Brandelyn: Lyrical Contradiction

I started my new job this week and so far I really like it. Anytime I get a quiet space, snacks, tea and access to the internet, I am all for it. Last night I had a lot of trouble sleeping. I have been stressing out about my life in general. Last Sunday Pastor Chris gave the analogy of our dreams being like a cake baking. I have all of the ingredients, mixed up ready to go, but lately I have been feeling like something is wrong with my oven because I don’t see the cake rising or browning or anything. So I have been a little frustrated with everything. Anyway, this morning, I woke up and there was an email from Tyler Perry that he sends out to his mailing list. I know I wouldn’t do it justice if I paraphrased, so I am going to paste what he wrote. It really, really encouraged me… so here it goes:

“When we won the Image Award for HOUSE OF PAYNE, I said something that I didn't know I had said until I watched the show played back that night. I said that if 1000 people tell you no and you get one yes from God then that's all you need to make it.
That thing woke up something in me. I realized at that moment that I had had a lot of NO's in my life. I had a lot of people say, "You can't!" and "You never will!"  I had a lot of doubters and hardly anybody ever said that I could. And through the hardest times in my life I had to learn how to encourage myself. And I want to tell you that if nobody else will encourage you then encourage yourself.
If you have a dream, keep working towards it. It's great to have people give you awards and appreciate what you do, but back in the day, it wasn't that way at all.  I remember when I was broke and working a dead end job clearing about 300 dollars a week. This wasn't long ago at all, as a matter of fact.
What I would do though was on my lunch break I would spend the time writing down play ideas, writing down movie ideas, planning a tour for my play, looking at maps of the country, calling theaters. I knew that I had ideas that would move people--that would help them in one way or another, so I just kept going. I didn't have a dime to my name. I didn't know how
I was going to get there, but I knew that I would in some way. And then God made a way.

In order to get to your dreams you have to see yourself there. You have to see yourself doing better. Use your mind to see yourself doing better. The Bible says, "As a man thinketh, so is he." Stir up the gift in you. People are waiting for your dream to come to pass. Don't give up. I often think about all the times I wanted to give up. I thought about how hard it was and how much I was going through. I look at my life now and I say to myself, "Boy I'm glad you kept going!" What if I would have stopped, can you imagine? No plays, no movies, no Madea, not even this email. Again, God has given us all gifts and if you give up on your dreams then the world will never know. We're waiting for you!”

Needless to say this was exactly what I needed to hear. I just have to keep moving forward. I know the dream, I know the promises so now I keep going. I will keep writing books and blogs and poems and whatever else I need because if nothing else this is my therapy as well. So there you have it. I hope this encourages someone else!

Peace Y’all

B

Posted by Brandelyn at 11:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

This could only happen to me….

 

            Yesterday I was on the bus. I know that is usually enough said, but you won’t be disappointed with this story. So yesterday I was on the bus on my way into San Francisco for a meeting. I had exactly 45 minutes to get there from East Oakland so I had to make moves. The bus is nearly empty when I get on because it is fairly early in the afternoon and it was a double bus so there were plenty of open seats on this bus. (This will become important in 5 seconds.) So the bus pulls to the next stop and next thing I know a guy gets on and he is falling all over the place. He falls on top of me before deciding to sit next to me. That’s right, on the practically empty bus, the extremely drunk smelly man with no teeth wants to sit next to Brandelyn. Oh but it gets better. So he sits next to me and instantly my personal space is taken over by the scent of every single alcoholic beverage known to man all wrapped up in one.

            “Where’s your baby?” he says to me.

            “What?”

            “Where’s your baby. You had a baby last time I saw you.”

            “No, that wasn’t me.”

            “YES IT WAS DON’T LIE TO ME!”

            (Whoa…really sir, you’re just going to start yelling at me? Is this what you feel you need to do?)

            “Where is your baby?”

            At this point I proceed to text my rose and tell her that she needs to call me RIGHT NOW! Thankfully we have an understanding and she called immediately. So the drunk man starts talking about Quincy and how he is running for president and his wife needs to sit down because we need a woman in the white house…(mmhm, that’s right, that’s what he said) and I am on the phone with my Rose, trying to explain to her what all the commotion next to me is about. So as we are talking old boy literally starts huffing and puffing trying to get my attention. Now he has me completely blocked in and I can’t get out of my seat and he is now getting extremely agitated that I am ignoring him and talking on the phone. While we are talking he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a tiny bottle of liquor. I watch as he unscrews the top of it, huffs and puffs one more time then proceeds to toss the contents of the entire bottle on me. I jump up covered in some sort of brown liquor and looked down at him like he is crazy.

