Jodi Hills

So this is who I am – a writer that paints, a painter that writes…

Tag Archives: sketch


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N-E-R-V-Y 

If you look it up in the dictionary, it has two meanings. Opposite really. Nervy. It can mean bold, or nervous. Both are probably true. And for me, usually at the same time. 

Months ago, in the middle of a situation in Marseille, feeling both, I decided to Wordle for distraction. I know there are certain starter words, almost mathematical, to give yourself the best chance, but I don’t play that way. I usually insert a word that says something about my current state of affairs, a way to insert myself in the game. It’s just more fun for me that way. So I chose the word with two meanings. Bold and nervous, because wouldn’t you have to be, I mean, are you really being bold if you’re not nervous? Is there any bravery without being afraid? I typed it in. N-E-R-V-Y. The letters turned over green. One by one. I beat Wordle. I chose the word in a single guess. It was about me. 

I three and four my way through most days. Sometimes two. Not playing the odds, but always playing myself. 

Last night, reading a new book, Apples Never Fall, there it was on the page, twice. Nervy. Had I not taken the big chance, the big swing, with my Wordle word, I would have just passed this page without great meaning. But I had taken the chance. I had bolded and nerved my way in, and found myself again, here in the words. 

I don’t want to live timidly. I want to be bold in the attempt. When I love, when I live. So when my reflection is offered back to me, I can say proudly, I was nervy. 

APPLES NEVER FALL
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In the right tempo.

She was the first person I knew to wear a beret. She sang songs about Paris. When I say I knew her, well, we never actually met, but she, Joni Mitchell, was my babysitter. Alone (I suppose you could say “unfettered”) with a turntable my brother left behind, I played the Court and Spark album again and again. I had memorized the words to each song, long before I knew what a free man in Paris would look like, or where Paris even was on a map. 

She was always there, the two hours between my hop off the yellow school bus and my mom’s return from work. Music never lets you be alone. Nor poetry, or any of the arts. Maybe that’s why I love them all so. For me, all a form of grace — it sits with you, until you can walk in it again. 

Maybe you’ll think it strange, but one of the first things I purchased at the Galleria in Edina was a green beret, made in France. But I think it’s perfect. This spinning of my worlds together, round and round, like the very music of my soul. 

We outgrow our babysitters, but not our need for care. I try to give it to myself, still. I hope you can do the same. Find your grace. In the right tempo. Walk in it. And then one day, “unfettered and alive” you find yourself in the dance. 

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Showering in the Louvre.

It was one of the best compliments ever. They were visiting us from the US. After getting ready for the day, he said of my bathroom, “It was like showering in the Louvre.” I’m still beaming. 

Sunday afternoons were always ripe for the dreaming when I was a young girl. Saturdays, my mother did laundry and catch-up work. We often snuck in a trip to the mall if my homework was done. And it always was, by Friday night.  Which left the sweet spot of Sunday afternoon, hovering between the rush of Saturday and Monday’s panic that arrived late Sunday evening. 

In our small apartment, it wasn’t unusual to wish for space. “And if I had a big house,” she said, “I would travel from room to room, each one an adventure.” “Oh yes!” I agreed. And donned in our Saturday clothes, sale tags still hanging, we decorated the imaginary rooms with all of our very real hearts!

I think of it still. Each room an experience. Books and paintings and photos and music. Walls with feeling. A welcome. A gathering. Decorated with the sweet dreams of Sunday afternoons. 

So when he said, it, it wasn’t about the bathroom itself. It was bringing my mother here. To France. It was a gathering of all sweet dreams come true. 

For the same reason I offer the scent of fresh baked cookies to the kitchen painting on a Sunday afternoon. It wafts throughout the house, past Sunday night, into the fresh week’s beginning. The dream continues. Monday promises to carry. 

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Having the farm.

When he saw the painting of my grandfather he asked if we still had the farm. I paused, stuck in who the “we” would even be. I started passing it down in my head, from uncle to cousin, to second cousin, (none to whom I felt a collective we). It passed again in my head to I’m not sure, to finally, it didn’t really even matter, because, I told him, “I still have everything.” And I do.

