#Chalk Hill Artist Residency

[williammarksommer]

The poster for my Solo Exhibition “On The Road” with the Chalk Hill Artist Residency Gallery. 

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

( Artist credit: Tasmin Abbott )

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If ever you’d like to delve deeper into the ancestral lore of the British Isles & under stand some of its indigenous foundations, I feel it is the most directly accessible in the gateway of the spring equinox (which rings in this Wed 20th March) other wise known in Scots Gaelic as Alban Eilir, the ‘light of the earth’ when the light of the sun meets in equal hours with the night

The myths & lore are interwoven so intricately in the landscape this time of year. Here it is in a nutshell for you to absorb. But it truly is a nutshell as each part is deserving an immense investigation & study to take you further into the heart of it all:

~ TOWER HILL: The spring equinox still today is honoured by the Druids on Tower Hill in London. An ancient ancestral mound once known as ‘Bryn Gwyn’, which translates to White Mound or White Raven. It visually used to look like Silbury Hill a neolithic hill in the Avebury complex in Wiltshire, & was covered in a white chalk which reflected in the moon & sunlight & could be seen for miles. The White Mound is the sacred mound of Sovereignty of this isle, a place where our ancestors would pilgrimage to from far & wide

~ RAVEN: The raven is the bird & protector of the spirit of Sovereignty of the British Isles & has done for millennia. Raven veneration goes back very far in this country’s lore & is deeply rooted in it’s soul’s foundations. An ancient ancestor of this isle called Bran the Blessed, a Welsh King who you could say presides over this gateway because his lore is so interwoven into the landscape this time of year. Bran means ‘Raven’ in Welsh, who was seen as a seer & oracular king bridging the worlds of the gods & earth like his divine messenger feathered friends. Story goes that on his death bed in battle he asked for his head to be buried in the White Mound in London in protection of the Sovereignty of this isle. The ravens in the tower of London today, hold the lore & protective forces of Bran. The fact that the raven is the animal of sovereignty of this isle…tells you everything you need to understand about this island & it’s essence. It is one of magic & deep seership

~ SOVEREIGNTY: You see in the sovereign codes of olde in kingship, that in maintaining balance in your kingdom you married yourself to the earth in an alliance for true balance. Your sovereignty was infused with the earth (the goddess) and the minute that allegiance was severed a wasteland would take seed in the land and all hearts. For Bran to ask for his head to be buried in the White Mound even at death shows his complete allegiance to the earth and understanding of what it means to be Sovereign. The olde understanding is to be in Service to the All, in allegiance with the earth and protection of the goddess. When the Druids stand on Tower Hill, they are welcoming back the sovereign sun during the tide of the equinox but they are also invoking the ancient powers of sovereignty in the land. And of Bran.

~ BRIDGING: In one of the stories of Bran, his sister Branwen (which means ‘white raven’) is abused by her husband who is an Irish King. Bran hears of the news and crosses the Irish seas, by using his body as a bridge for his men to cross over him safely across the stormy seas to help him set his sister free. He was always seen as a king who sought to bring enemies into peaceful accord with one another, and therefore may represent the balance implicit in the equinox as well.

~ ALDER: Bran carries alder branches on his journey to rescue his sister. People recognise him by the alder that he holds. He is known as the alder king. Alder trees are indeed ‘bridging’ trees which preside over the realms of water and fire; the conscious and unconscious. The inner and outer. In the tree ogham it resides between the astrological zodiac signs of pisces and aries, emerging from the watery fluid time of Pisces and entering the fiery intensity of Aries. It is a water resistant wood which gets harder in water and was widely used to build the city of Venice. It is connected to the realms of fire, due to it’s ability to create very high quality charcoal and gun powder. It holds the ancient alchemical colours of white and red in it’s wood. It’s wood is a beautiful white colour but when cut or it’s roots exposed to the air it turns a bright red colour. The white is representative of the moon, the water, Branwen the white raven. And red, being the sun, the fire of the coals of gunpowder, Bran the solar deity king. It possesses both female and male catkins on the same branch - a tree that symbolises the balance between the masculine and the feminine, day and night.

In essence the gateway of the vernal equinox is deeply coded in the earth and lore of the land: Reminding us in order to keep balance within and without ~ true Sovereignty must be upheld, and that it is in an alliance with the earth and in service to all.

That sovereignty is restored when we act as a bridge in the world; remembering the essence of our humanity in bringing heaven to earth as bridges. Akin to the raven messengers who bring the words from the gods into the human world. And the alder trees who bridge the worlds of water and fire.

