Channy Oakley

We had a western themed 5th Sunday dinner today, and I went all out . . . yee-haw! I had a toy gun in a holster too, but the kids were going crazy trying to pull it out and shoot it in church, so I thought it best to leave my gun-totin' days behind.

Time to Get Crackin'

My parents left for Atlanta this morning to go to the UPCI's Black Evangelism Conference. I wanted to go, but extenuating circumstances prevented my attending. Later on this afternoon, my mom called me excitedly on her cell.

Mom: Chantell! You won't believe who I ran into!
Me: Ummm, someone I know?
Mom: Yeah, guess who it is!
Me: Ummm, a friend of mine?
Mom: Yes.
Me: Ummm, a a girl friend or a guy friend?
Mom: (clearly relishing this little game) A guy friend.
Me: Is the guy friend my age?
Mom: Uh, no . . .
Me: Mom, just tell me who it is.
Mom: I met Professor Beardsley!
Me: Beardsley? Really? That's pretty cool. I didn't know Beardsley was going to the Black Conference. That's awesome.

Beardsley was my brilliant professor at UGST. My mom went into the story of how she ran into him and how she met his dad and his kid, yadda, yadda. I thought it was pretty cool. But then she said, "And I was telling him how you wanted to come but weren't able to and how you're going to be so sorry you missed seeing him and then he said, 'Yeah, she has a paper due for me in about two weeks. No ifs, ands or buts about it.'"

Yipe! Beardsley is awesome and a great guy, but he is no joke. Perhaps it was best that I didn't go and run into him and possibly have had to admit that I haven't started writing the paper yet. I will take my parents' running into him as a nudge from Providence telling me it's time to get crackin'. Yea, Lord.

The New Band Director, Part II

Okay, so if any faithful readers out there remember, I was all in a tizzy because my co-workers were driving me crazy about the new band director. It was insane because ever since he was hired to replace the outgoing band director, not a day would go by that someone wouldn’t mention something about his cuteness and how I’d just love him and how I just had to meet him and all of this.

As I suspected, the reason we’d be so perfectly suited, in my co-workers’ eyes, was that we shared an overwhelmingly strong common bond—African-Americanness. It sort of felt like an unspoken, “You and the black guy are just made for each other. I mean, you are a black girl, right?” Aw, black guy, schmack guy. It was just annoying and, yeah, so I hopped up on my soapbox in the previously linked post.

But (sigh, there’s always a ‘but’ in these kinds of things), I finally met him today. Since I’m an exploratory teacher, I could choose to go to any of the team meetings I wanted to, but I chose the 8th grade one since it was closest to school starting back up and it would give me a chance to touch base with everyone, I could go check up on the progress of my new room on the elementary side, yadda, yadda yadda. So in the middle of the meeting, the new band director walks in late because he was finishing up summer practice with some of the kids in band, all apologetic.

It dawned on me: This is the new band director and my co-workers were not lying when they said that he was cute. My inner monologue—Be composed, make sure your mouth isn’t hanging open, act normal. Oh, great, what if all the stuff they’ve been saying to me about him they’ve been saying to him about me!

I very cordially introduced myself to him, trying not to stare at how nicely his long lashes framed his eyes. Good googly. His fine, boyish face was reminiscent of that once-in-a-lifetime, Euro-black man I met in Paris. Ay, caramba, I was not expecting this.

My Current Song

You know how songs get stuck in your head and become your theme song for a while? I present to you "Lost at Sea" by Jimmy Needham. I plan on getting his CD Speak when it comes out August 15. Click play and enjoy!


Upload music at Bolt.

