The Wilds by Brianna Bjarnson A creative project submitted to Sonoma State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS in ENGLISH (Creative Writing) Committee Members Sherril Jaffe, Chair and First Reader Noelle Oxenhandler, Second Reader April 01, 2016 Copyright 2016 By Brianna Bjarnson ii Authorization for Reproduction of Master’s Thesis (or Project) Permission to reproduce this thesis [project] in its entirety must be obtained from me. Permission to reproduce parts of this thesis [project] must be obtained from me. Date: April 01, 2016 Brianna Bjarnson____________ iii The Wilds Creative project by Brianna Bjarnson ABSTRACT The Wilds is a multi-genre creative project containing a range of works including: varying forms of fiction (novel, short story, flash), creative nonfiction (personal essay, personal narrative), and poetry. Thematically, the pieces as a unified whole seek to explore the essence of human thought, interaction, and experience. MA Program: English Sonoma State University Date: April 01, 2016 iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Anne Goldman: You have been my mentor in teaching, in writing, and in thinking. You were the first teacher in all my years of schooling who really saw me and recognized my full potential as a writer, thinker, and human being. You were the first person in my life who ever told me I was smart, who gave me the permission to spread my wings, expand my mind, and see what happened. You introduced me to the beautiful world of poetry, and I have not been the same since. Thank you for encouraging me to pursue my master’s—something no one in my family had ever dared dream of before—and thank you for truly believing in me. I would not be here today nor accomplished all that I have, if not for you. You are the teacher who changed my life. I will always be grateful to you! Sherril Jaffe: Thank for introducing me to the craft, the truth, and the beauty of fiction. Thank you for your sense of humor, for helping me to truly understand fiction and its role, for teaching me how to do it better, for inspiring me, for taking me under your wing, and for simply being you. I have so appreciated your caring, guidance, and support over the years. You go the extra mile for your students and I fear you ended up going several extra miles for me! Thank you so much for wholly embracing my proposal of a multi- genre thesis and for supporting my creative project. I took my very first creative writing workshop with you—and (so bittersweet for us both) my last. They were my absolute favorites. As you said: “these bonds last a lifetime!” Thank you for everything! Noelle Oxenhandler: Thank you for your wisdom, guidance, encouragement, insights, and for providing me a safe space in which to explore a genre that at first terrified me. Thank you for allowing philosophy, history, spirituality, literature, and process to mingle comfortably while I found my voice in creative nonfiction. Thank you for your endless patience with my resistance to my own work and for helping me to understand how beautiful, wonderful, and important creative non-fiction is. And thank you especially for so casually suggesting that this very private person submit a personal essay for publication! I so cherished my chance to work closely with you. I am very grateful. Gillian Conoley: Before working with you, I was scared to show anyone my poems; now I want to show them to the world. If graduate school consisted only of weekly, lunch- hour poetry-and-life-discussion meetings with you, I would never leave! Thank you so very much for all your thoughtful readings and your insightful (and often hilarious!) critiques and guidance. Thank you for supporting me and appreciating my work. You midwifed my poems into the world so they could finally breathe and live. You helped me to discover what my poetry is and where I want to go with it. I absolutely adored working with you and feel truly honored to have done so. Thank you! Chingling Wo, Thank you for sharing your humble brilliance and your stories with me, for stimulating my mind and inspiring my heart. Thank you for believing in me, both as a student and a writer, and for acknowledging and promoting my creative efforts. You helped me to finally see myself as a graduate student and to finally know that I am exactly where I belong. The world is a better place for having you in it. v The