Midterm Reflection
Mood:  quizzical
Midterm Finds

Constructing the argument for this assignment was more difficult than I imagined, but not because many of my finds would not fit under any specific argument (which they wouldnt). This composition was difficult because it made tangable things I often try to ignore.

In my first four finds entries, I have many photographs, cards, and mementos from my family; however, my midterm reflection contains none of these finds. The argument for my midterm reflection allows me to grapple with the pain of writing and being a writier and part of that pain is represented by the absense of my family photographs. Although I touch on the distance writing places between my friends and I, I did not find a vehicle in my first four finds entries that enabled me to integrate my family into my writing.

The subjects of most of my creative non-fiction (and most of my interests in reader response theory) have come from family stories. Perhaps I could include images of my great-grandmother or copy from one of those stories, but these would merely be concessions that allow me to elide what my choice of finds and argument show me in reflection: my academic work--my writing--has distanced me from my family.

Sometimes I feel like my parents and I have nothing to talk about, and I end up calling home and wishing my mom could be as excited about my passing candacy as she is about her new grandchild. I understand this is selfish, but there are fault lines between my family and I that no matter of code switching, multiple defensible interpretations, or reader response reflections can bridge. I suppose recognition is positive in and of itself.
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This is a poem I wrote about the contradictions that arrise when you pair "activity" and writing:

social construction

if writing and language are social
then why do i compose in isolation
when the world has to be asleep
everything on away
hardly any lyrics
'cept the ones i am trying to syphon out of my mind
out of the sources
and onto the page
how many of my sources are mine and how many belong to the
society
that i cant seem to edge my way into
outside by the ashtrays
i seem to do ok
things make sense
and then i tease them out
when i am alone and they deconstruct into complexity and chaos
chaos. which we are trained to embrace at all costs
chaos. which we are conditioned to celebrate as the key to discovery
those moments when we make the sources out own
construct new readings
new ways of seeing the old
but all of that pomp and circumstance is part of the community
and i am sitting here writing
alone.