Me vs. Procrastination

Me: Procrastination, I am sick and tired of you thinking you can have free reign in my life. I don’t think you realize how much I hate waking up in the morning knowing I have things to do and then going to sleep that night realizing I haven’t even attempted to do any of them. Geez, I don’t know how I even got this far with you around. I’m a pretty patient person, and I’m pretty non-confrontational, so I usually grin and bear it. But sometimes things reach a point where I just have to be for real and tell you. Procrastination, you’re getting on my nerves. Go away and stop trying to tell me I have more time. My summer’s almost over for goodness sake! The first day of school is in a little over two weeks, and I haven’t even started writing the Paul paper yet . . . well, I’ve done some research and found some good sources, but still, I haven’t done any major strides toward applying for grad school yet, and I have nothing organized curriculum-wise for the new school year. This is the last straw, Procrastination. I’ve never told you these things to your face, but it’s high time that I stand up and refuse to be punked by you any longer. Get that silly grin off of your face! I’m being serious.

Procrastination: I just couldn’t help but note that you’ve wasted even more time in writing your little rant against me when you could have been doing something more, uh . . . constructive? (snickers) Sucker.

Me: AAARGH! Okay, point taken, but this doesn’t mean you’ve won. (realization flooding my brain) In fact, you’ve never won! Ha, ha! No matter how much you persuade me to keep putting things off, I somehow always get things done. You’ve never gotten me to a point where I have missed a deadline or failed to come through. Sure, you may have kept me up late some nights, or forced me to get up at ungodly hours in the morning to finish the job, but isn’t that the point?—I finish the job, despite your wily ways. I get it done, regardless of your skullduggery. So there! What do you have to say to that, scurvy knave?

Procrastination: (rolls eyes languidly, sighs, and sullenly begins to walk away)

Me: Nothing. That’s what I thought. That’s right, get on out of here. (under breath) I told him, humph. Couldn’t even say nothin’ back.

I don't know why

I wrote this, and I don’t know what everything means. Homegirl, a former Iowa Writers' Workshop attendee, MFA candidate in Creative Writing friend of mine said that sometimes you don’t know why you write what you write or what it all means until years later. And really (disclaimer time), I don’t take my writing that seriously because it seems that I know enough to distinguish between the good and the not-so-good that I read, but I don’t know enough to do what’s good and steer clear of the not-so-good when I write, poetry especially. So, you won’t hurt my feelings if you laugh at my peanut butter hope and jelly dream sandwiches. lol.

If you could see beyond
My molecules of fickle flesh
If you could not be blinded by
The blur of my electrons
As they whiz round
Chunks of insecure nuclei,
Colliding into one another
Like immature marbles set free
In the dust of schoolyard passion,
If you could catch
The good my tears do
When they soften the cracked earth
And are sprinkled into soup
Meant to warm the lonely,
If you could probe
My mind, winding labyrinth,
Strewn with Rubik’s cubes of stalwart logic
3D Viewmasters of memories, and
Cartoon lunchboxes filled with
Peanut butter hope and jelly dream sandwiches,
If you could delve into
The constructed bloody pulp that is my heart
If you wouldn’t mind
Getting a little messy
Shooting through my veins
Mingling with adrenaline
Not knowing whether it’s in response to
Excitement or fear,
If you could tell me
What my eyes are made of
Why my hands get so cold and
How my boisterous laugh is infectious,
I’d scramble all over the world and
Pick the finest
Similes, metaphors,
Hyperbole, synecdoche,
Metonymy and personification
Harvested by language farms of renown,
I’d slice them up delicately
Removing the skins and the rinds and the seeds
Arrange them on a silver charger
Garnished with a verse from Shakespeare
Lay it at your feet and hope,
As surely Ruth hoped as she lay at Boaz’s feet,
That you’d wake up and take me in.

Batman

I just finished watching “Batman Begins” with my little bro. It was pretty awesome. It had the dark, noirish feel as the earlier Michael Keaton Batmans—pre-Val Kilmer and George Clooney. Ick.

Batman always was my favorite superhero. You know why? Because he doesn’t have super powers. He’s just an ordinary man who chose to fight evil.

See, folks like Superman and the Spiderman and The Incredible Hulk have superhuman strength, the power to fly, x-ray vision, spidey sense and the like, but Batman has nothing but his own little gadgets and ingenuity to get by.

He doesn't have any powers, but he has a cause.