Even a lifetime and country away, I can feel the warmth of the rock at the base of the driveway. The same steady of my grandfather. The gravel beneath my feet. The jolt of an electric fence. The smell of apples, on and off the trees. The sandy feel of a cow’s tongue. The bounce of a screen door. The scent of my grandma’s kitchen. My face against her sticky apron. The ever damp basement. Jesus on the cross upstairs. Prayed to from the kitchen table. The sewing room that stitched all nine children’s lives together. The front stoop that promised the scent of tobacco and hope. My mother laughing in that kitchen. Crying in that kitchen. Hands folded at that table. Driving away from the rock one last time, never really leaving. 

So, yes, I still have the farm. And the we is all who listen to the stories. The we is you who remember your own grandmother’s apron. Who read the words and climb upon your grandfather’s lap. We still have it all. We have everthing.

Something will grow from all of this, and it will be me.
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Not lost on me.

If you need reminding of how differently we are taking in the information of this world, just google a few books and read the reviews. I always sample the books online before buying. Searching for a new read yesterday, I had to laugh because three times in a row the “It was so bad I want a refund” review was right next to the “I can’t stop thinking about this book, it changed my life” comment. Each were given the same words. The same pages. But clearly they didn’t receive the same story. 

So it really shouldn’t be a surprise that we have such vastly polarizing views of the world. The information is processed so differently within each of us. Affected, I suppose, by our own experience. This was proven again as I picked out my book last night. As I began sampling, I wasn’t certain about this book, not sure if it would appeal to me. Did I have anything in common with the main character, a young Japanese girl writing in her notebook? It was when they cut to a woman on a remote Canadian island, who finds this journal that washed up on shore in a bag that I knew. It was one of those moments when you look around to see if you are actually being filmed. Am I part of the simulation? Because surely some magical force directed you here. It was when they cut to the Canadian woman describing the front of the sketchbook that I knew — “À la recherche du temps perdu” (French — in search of lost time). This is the sketchbook I started recently. The sketchbook I show you almost every day with the birds. The sketchbook that I hold daily. The one that is currently resting beneath the tablet that I’m typing on. 

This is the reason why I buy this book. The reason that I am connected to this Japanese girl and this Canadian woman. The reason I still believe we can come together. We can find a way. The very reason I have continued hope. 

There are so many things that can divide up. But I am not that different from you. We can always find a reason to connect. If we keep searching, time is never lost. 

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Ever the heart.

I didn’t have words for it when I began. It all seemed too much. Too long. And it wasn’t like I was simply out on a limb, I was gone, so far off into the distant future, a future that I could awfulize into every worst scenario. So I brought myself back. Gave myself only the space of this sketchbook. Allowing myself any emotion, but confining the worry, the fear, to about 12” of my day. Feel anything, everything, I told myself. And once I gave it a voice, without my knowledge or permission, that voice began to turn into a song. And that song calls me each day to the page, not the fear. 

And the most joyous thing happened yesterday. Looking at the bird woman, with her wicker bag at the market, birds resting on her head, I imagined her saying, “Seriously, I really need to shop faster.” And I laughed. Out loud. 

And it isn’t time making the difference. It’s the work. Giving myself a place to grow, to feel. A place where perfection isn’t required. And it’s ironic, I suppose, so beautifully ironic, that in this tiny space, I feel so gloriously free. 

It just occurred to me, maybe that’s what the heart is after all, a sketchbook. Not the place with all the answers, but beat by beat, page by page, a tiny space where we are free to feel, to learn, to grow, to become. Ever the artists of our own choosing. I suppose it’s never the brain, nor the hand, that says, I can make something beautiful out of this, but the heart…ever the heart… turning the page, crossing over to the beauty that lies ahead. 

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Forwards, backwards and upside down.

I suppose I’ve always valued resilience over perfection. First of all, good luck with the latter, but even if it were achievable, how boring! There is no movement in perfection. No dance, no artistry, no flight at all.

Some say it’s why we love the hummingbird — the acrobats of the sky — with their ability to fly forwards, backwards and upside down. How delightful! I love even just saying it. And don’t we all have to be, emotional acrobats that is, while navigating these lives, these loves. Do you think joy, or forgiveness comes without a little tumbling? I don’t think so.

