My first mistake, which I make soon after arriving at my studio, is to confuse the insect resting on the doormat for the hornets swarming the broken light fixture above my door. The hornets have made a nest there and are flying in and out, navigating the splayed wires hanging from the lamp’s tubular neck, which is open to the elements. The hornets are what to worry about, even though they haven’t noticed me yet, not specifically. I am a peripheral disturbance, an odor that sends them swaying to an ancient choreography.
I’ve come for an artist residency in the rural Virginia Piedmont, east of the Blue Ridge Mountains, south of Charlottesville. The land was once a farm, and the buildings reflect that heritage. My writing studio is in a converted barn, built in the 1930s, that had once housed dairy cows. The concrete floor, now painted a glossy gray, had been sloped to accommodate drainage, and that idiosyncrasy was preserved in the renovation. Sometimes when I sit at
