fair

Maybe the conservatives are onto something, as far a parenting anyway, a friend recently said to me.

He’d been to an extended family funeral-come-reunion, and noted that of a whole slew of kids of all ages, only his kids had pitched fits.

—And the other kids, his wife confirmed, where just gracious about it. I mean, they couldn’t have faked good behavior for that long, right?

As mother to a boy who at times throws things, scowls, stomps, talks smack, and generally acts the fool, I knew what these parents were saying. In my extended family, I too have noticed that the kids are sometimes better behaved, more polite. Unabashedly liberal, I think sometimes Billy and I felt sorta bad about telling someone else what to do, even our young boy—like it’s not fair of us. And although we both agree that is part of the job of parent, we’ve executed our commands with a reticence, a kind of ambivalence that our boy would poke at, unravel, rip apart.

Political leanings aside, Billy and I have made a conscious effort lately to draw our line in the sand —a line that does not squash or demean, but instead insists on civility and kindness from our boy. For the moment, it seems to be working. William, our wild one, seems to like it, actually. As if something has been taken off his plate. Like finally he can just relax and tow the line.

Pics of William at the fair, by Billy

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back to school

Summer is ostensibly over; school started last Wednesday so students line up at my door, antsy to draw and paint and tell stories. I spend the first class reminded them why we do art in the first place; but I think, without words they may understand this intuitively, in bone and muscle. We do art, they seem to know, because we are human.

Our new principal gave us teachers a copy of ‘Brain Rules’ during our in-service week, a book about the way our minds work. This read has made me think that although we are often asked to justify art and music and physical education, our so-called peripheral subjects—their core tasks of moving and making and imagining—are at the core of our evolutionary memory, our ways of living and surviving.

Photos by Billy

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so long summertime

This summer has been wet and wild as a rain forest, everything growing too fast; packed full too, like a 2-year graduate program where all you can hope to do is skim the surface of the material, tend only to the most egregious weedy outbursts.

For my part, I’ve made lists, read novels, cleaned closets, and written 100 pages of setting and dialogue. It all feels tangled, unreal in these first cool days. And already I am anticipating that inevitable change: the zen-like drifting of one leaf after another—of fall.

Photos by me and Billy Billy

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baseball field on 1st street

–9-1-1, state your emergency
–There was a man, a woman
–What were they doing?
–I was walking my dogs. He was cornering her, pushing, shoving…
–Where were they?
–By the baseball field on 1st street
–Can you describe them? Black, white?
–Black, both black; he had on red
–Did anyone look injured?
–He was pushing, yelling. It was escalating. It didn’t look good
–Do you want to leave your name?
–I don’t think so
–Okay then, we’ll send someone by to see
–It didn’t look good
–I know, ma’am. Okay.

I’m enjoying this local blog of a mom I know. Check out Coconut girl, here, or read a review of her at stlworkingmom.com

Photos by Billy

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girlfriend

I discovered odd candy wrappings and a crust of a PB& J in William’s lunchbox, things I hadn’t packed for him. So I asked him about it. He looked at me sheepishly before answering:

–Maggie gave them to me
–Who’s Maggie?
–My girlfriend.
–So she gave you some of her lunch…did you give her anything?
–My salami.
–But you’re always saying you don’t like girls…
–Well, I like Maggie.
–Why is she your girlfriend? How did you know?
–I looked at her; she looked at me.

Here are a few new talented girlfriends from my writer’s retreat:

And our teacher, Hollins Professor, Cathy Hankla, with her many books, recent winner of the Boatwright Prize for Poetry, and to whom I am thankful for her generosity and guidance.

Photo by Billy
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pants on the ground

William represented at our family reunion in Carolina, hanging out with his cousins and accompanying Grandma and Papa in their rendition of Pants on the Ground in the ‘No Talent Show.’ I’m thinking back to when we hosted the reunion in Charlottesville in 2007: Billy and William played Bongos together.

Photos and video editing by Papa Johnson

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polaroid

Last week I ventured off alone to a writer’s retreat at an old hunting lodge turned rustic camp in bucolic Virginia. This meant of course leaving my own family. My departure was not as tearful as going to to Tinhouse when William was one years old, still there was that same bittersweet quality to being away—indulgence and ease and loneliness all at once.

For six nights I slept in an upstairs room of an old farm house under threadbare blankets. I set up the desk I brought myself by a window, and sat the fat square fan in a chair, facing me, to hasten my words or else lull me to sleep. I ate family style with the other writers, ten or so women– beautiful, bawdy, with a mean age of maybe 65. These writer women had done things: had attended wedding of now grown children, cared for and buried aged parents, held grand-babies older than my own only son. Their writing told that your relationships continue to pull and tug at you over the decades, even after your loved-ones have left this great green earth.