So what if we embraced it? Celebrated them — all of our imperfections and struggles survived, as the beautiful flashes of color that they are?

I’ve never been one to be get there as the crow flies. But I keep humming along. Taking delight in all of my forwards, backwards and upside downs. And it would be my honor, my pleasure, to tumble and fumble along beside you.

“I wish for you an imperfect life, and all the wonder that living can bring.”

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Je m’appelle Emily.

Before I had finished the page in my sketchbook, it had become an Emily Dickinson poem. “In the name of the Bee,” — a poem that had been passed around between my mother, my ninth grade English teacher, my friend David, two books on my shelf, and the path that I walk daily. 

It was another Emily who asked, 

“EMILY: “Does anyone ever realize life while they live it…every, every minute?”
STAGE MANAGER: “No. Saints and poets maybe…they do some.”

– Thornton Wilder, “Our Town”

Wanting to get to “some,” and realizing my limits for sainthood, I try to walk in the poem each day.

I said once, on the days that I can’t create something beautiful, at least give me the wisdom to see it. Yesterday was busied with a trip to Marseille. We had an appointment at the Hopital Conception. We were greeted at the entry with a poster of Rimbaud, the French poet. While others sat in the waiting room. I sat in the poetry. I looked around to see if others were held in the syntax, hoping, wishing, they could feel my Emily within their Rimbaud. That maybe we could all live together in the magic of the word, maybe not “every, every minute,” but for this moment, the magic of this collective poem. 


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The comfort of shore.

Van Dyke Road separated the two worlds. It was so magical how far crossing one small stretch of gravel could take me. The back of our house faced a sea of grain — Hugo’s field. And in a way, it was like swimming, running through the stalks at full chubby- legged-speed, arms stretched to each side, creating a golden wave. Across the road though, behind Weiss’s house, was a lake. Not a big one. Nor a clean one, of the 10,000 our state touted. We didn’t swim in it. So what was the allure? It had to be the dock. 

Florence and Alvin had a big yard. Bonnie, the daughter, was so much older, that to me, she was just another adult. So there were no arms of youth waving me over to play. I would sneak along the shrub line. Roll down the manicured slope to the lake’s edge. I could hear the dock before I saw it. The wave rocked wood cracking gently. I took off one bumper tennis shoe and placed my lavender-white toes on the sun warmed plank. It was extraordinary. I have no memory of being a shoeless baby, but I imagine at some point some uncle or boisterous neighbor blew their warm breath on my rounded feet, and I knew, standing there, barefoot on Weiss’s dock, this must be exactly how it felt. I giggled like that infant and took off my other shoe. 

I braved each crack to the end. My body craved what my feet already had, so I lay down and let it gather in my arms, legs and back. My fingers danced at my side in the tiny puddles of cool water that gathered in the wood’s unevenness. I don’t know if I saw all the beauty of these imperfections, but I’d like to think I did. 

Who knows how long I stayed. Summer afternoons felt eternal. I guess in a way, they are. I can still rest in that warmth. 

I have written so many times about swimming – in actual lakes. Lake Latoka was only a bike ride away. But just out my door, front and back, oh, how my heart and imagination swam. Daily. And maybe that’s what home is after all…this ability to dream in the comfort of shore. 

The comfort of shore.
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No sharp edges.

For me, it’s the softness of her gaze. No sharp edges to her reaction. Even her shoulders aren’t weighted. This is what makes her beautiful — not what she sees, but how she sees it. From within. 

I paint her to remind myself the same is true for all of us. How we navigate through this world is what people really see. We need to stay informed, of course, but the ugliness that gathers, and there is a lot, I don’t want that inside of me. So I soften my gaze. My eyes. My lips. My tongue. Relax my shoulders. Nothing for hatred and ill will to hang on. (Because aren’t those sharp edges so much easier to cling to?)

I suppose I only know it, because I was always given that soft place to land. My grandma’s lap, my mother’s heart. I see now that it was not only for me, but for them as well. A gift we must give each other.  A gift we must give ourselves. I dare the morning and the mirror softly. No sharp edges in sight.

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