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:
Smart, salacious sex and travel writer Jenny block who writes columns for Huff Post and Fox News. I’m looking forward to reading her memoir, ‘Open.’
Vivacious, clever, Vivian Lawry, Author of the Chesapeake Bay Mystery, Dark Harbor.
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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coconut, part 1
The first installment of ‘Coconut’, one of my favorite stories from ‘The One You Remember.’ This short was a finalist for the Jane’s Story Annual award in 2/2009. It begins:
I was a nice girl before Principal Jackson ushered Satya into our English class. ‘Her family just moved her from India,’ he told our teacher, loud enough for us to hear. When he said ‘India’ he brought his hands together and squeezed and predictably, half the class looked over at me.
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Filed under Podcast, fiction, short story, writing | Tags: charlottesville podcast, Middle School Story, Podcast, short story | Comment (0)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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Filed under family matters, photographs, video | Tags: family reunion, pants on the ground | Comment (0)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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Filed under art, family matters, photographs, writing | Comment (0)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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Filed under fiction, photographs, writing | Tags: alternative community, Christiania, commune, screenplay, twin oaks | Comments (3)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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Filed under fiction, photographs, the world we live in | Comment (0)the episode, final
Here is the final installment of Jarrod, his mother, and their days of judgment.
Jarrod’s mother is holding up the backpack between them, like a trophy. Her cheeks sag even as she smiles at him. Her shirt is stretched open in front between the buttons, the fabric pulling. Her skin looked boiled and pink like canned meat.
-I was straightening up, she says, And look here what I found by the door…
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Filed under Podcast, short story | Tags: charlottesville podcast, Short Stories | Comment (0)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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Filed under family matters, motherhood, photographs, video | Tags: kid swimming | Comment (0)billy is a sail
Billy is a sail. He puffs up and tugs us way out when the wind is right. To William’s delighted squeals, we take a trip, a risk, try something new.
Billy is billowy, easy to spot even from a distance. I see the two of them–father and son—way out there and so happy to be together that it almost hurts.
Most days, I am the steady plodding one. I drop William off, kiss his cheek at the gate, check to make sure he has everything. He tromps inside to put his lunch in his cubby, and when he returns his big eyes bob briefly past the playground—past the sandbox, where all his friends unearth and bury things–and settle on me.
I imagine I am not all not that easy to see, holding still and blending in with the blue-green foliage by the gate. But he trusts that I am there waiting to be found. Briefly, his eyes meet mine and he smiles, mouthing bye momma before turning to play.
I feel like the rudder then: unseen, understated, but necessary too.
Will and his friend Quinn, Cape Charles
Photos by Billy
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Filed under family matters, motherhood, photographs | Comments (3)the episode, part 1
I have a secret love for TV judge shows: Judge Judy, The Judy, The People’s Court. I know its wrong: all those people airing their dirty laundry for a few dollars and my entertainment, but I can’t help myself. And those judges with their TV smiles, highlighting the chaos then making order from it, like a perfect short story. Here is my story, The Episode, which starts with 13 year old, defendant Jarrod.
Jarrod knows that his mother is big, but on the episode she is chunky, hefty, obese. The camera adds pounds to her massive breasts and bulging stomach. In pans to better show her thighs: pink rolls of flesh of flesh beneath a frayed jean mini-skirt.
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Filed under Podcast, fiction, short story | Tags: charlottesville podcast, Judge Judy, podcast stories | Comment (0)