you as your own art project

This is William’s tree. I chose and photographed and painted it back in the spring as part of a graduate color class. This tree, its versions, and all the things I learned while making it are forever linked to William.

The thing about art projects, I tell WIlliam and my students, is that the real result is you. You are your own project, I try to tell them.

And all those hours, choices, struggles—even those framed final pictures up on the wall or packed away—none of it matters as much in the end as what the making of it does in you.

Snapshots of student masks and tree by me; photo of painting by Billy

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first fridays

Baby Landscape by Billy Hunt

First Fridays in Charlottesville mean wine, cheese, and art openings; this Friday, June 4th, our family and friends are well represented. Check out Billy’s (and William’s) show of Baby Landscapes, photographs of our boy between one and a half and three years old, in local landscapes, overlaid with William’s own drawings. Downtown at Cafe Cubano, 5-7.

Also, my mug is featured in two, count ‘em two shows, thanks to local photographer Sarah Cramer. Her striking portraits will be on display at the Women in the Arts Auction and Show, to benefit the Piedmont Council of the Arts (Auction Thursday June 3rd and opening Friday June 4th). Click here for details.

AND, another set of Sarah’s work, Portraits of Talent, will be exhibited at NPR Radio IQ’s new gallery.

There are many other strong shows worth checking out, Stacy Evans and Aaron Farrington to name a few. So I hope to see you gazing at art downtown this Friday, or sometime during these longest days of June.

Portrait by Sarah Cramer

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seizure in the snow

It came out of nowhere. Weirdly, William had fallen asleep in my arms, but otherwise he looked fine, so I laid him down for an early nap. It was snowing outside, the start of our promised new and improved blizzard, with the snow from the last one not yet melted.

I was startled when I heard the strange gurgling coming from the bedroom–unearthly noises, ones I’ve unfortunately heard before. I rushed in and there was William, rolling under a blanket, eyes rolled back and white as the snow falling in the window frame. His muscles fired oddly, his fist clenched, slobber bubbling at his mouth.

Panic is a strange thing; it comes on steadily, surely, when your child is not right and beyond your reach. Billy had left his cellphone and was unreachable, but the pediatrician’s answering service called back.

–It could be another febrile seizure, the doctor said. But if he didn’t appear feverish, it could be a sign of meningitis or something worse. Take him to the emergency room.

I didn’t want to call an ambulance, but that’s just what I did after no one else answered their phone. It was slippery out, and I knew I couldn’t drive. In anticipation of the storm, my car was parked at the top of the long gravel drive, blocking any entry. William kept twittering, murmuring, not in full seizure, but not himself either. I was terrified to try to wake him. What if he didn’t wake? I packed a bag of odd things; put on my snow boots; wrapped William in a gray blanket. I left a scrawled note for Billy. I started up the long gravel drive, crunchy with snow.

That was a very long and surreal walk up our gravel driveway. William woke and looked at me with his fierce gaze, as if to say , Why are we even out here, Mama?—him reading the looks of panic and containment fighting on my face. William was not well and it was my responsibility—mine alone at the moment—to make him right again, and that felt like a terrible weight. My arms ached with it. The yard had a dreamlike quality, snow clinging to the branches and some already fallen, littering the white. I stopped under some pine boughs, my arms trembling. Then I looked up, saw the red shininess by the mailbox, a fire truck slowing. I have never in my whole life been so glad to see the paramedics, broad strong men, rushing down toward me in the snow.

About 5 percent of children under 5 years old have fever related febrile seizures. William’s turned out to be just this, again. In most cases, children outgrow these and have no symptoms later in life. Thanks to EMS and the kind folks at Martha Jefferson. Thanks for all yours warm thoughts. You can read more about febrile seizures here.

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our times

Every time I turn on the radio lately, I hear worrisome news, news that makes me want to switch it off again.

How hordes are suffering among rubble, and elsewhere, others are recklessly lashing out.

I hear about the many ways our economy is flailing; how the social systems that support us are strained or bankrupt; how the natural ones stressed to an unprecedented point.

And as of this month, according to the the supreme court, corporate money equals free speech, so I expect the next election cycle to be particularly cacophonous, with no one much listening, and nothing much getting done.

Then randomly I came across an image of one of those body scans—the kind they now take of you at airport security, after you’ve put your shoes and your plastic bag of toiletries in those dull gray bins. I’d never seen an image from the scans before. It was a woman, gray and translucent. And she looked so naked there, so alone, so exposed with her hands thrown up in quiet surrender.

And I thought, This an image of our times.

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art and immortality

Computer drawing by me.

Mimi’s house is a monument to remembering; the stairwell lined with old faded pictures, and those silhouettes cut from black paper, inscrutable profiles. There jutting out like a mast is the youngest family member: our boy William.

Having children has always been the time honored path to immortality, and it’s no different for us. William’s arrival shifted our sense of scope, like plate tectonics, unseen but massive. All at once we felt ourselves balanced between antiquity and the future that we see in him.

Nonetheless, I think there is another, less talked about way to connect to the future. In short, by making things. Not monumental best selling things, but small, careful, strange, awkward things. Artifacts of being here.

Art, even art with a lower case ‘a’, has a way of remaining in the world. I’m generally taken aback when I reunite with an old friend and they mention some forgotten paintings that still lives on some wall in other their house, occupying some small framed corner, and their mind each time they pass it.

