Happy Objects- Sarah Ahmed:
(Ahmed, Sarah. “Happy Objects.” The Affect Theory Reader. Comp. Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2010. N. pag. Print.)

Locke says that we judge happiness by what causes an increase in pleasure or diminishes pain in us– Something is good or bad according to how it affects us (ahmed 31)

— But heartbreak cannot be judged in such short-term thinking. Heartbreak is an emotion that must be dealt with, and the result can be either -or good or bad. Locke says that a man loves grapes, so his joy of grapes is no more than he likes the taste of them. But heartbreak’s empirical, “object” is more abstract. On one hand, someone rejects you, but there is no “grape” to grasp; furthermore, the feeling lingers as something that must be overcome, or the emotion can take over and destroy you–just ask Othello.
“Happiness might play a crucial role in shaping our near sphere, the world that takes shape around us, as a world of familiar things. Objects that give us pleasure take up residence within our bodily horizon” (32)—also, our likes shape what we are like. We shape our material space by what we like and do not like: we avoid places, things, smells, objects, etc. that we do not like and we try to surround ourselves with the stuff we do like.
Locke says we are made happy by different things that we find delightful. Happiness can be directed towards a thing– an object: a grape, here now. I like grapes so I try to eat them. I am directed towards the things I like and try to distance myself from the things I do not like. In a phenemonological way, happiness is intentional. I am happy towards something. Even in the moments of absence, if the object is not before me, I can be happy if I recall a moment of happiness. (32-33). Objects can affect us in time and space. If I receive something that makes me happy in a certain place, then that place, by association, becomes a happy place. “Or if you are given something by somebody whom you love, then the object itself acquires more affective value’ (33). Happiness has a “here” and “now” or a “when” to it.

“It has always interest me that when we becomes conscious of feeling happy (when the feeling becomes an object of thought), happiness can often recede or become anxious” (33)

— This idea is in Heidegger- When the hammer breaks, we detach from it and turn it into an object of contemplation rather than authentically, just use the hammer. So with feelings–there is a heideggerian idea here– Our truest feelings/emotion are the ones we feel when we don’t notice. –or are we just blank slates? Do we just feel nothing until we realize it? I would still argue no– just as the upset stomach or sleepless night attest to the feeling of anxiety or stress you might not be fully, consciously aware of.
On page 34, she looks at Aristotle who says that happiness is the Chief Good that we aim at. This idea of the end of ends gets at the problem of thinking of happiness as a “thing” that can be achieved. Is it happiness if there is an end? Things, here, are good in that they become the means to happiness. Temporality matters, happiness comes after the object. “As if happiness is what we get if we reach certain points” (34).

Sociable happiness:
Objects get related to happiness, since they are meant to embody good feelings and necessary for a good life. (34)—but the things that bring us happiness require an attainment of taste as well. In saying that a grape is good, you have made a value judgment on that object: “…taste is not simply a matter of chance (whether you or I might happen to like this or that), but is acquired over time” (35). What Pierre Bourdieu illustrated: taste is shaped by what society deems as good or bad so that we desire these good and bad objects. Again, as Aristotle says, good habits are gained through habituation—practice, just like taste is a matter of putting in the work to like the right/good object. At this point, Aristotle makes a distinction about intention “a man is not a good man at all who feels no pleasure in noble action” but what does the “feeling” matter if the feeling fails to be seen. If a man does good, he is good, no? Intention is too tricky. More than habit, habit gives us good taste, makes us desire and strive for the right/good object. “Fake it til you make it”—lie to yourself until you believe. The social of happiness is this idea that society decides what should bring us happy: “groups cohere around a shared orientation toward some things as being good, treating some things and not others as the cause for delight. We are affected by others, such that when we are around others who are happy we catch that happiness. By thinking about affects in this contagious matter, we can look at the inside-outside model of affect—that affects come from inside us to the outside world. But here, affect comes from outside of us and changes us inside.

Think of the “feeling” of a room: the atmosphere of the room gets inside the individual. However, what coms first? The feeling of the room or the emotion? Emotions are “sticky” – anxiety is sticky and picks up what comes near it. If we enter a room with anxiety that anxiety gives us a certain angle.