I pinned a Polaroid of Billy and William over my desk by the window. I offered their images and images of the things they’ve done to the other writers whenever the internet caught and held and I had my laptop over dinner. At lunch, over fresh ears of corn, I mumbled to myself, ‘This is sweet, William would like this.’ I guess it shouldn’t be surprising how much their presence pulled and tugged on me across miles. Even then.

Polaroid above by Billy, Checkerboard of Billy, William, and me, plus our friend (and Billy’s assistant) John.
Images of Nimrod Hall below: Painting by Judith Guy and photograph by a fellow writer. Thanks ladies!

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twin oaks and other summer excursions

As an detour from my regular fiction, this summer I’ve drafted a screenplay. I jumped on board to my husband Billy’s project because I wanted to work with him, and I was interested to see something I wrote possibly exist more fully in the world: actors speaking words I have written, and places I’ve imagined more or less come to life. And if all else fails, at least the chance to collaborate with other people on the process. Mostly, as a writer, I work alone. Mostly my stories sit silently in drawers, in piles red with workshop notes, waiting.

A screen play by its nature is a different beast from fiction. It is all structure: setting and action and dialogue positioned just so. The past, the internal world of the characters are (should be) shown only through what they do in a scene. This seems true in a way, too, like when you sit beside a stranger on a train, you only can guess at their past, their beliefs, by what they do and say, and the common space you share.

Our screen play takes place in an imagined place called ‘Christiania.’ The real Christiania exists in Copenhagen, a massive urban commune, big as city block big. In 2005, a brutal conflict with a drug gang led to a mayhem, infiltration, and several members shot. Ours in a smaller story, closer to our home, and our first place to look is at some of the communes (okay, alternative communities, intentional communities) here in Virginia. What does it mean to live in intentionally, and how does that go day to day? How can that difference lend to an interesting story?

Here is a bit of an opening scene:

EXT. DOWNTOWN – AFTERNOON

A young man, bright eyed, scraggly-faced, stands on a corner in a small-town downtown. A few people hurry by him against the backdrop of run-down storefronts. He extends flyers out toward them from the stack he holds in the crook of his arm. A jar for donations sits at his feet.

ISAIAH

Here you go, man—sir… It’s gorgeous out there…heaven on earth, truly….

An older man takes a flyer, nodding politely, but then sets it on the trashcan after passing.

ISAIAH

Excuse me, ma’am,… Two? Sure… take as many as you want…

A woman, busy with a toddler and a girl, takes two flyers, but then she gives them immediately to her children. The girl-child studies the paper. It appears homemade; there are flowers pressed into it. She rubs it against her check.

Two Goth teen-aged girls stop to talk to the young man. They huddle close, barraging him with questions, not pausing for his reply:

GOTH-GIRL#1

What’s it really like up there?

GOTH-GIRL#2

What do you DO all daylong?

GOTH-GIRL#1

Whatever you want, I’ll bet.

Billy and I took a look at Twin Oaks, a bucolic, well organized intentional community outside of Charlottesville. They hold Saturday tours, for a donation of a few dollars, a guide will walk you through all the buildings–laundry, cheese making, hammocks—along with glimpses of what life might be like there.

Photos by Billy

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wearily at the walmart

The signs boasted ‘unbeatable’ but from where I stood, things looked broken. From the waxy de-laminating floors to the pairs of plastic shoes hanging—off-gassing and strung together like fish.

I wandered the aisles, filling my basket with 5.99, 2.39, 1.29, weaving through mothers struggling behind strollers and old people wearing worn sneakers and furrowed brows.

The construction out front was marked by cryptic posters: ‘ Wait for the WOW!’ they read, but I for one, was not dying of anticipation. I hurried by a stack of cinder-blocks, a story high, teetering near the doors.

As for you Walmart, I used to fear your belligerent ‘Beware of Falling Prices! and you ceaseless expansion, but today I just felt sorry for any malice I may have wished on you and yours. As if you are, in some small way, a symbol of the promise of America; your decline a view to what we might become.

Read more about Walmart here.
Or for fun, consider this: Big box stores, like our lives, are cluttered with objects. My friend Hope just launched a site about the stories behind objects called both Life with Objects. Read it, write for it. Enjoy!

Photos by Billy

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swim

How did this happen so fast? One day, at the ACAC, William learned to swim, to flip even. How did he master this complex move of muscle and air? I remember when he couldn’t even push up, when crawling seemed a miracle.

Which everyday feats, preformed by loved ones, amaze you?

video by Billy

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