[Thank you Charlotte Pulver]

[lcdrarry]

LCDrarry 2021 Master List

Dear lovely Participants, Creators, Alpha and Beta Readers, Commentors, Cheerleaders, Readers and Fans of our fest,

Our 3rd installment of LCDrarry is coming to an end, and we'd like to thank you all for taking part in our little fest, for creating so many amazing new Drarry works for us all to enjoy, for commenting on your favourite creations, for sharing and recommending the LCDrarry gems with your friends and blog followers, and for making this fest another amazing experience for everybody!

You can find out under the cut who created what ;D

~Your LCDrarry Mods Tami ( @celilasart​ ) and Suzi ( @erin-riwen​ )

PS: Please have a look at the author notes and tags on AO3 for additional information and more detailed warnings.

PPS: As always, reblogs are very much appreciated to promote all the wonderful works of LCDrarry.

Thank you! :)

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Podfic

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[Podfic] Harry Potter And The Disorder Of The Phoenix

Title: "Harry Potter And The Disorder Of The Phoenix" Written by: postjentacular Read by: @porcelainsalt​ | bluedreaming (AO3) Word Count: 1,304 words / 8 minutes Rating: General Warnings: none

Summary: An exasperated werewolf-slash-professor, a decidedly not-dead drama queen, a brat, and a straight white man settle down to watch a movie. It goes as well as you’d expect.

Listen to "Harry Potter And The Disorder Of The Phoenix" on AO3.

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Art

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[Art] At the Beginning (With You)

Prompt: "Anastasia", 1997, Don Bluth and Gary Goldman Artist: @zandragorin​ Art Medium: Digital Art Rating: Teen Warnings: none

Summary: It's one, two, three, and suddenly he sees it a glance.

View "At the Beginning (With You)" on AO3.

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[Art] Between Your Heart and Mine

Prompt: "Crimson Peak", 2015, Guillermo del Toro Artist: @kryptidfox​ Art Medium: Digital Art Rating: General Warnings: none

Summary: Auror Harry Potter is called to investigate barren and isolated Malfoy Manor, home to Sir Draco Malfoy. There, he finds forgotten secrets, lingering ghosts and perhaps even love.

View "Between Your Heart and Mine" on AO3.

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[Art] Fallen

Prompt: "Chocolat", 2000, Lasse Hallström Artists: @julcheninred​ & m4gOrtz Art Medium: paper, thread, chalk, ink Rating: General Warnings: Food, Depression, Clergy

Summary: As Père Harry passed the window of the chocolate shop early on Easter morning, he was shocked to discover the Comte de Malfoy, who had destroyed the shop's window display and fallen asleep in his grief and exhaustion.

View "Fallen" on AO3.

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[Art] I am only one side of a coin.

Prompt: "Merlin", 2008-2012 Artist: @digthewriter​ Art Medium: Digital Art in Photoshop Rating: General Warnings: none

Summary: The better side, obviously. Merlin/Harry Potter fusion. Harry as Merlin & Draco as Arthur.

View "I am only one side of a coin." on AO3.

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[Art] No Sweeter Innocence Than Our Gentle Sin

Prompt: "Romeo and Juliet", Shakespeare Artist: writingsbydestiny Art Medium: Digital Art Rating: General Warnings: none

Summary: Inspired by Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare starring Draco Malfoy as Juliet Capulet and Harry Potter as Romeo Montague.

View "No Sweeter Innocence Than Our Gentle Sin" on AO3.

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[Art] The Malfoy Family

Prompt: "The Addams Family", 1991, David Levy Author: @moondraconis​ Art Medium: Digital Art Rating: General Warnings: None

Summary: Harry and Draco have just got engaged. Now Harry has to sit for a family portrait with his weird new in-laws.

View "[Art] The Malfoy Family" on AO3.

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[Art] The Poet's Choice

Prompt: "Portrait of a Lady on Fire", 2019, Céline Sciamma Artist: @kairennart​ | Personaje (AO3) Art Medium: Digital Art Rating: General Warnings: none

Summary: On an isolated island in Brittany at the end of the eighteen century, Harry is commissioned to paint a wedding portrait of Draco without him knowing, since he refuses to pose. That means a lot of staring, and a lot of time together. Time goes by, and, inevitably, like everything in life, they fall in love. But Harry has to finish his painting, and Draco has to get married.

View "The Poet's Choice" on AO3.

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[Art] there are dangerous men about

Prompt: "The Legend of Zorro”, 2005, Martin Campbell Artist: @dragontamerdame | dragontamerdrarry (AO3) Art Medium: Digital Art Rating: Teen Warnings: None

Summary: Two wizards engaging in a vicious duel, but make it gay and sexy.

View "there are dangerous men about" on AO3.

