the #1 city in america

Photo by Billy

This Saturday, our friend Cynthia drove down from Northern Virginia. She arrived in Charlottesville flustered and disturbed by all the new development along Route 29. Countless plateaus of red clay, tracked up by bulldozers, had replaced the green pastoral landscapes of her last visit.

The rate of development here exploded after Charlottesville was named the number one city in America to live, in the 2004 edition of Cities Ranked & Rated. Since then, terms like “mixed used condo” and “by right development” have become commonplace. Battalions of beige row mansions are rising up on every “unused” parcel–no matter how steep or inaccessible. In my historic neighborhood, mornings are filled with the beeps and screeches of bulldozers, and mid day is punctuated by dynamite blasts. By evening, the topography and the socio-economic structure has shifted.

Does this aggressive development signal progress, wealth, and freedom? Or is it a mark of environmental recklessness, cultural homogenization, and money grubbing? Some mix, I’m sure. Still I feel flustered and disturbed to see it.

This sweeping change is the subject of Billy’s latest photo project, called ‘The Number One City in America.’ Images will be on display in April at Cafe Cubano or check them out here. Join us for a casual opening reception the evening of Friday, April 6th.

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the shape of fiction

Will and I, out front
Photo by Billy

I came across an excellent book for writers: “Making Shapely Fiction”, by Jerome Stern. This book arrived when I most needed it; like finding a flashlight at your fingertips just as the lights go out with a pop.

My darkness, so to speak, was puzzling out the structure of some of my Wakefield Middle School Stories. I’ve been working on them almost daily, vacillating between the excitement of creating and the frustration of not knowing how to fit everything together. For me, writing is a balance between radiating ideas, and the exacting craft of honing them down. I struggle to organize everything so that it might mean something to me, to a reader.

This is why “Shapely Fiction” is so elucidating. In the first section Stern describes 16 shapes a story can fill. These shapes have natural tension and immediacy, which pulls writer and reader along.

All of our creative endeavors are collaborations. As writers, cooks, musicians, parents even, we get inspiration, guidance from the world. This can come from a phrase overheard, community, art, or even an instructional book, it seems.

That said, I’m grateful to have found Mr. Stern’s book. And I’m excited to see how the Wakefield stories– the narcissistic principal, the bawdy new girl, the geeky boy who gets hot over the summer– shape up in this new light.

Note: The Festival of the Book starts today here in Charlottesville and John Grisham will announce the winner of the Hook Fiction contest at a kick off event. Sadly, it won’t be my short story: Social Studies, which was a finalist. Still I’m looking forward to popping in on a few Festival events, and maybe even introducing myself to Mr. Grisham, anyway ;)

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now and then

Grandma reads to William, 3.2007

Photos by Billy

A visit from Grandma, 8.2006?

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spring cleaning

Springtime in Virginia has my head spinning, with those ridiculously cheery daffodils sprouting from the grass. On Sunday, I set William down outside for the first time. He scratched the dirt gently as if unearthing fragile, ancient things. Later I saw him looking up, with wonder and amazement, into the vast empty sky.

Inside things seem boundless, too, but not in such a gorgeous way. How can a 1,500 square foot house contain so much unnecessary stuff? Outgrown Baby paraphernalia; towers of cds; photos sticking together. Not to mention the windowpanes, patterned with impatient prints of the dogs’ moist noses.

When it first gets warms out, I want to flush out all that is superfluous, scrub away the excess, tidy up what is left. I want to open the windows, the doors, and invite that vastness in, that fleeting sense of wonder.

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everybody hurts sometimes

computer drawing by me

My baby hurts.
Not William.
Billy.

My husband, Billy, hurts almost always. He has suffered from daily, chronic, sometimes debilitating pain for the last six years. I knew him before this pain descended, a bright eyed boy who played spastic drums, biked to karate, and went sky-diving at dawn on Saturdays.

Billy’s pain started while we were traveling for eleven months through parts of Asia and South and Central America. In Nepal Billy lost 30 pounds in as many days from Gardia. In Peru his wrists began to hurt like carpal tunnel syndrome.

Back home in Virginia, this normal pain transformed itself. It migrated from his arms into the front and back of his body. It began to set off migraines, insomnia, nausea. Billy describes it as charlie horses all over, ever present, never fully releasing.

For years, we tried desperately to find the cause, the cure, talking to local specialists and alternative medicine practitioners. We waited for weeks at the famous Mayo clinic. We tried acupuncture, shiatsu, weightlifting, various diets, and supplements. Some doctors were dismissive, saying “it’s all in your head.” Others humbly claimed the limits of their practice. The closest we’ve come to a diagnosis has been “fibromyalgia, maybe.”

Now we don’t ask too many questions. Billy feels this pain is his to bear. He grits his teeth, forces smiles. He soaks in the bath and breaths into it. He loves us dearly, and plays music more measuredly. He does not practice martial arts, or jump out of planes.

I love him dearly, so try to make a space for his pain in my body, but my organs are already too squished together, my muscles cling close to the bone. So I repeat his pain like a mantra: he hurts, he hurts, he hurts, I say to myself.

And still I cannot quite get
my mind
around
it.

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