Herb chest
Dec. 3rd, 2003 03:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vaneramosCross-posted to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
free_write: 10 minutes
He has herbs hanging in the utility room closet near the dehumidifier. They are rank and dark, crumpled torsos of things once living, their essence concentrated in dark withered hands and feet. The roots are dead hairs, shriveling skyward, backwards from the way they ought. Some grew in the garden in rich loam: lavender, rosemary and catnip. Others he found growing along the edge of the field: the wild bergamot, which would be called beebalm if it had bright red garden style flowers, but these are pale pink, dessicated, falling and dripping like fragrant death. These are supposed to keep us healthy, full of vitamins and vitality, but somehow the purpose got lost.
He takes them down, strips the dark crumpled fragments off their bodies and stuffs them into old spice jars. He keeps them in a dark wooden chest. It used to keep his mother's silver, but she has discarded the old utensils. Silver and china were never valued highly in this house. They saw more beauty in flowers, fragrances, the breath of summer across sweet bluegrass, bending, always bending toward a distant hope, a hollow in the end of the sky where all sorrow blew away. The air was a sieve for grief and madness. Anger drained into the dark shadowy roots of the mulberry tree.
At sunrise he goes walking with a knife, waiting for the moment when the sun hits fresh stems and evaporates the dew. Moisture flies into the heavens, where spirits go. But here we do not believe in spirits, not in the kind that carry on when the stem has been cut. Now he applies the knife and slices the stalk, square in the case of bergamot, catnip, thyme, rosemary and mint. Why does one family of plants, the one with square stems, have so much fragrance, so much essential oil? Why is richness not spread fairly through the plant kingdom.
The other plants have different beauty, another claim on our senses.
Later he takes them, ties them into bundles and hangs more herbs to dry in the closet. He imagines he might save a life with them, going about the countryside like a shaman or ancient healer. He might save his own life, going about the country. He might hang it to dry, strip off the dried leaves and later stuff it into a jar and hide it away in his mother's silver chest in the darkness.
free_write: 10 minutesHe has herbs hanging in the utility room closet near the dehumidifier. They are rank and dark, crumpled torsos of things once living, their essence concentrated in dark withered hands and feet. The roots are dead hairs, shriveling skyward, backwards from the way they ought. Some grew in the garden in rich loam: lavender, rosemary and catnip. Others he found growing along the edge of the field: the wild bergamot, which would be called beebalm if it had bright red garden style flowers, but these are pale pink, dessicated, falling and dripping like fragrant death. These are supposed to keep us healthy, full of vitamins and vitality, but somehow the purpose got lost.
He takes them down, strips the dark crumpled fragments off their bodies and stuffs them into old spice jars. He keeps them in a dark wooden chest. It used to keep his mother's silver, but she has discarded the old utensils. Silver and china were never valued highly in this house. They saw more beauty in flowers, fragrances, the breath of summer across sweet bluegrass, bending, always bending toward a distant hope, a hollow in the end of the sky where all sorrow blew away. The air was a sieve for grief and madness. Anger drained into the dark shadowy roots of the mulberry tree.
At sunrise he goes walking with a knife, waiting for the moment when the sun hits fresh stems and evaporates the dew. Moisture flies into the heavens, where spirits go. But here we do not believe in spirits, not in the kind that carry on when the stem has been cut. Now he applies the knife and slices the stalk, square in the case of bergamot, catnip, thyme, rosemary and mint. Why does one family of plants, the one with square stems, have so much fragrance, so much essential oil? Why is richness not spread fairly through the plant kingdom.
The other plants have different beauty, another claim on our senses.
Later he takes them, ties them into bundles and hangs more herbs to dry in the closet. He imagines he might save a life with them, going about the countryside like a shaman or ancient healer. He might save his own life, going about the country. He might hang it to dry, strip off the dried leaves and later stuff it into a jar and hide it away in his mother's silver chest in the darkness.
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no subject
Date: 2003-12-03 01:07 pm (UTC)I'd never thought gathering, drying and storing herbs could be so spooky! I've got so many herbs at home... ones stuffed in draws that I use for magick and healing, ones in the pantry that are for cooking and more healing, ones in little sachets that hang in the big closet to try and make it smell better in there, and still more in a couple of my storage boxes (none of them nearly as nice as the one you describe).
My friend Crowman has a bunch of rue hanging in the kitchen, big pots of sage, rosemary and lavendar growing in the kitchen window (the lavendar was getting ready to bud again last time I was over there), and more potted herbs in other rooms of his house.
I'd love to have a proper herb garden. As you may have gathered, Chip's beautiful herb garden is one of my favorite places at the Farm.
xo Shimmer
no subject
Date: 2003-12-03 02:34 pm (UTC)I have a strong affinity for plants. Horticulture and herbalism will undoubtedly appear in my future fiction writing. I don't know how. I liked creating this imagery, symbolically bound with the isolation and melancholy of my youth.
Tendril, the character, was specifically ignorant of plants. That was an interesting exercise in itself.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-03 05:04 pm (UTC)Somebody should have explained her name to her.
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Date: 2003-12-04 07:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-12-03 05:05 pm (UTC)Inobservant fellow that I am, I never noticed that mint-family plants had square stems.
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Date: 2003-12-04 07:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-12-04 08:15 am (UTC)That's a beautiful, stunning line.
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Date: 2003-12-04 03:30 pm (UTC)