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Fic & Art

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[Fic & Art] One More Lantern

Prompt: “xxxHoLiC”, 2006-2010 (anime)/2013 (live action) Author/Artist: vivi1138 Word Count/Art Medium: 8,373 words & Digital Art Rating: Teen Warnings: Smoking

Summary: Harry is plagued by spirits who seem intent on devouring him, and there’s only one place they can’t follow: a house hidden in wizarding London, belonging to Draco Malfoy. Harry didn’t intend to stay. He certainly didn’t foresee falling in love. Yet here they are. A slice of life where Draco is a sap, Harry buys ice cream, and spirits keep throwing their peaceful life into chaos.

Read and view "One More Lantern" on AO3.

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[Fic & Art] In the Shadow of Your Heart

Prompt: Howl's Moving Castle, 2004, Hayao Miyazaki Author: @fantalf​ Word Count/Art Medium: 854 words & Digital Art Rating: General Warnings: sectumsempra scars, memory loss

Summary: When the recluded ex-Death Eater Draco Malfoy finds Harry Potter wandering around the hills, with no memory whatsoever of who he once was, he and Teddy decide to welcome him into their little family.

Read and view "In the Shadow of Your Heart" on AO3.

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Fic

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[Fic] Paging Healer Twatwaffle

Prompt: "House M.D.", 2004-2012, TV-Series Author: @veelawings​ Word Count: 1,550 words Rating: Explicit Warnings: Mild dub-con and manipulation, but they’re already friends with benefits.

Summary: Healer Malfoy is an absolute wanker.

Read "Paging Healer Twatwaffle" on AO3.

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[Fic] (Let's Take Our Time) Just Moving Slow

Prompt: "Holidate", 2020, John Whitesell Author: Melacka Word Count: 1,886 words Rating: Teen Warnings: none

Summary: Harry and Draco have a mutually beneficial arrangement: automatic dates for all holidays and public events, no questions asked, no obligation, no strings. It all seemed like such a good idea when they started. Harry certainly never expected to develop feelings for Draco.

Read "(Let's Take Our Time) Just Moving Slow" on AO3.

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[Fic] Jurassic Drarry

Prompt: "Jurassic Park", 1993, Steven Spielberg Author: PhenomenalAsterisk Word Count: 1,941 words & Digital Art Rating: General Warnings: Unconventional disposal of dinosaurs; fanart includes graphic image of meat

Summary: An unflappable palaeontologist, a sexy chaos theorist, and a distracted palaeobotanist are called in to tour an eccentric billionaire's pet project.

Read "Jurassic Drarry" on AO3.

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[Fic] My Saviour Won't Stop Texting Me

Prompt: "Hercules", 1997, Ron Clements, John Musker Author: fwooshy Word Count: 5,012 words Rating: Teen Warnings: Texting fic

Summary: Long ago, in Ancient Greece, there was a man named Draco Malfoy who sold his soul to Voldemort. Tortured by his sins, he... oh, who am I kidding? This is a Hercules AU texting fic, not some Greek tragedy! Harry and Draco get together and everyone has phones in Ancient Greece. Please enjoy.

Read "My Saviour Won't Stop Texting Me" on AO3.

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[Fic] The Malfoy Family

Prompt: "The Addams Family", 1991, David Levy Author: floydig Word Count: 7,088 words Rating: Mature Warnings: All Addams Family Warnings Apply, Morbid and Dark Humor, Loving Horror, Mild Body Horror (fun), Carnivorous Plants, Blasphemy, Necromancy, Implied Sexual Content

Summary: The Malfoy Family is the Addams Family, and things are about to get interesting. Draco and Harry Malfoy are odd, intriguing, endearingly creepy, and completely and utterly infatuated with one another. This is going to be a fun one. Featuring deadly magical creatures as house pets, recreational use of Unforgivable Curses, hungry carnivorous plants, and plenty of mayhem in between. Also, the whole thing takes place at a Magical Multi-Purpose Store. The Malfoy Family goes shopping!

Read "The Malfoy Family" on AO3.

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[Fic] Love that Blinds

Prompt: "The Batman", 2004-2008, TV-Series Author: aminathescorpio Word Count: 7,245 words Rating: Explicit Warnings: Brief graphic descriptions of violence, dubious consent, gaslighting

Summary: When Draco Malfoy gets accepted to work as a psychiatrist in Azkaban Asylum, he finds himself caught in a complicated relationship with none other than Azkaban's most infamous resident: Harry Potter.

Read "Love that Blinds" on AO3.