But why should I be surprised? I have threadbare mixed tapes, and scraps of old songs stuck in my head that play in loops if I wake in the middle of the night; that I sing sometimes to William when he can’t sleep. I’ve got stories, even stories from forgotten friends— a girl I met one summer when I was 15, for example, whose poem is embossed in me. Her name was Stephanie and the silver feather-shaped earrings she wrote about still shines in my memory, catches the light, reflects some sliver of her back to me.

My friend Sara Owen does this beautiful ‘house’ painting. Check out her painted portraits by clicking on her link.

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the future of the book

William drawing in the backseat and his first computer drawing.

Photo by Billy

I haven’t written any new fiction lately. I set ‘write my book’ squarely near the top of my things-to-do list, but other pressing things cut in line:
Loads of laundry.
Meds for Molly.
Plans for the next school week.

A few weeks back, I went to the James River Writers Conference in Richmond. There was a panel discussion on the future of the book. Would books even exist in a few short years, and what about the publishing industry? My own concerns were more localized. I sat there knowing the future of my own book, namely that there would be NO book unless I could sit down an write it.

There was one speaker, a kind of a non-writer, Dash Shaw, who makes Graphic novels. He talked like Keanu Reeves a la ‘Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure’—that stoner-style disjointed cadence, not without its poetry. On the panel, Dash said something like, ‘Who cares about the future of the book?’ to an audience full of writers and bibliophiles. Then he mentioned a xeroxed comic-zine that he used to get as a teenager in the mail. How unpolished it was, and how amazing. He said he was happy enough to be able to put a comic up on the web, no publisher in sight. To lay it out just the way he wanted.

I cracked open Dash’s fat graphic novel on Monday. Although I love words and pictures, I’d never read a comic book before. The thing is, it’s so good: funny, thoughtful, gross, and sometimes sublime.

So I’ve come to this: why worry about the books in my future. What form, if any, they might take. Better for me to just focus on stories.
Stories in drawings or words lined up on the page.
Stories unpolished or amazing.
Gross or sublime.
Stories are the thing I want to do.

The graphic novel I’m reading, by Dash Shaw, is called Bottomless Bellybutton.

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perfect outfit

computer drawing by me

Every since I was little, I’ve held the secret belief that the perfect outfit might act as a charm. That maybe if I lay the right fabric against some other right fabric, especially say, for the first day of the 5th grade, or for an important trip,then there will be some sort of magical outcome.

It’s like superstition.
Like clothes could be some sartorial harbinger.
Like, maybe beauty can seep from cotton into muscle and bone.

You should have seen: when Billy and I were planning our trip around the world together back in ’99, the complex plans I drew up of which lightweight and portable articles I might bring to India, Nepal, Brazil.

The thing is, rarely does it ever turn out right—these first day, first impression outfits, these compact attempts at outward perfection. Cuts fall all wrong. Fabrics Pull. Things that look fine in our dim bathroom light prove unflattering or plain ugly in the real world.

Still, here comes some new thing. Something where I might be new again. Better this time. A new year. A party. A try for good and true new friends. I want to wear something–not so much fancy or expensive–but that shows people the person I want to be. The person I think I am. The inside one.

Human as I am, I set out my clothes.
This with that.
Look at me.
Can you see how hard I try?

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new table

My pine cone drawing on our new table; our assignment is to add, erase, and redraw within the same work over several months. Photos by Billy

We got this new dining room table—sleek lines drawn in dark gleaming wood—but at once it set everything else in our house into question.

What of the long low couch I inherited in college, which now shows bare teeth marks of our second dog? Or the orange shaggy wool rug that was supposed to shed for a week—according to the manufacturer—but is, instead, still shedding years later?

Our house is too old too, and ‘not a straight angle in her’ the inspector had said, and from day to day we can’t decide if there is charm in those odd angles or just plain disarray.

In my drawing class, it’s the same as I set out to make a system of lines in vine charcoal and ink. With each new choice, everything from before hangs in the balance.

Part II of ‘drawing with a history’ where I was instructed to erase or smudge parts of the pine cones and add a ‘living thing.’

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out on the town

computer drawing by me

Friday night at 7:30 the downtown pedestrian mall is bustling; women in skinny jeans and high heels click past with men on their arms. Cars troll for spots, their windows down and music streaming out; their low beams click on as the light falls from the sky.

The air is that perfect temperature where you barely notice it, and people want to be outside: at X lounge and Miller’s, all the outdoor tables are filled. High school kids sit and smoke in front of the movie theater, looking affected and lost.

Then a group of woman closer to my age sweep past, in flip flops and soft hoodies, their hair down, talking and laughing. For a moment I keep pace with them, and anyone would think I was out on the town, too. Then I peel off at the pharmacy—open til 8:00—pick up our prescriptions, and hurry back to the boys at home.

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repped

computer drawing by me

She heard a few paragraphs of my short story Pseudocyesis, read shakily at Tin House, and introduced herself afterwards. “I’m a scout for a literary agency,” she said. “What are you working on…I’d like to see more.”

Back in Virginia, I learned a bit about the agency then, with help from Billy and Sarah B., I polished up three middle school stories and sent them off. I was excited, but I expected nothing; short stories are not particularly marketable, and I am still learning so much about lining the words up right.

At any rate, I heard back, and miracle of miracle, they wanted to represent my collection. So I’m repped now, meaning I have an agent who will try to sell my work to a publisher. Pretty much I feel giddy as one my characters: a thirteen year old with a crush, except—just this once—my love has been returned.

One of my essays, Our boy Powhatan, has been republished this week Sure Woman.To receive notices of new posts on Jocelyn’s Stories, click here