BATTLE ELEGIES for PEACEFUL PEOPLE BORN INTO a MODERN WORLD a Written Creative Work Submitted to the Faculty of San Francisco St
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BATTLE ELEGIES FOR PEACEFUL PEOPLE BORN INTO A MODERN WORLD A Written Creative Work submitted to the faculty of San Francisco State University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for ~ k the Degree 2L0IS Master of Fine Arts In Creative Writing: Fiction by Jacob Alexander Boyd San Francisco, California May 2015 Copyright by Jacob Alexander Boyd 2015 CERTIFICATION OF APPROVAL I certify that I have read Battle Elegies for Peaceful People Born Into a Modern World by Jacob Alexander Boyd, and that in my opinion this work meets the criteria for approving a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing: Fiction at San Francisco State University. Maxine Chernoff, M.A. Chair and Professor BATTLE ELEGIES FOR PEACEFUL PEOPLE BORN INTO A MODERN WORLD Jacob Alexander Boyd San Francisco, California 2015 My novel excerpt is about the narrator’s recovery from the hopeless state of mind and being that is addiction, and it is also about his simultaneous journey of learning to manage and accept my superpower/mental illness in the suburban community of Hemet, California, in the heart of Southern California's Inland Empire. The novel's plot will follow the arc of the Joseph Campbell monomyth of the hero's journey as the narrator learns how to become Clark Kent. The chapters are divided into very small pieces which, in addition to the novel's plot, include the narrator's writings in notebooks kept during this time in his fictional life. Entries from the notebooks will be very short lyrical opinions on metaphysics and theology, assignments from his time in treatment, and selections from the science fiction epic novel about clones and restaurants and filmmakers and addicts and two siblings traversing a post-apocalyptic landscape. I certify that the Abstract is a correct representation of the content of this written creative work. Chair, Thesis Committee Date Part 1: You're a Broken Human Being, D on’t Be a Pussy About It Prologue to the Epilogue 1. The book you are about to read doesn’t have a flashy opening sentence, which is unfortunate because I really like it when a book has a flashy opening sentence. Here are some of my discarded attempts (the ones that I liked, anyway): “What’s worse — going crazy or being sane afterwards?” “Memory is a virus,” and “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” 2. It’s been years since I’ve spoken with or seen anyone from that time in my life when I got better. They (those that I’ve not seen or spoken to for years) find me daily. Sometimes they make me smile (smoking Djarum Blacks with Joni on the balcony of our apartment in the desert dawn hours, steam curling off our coffees and weaving with the smoke before vanishing in the air between us, a pausing in our morning routines) and sometimes they make me cringe (coming-to in the emergency room, strapped to the bed, a prisoner who didn’t remember his crime, and that nurse with hard eyes and a smug voice who only undid the straps one at a time). I love and resent them equally, the characters from my past. Each person I met in that impossible time carried a verse, and now push against memory’s narrative, their spirits humming in refrain, those who created the book you are about to read. 3. The book you are about to read is a safe book. There is a happy ending. It is a story of healing and forgiveness, but there are some perilous passages that might cause you some discomfort. The drug fueled spiral that nearly ended my life, for instance, or the cancer 2 that ended my best friend. In the interest of relieving any discomfort you may or may not experience as narrative suspense, I’ll lay out the chronology for you now so you’ll know which sections to skip if you like (starting off with a little pertinent backstory about myself as well): I graduated from high school as class valedictorian and received an appointment to the Air Force Academy and then I was hazed at the Air Force Academy and a new part of my brain sparked to life giving me a superpower/mental illness and then I went to film school on scholarship and then my brain shut down and I spent some time in that place and then I trained to be a chef and then I got hooked on all the drugs and then I had a brief tenure on the streets (the book you are about to read starts right around here) and my awe-inspiring B.A.C. of 0.517 and then I died and came back and got clean and then sober and then the Cinderella story I lived through where I almost made an independent movie that folded at half past five rather than midnight and then I took care of my friend who was sick because she took care of me when I was sick and then she died from her sickness and I was left alive and then about how I could see through the identities of narrative that people in the world construct as being nothing more than a dream, a metaphor, a cinematic projection of the subjective and how it could ultimately even be that death is nothing more than a temporary solution to the permanent problem of soul sickness but even if I was dead from my overdose and landed in Hemet and Hemet was Heaven like the bumper sticker said which could be true because it felt like it might actually be so in those euphoric moments of creative energy as I wrote and wrote and discovered a way to find peace and be in this world and reconcile my 3 superpower/mental illness and be of service to others (the book you are about to read ends right around here) (Also: I will explain the superpower/mental illness soon). 4. I get truly bored writing the connective tissue that most stories contain. I wouldn’t dream of making my failing your frustration, however, so here is a permission slip (though not necessarily instructions) from me to you: feel free to just jump to around the text, you can always come back to plot points later in the story. Please don’t stop reading. Altogether, the story spans a little more than a year. That first year. 5. This story is not a typical allegory for addiction where we follow a protagonist making unwise choices and spiraling out of control. Nothing is really at stake in such stories because drunks and junkies do not value their lives, the families, or their futures. How can a protagonist be in danger if he or she doesn’t have anything to lose? The only motive any true junkie or drunk has is to escape life, grind towards oblivion, with a distant hope of suicide (while being simultaneously terrified of it). They also always say or think the line: “Insanity is doing the same thing expecting different results.” While I have found this to be true, I’m more interested in telling about the time I did a different thing and discovered a different result. There will be no sloppy ending where the “hero” hits rock bottom at the end and then the narrative flashes forward to a magical “all better” epilogue. The book you are about to read takes place during that chapter break, between the rock bottom and magical epilogue. It’s about the crawl out of the horrific spiral, about the delicate steps towards finding a reason to live, where there are real stakes (new friends, renewed families, a perceivable future) and the very real threat of relapse 4 (because it is in every decision you make for a while, lurking in a comer and never forgotten). 6. The book you are about to read is written in the first person past tense. Even so, there are two different times that the same narrator is narrating from: the voice in the regular text (not in the parentheses) is looking back from a year or so on, but (the voice and asides and commentary found within the parentheses) and not in the regular text is speaking from ten years on. It’s taken me this long to actually be able to write out this story. 7. The book you are about to read is not just about recovery from the hopeless state of mind and being that is addiction, it is also about my simultaneous journey of accepting my superpower. I have a superpower (though I don’t like that label), an ability, and it is among the most useless abilities anyone could have (actually, I don’t like calling it an “ability” either). When I meet someone and touch them for the first time, and only on the first moment of tactile contact, I’m transported into the body and mind of their previous life, as that life is ending. I see a lot of death. This “thing” is just a thing that I do — as magical and fascinating as any other naturally occurring phenomena (like the glittering shimmer of sunlight off the ocean or the smell of concrete during a thunderstorm). I didn’t always have a healthy attitude towards it (and I think that attitude is healthy) (the book you are about to read is also about how I acquired a healthy attitude towards it).