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[Fic] Sesame Seeds and the Entire Spectrum of Human Emotion

Prompt: "The Proposal", 2009, Anne Fletcher Author: @bisexualronaldweasley​ Word Count: 9,530 words Rating: Mature Warnings: Nudity, Boat Incident, references to past abuse/neglect

Summary: Faced with exile, Draco pretends to be engaged to Harry Potter, who agrees to play along for Narcissa's sake. When they're forced to spend a weekend together celebrating the engagement with the Weasleys, they might try to kill each other, or... they might just fall in love. . Based on the movie The Proposal (2009), though you don't have to have seen the movie to understand the fic!

Read "Sesame Seeds and the Entire Spectrum of Human Emotion" on AO3.

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[Fic] Ghost

Prompt: "Ghost", 1990, Jerry Zucker Author: @maraudersaffair​ Word Count: 10,761 words Rating: Explicit Warnings: major character death (MCD), canon-typical violence, grief and mourning

Summary: When Harry is killed tragically during an Auror raid gone wrong, Draco does his best to move on. He's even a little cheered when Theo Nott starts pursuing him. Then Sybil Trelawney visits Draco.

Read "Ghost" on AO3.

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[Fic] all in good time

Prompt: "Groundhog Day", 1993, Harold Ramis Author: saltwatergarden Word Count: 13,054 words Rating: Mature Warnings: mentions alcohol

Summary: Draco Malfoy's life is boring and repetitive. He supposes he shouldn't complain, since that's better than sharing a house with Voldemort, or doing time in Azkaban. When he gets trapped in a time loop, however, he is forced to confront the routine he has fixed for himself, and try to break out of it. It isn't all bad, facing no consequences for his actions can be fun for a bit. But after he starts visiting the Auror Headquarters and having brief but remarkably pleasant conversations with one Auror Potter, he finally has the real motivation to break out of the time loop - something worth sticking around for.

Read "all in good time" on AO3.

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[Fic] Star Crossed

Prompt: "Romeo and Juliet", Shakespeare Author: GallifreyisBurning Word Count: 13,615 words Rating: Teen Warnings: none

Summary: Two Quidditch teams, alike in dignity, In fair Great Britain, where we lay our scene, From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean. The Wimbourne Wasps and the Appleby Arrows have been bitter rivals for centuries. When a nasty brawl ends one of their Seekers’ careers, the teams need new blood to take up the slack and divert attention from the bad publicity. And who better to distract the press than the infamous Draco Malfoy and golden boy Harry Potter? Called back from successful careers abroad, the pair are once again to be pitted against one another in an epic feud. Too bad no one told them that before they started flirting…

Read "Star Crossed" on AO3.

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[Fic] The Slytherin Host Club

Prompt: "Ouran high school host club", 2006, Bisco Hatori and Takuya Igarashi Author: shushu_yaoi_lj Word Count: 14,377 words Rating: Explicit Warnings: explicit sexual content, scars, non-graphic mention of past abuse

Summary: Harry is simply looking for a quiet place to finish his Potions essay.It's a pity he ends up at the Slytherin Host Club instead. Or maybe it's a blessing in disguise, since he's had a crush on Malfoy since the beginning of his eighth year...

Read "The Slytherin Host Club" on AO3.

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[Fic] It is on the other side of my soul (where your name is written)

Prompt: "Call Me By Your Name", 2017, Luca Guadagnino Author: opaleopioid Word Count: 16,372 words Rating: Explicit Warnings: implied switching, rimming, anal sex, no age difference (HP canon-compliant age difference)

Summary: Harry’s having it all, now that the unpleasantries of being treated like a loose cannon is gone: the war is well over, and Voldemort is long dead. He’s made the choice to stay in B, an unplottable magical town in Northern Italy, whose protection wards had kept him in one piece at the height of the second wizarding war, and whose seclusion provides him with the quiet, normal life that he now lives. Harry adores the grassy hills that enclose B like the warm arm of a mother; Likes playing the grand piano from dawn to dusk; Cherishes his current life, on the whole. He gets himself Mocaccino every morning and sometimes has dinner with the Weasleys at their cottage nearby. With the majority of his friends and family falling in love with B and gradually settling down as well, Harry feels like this is the last place he would ever want to leave. To say that the arrival of a certain wizard—a razor-sharp, infuriating blond—makes anything remotely different for Harry would be absurd, of course.

Read "It is on the other side of my soul (where your name is written)" on AO3.

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[Fic] In Search of Our Better Selves

Prompt: "Mad Max: Fury Road", 2015, George Miller Author: alrespirar Word Count: 17,519 words Rating: Explicit Warnings: Mentions of past torture, mentions of past rape, brief mention of miscarriage, descriptions of gun violence and injury. Sexual content.

Summary: Five times Imperator Draco saved Potter’s life and the one time Potter saved his.

Read "In Search of Our Better Selves" on AO3.

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[Fic] Where in the World is Draco Malfoy?