Smorgasbord

Steve Madden Sandals
I was desperately looking for some trendy white sandals to go with an outfit while I was on my St. Louis trip. Steve Madden was having this crazy 50% off sandal sale, so I indulged. And you know how a lot of Steve shoes have these insanely high heels, but they were cute and I figured I could risk breaking my neck or twisting my ankle since those bad boys were 50% off. Plus I tried them on and I managed okay.

What I didn’t take into account is the factor of nervousness. I guess since I went to a larger-than-I’m-used-to unfamiliar church that weekend and I’m just naturally self-conscious in unfamiliar territory. Nervousness produces sweat, and sweaty feet aren’t good candidates for high, open-toed, open-heeled shoes. My feet wouldn’t stay put. They just kept trying to slide out through the open part in the front just meant for my toes, and I guess it didn’t help that my feet are pretty narrow. It was a disaster. “This is the first and last time I’m wearing ya’ll,” I told them. And I banished them to a corner of my jumbled closet.

But today I showed mercy. They were still in their box, looking up at me with puppy eyes, begging to be worn. I wasn’t feeling especially nervous today, so I gave them a second chance. This time my feet and the sandals clicked. So I might wear them another (non-nervous) time.

Erik Erikson’s Stages of Psychosocial Development
Infancy (Birth-12 Months): Trust vs. Mistrust
Younger Years (1-2 Years): Autonomy vs. Shame & Doubt
Early Childhood (3-5 Years): Initiative vs. Guilt
Middle Childhood (6-10 Years): Industry vs. Inferiority
Adolescence (12-18 Years): Identity vs. Role Confusion
Early Adulthood (18-34 Years): Intimacy vs. Isolation
Middle Adulthood (35-60 Years): Generativity vs. Stagnation
Later Adulthood (60 years-Death): Ego integrity vs. Despair

First of all, isn’t that an awesome name? Erik Erikson. Anyway, I was advised to . . . do a little investigation on Erikson’s stages. I actually first learned about him from an Educational Psychology class I had to take, but I despised that class, so maybe I had sort of a mind block up. But here I am, smack dab in Early Adulthood. From another site: “The young adult must develop intimate relationships or suffer from feelings of isolation.” So I guess that’s my psychosocial crisis right now. lol. I’m just using the psychobabble all the rest of them do.

But it rings true. It’s the point I’m at in my life right now, and that’s cool.

One Hundred Years of Solitude
I’m trying to get literary this summer, so I’m following a well-devised list to read the greats. I haven’t cracked Anna Karenina yet, but I’m going to. Anyway, reading One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez was reading a living, breathing, epic creature. Think Kings and Chronicles with a modern-day, Latin American flavor. There was one teeny, tiny detail that gave my brain a little prick. One of the gringo characters was from Prattville, Alabama. It’s a small town right outside of Montgomery. That was so bizarre to me. Why, out of all of the small town places in the US, would this Columbian, Nobel Prize winning author mention Prattville, Alabama? Maybe some more investigation is in order.

Caramel Cone and the Realness of God

Häagen-Dazs Caramel Cone ice cream is really good. Caramel ice cream with a caramel ribbon and waffle cone pieces covered in chocolate. Even though I hadn’t had it before, I knew it was going to be good. I think I have a sixth sense for judging the deliciousness of never-tried-before ice cream.

***********************************************************

Today, I was about to take a shower, but instead of stepping into as-hot-as-I-can-stand-it water and blasting Starfield, I sat on the toilet lid and cried into my towel. I really worked myself up. As usual, it was something very minute that tipped the scale and it all came pouring snottily forth. I really hate when I do that, not only because it makes me feel . . . unstable, but because on top of everything else, I begin to berate myself for reacting the way that I am. Anyway, bunches of irrational thoughts began to slip through my mind, among them, that no one cares or understands. God, there is absolutely no one I can talk to. No one would even want to listen to me in this state. No one would even think that whatever I had to say was worthwhile. No one would understand me even if I did try to explain it. And suddenly, the phone rang.

I sucked it up as best as I could to answer it, and it was a dear sister who is very sensitive to the things of God.

