jld

Writing female-centric fantasy as a form of reclamation. A recovering creative & advocate of creativity-as-spirituality.

[motherearthnewsmag]

How to Dry Herbs for Optimal Quality

If you grow your own herbs, you’ll want to learn how to dry them to preserve their freshness and enjoy them through the winter months. If you follow the techniques described here, your dry herbs will last for months to come.

By Tammi Hartung 

[thegreydavidson-blog]

In preparation for winter.

[thegreydavidson-blog]

[thegreydavidson-blog]

1. Poisonous

     She was in good spirits when he came to her room.

     “Hello, gloria.”

    She laid back on her bedspread and smiled lazily at him, sprawling her arms out to her sides. Too much, she thought, and looked him over nonchalantly. You'll give yourself away if you're giddy like this.

     “Come to dinner.”

     “All right.”

    They left her personal room and crossed the courtyard. She hitched up her shawl against the chilly night air. He glanced sideways at her, then looked the other direction. She knew he knew. But would he guess? Oh, he always did. This was their game, and no one ever won.

    In the hall, a fire was lit and the table was spread long and low, cushions all around. Plates and cups had been laid out, and there was some fruit, but the dinner hadn't yet been served.

     “Come, gloria.” He took her hand and sunk down with her onto a few of the cushions at the tableside. He was stroking the inside of her elbow with the fingertips of one hand while he was reaching for one of the bowls of fruit with the other.

    He leaned over her and he looked mischievous. She narrowed her eyes him, but couldn't hide her smile. “Let me feed you grapes.”

    He had plucked one from the vine and was lowering it toward her lips when she turned the other way and said, “Oh, I've an appetite now for something more than fruit, my husband.”

    He chuckled, low and sharp, and popped the grape into his own mouth, dropping her outstretched arm and leaning away from her onto his own pile of cushions.

     “And what is it to be tonight, then?”

    She looked at him, her eyebrows high, feigning innocence. She shrugged her shoulders, reached over to him and took the grape that was now resting in his fingertips. She sucked it through her lips and chewed slowly while he watched her.

    He slapped the table.

     “Wine!” He looked around. “Where are my slaves?” He drummed his fingers on the tabletop, and in the next instant, the servingmen and women had swooped out from seemingly nowhere. They were piling platters of food onto the table, jugs of wine, a harpist had begun to play somewhere in the room.

    She raised her cup for her slavegirl to fill with wine. He was already grabbing anything within arms' reach, looking it over, sniffing it, then tossing it aside and moving onto the next thing. Her girl came over with a sealed amphora, held it out on display.

     “Is this it?”

     “My beautiful lady's wine, yes,” the girl said.

     “Husband, this is my special wine. I helped to stomp the must -- last year?” She turned to her girl. “The year before?” The girl nodded.

     “Yes, open it. I have waited so long.”

    The girl sliced open the resin seal and poured a little into her cup. She lifted it and inhaled slowly, deeply. It was sweet and dark, fruity and earthy all at once. She sighed and lilted her head back in pleasure.

     “Mmmm,” she breathed. “This, my husband.” She leaned down the table and handed him her cup. “This would have Zeus himself drunk before the dinner is over!”

    He stuck his nose in it and sniffed.

    She grabbed at the cup.

     “Don't!" She made as if to pull it from him but let him inhale the aroma. "This wine is all for me, husband.”

    He barked a laugh and waved his hand carelessly. She hesitated.

     “Or is there something in this cup that I should not drink?” She asked suspiciously. “Have you poisoned my wine, my dear husband?”

     “How can I have done, gloria,” he said to her lazily. “It's just been unsealed. It must be, then, that I am a master assassin, after all, despite all my many failed efforts.” He laughed.

    She began to pour her wine out onto the floor, watching it dribble out from the rim of the cup. She sighed, “You ruin everything.”

     “My dear,” he said impatiently, and taking hold of the cup -- her hand still around it, his hand around hers -- he took a deep swig, then released it and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand with a flourish, as if waiting for applause. He cocked an eyebrow at her.

    She was motionless. She could not believe he had done it. She stared at him, her cheeks drawing heavy on her face.

    He swayed a bit and looked down at his body. His eyelids blinked unevenly. He opened his mouth as if to say something, but closed it again, open, closed, open. He looked up at her suddenly. She knew he knew now.

     “I have won, my husband,” she whispered, and, leaning forward to his chest, held his neck in her hand and kissed his cheek gently. She pressed her forehead to his temple and held him until he died.

[thegreydavidson-blog]

1. Poisonous

[levv17]

Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.

Winston Churchill (via levv17)

[leave-me-colourless]

[thegreydavidson-blog]

story snippet 003

     This is your fourteenth life, and you think it's a good one.

     It's hard to remember them distinctly most of the time - they blur together, and you'll catch yourself remembering things that happened in two different lives in the same memory. You've always been a woman, at least you cannot remember ever having been a man, but then maybe the experiences aren't all that different, or it's just too hard to think past the female existence you're in now.

