ELEMENTS for an ATLAS by Copyright 2009
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ELEMENTS FOR AN ATLAS By Copyright 2009 Samantha J. Bell Ph.D., University of Kansas 2009 Submitted to the Department of English and the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Kansas in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy ______________________________________ Chairperson G. Douglas Atkins ______________________________________ Michael L. Johnson ______________________________________ Kenneth Irby ______________________________________ Michael Valk ______________________________________ Charles Marsh Date Defended: October 22, 2009____________ ii The Dissertation Committee for Samantha J. Bell certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: ELEMENTS FOR AN ATLAS Committee: ______________________________________ Chairperson G. Douglas Atkins ______________________________________ Michael L. Johnson ______________________________________ Kenneth Irby ______________________________________ Michael Valk ______________________________________ Charles Marsh Date Approved: October 22, 2009____________ iii Abstract This dissertation is a collection of creative nonfiction essays to include emotional, lyrical moments that evoke my personal history. The essays focus on my developing identity in conjunction with external influences, namely the impact of people and places. I have written essays and other short prose pieces that describe who I am in the wake of living with a very ill and addicted father; the essays circle a theme of recovery. I experienced a childhood marred by alcoholism and abuse that caused my struggles with anorexia, perfectionism, and an abusive romantic relationship in my early twenties that nearly claimed my life. Having recovered from these circumstances, I wrote about them. Memories of trauma can be painful, so I moved cautiously as I worked to describe in full detail the series of struggles I endured. My recovery from trauma was accomplished with the help of Ralph Waldo Emerson. People and texts that were disconnected from my family system became instrumental to the development of these essays. Emerson’s essays, and my connections to them, are identified as a productive method for accepting my family’s fate. I connected with Emerson’s deep affiliation with the New England landscape, and geographical places in New England and in Kansas are also influences upon my maturation in the essays as they move forward. iv Dedication I am thankful first, last, and always, to my husband Dan. He is a source of constant joy, intellect, and love. He moved to Kansas – Kansas! I love him – there is no other way to say this. I am thankful to Ben and Julie, who are beautiful. They are my lost siblings, my best friends, my family. I am thankful to Nate and Leigh Ann, Joanna, Meghan, and the entire McCarthy family, for demonstrating how to live life fully, with humility and grace. I am thankful to all my students for giving me the heart to know that each person has a memory to tell. I am and will always be grateful to have studied, worked with, and gotten to know Doug Atkins. His wisdom, patience, and compassion are unmatched. His support and guidance have changed my life, both in writing and in living. Likewise, Michael Johnson, Michael Valk, and Ken Irby have given me kernels of kindness, strength, and beauty that I take with me wherever I go. I am grateful to my confidant, my reason for doing all this, my biggest supporter – to my mother, who left, and found her way back home. And to my father. Dad, one day soon, let’s put on some old Dylan records on a rainy afternoon. I owe it to you; I took too much for granted, I got my signals crossed. Just to think it all began on a long-forgotten morn. v Acknowledgements “Letchworth State Park” The Chesapeake Reader 3.1 (Summer 2009). 1. “The Facts As They Are.” Prick of the Spindle 2.4 (2008). “Ask for Nothing.” Melusine 1 (July 2009). “Definitions: A Historical Approach.” DIAGRAM 8.2 (December 2008). “Shift and Sway.” Paradigm The Elliott Issue 6 (Spring 2008). “Shift and Sway.” Reprint. Reprinted in Paradigm Volume 2. Columbus, OH: Rain Farm Press, December 2008. 125-33. “Appalachia.” Pure Francis (Summer 2009). 1. “Papaya Whip Yellow and Bisque Lobster Pink: Or, Considering the Colors of Ash and Glass; the Orchids in Our Days.” Emprise Review (March 2009). “A Pattern of Light.” “A Pattern of Light.” Under the Sun 14.1 (2008): 57-63. “Open & Close.” Language and Culture.net (forthcoming Fall/Winter 2009). “Teaching the Self to Speak.” Emprise Review 8 (May/June 2009). “Halves.” The First Line (August 2009). 