Prompt: "Carmen Sandiego", 2019, Series Author: Anaxandria Word Count: 18,029 words Rating: Mature Warnings: Minor mentions of homophobia, violence, and blood

Summary: After the war, Draco Malfoy and Harry Potter took parallel paths of fighting crime. Draco discovered the existence of VILE, an international organisation dedicated to the eradication of Muggle-borns. With the help of his best friend, Blaise, he commits international capers to steal artifacts before VILE can get their hands on them. Harry is the auror investigating the heists, but his instincts tell him there’s more than meets the eye.

Read "Where in the World is Draco Malfoy?" on AO3.

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[Fic] My Fair Gentleman

Prompt: "My Fair Lady", 1964, George Cukor Author: emilattes Word Count: 20,766 words Rating: Teen and up Warnings: light alcohol use and mentions of child neglect by Dursleys

Summary: After an extended stay at Charlie's Dragon Reserve in Romania, Harry returns to London and makes a fool of himself at his first Ministry Gala. Minister Shacklebolt orders Harry to seven months of etiquette lessons with Draco Malfoy. Will Harry pull through and become an expert in PR? Will Draco manage to make over the biggest PR disaster the wizarding world has seen in years? Wouldn't it be loverly?

Read "My Fair Gentleman" on AO3.

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[Fic] saying yes (instead of no)

Prompt: "Schitt's Creek", 2015, Series Author: Pineau_noir Word Count: 21,022 words Rating: Explicit Warnings: canon typical alcohol and drug use, marijuana use, explicit smut

Summary: “It’s a general store that’s also a very specific store,” Draco grumbled. “Most people won’t realise this, but I want to market Muggle goods to the Wizarding world as well. I want something that will help boost the economy of the Hamlet and Muggles have so many amazing things we don’t have.” . Draco sighed again. “I think it would benefit everyone.” He glared at Emily. “But there’s not a single witch, wizard, or wix who will shop at a place owned by Draco Malfoy.” . “What if it’s owned by Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy?” Potter asked. . “That would be preposterous,” Draco mumbled. “Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy would kill each other before the store opened.” . “What if you didn’t?” Emily asked. Draco opened his mouth to let her know, they would indeed kill each other, but before he could say anything, she continued, “What if it turned into a lovely business?” . “There’s only one way to know,” Potter said. “I really think this is a good idea, Draco."

Read "saying yes (instead of no)" on AO3.

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[Fic] A First Look Into Resurrecting Mummies With the Aid Of the Chosen One, and Why It Should Be Advised Against (an Essay by Draco Malfoy, Assistant Archaeologist)

Prompt: "The Mummy", 1999, Stephen Sommers Author: @cibeewastaken​ | Cibee (AO3) Word Count: 21,948 words Rating: Mature Warnings: minor violence elements

Summary: Draco hopes to find an ancient spell book rumoured to be in Hamunaptra after Astoria found a map to the lost city. If he makes this discovery, maybe the Magical British Museum will finally look at his application, and his annoying colleague will finally leave him alone. It’s a good plan, until Draco is reunited with Harry Potter for the first time in ten years, as the man is about to be hanged.

Read "A First Look Into Resurrecting Mummies With the Aid Of the Chosen One, and Why It Should Be Advised Against (an Essay by Draco Malfoy, Assistant Archaeologist)" on AO3.

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[Fic] Wicked Game

Prompt: "Jumanji", 1995 or 2017 Author: DearJames Word Count: 22,044 words Rating: Explicit Warnings: Sexual Content, Implied PTSD

Summary: Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy crossed a line during one of their late-night Astronomy Tower Bonding Sessions and neither are sure what that means. Not that they got particularly far, considering they were caught and assigned detention for their antics. And, now, they've been sucked into a boardgame. That's just fantastic...

Read "Wicked Game" on AO3.

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[Fic] Love in Three Parts

Prompt: "Bridgerton", 2020, Series Author: static_abyss Word Count: 24,172 words Rating: Mature Warnings: Canon-typical content

Notes: Thanks so much to my beta, L, for all her help and her encouragement as I wrote this fic. Thanks to the mods for hosting this fest and to the Anonymous prompter who inspired this fic.

Summary: Draco has everything needed to be the diamond of the season. He has the looks, the pedigree, and if he should be short on the money end, well, it isn't up to him to convince anyone they want to marry him. And yet, he finds himself with no prospects and no suitable matches until Harry James Potter, Wizarding Britain's Most Eligible Bachelor, makes his first appearance in proper Wizarding society for the first time in five years. Together, they hatch a plan to secure Draco a husband and keep the debutantes' mothers away from Harry. And if someone should develop feelings along the way, well, the course of true love never did run smooth.

Read "Love in Three Parts" on AO3.