     One of your daughters is sitting next to you at the table. How many have you had now? Quickly, you try to envision the faces, the names, of all the daughters you've had in all your lives. You can remember eleven, but you're certain you're forgetting some. And there were some sons, too, but rarely. Maybe three or four. Which lives were those?

     You weren't always a mother, in those other lifetimes. Roughly half the time, you imagine. And glancing sideways at your daughter (twelve?), you wonder if you have any choice going in.  Were you always meant to be a mother in this life, or if you'd only made different choices, it wouldn't have been so again?

     Maybe in some lives you'd felt like a good mother, but this motherhood feels unnatural, cumbersome, like poorly fitted clothes that you're always pulling at. How old am I now? you wonder. This daughter has seen at least five harvests, but she had been born at lammastide and she is still quite small. And she hadn't been the first daughter, but she is the oldest now.

     So many daughters. Are they all living different lives?

[words-pics-flicks-deactivated20]

There is no doubt fiction makes a better job of truth.

Doris Lessing (via words-pics-flicks)

[thegreydavidson-blog]

story snippet 002

    The mound of earth beneath their feet was hardly more than a few blades of grass stuck up out of a lump of mud, soft and soggy. Fog curled around them, floating off the waters from all sides. The birds hadn't begun to sing yet, the only way Ingorn knew that it was not yet morning. Here in the mists, on the island, time felt slippery. The air itself seemed to shimmer, somehow, despite the matteness of the fog, mimicking the janus's velvety veil of nothingness.

    Ingorn's skin began to tingle, and she turned her head slightly, peering past her cloak to look upon her cousin. Isild was standing, clasping her hands tightly together in front of her, watching the waterswomen as they moved about, forming a half-circle around them and the janus. She peeked up at Ingorn, saw her watching, twitched a smile that was more nervous, Ingorn thought, than excited.

    Ingorn reached out her hand to pat the girl on the shoulder, but at the same moment, the waterswomen raised their arms in unison toward the janus.

     There wasn't time anymore.

[thegreydavidson-blog]

The Autumn Cauldron

Inspiration:

Spend the next three months creating something that will materially improve your portfolio. Then, do it again.

Objective:

To use the wheel of the year as a creative guide; following the natural cycle of the seasons, to tune into autumn’s energy to shape a nourishing space for spending meaningful, intentional time on my vocational work.

Guiding Energies:

Autumn Medicine:

challenged + tempered to grow up, take full responsibility

holding the tension of our own complexity - light + dark

the power of no, boundaries

rooting into our own authority

aligning with our truth

learning to wield our power wisely

sacred task: to hold ourselves

listen with intention to our inner critic

disruption + disturbance of what the ego holds precious

what is the kernel of truth? + what is simply unkindness?

holding onto our goodness while examining our flaws

reward: the capacity to hold to the brilliance of ourselves, with humility

resilience + responsiveness to life

honoring our own wisdom

Autumn Equinox Medicine:

accepting gifts of the harvest

healing, balance, greater strength of body-mind-spirit

the harvest of another creative year of our lives

what grown + maturation have we experienced this year?

celebration, purification, preparation

observing our values, which ones do we want to center in our lives?

considering our harvest, what new goals + dreams do we have?

what do they need to be able to be harvested next year?

preparing for winter + death/rebirth

what no longer serves, needs to be let go?

recognition of growing older

inevitable death of our youth, ideas, ambitions, dreams

Samhain Medicine:

veils between worlds is thinnest

intuition vs. logic is indistinguishable

remember + honor what has gone before us

ancestral wisdom, cellular wisdom

let go of our fears, failures, + unfulfilled goals

let die parts of our selves/identities + lives that have withered

how can they be used to feed new life within us/our lives?

ruminating on cyclical time

resources & inspirations [x] [x] [x]

[thegreydavidson-blog]

This blog is a personal project in creative recovery.

I have always identified as a writer, but have not written fiction (my true love) since my college days. And I’ve only recently come to realize that, while fiction has been tugging at my soul again the last couple of years, I have felt afraid that I don’t know how to write fiction anymore, after so many years of writing academic and creative non-fiction work.

So! This is a personal journal of my exploration of my creativity. I believe that our vocational work — the work we feel as a deep love, a lifelong yearning, an identity and purpose — is a form of spiritual expression and service, and I am here to get in touch with my vocation again.

I am here in this life to be a writer, and a writer of fiction. I am here to craft stories, to examine, to observe, to recount, to unravel, to reclaim. I have always believed that fiction is the great revealer. Fiction is the realest thing about us, as humans. I love fiction and believe in her power.

Here I go.

[thegreydavidson-blog]

story snippet 001

    Dawn, and with it, smoke on the morning air. The far fields were burning. The men of the mountain god had been here in the night.

    She would pass such judgment on them. But that would come later.