60-62. “Behind Us, the Full Neighborhood.” Fourth River 4 (Fall 2007). “On Forgiving.” The Road Home Ithaca University Press, pending. vi Elements for an Atlas Table of Contents Opening the Atlas: An Introduction viii-xvii Section One: My Father & Other Immeasurables 1 Moving 2 Anxiety 3-4 Nuts 5-14 The Air 15-17 Identifying [with] Identities 18-26 Letchworth State Park 27 The Wait 28-30 The Facts as They Are 31-41 Things Checked on a Wish List 42-43 Vacancy 44-51 Ask for Nothing 52-61 Return 62 Girl with Cat 63-71 Before 72 Section Two: Color Schemes 73 Lavender 74 Definitions: A Historical Approach 75-78 On Place: The Essence of Movement 79-90 Shift and Sway 91-99 Appalachia 100-101 A Friend’s Apartment; A Snowstorm 102 Papaya Whip Yellow and Bisque Lobster Pink; or, the Orchids in Our Days 103-109 Color Scheme 110-112 A Pattern of Light 113-120 The Flower Shop 121-129 Open & Close 130-136 Section Three: Circles and Spheres 137 My Father Figure 138 Emerson Speaks 139-149 Teaching the Self to Speak 150-156 A Mother’s Memoir 157-162 Circles II 163-173 Different Ways out of Town 174-180 Halves 181-183 Section Four: The Map of Me 184 vii Behind Us, the Full Neighborhood 185 On Forgiving 186-190 Unforgiving 191-198 The Interview 199-205 Lyme Disease 206-211 Inventory 212-219 viii Opening the Atlas: An Introduction On a Saturday afternoon in the early summer, my apartment doorbell buzzed. I peered down the long, first-floor hallway and found my father standing at the glass entrance, waving madly. I walked slowly, wondering where my mother was. I opened the doors and said hello, looking behind him for reassurance that he was not alone. He should not have been alone. He was wearing a winter coat. I asked him if he wanted to come in, but he refused. He wanted to take a walk. I felt the rush of goose bumps, and the hair on the back of my neck stood up. He took my hand and we walked. The ivy on the buildings swayed. We sat on a bench. Finally, he turned to me. His eyes were red and swollen. “I can’t stop lying,” he said. I deposited my father into my parents’ narrow living room, leaving him sitting across from my stony and furious mother. I drove home in a dusk tinged with ochre hues. My dissertation began because I turned the car around after many years, and began to drive back toward home. I have written a collection of essays to include emotional, lyrical moments that evoke my personal history. The essays here display a coherence of my developing identity that cannot ignore or displace external influences, namely the impact of people and places. I experiment with fragmented essays that prioritize acute memory and image over the chronology of events. It is my hope that the reader uncovers his or her own emotional response to my memories, because my intention is to establish a human-to-human connection. I have tried to retrace the steps that drove me from, and led me back to, my father. My father is a recovering alcoholic and a drug addict, and he suffers from either manic depression or narcissistic personality disorder -- his lying prohibits clarity on this point. I have ix written essays and other short prose pieces that describe who I am in the wake of living with a very ill and addicted father; the essays circle a theme of recovery. I experienced a childhood marred by alcoholism and abuse that caused my struggles with anorexia, perfectionism, and an abusive romantic relationship in my early twenties that nearly claimed my life. Having recovered from these circumstances, I began to write about them. Memories of trauma can be painful, so I moved cautiously as I worked to describe in full detail the series of struggles I endured. I began to wade through memories methodically to uncover the central feeling I experienced in each. I remember events out of order, and I revisited my father in his various stages of addiction. Soon, I could identify again with my old self, the self who tried to fix my parents’ marital troubles and who appeased a dangerous man in college because I feared confrontation. In order to mold these memories into meaning, I wrote them down. Memories flooded back. There was my father’s rare smile during a hike, there was my lover J.’s first act of violence, there was a lake shimmering in southern New Hampshire after a summer rainstorm. My life returned to me in fragments and pieces. Taking shape, they forged bridges from one to the next. Soon, I was grappling with an identity I could claim as my own. Creative nonfiction has afforded the space in which to reconstruct and document my personal history in the forms of fragmented, lyric, and personal essays. The essays are accurate in detail and are focused on real, lived moments. In each piece, I attempt to render an emotional truth that connects with a moment or event. In essence, each memory has found a place, a home, in the form of an essay.