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MIDHEAVENS By ALEXANDER SIWIECKI (ALEX ENDER) A THESIS PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF FINE ARTS UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2018 1 © 2018 Alexander Siwiecki (Alex Ender) 2 To Roxy Hernandez May we understand one another 3 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am grateful to David Leavitt, Amy Hempel, Marcus Pactor, and Mark Ari for their guidance, patience, and influence. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...............................................................................................................4 ABSTRACT .....................................................................................................................................6 CHAPTER 1 MIDHEAVENS ........................................................................................................................7 First House ................................................................................................................................7 Preface: The Age ...............................................................................................................7 Proclamation ......................................................................................................................8 Entry: The Kingdom ..........................................................................................................9 Madison I .........................................................................................................................11 Slides I .............................................................................................................................12 Blueberry .........................................................................................................................13 Biscuit Socialist ...............................................................................................................15 Jelly Boxer .......................................................................................................................18 Gray Matter .....................................................................................................................22 We Be Loyal I .................................................................................................................24 Tiger Cruiser ....................................................................................................................27 Chicken Fingers, Hot Dogs .............................................................................................29 Mikey ...............................................................................................................................32 Lapping ............................................................................................................................33 2 TONALPOHUALLI ...............................................................................................................36 3 ABIKU ....................................................................................................................................44 4 UPWARDS, ZIONWARDS ...................................................................................................54 5 CAGELING ............................................................................................................................63 6 THE REEL MOWER .............................................................................................................78 7 FERAL CAT HIGHWAY ......................................................................................................90 8 MUSTELINE ..........................................................................................................................96 9 NO OPEN CAGE .................................................................................................................101 10 BOUJEE ...............................................................................................................................105 11 TALK TO ME THROUGH THE WALL ............................................................................118 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH .......................................................................................................132 5 Abstract of Thesis Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Fine Arts MIDHEAVENS By Alexander Siwiecki (Alex Ender) May 2018 Chair: Davis Leavitt Major: Creative Writing Midheavens is a work of astrological autofiction, interpreting the life of author Alex Ender using astrology. The first house, or chapter, is included in this thesis, along with a collection of other short stories by Alex Ender. 6 CHAPTER 1 MIDHEAVENS First House Preface: The Age I beckon for the upsurge. If I must tide them, so be it. It should not take an age—just mine. I’ve the whole span to convince them, and here I begin the reform. If they are to read and learn, then they shall of social and economic justice, for all beings. Destigmatize their mental failures, illnesses through mine. Sense what poverty has wrought and apply socialism. Eat not what has thought, has felt. Send the lifeboat to world government. Cultivate any environs where it all shall exist. I feign no line of fact, claim no desire for fiction. I sit with a natal chart, a shell of experience, their combined measure and intersection, and no other yardsticks. I will tell that I know when I do not know, for it is my custom to false start. The associative will often overrule chronology. I decree that we are done with cold fish. The counterpart—the Lion, with its terse self- interest—shall fail. Only their warm-heart approach shall remain so they will approach as they should. Come to me. You shall all become like me, new Aquarians, except I seek that you suffer far less than I have. 7 Proclamation I’m a child of indigo. Any exceptionalities were not to be discerned, in childhood at least—I was much too quiet for detection. I spoke not when spoken to, only small nods or short phrases. I was not rude but sensitive to attention. To have the attention of the room was to disrupt the world, and even a small disruption exceeded what I could stand. Any presence of mine, at all, was a rift in the day of others, of the room, of the entire Earth. I did not want to affect. Withhold cop-out parenting excuses, if for a moment, for this is now a self-branding, this color of being. For the science-minded, dismissal comes easy—they’ll ask, what of those with deficits of attention and other disorders?—and I favor those immersed in logic and method. However, I’ve an existence dependent on self-evaluation, whatever it’s worth, and after several mental health diagnoses, depression is the farthest any professional is willing to go. Depression is, at least, temper-able, given the right natural remedies. My god, I’ve dodged the chemical bullet of my parents, bouncing up and down within the skull, straight through the brain. 8 Entry: The Kingdom Waterbearers oft wonder at their role: drinking from or filling the King’s cup. If I was ever a lowly cup-filler, the King was indeed a Lion. Grant a Lion—that primordial beast of stark opposition to a Waterbearer—grant it a cup and the cup will be emptied solely only by the lion. The contents shall not be poured into many mouths until a few refillings later, beyond thirst. The demand for the cup to be filled will be ceaseless, so much that it will eventually tire and then negate the existence of the cup-filler. Yes, I was once a cup-filler. You must think of these allusions as inseparable couples, telling dualities, the Waterbearer and the Lion. As such, John Anthony drank before I was born and I, his son, have never filled a cup for myself. I inquire still of the causation of his drinking and degree of pivotality on him, but I suspect a fear of abandonment. John Anthony had here and there partaken after my birth—once, for his second wedding, he asked to share with me a beer of commencement with his best man, a classic moment between father and son when maturity is understood and to be celebrated. To his disappointment, I rejected the offer as I had rejected those made by my peers and significant others each time before. I was not above him, or anyone else, in making this choice. I implore that further onlookings of an opposite, namely Lions, are for objectivity, interpretation—as any description of astrology should cite—and not merely for adversarial combatance, the striking down through written recollections. I shall also concede, now, that I am not particularly warm or endearing but hope to appeal with aloof glamour. No, no—the earliest impression of being against a drink, this deep-rooted principle, is from a bike ride in St. Mary’s, Georgia. A missile tech in the Navy, John Anthony had been re- stationed to King’s Bay Naval Base in 1989, a year which would end in a rare 10” of snow, the only significant snow since. I think of myself fraught with importance in these ways, as if my 9 migrating down from Madison, Wisconsin, could carry the weather down with me. Perhaps it is the way in which I feel the air around me, the sensitivity to any interruption of its purity, be it sound or pollution. I cannot bear many of these interruptions without retreating to somewhere clearer, places where the clusters of matter shove on me less or at least in the way I am going. There are either not many places such as these, or I have not yet found them. John