Going back to Heidegger, who says we are always in moods, so we can’t enter a room in neutral, but rather, we always-already feel something or come into a room with some expectation or hope of how the night will go and how to feel. A room might have a feeling—and surely, I have entered rooms feeling one way but the energy of the room has turned me another way. I might enter anxious because I don’t know anyone, but once I have a drink and talk to some people, the feeling changes. “The moods we arrive with do affect what happens, which is not to say we always keep our moods” (37).
We become alienated when we fail to connect with the affective community, when we fail to derive happiness from an object that is supposed to give happiness. We then offer explanations for why we are not happy: “Such explanation can involve an anxious narrative of self-doubt (why am I not made happy by this, what is wrong with me?) or narrative of rage, where the object that is supposed to make us happy is attributed as the cause of disappointment, which can lead to a rage directed towards those that promised us happiness through the elevation of this or that object as being good” (37). Happiness depends on situation, context, and person. Think of the feminist “killjoy” who calls someone out on being offensive so that the killjoy is said to be unhappy. You are said to be causing an argument because you spoke up. “The feminist is an affect alien: she might even kill joy because she refuses to share an orientation towards a certain thing as being good because she does not find the object that promises happiness to be quiet so promising” (39). The community shares in a happiness affect, in a shared idea of good or happiness that the kill joy refuses to accept. However, to go against the common belief and point out offensiveness rather than go along with it is to be awkward. Depends on who does what to whom; bodies who don’t go along with society are alienated or perceived as aggressive to society.

“If we arrive at objects with an expectation of how we will be affected by them, then this affects how they affect us, even in the moment they fail to live up to our expectations” (42)—Well, ya… Heidegger says that we can never fail to have an expectation of objects. Objects in the world are only comprehensible because those objects are in the world and we have knowledge about them. How can I not have an expectation of how something will affect me? What about heartbreak? Do I have an expectation of how heartbreak will affect me? I know the experience will hurt and that melancholy is always lingering in a relationship. Derrida examines the end of a dialogue and the impending melancholy since you always know one of you will die—but what happens if death is not what ends the dialogue but rather heartbreak/ rejection?

“The promise of happiness thus directs life in some ways rather than others” (41) “We do not just find happy objects anywhere” 41—so people are not “objects” granted, but we DO fall into relationships at random: “anywhere.” The idea of happiness from love out of nowhere is examined in Badiuou (see above). Ahmed states that we direct our life towards the social good, and THAT does not come from nowhere. Expectations come from social arena—Heidegger’s being-in-the-world and following the they-self. The expectations set up by society, having x or y, doing x or y, completing such and such a goal in life promises happiness, happiness follows these things.
Ahmed is interested in the speech act “I just want you to be happy.” (look at Badiou who says the act of saying “I love you” must be continually repeated and lived again and again, continually changing and evolving).

Ahmed wants to examine how the act of saying “whatever makes you happy” releases the child, giving freedom for future decisions, but recall Zizek who looks at this act: how can you be happy without me in your life. The “whatever” of happiness also involves the unsaid idea that “how can you be happy without following what I say will make you happy?” ZIZEK.

Ahmed looks at the queer child: the parent is unhappy about the child being unhappy, as in, I just want you to be happy, but how will you be happy living this queer life? “The queer life is constructed as unhappy, a life without those things that will make us happy (42)… In Ahmed’s examination, the unhappy queer becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy where the Dad imagines the queer child unhappy; the queer child becomes unhappy at the father’s speech act “I just want you to be happy but how can you be happy as a queer? You won’t have all this straight things like a kid and family.” (so queer life is already marked as an unhappy life). The father sees the unhappy queer child as fulfilling what he though all along: tha the child can’t be happy. These examples show how happiness choices get normalized: happiness is marriage and family life. Happy objects are shared, and while you can live a “queer” life “happily” that does not mean you will; furthermore, you will live happily but make others unhappy.

