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The ministry of love Item Type Thesis Authors Frost, Charles (Charles Ray) Download date 28/09/2021 08:35:44 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/11122/4910 THE MINISTRY OF LOVE A THESIS Presented to the Faculty of the University of Alaska Fairbanks in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF FINE ARTS By Charles Frost, B.A. Fairbanks, AK December 2014 Title Page Abstract The Ministry of Love is a literary nonfiction memoir that follows the author’s process of individualization. Using a narrative design, the author recounts his religious upbringing, his family dynamics, his dreams, and his failed attempts at winning the affection of his first love. The author uses these small events as a foray into meditations on the spiritual, the carnal, the physiological and the psychological transitions he experienced as an adolescent. The Ministry of Love achieves a narrative dreamscape as the author intertwines memory, illusion, and fantasy to capture the author’s consciousness. v Signature Page ............................................................................................................................................... i Title Page ...................................................................................................................................................... iii Abstract ......................................................................................................................................................... v Table of Contents ........................................................................................................................................ vii Clutter ........................................................................................................................................................... 1 They Were Lovers Once . And Young ...................................................................................................... 13 The Birds and the Beasts ............................................................................................................................. 39 Eternal Return ............................................................................................................................................. 61 Shadow Play ................................................................................................................................................ 89 Blood and Body ......................................................................................................................................... 109 I Like Smoke'n Lightning ............................................................................................................................ 141 Kick Start My Heart ................................................................................................................................... 171 Works Cited ............................................................................................................................................... 201 Works Consulted ....................................................................................................................................... 203 Table of Contents vii Clutter After my first delusional break with reality, I spent my fourth semester in graduate school evading the cabal of professors who were trying to destroy me. The evasion was successful because the cabal never existed. It was now June, I was twenty-four, and I couldn’t write anymore—everything I typed came out garbled. So I threw out everything I had written since I was twenty-three. I climbed the steps of the apartment Chelsea, my wife, and I were renting at the University. She was studying psychology and I was in the Masters of Fine Arts program. Once I reached our bedroom, I hefted two cardboard boxes and a milk crate from my bedroom closet and set them on the bed. The mattress springs sagged. I pulled out all the loose paper and stapled stories—some were nine years old and the paper was brittle. There were poems written from when I was a teenager filled with existential angst, many false starts to stories, stories from undergraduate courses, and personal musings. I opened all the binders I had filled throughout the years and tore the pages from the aluminum rings. I threw out the very best I had written and the worst. I only saw trash. All the printed pages and legal pad leafs, covered with scrawls, led to nowhere. I left the piles of paper on the bed and walked down the stairs, opened the cabinets under the kitchen sink, and pulled out two white trash bags. They had been advertised as the strongest in the market. They were white, pure, with diamond patterns that allowed the plastic to stretch just a little if the contents were too heavy. Did I need two or three? I decided on two. Chelsea was sitting at her computer reading blogs from militant atheists and disillusioned OBGYNs. My two year old daughter, Blair, wandered around aimlessly, dressed in a pink shirt, leggings, and white socks. The soles of the socks had turned a dark brown. I made a mental note to vacuum the rug and sweep the floor. 1 I took the stairs two at a time, reached my bedroom, opened the bags, turned to the papers, and began to slip them into the trash bags. The piles were like layers of sediment and the deeper the stack of papers, the farther back in time I was taken. I glanced through them. Some had page numbers, indicating there had been some sort of order at one point, but were now in disarray. Drafts of some of the stories were stapled together. There were multiple copies of some stories I had submitted to writing classes my peers had left comments on. On one of the oldest submission, I glanced at the comment left on the last page. I enjoy reading your writing. Thank you for sharing with me. The classmate had signed her name. Something in the prose had resonated with her. I had once been able to write prose that had touched someone’s life. I remembered the clothes she had worn. Her shirts and jeans weren't revealing, but were skin tight, emitting a strong sensuality. Her hair was chestnut and her voice sounded just a few years older than she was. The light, from bulbs or the sun, always brought out a different color in her eyes. Her irises were constructed more out of crystals than cones and rods. At the beginning of one summer, she went to Ketchikan, perhaps worked in the tourist industry or in commercial fishing, and in the end came back in the fall wearing sweaters, turtlenecks, and looser fitting jeans. Her eyes were still mesmerizing, but didn’t have their same inner glow. Seeing the change in her demeanor had frightened me. I wondered where she was at now and if she still sat in front of a keyboard and typed. Where was I? I looked back on the last two sentences she had written me. Perhaps she had been blind to what she saw on the paper. I slipped it into the trash bag. There was so much positive feedback from my undergrad years and later such disdain from my graduate peers. A letter at the top of the stack, read—this is abysmal. Get a grip on your craft. I had hid that copy from myself for a long time because I knew this student was right. 2 Chelsea came upstairs to check on me, sticking her head through the doorframe. I loved her blond hair and her wide nose, had grown to love her wide nose, which, on occasion, bothered her when she looked in the mirror. She'd been teased in school. Her hair was now red, dyed from food coloring she had found in the kitchen. The color verged on maroon. She asked, "What are you doing?" I said, "I'm tossing it all out. It's failures and failures belong in the trash." I had said those words once before three years earlier as I was passing in and out of consciousness, much too drunk, staring at my friend's trashcan. Chelsea had knelt beside me. She had been six months pregnant. I'm a failure. Failures belong in the trash. She asked, "Do you know what your daughter is doing?" I sighed. "No. What's she doing?" "She's wearing her training toilet bowl on her head like a hat. Running around and giggling." "I can't fix that." Chelsea looked at the stacks of paper and half-filled trash bag. "Please, don't throw everything away." I closed my eyes for a moment. I couldn’t look at her. "I don't want to die and have people see this stuff and I don't trust you to do it." She said okay and then headed back downstairs. I wanted to be alone and thought about asking her to take Blair on a walk or to the playground. But she would've sighed and said, really, right now? I don't want to go on a walk. I finished filling the trash bags and lugged them down stairs and out the front door. I could feel the plastic stretching, giving way, and calculated that if I made my journey to the dumpster quickly, 3 everything would be fine. I wouldn't need to double bag the sacks. I set the two bags against the side of the apartment and lit a cigarette, picked up the bags again, worked them over my shoulders like Santa Claus, and hurried on my way. I puffed on my cigarette like an old steam train. If I could have burned the paper, I would've burnt it all instead of tossing them in the trash. Recycling was out of the question—I didn’t want the paper to be turned into something else. As I walked, I wondered if I had grabbed everything. Had I missed other binders I would find later in life and be, once again, confronted with miss constructed sentences made from phrases and words serving to confuse others? The digital copies. I recalled the joy I had had

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