Sonny's Blues

Reading this story opens my eyes to what family really is. It at the same time puts into perspective families that are not as close as mine. And how many more hard times they must go through; but in the end always staying a family. I have always been blessed with great parents, my brothers that I love so much and a big family that all love spending time together. So I cant say that I know what it feels like to have to deal with a family member who is like Sonny and has a lot of problems. But this story proves that no matter what families get into together, they always come out on top. Sonny's brother expresses his feeling toward Sonny's choices in life and how he chose to deal with them. It is obvious that he was not very happy with his brother. And every time they would see each other, they would fight. But that does not change the fact that in the end, Sonny's brother is the one watching him play with his band. The one that has not always been there, but in a cense, has. "Family" in my opinion defines who we are. Where would we be without our parents or the ones we've grown up with. The ones who know us the best. The ones that have seen us at our worst, and at our best, and no matter what there is always that connection that is family. Having a relationship with your siblings, in my case, my brothers, is just as important. If you have these people to live with, why are you going to make it something bad, loving each other should just come so easily. Seeing that I only can say that it is to me, I don't personally know how it can't come so easily to others. People see me and my brothers when were together and they ask us how we are so close, and that they hope their kids are like us when they are older. And I don't really understand why they ask this sometimes because what I ask myself, is why aren't they already like that. There really is nothing more important to me in life than my family. Since i've moved out i haven't had the chance to really spend time with my parents like I used to, and it kills me everyday. I know my friends tell me I need to grow up and move on but the thought of not having them forever makes me want to pack up and move back in with them right now! haha but I know I cant do that. So for now, all I can do is love them and I know nothing will ever come between my family.

Memory and Imagination

This so far has been my favorite reading for this class. Every other reading we've had, has been good writing. But I've never really related to any of it in the way I related to Memory and Imagination. I guess you can say it has to do with the remembering things and writing down what Hample, would say are "lies". I can say I struggled with it all throughout high school. Kind of a lot in Spanish we were given assignments where we would have to reminisce about a memory with the family we might have had. Or something like that! I would find myself filling in I guess you could call "gaps" of memories that were a little fuzzy to me, with lies. Or something I would make up for the moment to fill those gaps. But a difference about the steps I took from those of Hample's steps is that I wouldn't go back after my first draft and change the "lies" I wrote in the first place with something I might have remembered to actually be true. I don't know if it is because I was lazy to actually take the time to create a good piece of writing, or I never really thought about it. Maybe I was just in the mind set that I couldn't mess with my first draft I had to leave it the way it was, only fixing grammatical errors my teacher might have found. Its more like when I am writing statistics or facts that I would go back and maybe fix something that was wrong. Never to my own memories did I fix anything. To be honest without reading this text I don't think I would have ever realized I was missing something in good writing. But does going back in your writing fixing things like memory glitches make you a good writer?
         Maybe writing things down is the only way TO remember something fully. If its never asked of us to go back and remember a time we once had, how often would we actually try to remember a time with our mom, or a dress that used to be your favorite? If we are not going to remember our pasts, then who is? Like Hample said, there are 1000 books I think that try to prove that the holocaust never happened. Why do people insist on trying to rewrite history? If we just sat back and never tried to remember something that once happened, we might loose our selfs all together.

a crot is hard to find.

I thought this reading was pretty interesting. I've never really heard of a teacher doing their own assignment  to help the students better understand the assignment. That is really cool of a teacher to do. I know that if I ever had a teacher that was willing to take on the paper herself it would put things into perspective for me for sure. Especially an assignment like the one this class was given. It was obvious to the professor that it was going to be a little more difficult than the students walked out of the class thinking it was going to be. The professor taking hours out of her afternoon to help out her class really shows that she does care about them and how well they do on the assignment. By doing this, her class was able to go home and really take on the paper the best they can. It was also really interesting to me how her class was coming to her with all the same questions. Was it because she didn't really explain the assignment as well as she could have? Or do all students have selective hearing, hearing only bits and pieces of what the professor was talking about? I'm sure they were listening but I think its funny how they all left the class thinking they had an easy paper coming their way. Only to find out it would be even more difficult than expected. "You know, at first I thought this assignment was going to be easy, but it was hard, one of the hardest papers I've ever written." pg. 46 It sort of makes me wonder how I myself would do writing a paper like this. Having to go against everything I've learned throughout the years and actually having to write UN COMPLETE sentences. I wonder if I would be able to leave the bubble I am used to being in when writing something for a class?