Happiness, Freedom, Injury:
Ahmed wants to explore how the speech act: “I just want you to be happy” protects the family. Using the example of Bend it Like Beckham, Ahmed explores the gap between father and daughter that makes up the conflict of the movie and can be read, simply, as the conflict between generations where the customary, common place conflicts with the alternative: old/father with old values vs. the new values/ daughter who wants alternative outcomes and life. Ahmed explores the climax of the film where the daughter is at the wedding of her sister; she is unhappy and accepts her unhappiness by identifying with the happiness of her parents (and marrying sister). The daughter manages to put her own happiness aside for the happiness of others. (45). ((can this analysis be used to explore heartbreak? Can the hearbroken put his/her own happiness aside for the happiness of the lover who wants to leave to find happiness—probably with someone else? My initial reaction/thought is no: repeating what Zizek says: how can the lover find happiness without me when the lover knows how much I care? How can you manage to be happy without me who loves you so much?))—Ahmed notices how the sister’s outcome—the daughter who finds happiness playing soccer and the daughter who finds “traditional” happiness in marrying and having kids—still manages to show the points of alignment, where happiness is enjoyed together. Both outcomes leave us with happy sisters and happy parents; however, the film places more weight on the alternative happy object than on the traditional one when the protagonist is asked by her sister why she wants to play soccer and the protagonist answers that she wants “more.” A “more” that liners noticeable since she doesn’t say I want something different but rather more. An evaluation is made.
Ahmed relates these ideas to the larger issue of immigrant/diaspora narrative. The immigrant wants the next generation to avoid the pain that the parents feel. The subtle message is that the immigrant needs to play the game [of assimilation], represented by the England’s national sport of soccer. Not playing the game (the father’s first speech about not playing cricket any longer once he was excluded) becomes the narrative of self-exclusion and a refusal to assimilate. Ahmed calls this angry immigrant the melancholic for not letting go of the unhappy object. The melancholic insist on speaking about racism when, as the kill joy, he should get over the racism instead of bring up the sore point (the past): holding on to the past is a way for the melancholic to create obstacles to happiness for himself as well as for his adopted nation.
Ahmed discusses proximity on pg. 49—read this page against Zizek’s views on tolerance and racism today. —end—


On a more specific literary interpretation:

Production and materialism:

For Marx, what sets humans apart from animals is history. We are real individuals, living with real material reality (which reflects the 18th primer). Furthermore, men are distinguished from animals in consciousness—when they begin to produce substances to live for themselves. We, humans, are distinguished because we produce ourselves: 1- in way we keep ourselves alive; 2-through sex, literally reproducing ourselves.

[side note: in terms of animal studies, these views are questionable. Animals have consciousness, produce means to live for themselves, keep themselves alive, and have sex to reproduce themselves. The argument might be made that Marxism can be applied to animals by analyzing animal’s base and superstructures since animals have rituals and “ideology” in a way, especially the more sophisticated primates and mammals]

Marx starts from material history—not ideas. [For example, texts, like everything else, are produced and determined by history and context, not freely shaped by ideas of an author. Those ideas an author has are shaped by his/her material reality and history]. Even the materiality of body affects the manner in which you think. If your body is being tortured, that will shape the way you think. If you are wearing certain clothing—fashionable clothing, tight clothing, comfortable clothing—will shape the way you think].

In terms of literary criticism: Some critics will look at author as if he/she didn’t exist in a certain historical moment. The critic examines the text in an idealist manner or non-materialist manner. Idealism—a way of thinking that divorces consciousness from history; 1-in the realm of which you fall down, scrape your knee, eat dinner, all of material history; 2- in the realm in which you think about this things (in 1) or imagine these things. Idealism believes these two points are separate.

Marxist critic believes, however, that an author is a product of his time and produced in a certain historical moment. The author, furthermore, is a producer of his time. An author takes raw materials (language, old texts, form, style, etc.) and will produce a story by transforming those material, creating a text. As in any production, a surplus remains that in Marxism is Signification: the text says more than the author meant to say because the text uses all these other voices, raw materials in its creation. Also, the text carries a tension between the author’s intention/meaning and the linguistic capacity of these other voices of the text.

A bourgeois critic thinks the author is to be found in the raw materials (the cotton) of the text, but a Marxist critic would say that the tension needs examination. The text becomes fissured, decentered. The text’s historical time dictates what the text can say so that there are certain things the text cannot say or even think. For a Marxist literary critic, the questions to explore are what is impossible for the text to say? What couldn’t the author say because of ideology? How does the text perform society?

Thomas Docherty at the University of Warwick has an excellent ItunesU podcast on literary theory. Here are some notes I got from his lecture, which you can find here:http://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/modes-of-reading-theory/id407477532

The class also has a blog: http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/itunesu/entry/modes_of_reading/

My notes from the above:

Marxism Notes:

Critique is an investigation into how a form of knowledge is possible, which stems from Kant. Exploration, then, attempts to examine the origins and limitations of a system; for instance, Marx’s critique of capitalism.