Wilds is lovingly dedicated to the memories of Sachi Yoshimoto, Blake Bjarnson, Micheala Wardlow, and my grandfather, Ray Bjarnson, who passed his name down to me, who finally told me his stories during his ninety-fifth year, which would be his last. The Wilds is also for my mother, the woman who started this whole mess: thank you for learning how to be open to me and to my stories; thank you for becoming my cheerleader, my first reader, and my eternal secret-keeper. vi Table of Contents Work Page Untaming the Truth: A Critical Introduction to The Wilds ix In Progress (a poem) 1 This Is (a poem) 2 The Highway (a poem) 3 Yip-Howl (a poem) 4 I Read (a poem) 5 Taxes (a short, short story) 6 Not A Cryer (a poem) 11 Lost (a poem) 12 Webs (a poem) 13 Sofia’s Gift (a short story) 14 Fifty Fifty (a poem) 27 Still (a personal narrative) 28 Vulture (a poem) 35 Sunlit (a poem) 36 Paper Cut (a poem) 37 Gone (a personal essay) 38 The Fish (a poem) 46 The Girls (a short story) 47 Excerpt from The Last Daughter (a novel) 64 First (a poem) 79 Mother (a poem) 80 Speech (a poem) 81 Home (a poem) 82 Stolen (a short story) 83 Unconditional (a short story) 93 Ties (a short story) 106 Pulp and Pulse (a poem) 119 vii Table of Contents Work Page Heat (a poem) 120 Real (a poem) 121 Next (a short story) 122 Silence (a flash story) 137 I Am That (a poem) 138 Literal (a poem) 139 One Angry Bitch (a poem) 140 A (a poem) 141 Peaches (a poem) 142 You Say (a poem) 143 Hole (a poem) 144 Patience Thins (a poem) 145 Seen (a short story) 146 The Imaginative Mind (a poem) 165 I Disagree (a poem) 166 Glovebox Notebooks (a poem) 167 Indoctrinated (a poem) 168 Night Walk (a poem) 169 No Books (a poem) 170 Animal (a personal essay) 171 Waterwash (a poem) 181 Sumac (a poem) 182 Alert (a poem) 183 The Wilds (a short story) 184 Tamed (a poem) 195 Absence (a poem) 196 Rid (a poem) 197 viii Untaming the Truth: A Critical Introduction to The Wilds I like to do things my own way. For this creative thesis, that meant accepting my identity as a multi-genre writer. I have always preferred the lesser traveled path, and my way—regardless of genre—is more often than not, dark, messy, and precarious. Hard to look at, even. The truth is rarely sweet or pretty, but I believe it deserves its moment in the spotlight. And pursuit of the truth is the very center, if not the driving goal of the works presented here. Whether fiction, personal essay, or poetry, each piece that follows offers its own exploration of what it truly means to be human. I was a child prone to daydreaming. In fact, lost in thought was my usual state. My constant “zoning out” was something my siblings had come to accept as part of my nature. “She’s doing it again,” they would tease and complain, waving a hand in front of my face, unable to break my vacant gaze, my eyes faraway and fixed on some other world only I could see. In school, my inability to keep my mind in the classroom was problematic. I spent most of my time staring out the window, especially on blue-sky days. Once, during a particularly vivid daydream of ponies bouncing from cloud to cloud so invitingly that even the classroom window between us disappeared, I suddenly felt a sharp pinch on the back of my ankle. The sensation of teeth in tendon jolted me back into my body. I looked up to see my second-grade teacher rise from beneath the desk as she growled at me to get back to work. I was an unusually small and quiet child and, at only six, I was young for my grade. Terrified by this large, muumuu-wearing woman and humiliated by my entire ix class pointing and laughing at my expense, I looked down at my desk, at the blank sheet of lined paper before me, at the sharpened number two pencil beside it, both sitting untouched. I picked up the pencil and, though I had no idea what I was supposed to write, I pressed its sharp tip into the paper and pushed it across the page. As a child, I was never read a bedtime story. In fact, my parents did not read to me at all. Still, we had a towering bookshelf (handmade by my father), and on it I found things to read: an oversized dictionary and dozens of religious texts lined the top three shelves; on the very bottom, sat a small collection of children’s books, which my siblings and I would look at from time to time. One afternoon, alone in the house with the bookshelf, I found a small book I had never noticed before.