[briiilovesyou]

[freeartzombie]

Meeting The Man: James Baldwin in Paris

(via Mubi)

[seaoflove]

Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.

― Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum

[photosbyterre]

[t-hiswifey]

[understands]

[moonsongpink]

“Fortitude” 6 x 6in, acrylic on canvas ©Cara Gonier 2016

[dame-de-pique]

Griffith & Griffith - Mt. Fuji above the clouds and Shoji Lake, Japan, 1890

[scarecrowbox]

Saburo Murakami, Passing Through, 1956

[quincunxial]

Abelardo Morell. Camera Obscura: View of Landscape Where Galileo Died in Exile, 2009.

[jennyhoelzer-deactivated2016120]

[modelsof-color]

AunJel Yepp by Renell Medrano for ELLE Magazine , March 2021

[millthompson]

[gallowhill]

Yoko Ono - A Hole, 2009

[ancestorswatching]

In many cultures, ethnic groups, and nations around the world, hair is considered a source of power and prestige. African people brought these traditions and beliefs to the Americas and passed them down through the generations.

In my mother’s family (Black Americans from rural South Carolina) the women don’t cut their hair off unless absolutely necessary (i.e damage or routine trimming). Long hair is considered a symbol of beauty and power; my mother often told me that our hair holds our strength and power. Though my mother’s family has been American born for several generations, it is fascinating to see the beliefs and traditions of our African ancestors passed down. We are emotionally and spiritually attached to our hair, cutting it only with the knowledge that we are starting completely clean and removing stagnant energy.

Couple this with the forced removal and covering of our hair from the times of slavery and onward, and you can see why so many Black women and men alike take such pride and care in their natural hair and love to adorn our heads with wigs, weaves, braids, twists, accessories, and sharp designs.

Hair is not just hair in African diaspora cultures, and this is why the appropriation and stigma surrounding our hair is so harmful.

[liquial]

[ttakahashis]

https://www.instagram.com/p/CCLQLZjKA_K/