Hang on St. Christopher / Babel of the Apes
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HANG ON ST. CHRISTOPHER / BABEL OF THE APES by Eric Botts A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of George Mason University in Partial Fulfillment of The Requirements for the Degree of Master of Fine Arts Creative Writing Committee: Director Department Chairperson Dean, College of Humanities and Social Sciences Date: Spring Semester 2016 George Mason University Fairfax, VA Hang on St. Christopher / Babel of the Apes A Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts at George Mason University by Eric Botts Bachelor of Fine Arts The Pennsylvania State University, 2012 Director: Kyoko Mori, Professor Department of English Spring Semester 2016 George Mason University Fairfax, VA THIS WORK IS LICENSED UNDER A CREATIVE COMMONS ATTRIBUTION-NODERIVS 3.0 UNPORTED LICENSE. ii DEDICATION The first part of this thesis, “Hang on St. Christopher,” is dedicated to Meg, whose love, support, and graciousness have allowed me to write about her and about our relationship honestly and, for the most part, guilt-free; to my father, whose sense of social independence, love for music, wanderlust, and generally down-to-earth attitude have informed my writing and approach to life immeasurably; and to my late brother Greg, about whose memory I remain woefully inarticulate. The second part, “Babel of the Apes,” I dedicate to my mother, who instilled in me the skepticism, incisiveness, and ethics that led to my concern for animal rights and to my desire to write about science, even if I was too mathematically inept to conduct or learn it properly. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thanks, first, to Meg, my mother, and my father for all of your support, in all of its many, many forms. Thanks also to my thesis advisor Kyoko Mori, without whose guidance and insight these essays would never have come to life, and to Kim Todd, my undergraduate professor who not only first taught me that facts and arguments could be rendered artfully, but who also gave me invaluable advice on much of my research for “Babel of the Apes.” My gratitude to the rest of my thesis committee, Tim Denevi and Eric Pankey. And finally, thanks to my fellow writers at George Mason’s MFA program, most notably Robbie Maakestad, Kerry Folan, Rajpreet Heir, Amanda Canupp- Mendoza, Merill Sunderland, Jeffrey Allen, Monica Booth, and PJ Majellan, all of whom offered indispensable feedback, both in and out of class, on one or both of the projects contained herein. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract .............................................................................................................................................. vii Hang on St. Christopher ................................................................................................................... 1 Prelude .............................................................................................................................................. 2 Love Letter in the Form of a Theme Song ............................................................................ 2 Life in the City of Ghosts ......................................................................................................... 9 Imposter ...................................................................................................................................... 21 Leaving the City of Ghosts ......................................................................................................... 25 Out from the Cave .................................................................................................................... 25 Love Song ................................................................................................................................... 32 People Are Strange (& So Are We) ........................................................................................... 40 The Vengeful Martyr ............................................................................................................... 40 Holey Jacket ............................................................................................................................... 46 Joie d’Amor ................................................................................................................................ 48 Interlude.......................................................................................................................................... 55 Clutch. Release. ......................................................................................................................... 55 Corn & Porn & Sweet Mary Jane .............................................................................................. 61 Corn & Porn............................................................................................................................... 61 Kindness in the Land of Bud .................................................................................................. 63 Garden of the Gods .................................................................................................................. 69 Pocket Rockets .......................................................................................................................... 70 Free Money .................................................................................................................................... 75 We Don’t Take Those Here .................................................................................................... 75 Delicate Lyrics ........................................................................................................................... 81 Hang on St. Christopher ............................................................................................................. 99 Not Unlike Tom Thumb’s Blues............................................................................................ 99 v It’s More Than Rain ...............................................................................................................110 Harry Potter & the Escape from Consumer Culture ......................................................113 South of the Rising Sun .........................................................................................................115 Epilogue ........................................................................................................................................140 Like a Rolling Fucking Cliché ..............................................................................................140 Babel of the Apes ............................................................................................................................143 The Speaking Shall Inherit the Earth .....................................................................................144 “An Intelligent, Personable Center of a Scientific Project” ..........................................144 “The Victims of Our Injustice” ............................................................................................147 Some Necessarily Inadequate & Self-Contradictory Definitions from the Oxford English Dictionary ...................................................................................................................149 The Speaking Shall Inherit the Earth .................................................................................151 Monkey-See-Monkey-Do .....................................................................................................154 The End of Nim .......................................................................................................................158 A Somewhat Slogging & Righteously Angry Argument Against Animal Cruelty That You Could Skip to the Last Paragraph of, but I’d Rather You Didn’t Because It’s Kind of the Emotional & Intellectual Crux of This Essay ......................................160 Babel of the Apes: Humanity as God .....................................................................................166 Charmed, I’m Sure .................................................................................................................169 Through an Uncanny Mirror, Darkly ................................................................................173 Celebrity & Controversy ......................................................................................................176 Names & Knowledge .............................................................................................................179 Trust in a Name ......................................................................................................................181 Contact ......................................................................................................................................185 “No Trespassing” ....................................................................................................................186 “HELLO, MY NAME IS KANZI” ..........................................................................................189 “Creative Elements” ...............................................................................................................196 Carefully Chosen Words ......................................................................................................198 Notes ..................................................................................................................................................214 Bibliography