with Drake, I just take the ride.  I enjoy his lyrical dexterity and his masculine bravado and the way he’s always standing for his Woes, his team, his click, buying them malls, getting them in free and getting them “Really big rings,”How he started paying his mom’s rent when he was 17, how he puts up strippers (but they’re virgins to him) when they need a place to crash. Being the “Biggest boss” means taking on a lot of responsibility. It’s also just part of what it means to be a real man

Plus which, I have never seen such broad merchandise potential explode from a freaking rap video the way I have for “Hotline Bling.” Drake gets all in his feelings about a booty call he’s no longer recieving, effortlessly and dorkily hops around in large, multicolored glowing squares and all of a sudden the market produces inspired sweaters, t-shirts, keychains, paintings everywhere! It’s not a question of whether I am actually going to purchase a Hotline Bling Christmas ugly sweater. It’s which color will I get? LOL!

Okay, that’s enough about Drake…

Let’s play some Drake.