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[Fic] He would always win the fight

Prompt: "Killing Eve", 2018 - ongoing, TV Series Author: Akira-kun Word Count: 26,578 words Rating: Explicit Warnings: Serial Killer, Off Screen Murders, Corpses, Political Polarity, Corruption in Government, Corruption in Justice System, Off Screen Violence, Post War Instability, Ambiguity, Dark!character, Vengeance, In a Twisted Way, Obsessive Behaviour, Crime Mystery, Open Ending

Summary: “But you were always just a puppet, weren’t you, Potter?” That voice kept haunting him, in his dreams and during his days, as if hovering over his shoulder, cold as a ghost, lost and lifeless. He wasn’t sure why it hurt like that. Maybe because it was an ugly truth that Harry hoped no one would ever throw back in his face. Or maybe because it was Malfoy. . Killing Eve inspired Drarry where people are getting killed, Harry is getting desperate, Draco is too sexy for his own good, and all hell will break loose.

Read "He would always win the fight" on AO3.

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[Fic] Peaches & Cream And A Little Bit Of Acid

Prompt: "Modern Love", 2019, Series Author: shortie990 Word Count: 27,755 words Rating: Explicit Warnings: suicidal thoughts, mental health issues

Summary: In love there is no real hiding. You have to be pretty up front on who you are. The problem was though, Harry didn’t have a clue who he was one moment from the next.

Read "Peaches & Cream And A Little Bit Of Acid" on AO3.

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[Fic] Outwit, Outlast, Outplay

Prompt: "Survivor", 2000-ongoing, Series Author: Albuss Word Count: 30,976 words Rating: Mature Warnings: Brief homophobia, mentions of past health issues

Summary: Draco loves Survivor. Loves it. So when his job at the Dept. of Mysteries offers him the opportunity to go on as a contestant, he can't think of anything that could go wrong. He is sorely mistaken, but a little chaos turns out to not be such a bad thing. Featuring gratuitous descriptions of Survivor game-play, really jargon-y magical theory I got way too excited about, and Draco's best friend Isabelle being an absolute QUEEN.

Read "Outwit, Outlast, Outplay" on AO3.

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[Fic] Advantage Rule

Prompt: "The Queen's Gambit", 2020, Series Author: @ziezie13​ Word Count: 42,738 words Rating: Mature Warnings: Character death, Parental neglect, Brief references to eugenics, Sexual content, Mild homophobia, Alcoholism, Drug abuse

Summary: Draco's life has been struggle after struggle. He was exiled as a baby, his mother died, he was forced to live with muggles... Need I go on? Quidditch was supposed to be his escape, but how is he supposed to beat Victor Krum and take the world title if he can't even beat Harry Potter? ~No knowledge of The Queen's Gambit required~

Read "Advantage Rule" on AO3.

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[Fic] (This Will Be) An Everlasting Love

Prompt: #12 (also fulfils #6) | "While You Were Sleeping," 1995, Jon Turteltaub Author: @drarrelie​ & @janieohio​ Word Count: 45,139 words Rating: Teen Warnings: None

Summary: Life doesn’t always turn out the way we plan. That’s what Draco’s mother always used to tell him, but Merlin, who could have predicted how right she would be? A story about feisty dragons, loneliness, family, and friends — and finding love in places you least expect.

Read "(This Will Be) An Everlasting Love" on AO3.

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[Fic] In a Field of Chrysanthemums and the Woods

Prompt: "The Untamed", 2019, TV-Series Author: @outstandingmoralfiber​ Word Count: 83,399 words Rating: Explicit Warnings: None

Summary: Three notes, and yet they made all the difference. Draco could feel it, the slight magic and wavering notes, washing over him in a brief but calming wave that lit his soul and it was then that he knew that he was going to learn how to play this guqin no matter what. Little did he know that, like dominos, this one simple decision would diverge him onto a path he would've never imagined. - Wizarding world in the Untamed setting, (but you don't need to know anything about the Untamed). Drarry AU starting from Goblet of Fire. Rated E for the smut scene in Chapters 13 & 14, but is otherwise rated T.

Read "In a Field of Chrysanthemums and the Woods" on AO3.

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As always, reblogs here on tumblr are very much appreciated to promote all the wonderful works of LCDrarry. But of course, please also shower our creators with comments and kudos on AO3 ;D

And yes, dear creators, you can now credit your alphas and betas and cheerleaders and of course answer the comments :)) 

And if you like, use the banners here to promote your works on your own blogs. Tag us, so that we can reblog your claiming posts.