Me: Hello?
Sister: Hi, is everything okay?
Me: Yeah (sniffle), I’m okay (voice breaking).
Sister: The Holy Ghost told me to call you, Chantell. What’s the matter, dear?

It was crazy. It was like God was saying, “Don’t you think I care? What? Well, I’ll show you!” and in that instant He impressed that sister to call me, just to prove His point.

Sorry, atheists and agnostics. I can’t prove His existence, but just my knowing that He’s real is greater than any evidence I could offer.

My Little Revelatory Thought

This morning at church, I listened to the pastor preach about faith. Oh, faith! Oh, jump up and down and get worked up and excited faith! Move mountains, swing from the chandelier, woo-hoo!

I’ll admit that perhaps my initial response was a slightly cynical, “Okay, tell me something I haven’t already heard.” I’m just being honest.

He started talking about holding on to the promises that God has made to us and to the promises in His Word. And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us: And if we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him (I John 5:14-15).

Of course, there’s a little catch, if you want to call it that. Overall, God doesn’t really seem to be a God of instant gratification. Even though He’s got some rock-solid promises, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the promise will be fulfilled like, tomorrow. That’s where the whole “holding on” thing comes in.

But here’s the revelatory thing my pastor said: In the time between making the petition known or the prophecy going forth (oh, so Pentecostal) and the actual fulfillment of it, you’re going to be expending energy. Wondering when it will come to pass, turning it over and over in your mind. So, since you’re going to be expending energy anyway, why not expend the energy positively instead of negatively? Instead of brooding, doubting, and looking at it pessimistically, why not hope for it, have faith that God is a man of his word, so to speak, and believe with everything in you that it will happen?

Okay, let’s say your flight to Paris or some other international dream destination is indeterminately delayed. You don’t know how long, but you know you’re going to have to wait. You could do one of two things: One, you could spend the indeterminate wait complaining, fearing that the flight is actually canceled, and feeling sorry for yourself thinking how it’s so unfair that you have to waste time at the airport when you could already be in France eating crepes as you walk down the Champs-Elysées. Or two, you could sigh and think, “Oh, well, flights are delayed all the time,” and you could spend some more time planning out your Paris trip, get a caramel Frappucino from Starbucks, buy that book you were always meaning to read, and find a nice spot in front of the terminal window to watch the sunset.

It’s up to you.

Here's What I Get for Intensely Thinking

I'm already starting to get wrinkles. Not like for real old people wrinkles, but it's a wrinkle or two on my forehead, when I wrinkle up my brow while I'm in intense thought. It's almost like a frown, and when I do it, it looks like the number "11" between my eyebrows, and when I don't do it, there's still a slight wisp of a wrinkle. Grrrr.

I've been trying to get myself to lighten up. Stop brooding and pondering and rehashing everything and trying to figure every detail out, I tell myself. But do I listen? One look at the slight wisp of a wrinkle on my forehead would answer that question.

I think I've found a semi-solution. Anytime I have a negative or uneasy or pensive or regretful or melancholy feeling, I go into that intense thought mode, possibly as sort of a defense mechanism. Like, maybe my subconscious (oh, so Freudian) thinks that going into the mode will block the negative feeling, will protect me from it. But going into the mode is causing me to have wrinkles prematurely, and I won't stand for it. My solution? Just let it happen. If the negative feeling starts to come, I'm going to try not to fight it off, try not to go into emotional denial and take cover in my "mode." I'm just going to accept it and allow myself to feel the hurt until it passes. Ha. Always easier said than done.

Or maybe I should scrap the whole "accepting the hurt" and start saving up for Botox injections. C'mon, a girl's gotta have a backup plan.

Connecting the Dots of the Mind

But first, a little photo-op . . .
Here's me in my recently won 90&9.com t-shirt. Yeah, baby!












Anyway . . .

This little game I play
It's kind of like a mental, abstract connect-the-dots. Okay, I'm not one to believe that every single solitary coincidence in life is God speaking to me. But sometimes, oh, sometimes, if I happen to unfortunately become a tad preoccupied with some . . . concept, I begin to think that everything that presents itself to me, whether in word or deed, or in something I read or whatever that is in any way connected to the object of preoccupation, is some kind of positive "sign."