Kant attempted a transcendental critique (which is also Hegelian)—In other words, Kant attempted to get outside the system he was exploring. Marx, on the other hand, wanted to examine a system from within.

The whole question of Marxism arises from political commitment. In the 18th primer he states, “Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under given circumstances directly in terms and inherited from the past. The traditions of the old generations of the dead weigh like a nightmare on the brain of the loving.”

We are historically situated so that our possibilities to make our own history are de-limited in certain ways and it is de-limited by our historical situation.

Marxist literary criticism strives to go beyond merely relating a text to society (more than a mimesis: how a text represents something else). Marxist literary criticism reacts against formalism’s wish to look at the words for themselves, outside of historical context; the
bourgeoisie way of looking at a text (since Matthew Arnold) was in objectifying the text, isolating it from its context and attempt a scientific examination.

Marxist views text as produced in a historical context: the environment shapes everything about a text—words, content, form, etc.—, along with the historical and social moment. For Marxist critics, our social, historical juncture defines and determines what it is we can write and how.

Our social moment and historical time determines text since writers do not write in a vacuum; they write in context and are affected by society.

The bourgeois writer is working at the level of the superstructure; Marx wants to find out what makes the superstructure possible.

In classic Marxism the Base means the economic base (mode of production and of economics). The supersctructure is the ideology of society and culture. Economic relations are predominate in a given society and shapes every thing else. The superstructure keeps society in line and reproducing itself.

If our basic human relations are goverened by economic structures—for instance capitalism that shapes and dominates our society—then we can understand how we realte to one another. For instance, through economic terms:

Employer and employee: Employer has a certain amount of capital and wants to make that capital bigger, so he will use the employee to produce more. The employee has no capital so he is beholden to the employer for capital.

[For example: a worker makes shoes by using the employer’s capital; the employer sells those shoes for 200 dollars, but only gives 5 dollars to the worker and keeps the surplus. Thus, we created a system based on exploitation]

That structure shapes everything else in society. Think of all societal interactions: you fall in love, you make an investment of time and emotions hoping for a pay off; you go to school and make an investment in your future and you hope to get a job; you spend time with people and hope it will pay off in friendship, etc… Since we have this economic base, it shapes everything else in society.

Problems arise when my interest as a worker conflicts with your interest as an employer. If we end up acknowledging that conflict, then the worker might feel exploited and tell employer to stop, and the worker would rise up and seize control in order to more evenly spread the wealth. Of course, capitalism suppresses worker revolt.

The employer tells his employee that the surplus needs to go back into the business to invest in material, the factory, and pay other workers so that the workers can keep their jobs. This system ends up creating different classes with different interest; hence, this relation of class struggle affects all relations under a superstructure: non-material or cultural aspects of society. Marx finds this one opposition (class struggle) dominant, “Class struggle is the model of history.” Only through class struggle will tomorrow be different than today; it’s how we are IN history.

History progresses as classes struggle against each other for preeminence or for fundamental survival. Marxism aims for the dictatorship of the proletariat. In this way, Marxism is utilitarian: we should be aiming for the greatest happiness for the greatest amount. Marx says we should start from the biggest group—the working class (the small group is the employers/rich class). Therefore, we should pursue working class interest.

The ruling class knows its power, so it tries to convince everyone that we all have the same interest (this point is seen in political discourse and literary criticism alike with phrases such as “it’s common sense that…” “A common reading of the text is…” Discourse that makes appeals to “universal truths”).

Ruling class uses ideology to try to stop history and to control certain institutions. By appealing to universals of common interest, the ruling classes stay in power. For instance, marriage, which is less about equality, love, or sanctity, but hopes people will assume certain roles. By defining marriage, the ruling class contains conflicts because those who agree to marriage agree to following certain rules. [On a side note, one would think that the ruling classes would be all for same-sex marriage since it would inject more capital into the system with weddings and divorces, and would “control gays” because if they want to marry, they would have to follow the marriage rules].

The ruling class uses ideology: a system of beliefs and assumptions, which are dominant and normative in a society at a given moment. Beliefs don’t need to be true; they just need to be believed by all—and normative. For example, why are all priest men? Because that is a man’s job—and we don’t question the assertion but take it for granted. Pink is a girls color and blue a boys—just because, without question—that is ideology.

