Count Your Blessings...Shout them one by one.

Like Ralph Wiley before me, I too find myself shouting my Black experience. Of course, this is only a contextual blackness as I am also Hispanic and French.

Much has transpired, and I am blessed. I am a new homeowner (and the house is amazing!!!). And so, I shout!

I am in love with the most beautiful, the most intelligent and the most caring woman in the world; incidentally, I asked her to marry me (via her father's permission of course), and she agreed. And so, I shout!

I am teaching as an Adjunct Professor at two wonderful institutions (Eckerd College and University of South Florida--St. Petersburg) while I study for my preliminary examinations for my doctorate in English: Medieval Studies Literature. I will be teaching Literature & the Occult (using my OWN monograph: The Position of Magic In Selected Medieval Spanish Texts alongside Lewis's The Monk, Radcliffe's The Italian and Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita), Composition, Professional Writing, Technical Writing as well as Western Heritage (Part I and Part II). And so, I shout!

I have been given access to the Dali Museum, and its resources under the auspice of one Peter Tush (Curatorial Educator). This, what Morrison calls "access," will be for my second book involving Dali, Medieval Iconography, the female form in gender space(s) and of course brujeria ["witchcraft," and/or "magic"]. And so, I shout!

Oh, and I am applying for a Fulbright to Spain to study, examine and write my findings in a dissertation re: Medieval travel narratives, the monstrous other, the Afroeuropean embedded in the margins of otherwise Anglo-centers and [un]just, religious violence. The host institution has already signed off on their letter under the Vice-Chair and Director del Departamento de Filologia Moderna at Universidad de Leon Doctora Marta-Sofia Lopez. Even Purdue University's Justin S. Morrill Dean John J. Contreni wrote a letter of recommendation on my behalf! And so, I shout!

I am truly a blessed man, and one that can thank God for His blessings. My response? I shout, I shout, I shout! 'nuff respect and give tanks no man! I echo the tenuous and yet sagacious words of George Herbert who once penned:

When first thou didst entice to thee my heart,
I thought the service brave:

So many joys I writ down for my part,
Besides what I might have

Out of my stock of naturall delights,
Augmented with thy gracious benefits.

And I, a faithless servant still shout louder and louder and louder:

Tantum Deus Sentio Mihi
Tantum Deus Sentio Mihi
Tantum Deus Sentio Mihi