            “Are you serious?” I yelled at him, “Get out of my way!” I said pushing my way past him and heading to the front of the bus. (Let me just interject and say that Jesus saved that mans life yesterday because the old Brandelyn would probably be in jail right now.)

            So I head to the front of the bus now smelling like a really bad drink, angry beyond anything I know.

            “Excuse me,’ I say to the bus driver, “um some man is in the back with an open bottle of liquor that he just decided to pour on me.”

            “Um, there’s nothing I can do about that.”

            “Oh okay so you’re saying that you can’t do anything about open containers of liquor being consumed on your bus and poured onto patrons? Do you think your supervisor feels the same or…”

            He looked at me and caught a whiff of my new fragrance and saw that this was indeed happening. So he pulls the bus over and after five minutes finally gets the drunk dude off the bus and I get back on. Of course Oakland is on the bus and they are having a caucus in the back about what had just transpired.

            “I know that ‘b’ did not just get him kicked off the bus over a dollars worth of liquor,” said the young lady with the teal colored braids, ‘I should kick her ass for doing that to him. He ain’t never did nothing to no body.”

            “That’s them stuck up ass college people, they always think they better than somebody,” said her dreadlocked, gold toothed counterpart.

            Their conversation went on until I exited the bus a few stops later and headed down into the BART station. So I get on the train, head into the city with exactly 10 minutes to run into Old Navy, drop dollars I did not have on a dress and sandals so I could change and go to my meeting not smelling like a wino. Once I am dressed and ready to go, I call the guy I am supposed to be meeting with and he informs me that he is out and about being a tourist and won’t be back at his hotel for another two hours. Seriously?! I didn’t even say a word, I just walked back to the bus, went back to Oakland and waiting for the event I was supposed to speak at to happen. The only real consolation is that the dress I got from Old navy is beyond fly and I was beyond fly in it. However, I am now focused and saving every single dollar I have to I can get a car. Brandelyn is officially OVER riding the bus.

Peace y’all

B

Posted by Brandelyn at 07:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

Happy Super Tuesday!!!

 

Oh what a glorious morning! I woke up this morning AMPED! It is so exciting to know that we as a people have the chance to make history. I know that record numbers of young people are out voting and it does my heart so good! I am not here to endorse a particular candidate, but just to know that people are actually doing their part in ushering positive changes in our country feels so good. I know I will be glued to my TV tonight, waiting to see what happens. I cannot wait!!!

 

But before I get too excited, let’s discuss my actually voting experience. Ahem…so I go onto yahoo maps to try and locate my polling place. I have never actually heard of the street it was on, so I had to do a little research. When I typed in the address, Yahoo maps gave me a door to door map from my house to the same street in Macon Georgia and was happy to tell me that the trip would only take 38 hours to drive. Um, let’s try this again. I reentered the address making sure to add Oakland CA to it this time and was happy to see that according to Yahoo Maps, my polling place was only half a mile away. So this morning I threw on my Ugg boots, my “Why I Vote” t-shirt and headed out the door. 30 minutes, three miles and one ignorantly steep hill later, I found my poling place, cursing yahoo maps and the fur inside my boots the whole time! I get to the poling place and I am told that I need to go downstairs to the basement because I was at the wrong station. I follow the dozens of arrows leading me downstairs to the basement and was dismayed to see sheets of paper taped to the doors with all of the constituents of that precincts name, number, address and voter information available for anyone who can read to take a look at. There was a woman at the door telling anyone who attempted to step into the promised land that they need to verify that they were on one of the sheets before they were allowed to step in. I found the sheet displaying all my business to the world and made sure home girl knew it was me before I entered into the room. I went to the table she pointed me to and after they searched their sheets, they told me once again that I was in the wrong spot. Thankfully there was an elderly woman who worked there with some sense and she looked at the sheet according to the names and found me. Somehow I was registered for the wrong party, so I had to get a little crunk, just a little and demand a democratic ballot. So, with ballot in hand I head over to the plastic table with the plastic barrier and proceed to try and make history, except there are no pens. No worries, ever the writer, I grabbed one of the fifteen I had in my purse and got to work. I filled in everything that needed to be filled and headed over to turn it in. When I first got my ballot they handed me a folder to place it in for confidentiality, so imagine my dismay when the guys who took my ballot to put it in the machine pulled out my ballot and examined it before sliding it into the machine. Then he turns to me and “Barack hunh?” My response was… “Criminal Acts hunh?” He shut right up and handed me my sticker and I was on my way. I decided not be miffed by the invasion of privacy because I had the chance to vote today and speak my peace. Today is an exciting day and I can’t wait to see what happens! Peace Y’all
B

Posted by Brandelyn at 09:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)