University of New Orleans ScholarWorks@UNO University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations Dissertations and Theses 12-20-2009 A Bruised Sky Falling Holly Dotson University of New Orleans Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td Recommended Citation Dotson, Holly, "A Bruised Sky Falling" (2009). University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations. 1005. https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/1005 This Thesis is protected by copyright and/or related rights. It has been brought to you by ScholarWorks@UNO with permission from the rights-holder(s). You are free to use this Thesis in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights- holder(s) directly, unless additional rights are indicated by a Creative Commons license in the record and/or on the work itself. This Thesis has been accepted for inclusion in University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UNO. For more information, please contact [email protected]. A Bruised Sky Falling A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the University of New Orleans in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in Film, Theatre and Communication Arts Creative Writing by Holly R. Dotson B.S. University of North Alabama, 2003 December 2009 Table of Contents Abstract................................................................................................iii Preface...................................................................................................1 Dirt........................................................................................................6 Eloping in Eleusis...............................................................................20 All That Remains................................................................................34 Never...................................................................................................45 Best As................................................................................................54 A Bruised Sky Falling.........................................................................66 Hand Me Down...................................................................................77 Vita......................................................................................................96 ii Abstract The following thesis is a memoir in essays. The narrative is a reflection of memory as a chaotic system. Each essay stands alone as a single memory but also is part of the larger story of the writer‘s life. The fragmentation of the story lends itself to what Roland Barthes called a readerly text. That is, a reader may enter the text at any point and read the chapters in an order, and by doing this, the reader creates his/her own version of the author‘s life. The overall narrative arch is one of self-discovery and self-destruction. Key Words: Creative Non-fiction; Memoir; Memoir in Vignettes; Memoir in Essays; Literary Essays; Memory; Chaos Theory. iii Preface A strange thing happened to Edward Lorenz one day in 1961. He was a meteorologist, and in 1960, he began working on the problem of weather prediction. He wasn‘t recording real weather, pouring over the measurements of thermometers, barometers, psychrometers, and anemometers. He wasn‘t launching weather balloons. He was in a lab with a computer and twelve equations that produced algorithms. These algorithms created sequences of numbers that reflected what the might be according to certain variables, like air temperature, air pressure, relative humidity, wind speed and the like. Lorenz thought that if he studied the pattern created by this weather model, he would discover a way to use the model in predicting real weather. The strange thing happened when Lorenz took a short cut. He wanted to see a particular sequence again, but because he wanted to save time, he started with a number in the middle. And to save paper, he only typed in the first three decimals of the six decimal sequence—0.506 instead of 0.506127. According to conventional science and mathematics, the shortened sequence should have looked just like the original. The sequences didn‘t vary greatly from the beginning to the end. He had run other sequences from the middle using the entire six decimals, and nothing strange had happened. According to standards in classical science and mathematics, measurements with accuracy to three decimal points are more than precise. It shouldn‘t have mattered whether he used three or six decimals, but it did. After he entered the number, he left and was gone for an hour. Maybe he called his mother. Maybe he picked up his dry cleaning. Maybe he bought a cup of coffee or spent the hour napping at his desk. It doesn‘t matter, what matters it what happened when he returned. He anticipated finding the same pattern of numbers as before, but when he returned, the pattern had changed drastically. He ran the sequence again 1 and got the same thing. Again. The same. Again. He concluded what people have known for years: humans can‘t predict the weather. This wasn‘t a profound finding in the world of meteorology. Because Lorenz was working with algorithms, his findings had more to do with mathematics and physics, but he was a meteorologist and not a mathematician or a physicist, and the only journal that would publish his paper was a meteorological journal. Mathematicians and physicists don‘t tend to read meteorological journals, so the strange thing that happened to Mr. Lorenz went unnoticed by the greater scientific community for over a decade. But his findings perplexed him so much that he did more experiments, and that research led to other discoveries. These discoveries became the foundation for what came to be known as chaos theory. According to many scientists and mathematicians, there have been three revolutionary discoveries in the 20th Century: the theory of relativity, quantum theory, and chaos theory. As any scientist will tell you, relativity and quantum physics are hard to define; chaos, or complexity, is also a slippery idea. It isn‘t easily pinned in place. However, basically, chaos theory begins where classical science and mathematics end. For centuries, scientists and mathematicians have busied themselves only with objects and events, seen or unseen, that could be measured. They created formulas. They could input certain data, and through a series of operations and changes, different data would pop out. Input=output. However, for as long as these physicists, chemists, biologists, cosmologists, statisticians, and topologists have been creating formulas to study our world, there have been common, natural phenomenon that have left them perplexed. The irregular side of nature, such as the irregularity in cloud shapes and tree branches, the disorder in the atmosphere, or the fluctuations in wildlife populations, cannot be 2 measured because they do not adhere to any formal. Any given input does not produce a given output. Classical sciences and mathematics are ruled by three simple principles: 1) simple systems behave in simple ways, 2) complex systems behave in complex ways, and 3) different systems behave in different ways. Chaos theory proves that this isn‘t always true. Simple systems can give rise to complex behavior, complex systems can give rise to simple behavior and the laws of complexity, of chaos, are universal. For instance, outside my house is a small ginkgo tree. Compared to a bustling manufacturing plant, the tree appears simple. Let‘s say that I wanted to measure the surface of the tree. I could measure the height, from the longest root to the tallest branch, but that wouldn‘t give me the surface. I would have to measure the length of the trunk and the circumference of the trunk and the length and circumference of each of the large branches large roots that diverge from the trunk and each of the smaller branches and smaller roots that split from the larger branches and larger roots and measure the spaces where the large branches and roots grow from the trunk and the spaces where the smaller branches and roots connect to the larger branches and roots. But even if I could measure all of these, I still wouldn‘t have a correct number. I would have to measure the area of each leaf and the length of each leaf stem. Still, if I did all that, I wouldn‘t have a finite measurement because there are tiny crevices in the leaves. There are fissures in the bark and nicks in the roots. There are small splotches of moss and rocks, that having grown at the base of the tree and become entangled in the root system, have become a part of the tree‘s surface. And so on. And so on. The tree is a system. Its surface is diverse and infinite. 3 Chaos theory is the study of pattern formation. According to James Gleick, ―Nature forms patterns. Some are orderly in space and disorderly in time, others orderly in time and disorderly in space. Some patterns are fractal, exhibiting structures self-similar in scale. Others give ris to steady states or oscillating ones.‖ Of all of nature‘s patterns, snowflake formation is the best example of how chaos theory works. For years, scientist knew how snowflakes were formed. They could even create snowflakes in a laboratory, but just like Lorenz looking at the weather, they could not figure out why each snowflake was different because they were approaching the phenomenon from the wrong angle. They were