Marxism wants to question these normative beliefs and ideology and unmask them.

Ideology: the ways in which a social formation represents itself to itself. The way society thinks itself. The way society gains and accepts norms and beliefs that constrain or define it.

Barthes answers his own question after asking who speaks in Balzac’s novel: the reader can never know because, “…writing is the destruction of every voice, of every point of origin” (1322). If writing is the destruction of origin, then it means that the Author must be dead since the Author is the origin of the text. Barthes indicates this by replacing the idea of an Author (capitol A) with the “modern scriptor” (1324).

Barthes’s idea echoes Lacan in the way that both perceive language giving subjectivity; language isn’t just a tool that the Author uses to communicate; rather, before the Author can use language, it is determining the way He thinks (there is no consciousness outside of language). Language is already imbued with structures, angles, values, priorities, etc.. The idea of a capitol A Author conveying inherent meaning is impossible because (for Lacan, there is no Subject that does not have lack, precisely because of language) language is, as Saussure elucidated, arbitrary. Language only means by deferral (and to jump ahead to Derrida by Differance: both deferral and difference).

Barthes traces the idea of an Author-God back to the reformation; therefore, the very idea of an Author is a historical-cultural construct. This construct posits the Author as the owner of his/her work as if she/he created the language with which the work was created. Barthes points out how this view limits a text, supplying the text a final signified (1325). This view makes criticism a game of simply finding the writer in the work.

The death of the Author opens up reading and the complicity of language. A text is not composed of a Meaning that can be traced back to an Author-God; this would imply that Meaning is outside of language. Language produces meanings rather than reflects language. Therefore, the Author dies, and the Meaning the Author “intended” goes with him/her, and meaning(s) are found in the reader: “A text’s unity lies not in tis origin but its destination” (1325). I like to think of this as the death of Capitol T Truth Meaning for the birth of little t truth meaning.

“…The more there are who would say ‘ours,’/ so much the greater is the good possessed/ be each–so much more love burns in that cloister”(Dante, Purgatorio. XV. line: 55-57).

As I was reading Nussbaum’s article “Cultivating Imagination: Literature and the Arts” I could not help but think of Jeremy Rifkin’s RSA video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7AWnfFRc7g) on “Cultivating Empathy” as both of these scholars look at the ability to empathize in society as a measure of a good society.

Rifkin relates a study in which scientist found that all human’s brains are soft-wired with “mirror neurons”– that is to say that if I see someone angry, sad, or going through whatever emotions, the neurons in the brain that control the emotion will fire in my brain as I watch the emotion in someone else. My neuron will mirror the neurons merely from observation.

Nussbaum’s claim then that “Children…are born with rudimentary capacity for sympathy and concern” (96), there is science to back her up, and more so than just Winnicott’s observations.

As an aside, Rifkin believes that empathy must be nourished; that we must build an “empathic civilization” which is not to say utopia, but a society in which we can build solidarity with not just one another but with all animals on this earth. Rifkin looks at how empathy has grown with technology. When humans were hunter gathers, empathy extended only to within tribes and the tribe on the other side of the mountain was an “alien other,” but with globalization, our tribe now encompasses the entire globe. And it seems that the way to create the empathic civilization that Rifkin is discussing would be through the arts, the way Nussbaum is suggesting.

I believe the correlation here between Rifkin and what Nussbaum points out when looking at Ellison’s ideas for his novel are informative for how to build a empathetic community: Rifkin says that humans are soft wired to feel what the other is feeling, and Ellison points out that his novel help us see the relationship with people we encounter everyday (Nussbaum 107). As Tagore is suggesting, as Rifkin is hoping for, as Nussbaum is analyzing– humans are wired to be sympathetic and a way to tap into that sympathy is through the arts and imagination. I am in complete agreement with Nussbaum when she mentions the arts as a way to teach children about “cultural blindspots” (108). As Nussbaum goes on to give examples of arts affecting young people (Chicago Chior, implementing art to psychotherapy, etc), it seems amazing that more schools are not doing this.

It seems the depiction of class in Hurston’s novel is more complicated than merely being a depiction of status. There is rather an intersection of class and status linked to race and color, which is seen in the exchanges that Janie has with Mrs. Turner. For Mrs. Turner, it seems that class is decidedly linked with race as the narrator tells us that Mrs. Turner can “forgive” Janie for wearing overalls “like the other women who worked in the field” because of Janie’s “coffee and cream complexion and her luxurious hair” (140). Mrs. Turner even goes on to say that “…dey outghta make us uh class tuh ourselves,” referring to light-skinned blacks (142).