Thank you again for participating! See you 2022 ;)

[lakelewisia]

A Lewisian Year

Presented in partnership with the Lewisia Communications Board and Lewisia Public Library

Sponsored by The Historical Society

Hello, readers, listeners, and psychic osmosizers! Welcome to A Lewisian Year, a monthly showcase celebrating the rich culture here in the Lake Lewisia district. Each month, we'll highlight some seasonal events, local celebrations and interpretations of national and world holidays, and historical tidbits.

JUNE

Midsummer Bonfires

It's Midsummer Day, and you're headed to the park through the noonday heat. But this time, it won't be to cool off in the shade of the trees or around the fountains where children splash in the water. No, it's only going to get hotter, thanks to a dozen or so large bonfires burning on temporary platforms dotted around the park. As you walk, you carry with you a stone, about the size of your outstretched palm and fingers, softly rounded in a way that suggests it might have spent a few eons in a riverbed long ago.

In the park, the air is thick with wood smoke, which spirals up in grey towers over each of the bonfires. The bonfires are heaped high with fallen limbs gathered from the forest over the past year, and it took weeks to assemble them all here. Each fire has an attendant watching over it so the burn stays safely contained. As always for such events, there are booths selling food and local crafts scattered between the fires. Maybe you'll grab an ear of roasted corn or a s'more later (though these are never cooked using the bonfires, as that's seen as depleting their power and thus bad luck). But most people quickly drift back to one particular fire or another. Their eyes stay fixed on the platform under the bonfire and the ring of stones assembled there--on their stone, wherever it may sit in the circle.

You find an empty spot around a fire and, with the use of iron tongs to save your hands, nudge it into place around the flames. As the sun beats down and the fire crackles, the stones bask in all that heat, soaking it up. How long this goes on depends on the year, because what you are waiting for is true midsummer, the moment when the day stretches as long as it will all year. This year, 2021, that won't happen until 8:32 PM in Lewisia. So the fires burn until then, standing in for the sun for the short time after it sets in the evening.

When midsummer arrives, the stones are pulled out away from the fire to cool. Some people wrap them up in blankets when they are ready to go home, the insulation more symbolic than practical. You just wait until it is cool enough to touch barehanded, and then you carry it back to your home. It will sit in the house--sometimes on mantles, or on bedside tables, or tucked at the back of the kitchen counter--all through the year. In the depth of winter, it is said, the midsummer stone in a house will keep the people warm against all odds. It is a little piece of summer sunlight and the promise of warmth to come, sustaining people through darker, colder times.

Pride

The annual Gay Pride events in Lake Lewisia seem to lack some of the wild flair of the event in other cities. Previous years have seen themes on outreach, community history, and representation of marginalized voices both in the wider world and within the community itself. The events are characterized more by volunteer hours than parades and more by art exhibits than merchandise booths. (I hear the community dance and fireworks display, though, is a very good time if you're the outgoing sort!)

This year's theme--"Season the Soup, Raise the Roof"--focuses on food and housing insecurity for QUILTBAG individuals throughout the nation. Members of the community are far more likely than the general population to experience homelessness at some point in their lives, often as a result of abusive family circumstances. Plenty of Lewisia residents found their way to the town for the first time during their own experience with homelessness born out of rejection by their former families and communities.

Observances this year include a number of volunteer opportunities around the community and outside it. The mixed-use building at Prism Place, which houses the largest queer collective within the town boundaries and the retail space they run to support themselves, is raising funds for repairs to the roof and heating systems of the building. Sea Mink Pastries needs help with baking bread to take to soup kitchens around Marguerite County and surrounding counties. Also, trips are being organized to distribute the latest prototype from Shipwreck Repair Collective for a pop-up living space to help shelter the unhoused in those areas. This iteration of the tent-like structure boasts more legs than previous versions for faster rescues and escapes, as well as an improved guiding intelligence (about which the representative from the Collective was rather cagey--industry secrets, I suppose).

Summer Art Walk

Toward the end of the month, the downtown area will be bursting with even more art than usual as exhibits go up for the Summer Art Walk. From still-lifes and landscapes to portraits and abstracts, new pieces created for the event and some old favorites brought out of galleries and private collections will all be made available to the public to walk. Taste the chalk pastel fruits and walk the shaded paths of pointillist forests. Slip between the brushstrokes and into worlds real and imagined within the frames.

Don't worry if your sense of direction seems insufficient to the task of such an exploration. Expert artists and adventurers both will be on call in case anyone gets a little lost. There is, I hear, a whole team of guides available to help people navigate an Escher-inspired pastoral piece this year, where infinite flocks of sheep graze up gravity-defying hills.

I was lucky enough to be treated to a preview of one of this year's pieces, something a little different even for those who are regular attendees of the Art Walk. Studio Tallaios, the bronze work partnership between sisters M'kayla and Soriya Johnson, has created an interactive sculpture. Without revealing too much of the surprise, I can say the piece took inspiration from both sea caverns and the architectural traditions of the Doorway Maximalism movement. I only took a short tour of the piece, and even that much required me to don a harness and rope to ensure I could find my way back. It was, I promise, worth the possible risks.

