The thought comes to me yesterday while I am sitting quietly in the hairdresser’s chair, listening to the wet locks fall against the mat below me: those frayed ends have been around for awhile. They’ve seen things I’d like to forget, and they’ve also stuck with me long enough to watch me build a better version of […]
Category: The Body Electric
The Body Electric: Day Fourteen
This evening, I stand in the kitchen and chop. And saute. And stir. And smile. There are friends coming for dinner, and that makes me happy. These days, food makes me happy, too. * There was a time in my life where food didn’t make me happy. In fact, I was downright afraid of it. […]
The Body Electric: Day Thirteen {the Dark Edition}
It occurs to me today that December is just … dark. I don’t mean that it’s emotionally dark. I mean that it’s literally dark. Because as December deepens, there’s less and less daylight for me to wander out in the woods, thinking and dreaming and breathing and shooting and writing. On days like today, the only […]
The Body Electric: Day Twelve
I find the rose almost by accident. It grows along the stairs to the backyard, struggling to bloom against the warmth of the concrete wall, right now, in the middle of December. I lean over the railing and finger its pink petals in wonder: Could this be possible? Now? The rosebush is one of the […]
The Body Electric: Day Eleven
Today, a little pre-Christmas miracle alights on our small valley — because suddenly, right smack-dab in the middle of the Christmas season, a warm wind blows in and the temperatures climb to nearly eighty degrees. I go out for a long walk, feeling strangely naked in shirtsleeves and flip-flops. I walk through neighborhoods festooned with wreaths […]
The Body Electric: Day Ten
Tonight, we drive out of the city and into the mountains: up a series of rutted gravel switchbacks to the top of the ridge. There’s an A-frame cabin up here that belongs to a friend, and as we walk to the front door I can hear music and laughter — the giddy hum of a […]
The Body Electric: Day Nine
Once upon a time, I was a little uncomfortable owning such a great-big pair of eyes. If you’ve been reading this blog for long, you’ve probably at some point seen my tiny Gravatar photo and realized that my eyes aren’t just big — they’re gigantic. And the trouble with that is you can generally spot what I’m […]
The Body Electric: Day Eight
I don’t know when exactly it happened, but somewhere in the course of my 34 years, I accepted the idea that most of my clothes would be uncomfortable. These days, I have a closet full of five-inch stilettos, nipped-waist pencil skirts and close-cut clothing in rough, hard-finish fabrics. And most of the time I’m completely fine with […]
The Body Electric: Day Seven
You would think it would be easy by now — that seeing my own magic would feel as natural as breathing. But there are still days when it’s work… Days when I look at the mirror and see myself fading, and believe the lie that this makes me less: Less valuable. Less powerful. Less human. On those days, I turn […]
The Body Electric: Day Six
I’ve always been a woman with nervous hands. The rest of my body is still and graceful by nature — balletic, after all these years. But I wear my tension in my hands, which are always folding and unfolding, pulling and smoothing and clenching and unclenching, as if engaged in an eternal game of […]
ASHLEY WILSON FELLERS 