Of course though, everything that Mrs. Turner says is refuted by what happens earlier in the novel. Even if whites were to make light-skinned blacks a “class tuh [them]selves,” would it matter? The people of Eatonville create a social hierarchy even away from a controlling white hegemony.

The people of Eatonville consider Janie to be high class, and this is seen at the very beginning of the novel when Janie walks back into town and the townfolks are gossiping about her: “–why she don’t stay in her class?–” (2). While the town’s view of Janie as being of a higher class has slightly to do with her appearance, it is her money that makes her high class, which is seen in Janie’s gold spittoon: “It was bad enough for white people, but when one of your own color could be so different it put you on a wonder” (48). This is hints at the contrast between Gatsby and Janie: while Gatsby, no matter how much money, could never be part of the upper echelon, Janie and Jody could buy their social status in Eatonville, just as earlier Killicks is considered someone of higher social standing because he owns land.

Jody, who was just like the people in Eatonville except for having money and because of money having power, considers the townsfolk “trashy people” (54), and doesn’t want Janie to interact with them. Although this attitude arises from both class and patriarchy, as Jody believes that a woman’s place is in the home. Jody conveys this view a number of times. He uses not only class but his position as the bread-winning-man to control Janie and discourage her from not getting involved in what the “trashy people” do (for example when Jody and the town bury the mule 60).

Class is wielded throughout the novel against Janie as a way for her to get out of her position as a woman (her grandmother’s way of living: marrying out of poverty). It is only through money, marrying into money, that she can be classy, and she can easily compromise her class by making “mistakes.” Pheoby warns Janie that running around with Tea Cakes is somehow compromising her class: “He don’t know you’se useter uh more high time crowd than dat, You always did class off” (112).

I think this raises an interesting question about what “class” means. If someone has class, can he/she lose that class? Tom Buchannan is considered by society as someone of high class even though he is a womanizer and brute while someone like Tea Cakes can never be considered of a high class even if he buys into it, or can he? JOdy is able to buy his way into the upper crust in Eatonville, but is this because Eatonville is a new town just for blacks? How then is class defined? It almost seems to be something one is born with (the nature vs. nurture exchange between the men on the porch).

For instance, Janie is considered by everyone to have some air of class about her even though she enjoys doing things that are not considered fit for her station, such as gossiping and joking on the porch with the men. This is further seen when Tea Cakes tells Janie that he didn’t invite her to the party he threw with her money because he was afraid she “…might get all mad and quit” him for associating with the non “muckty mucks” people. (124).

In the end, Janie is back in Eatonville with everyone gossiping about her, and it doesn’t matter to Janie. I htink this illustrates Janie’s realization that class is just a social construct, so it doesn’t matter if the townsfolk gossip about her and about what happened.

I haven’t posted anything in a while because I have been so busy. It makes me feel bad because my students suffer when I am too busy; although, I got to say, I have been pretty good, I think, about “teaching.” I went over paragraphing with them using a really interesting technique I learned in my practicum class.

I had students come up to the board and list their favorite sandwiches, and then explained to them how they wouldn’t mix ingredients in the sandwich, so they shouldn’t mix their paragraphs. I think the students had a good time, and I think they might have just learned something.

After this, we went over thesis in more details and desperation writing: We looked at a particularly bad piece of writing and mined it for good content; then we went over and compared that good content and discussed some possible thesis that could be written.

This all ended with looking back at the bad piece of writing (and now with a strong thesis), we created a reverse outline and began to re-write the essay with better focus. Tuesday they have their peer reviews, so we’ll see if any of this stuff about writing sunk in or not.

In other news, I went to the RMMLA and presented my paper on “Sonny’s Blues”–I posted a rough draft of this paper here— It went well, and New Mexico seems like a cool town. I did love the food; it had been so long since I got to eat some real, authentic, fresh Mexican food.

Back to reality again, I am broke, and I need to get some stuff done. My teacher cancelled class on Tuesday to let us work on our project, so I hope to be done with this thing by Wednesday morning. This is all I have the energy to share today. With things kicking back up tomorrow, this week should be blog and reflection filled.