Reckless Anxiety Hugo Esteban Rodriguez University of Texas at El Paso, [email protected]
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University of Texas at El Paso DigitalCommons@UTEP Open Access Theses & Dissertations 2015-01-01 Reckless Anxiety Hugo Esteban Rodriguez University of Texas at El Paso, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.utep.edu/open_etd Part of the Creative Writing Commons Recommended Citation Rodriguez, Hugo Esteban, "Reckless Anxiety" (2015). Open Access Theses & Dissertations. 942. https://digitalcommons.utep.edu/open_etd/942 This is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@UTEP. It has been accepted for inclusion in Open Access Theses & Dissertations by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@UTEP. For more information, please contact [email protected]. RECKLESS ANXIETY HUGO ESTEBAN RODRIGUEZ CASTAÑEDA Department of Creative Writing APPROVED: _____________________________________ Daniel Chacón, MFA, Chair ______________________________________ Tim Z. Hernandez, MFA ______________________________________ Frank Perez, PhD ______________________________________________ Charles Ambler, Ph. D. Dean of the Graduate School Copyright © by Hugo Esteban Rodriguez Castañeda 2015 Dedication I dedicate this work to the memory of my abuelito Esteban Rodriguez Luna, because his words, his music, and his love for his family, work, and art drew me to become the writer I am and to have the energy to always keep pushing forward. As he once wrote to me, “No hay que estar inactivo, porque venado que se para, lo flechan.” I dedicate this also to the memory of my grandfather Jose Castañeda Dominguez, my cousin Hugo Leonardo Menchaca, and Dr. Luis V. Colom, because their love, dedication to their family and to their community have never left my side. RECKLESS ANXIETY By Hugo Esteban Rodriguez Castañeda, B.A. THESIS Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at El Paso in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF FINE ARTS Department of Creative Writing THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT EL PASO December 2015 Acknowledgments To my parents, Hugo Esteban Rodríguez Uribe and Maria Teresa Castañeda Licon, for their unending belief in me and their support my entire life. From them I learned about love for others, about service to humanity, and about an appreciation to art, and a commitment to constant self- improvement. Los quiero mucho. Gracias por todo. To my brother Jose Mario Rodríguez Castañeda, whose work ethic and compassion for others is a constant source of inspiration. You are my moral compass and a reminder that working hard can open up so many doors and help so many people. To my girlfriend, Sarah Jean Hiscock, who heals the wounds left behind by the duende and reminds me to have hope for a better tomorrow. When faced with crippling doubt, when faced with the most self-defeating thoughts, she is there. I love you, your impeccable sense of décor, and your fajitas. I love you because you love me and you let me be completely me around you. To the 2006-2009 staff at the UTB/TSC Collegian, where I spent my formative years as a journalist and learned how to integrate writing and editing into my professional life. The memory of those long Thursday nights and hammered desks always never fails to bring a smile to my face. To the teachers at Saint Joseph’s Academy in Brownsville who took the time to listen to me and saw the wings of a writer years before I saw them for myself. Para Grecia, Cesar, Chelita, primos que no son primos pero mas como hermanos, no hay nada como verlos en Navidad. To the University of Texas at El Paso’s Graduate School and Department of Creative Writing for the opportunity they gave me to continue my graduate education. I am indebted to Professors Chacón, Hernandez, Pimentel, Sirkin, Williford and Bush for helping me develop further as a writer and poet. To Guadalupe Mendez, who baptized me into the Librotraficante movement and the Houston Poetry scene and beyond being a classmate has also been a mentor, a teacher, a brother, and an inspiration. Thank you for waking me up to the needs of our people. To the friends and siblings-in-arms I have made in my life, from Matamoros to Brownsville to Houston all the way to Spain and back across the States, the life of a writer is a desolate one, but it is thanks to you that I don’t feel so alone. To the staff at Inversion Coffee House in Houston, thank you for putting up with me taking up space at your establishment several Fridays throughout this year. v Table of Contents Acknowledgments........................................................................................................................... v Table of Contents ........................................................................................................................... vi Preface............................................................................................................................................. 1 Works Cited .................................................................................................................................. 20 Bibliography ................................................................................................................................. 21 RECKLESS ANXIETY Huizache ....................................................................................................................................... 23 Glass Memories ............................................................................................................................ 30 Chamber Music for a Weekend Out ............................................................................................. 36 If .................................................................................................................................................... 45 A swimmer, drowning .................................................................................................................. 46 Conversations with Tiffany........................................................................................................... 58 The Ritual...................................................................................................................................... 65 You are what you eat .................................................................................................................... 67 Halogen eyes ................................................................................................................................. 75 Endless Forms Most Innocent ....................................................................................................... 77 The Hard-Hitting Questions .......................................................................................................... 85 Anxious Love .............................................................................................................................. 105 Coffeehouse Anarchism .............................................................................................................. 115 Life when you have multiple windows open .............................................................................. 126 Vita .............................................................................................................................................. 138 vi Preface SCOPE OF PROJECT Reckless Anxiety will focus on fourteen short stories that have characters who all suffer from some form of mental illness, compulsion or disorder. The title is itself a paradox, because anxiety in its general sense could make someone with it more cautious than normal. I wanted to take it to an extreme level and approach writing with the recklessness of an artist afraid of what could happen should he ever stop moving or stop dancing. PROJECT BACKGROUND Before I started developing my thesis, as a writer I felt as if I was on a path with only one direction. In the periphery, I could see that there were other Latin@ authors and poets that had been charting out the map and making incredible inroads into the literary world. I felt disconnected to that, as if those paths were meant for someone else. I had, however, made inroads myself into different venues of writing. I had been a journalist in high school and in college and had adapted those lessons into my professional career. But for writing on my spare time, that process started changing when I enrolled at the University of Texas at El Paso’s Online Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. Before that, my biggest hangup as a writer was being genre-stricken—that is, sticking to either sci-fi or fantasy. Once I started at UTEP, I started a process that made me appreciate, learn, and breathe literary fiction. Writing short stories is a process that, for me, begins first and foremost with writing poetry. In my poetry, I use both image and line to the best of my ability to describe things around me. As a poet, I find something specific that calls to me, whether it is a building off of Houston’s Southwest Freeway, a particularly strong emotion at the closing of a Waldenbooks in 1 Brownsville, or seeing two complete strangers dance the night away in a country western club. Then I scribble a page or two about that particular moment on a notepad that tends to be on my person most of the time. I then wait a week before transferring the physical notes into digital ink, where it then sits in a designated “crockpot” folder. Here, my ideas stew for one more week while I initiate other projects. Once the week passes, I re-open my project and