I hate when I begin to do this. The rational part of me knows it's not God, but rather me, picking out "signs" from ordinary happenstances because my mental perception is heightened and tuned towards that particular object of preoccupation. Things that would normally go unnoticed suddenly become uncanny "confirmations."

It's the weirdest thing in the world for your rational side to realize the irrationality of something even while you're continuing to indulge in it.

Part of me is like, "Girl, chill out. You could expend your brain's energy in much more productive ways." The other part is like, "Aw, c'mon. No harm done by an already-acknowledged-as-irrational element. It's not like you don't realize you're being irrational. If you didn't realize it, then maybe we'd have a problem. It's not like you really buy this 'connection' stuff anway."

But perhaps therein lies the crux of the matter. Though, rationally, I cannot allow myself to buy it, deep down inside, I want to buy it.

My analytical, just-the-facts-ma'am side is a frantic, sweating, placating servant, doing everything he can to keep the irrational, emotional mistress at bay. What a ridiculous metaphor. It's not entirely accurate, but it's kind of amusing nonetheless.

Though this be madness, yet there is method in it.
(Hamlet, Act II scene ii)

Minneapolis and Gilead

Minneapolis
Today (well, technically yesterday, since it's currently after 12 a.m.) we got back from our little excursion to Minneapolis. Tuesday night we spent a few hours at Mall of America. Wow. It's the biggest mall in the country. We had dinner at the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co, and I got more than my fill of crab-stuffed shrimp.

All day Wednesday we spent at Valleyfair. I think I rode all of the rollercoasters in the park at least once. Two of them I rode thrice—Wild Thing and Steel Venom. I hadn't been to an amusement park since my senior year in high school, so I was pumped. I had ADHD that day. I mean, I really felt like a kid that day. I wore myself out.

Thursday we went back to Mall of America. We spent a good part of the day spending our money there. Then, we hopped on over to Albertville, a small town right outside of Minneapolis that is filled with outlet stores. Now I really know what it means to shop 'till you drop! Shoes and skirts and sunglasses and shirts and more shoes . . . (sigh).

Gilead
In the midst of all of the hustle and bustle of travel and road trips, I've been reading a book called Gilead by Marilynne Robinson. She won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction for it. It's not exactly an action-packed page-turner, but it's serene and profound. It's basically about the reflections of an old minister in a letter to his young son. One of the main themes is father-son relationships. It made me reflect on my relationship with my mom. I bought some huge sunglasses from New York & CO. Those sunglasses that are in style now that basically cover half of your face when you put them on, like exaggerated aviator glasses or something, that were in style in the 70s and such. When I tried them on in the mirror before I bought them, it reminded me of a 70s era picture of my mom girlishly posing, wearing the same kind of glasses. It was weird. It was like I was, in a small way, becoming more like her from wearing those glasses. Me in the prime of my youth. My mom in the prime of her youth in that picture. The two fusing together.

Another thing that Gilead is making me reflect on is the older guy thing. In the story, the old minister marries a woman about a generation younger than he is and he tells how his wife loves a novel called The Trail of the Lonesome Pine, which is partly a love story about a young woman and an older man. It brought the older guy thing up in my mind. Could I be with a guy who is several years older than I am? I've thought about this a lot, and I think the answer is yes.

I was one of those girls who had perpetual crushes on college professors. It seems that I've always had a penchant for the . . . pedagogical. I seem to want someone who can teach me something, show me something I don't already know, introduce me to that which is unfamiliar to me, who can intellectually engage and stimulate me. That is not to say that there aren't 24ish guys out there who could do that. But it just seems that for the whole "teaching me something" aspect about the kind of guy I think I want, an older one might fit the bill more than one of my peer group. I'm not saying this as like a certainty . . . it might just be my English major tendency (I double majored in Spanish and English, remember?) toward generalization and romanticism rising up and threatning to cloud my view.