This Month in History

On June 2, 1921, the Sunglow Distillery, then only a backyard operation, exploded in a shower of high-proof liquor and spirits of a more supernatural sort. Only a year and a half into Prohibition, Charles Fojt had been making a good living brewing and distributing his moonshine throughout much of the west coast. It was during this time that the multigenerational rivalry began between the Fojt family and the Espinoza family, vineyard owners intent on maximizing the legal loopholes that existed in the Eighteenth Amendment regarding grape juice and wine.

However, in his eagerness to outdo Pedro Espinoza, Fojt had been expanding his operation into land abutting his small farm. As it turned out, several human graves existed on those lands and the spirits of the place considered the moonshine brewing over their final resting places to be partially theirs. Letters written by Fojt at the time indicated he suspected the haunting around his stills but chose to ignore it. The explosion--which created a soft and highly intoxicating rain for several miles around--seems to have been the last resort of the frustrated spirits.

Following the explosion, Fojt relented and began making regular offerings of moonshine in the general vicinity of the gravesites. After that, and the rebuilding of his equipment, he saw ever-increasing success throughout the duration of Prohibition.

That's a taste of what June has to offer us. See you next month, when July brings heatwave hatchings and a convention for every occasion.

[rockislandadultreads]

Multi-genre Romance: new romantic reads with a hint of something else

The Persuasion by Iris Johansen

Forensic sculptor Eve Duncan and ex-Navy Seal Joe Quinn are about to give Seth Caleb their trust for the most important duty of his life: keeping their daughter, Jane, safe at any cost. Her talent as an artist has caught the attention of a brilliant psychopath with a violent past. Seth, Jane's strongest ally and fiercest protector, is determined to keep her out of danger, but that becomes nearly impossible when Jane is forced to take matters into her own hands and confronts the madman who wants her for himself...and wants Seth Caleb dead. As Jane and Seth chase down their blood-thirsty adversary, they also have to reckon with their own epic love story. Can they finally commit to a life together, no matter how uncertain? As the two come face to face with danger, one thing is made clear: it will take both of them to confront and defeat this evil.

What You Wish For by Katherine Center

Samantha Casey is a school librarian who loves her job, the kids, and her school family with passion and joy for living. But she wasn’t always that way. Duncan Carpenter is the new school principal who lives by rules and regulations, guided by the knowledge that bad things can happen. But he wasn’t always that way. And Sam knows it. Because she knew him before—at another school, in a different life. Back then, she loved him—but she was invisible. To him. To everyone. Even to herself. She escaped to a new school, a new job, a new chance at living. But when Duncan, of all people, gets hired as the new principal there, it feels like the best thing that could possibly happen to the school—and the worst thing that could possibly happen to Sam. Until the opposite turns out to be true. The lovable Duncan she’d known is now a suit-and-tie wearing, rule-enforcing tough guy so hell-bent on protecting the school that he’s willing to destroy it. As the school community spirals into chaos, and danger from all corners looms large, Sam and Duncan must find their way to who they really are, what it means to be brave, and how to take a chance on love—which is the riskiest move of all.

28 Summers by Elin Hilderbrand

When Mallory Blessing's son, Link, receives deathbed instructions from his mother to call a number on a slip of paper in her desk drawer, he's not sure what to expect. But he certainly does not expect Jake McCloud to answer. It's the late spring of 2020 and Jake's wife, Ursula DeGournsey, is the frontrunner in the upcoming Presidential election. There must be a mistake, Link thinks. How do Mallory and Jake know each other? Flash back to the sweet summer of 1993: Mallory has just inherited a beachfront cottage on Nantucket from her aunt, and she agrees to host her brother's bachelor party. Cooper's friend from college, Jake McCloud, attends, and Jake and Mallory form a bond that will persevere -- through marriage, children, and Ursula's stratospheric political rise -- until Mallory learns she's dying. Based on the classic film Same Time Next Year (which Mallory and Jake watch every summer), 28 Summers explores the agony and romance of a one-weekend-per-year affair and the dramatic ways this relationship complicates and enriches their lives, and the lives of the people they love.

Last Girl Standing by Lisa Jackson, Nancy Bush

The best of friends . . . In the Portland suburb of West Knoll, Delta and her friends were the pretty, popular elite of the high school. That was fifteen years and a whole lifetime ago. Even then, backstabbing and betrayal erupted among the women in the group, a trio of which are now gathered around a hospital bed. And most of it revolved around the man lying close to death before them . . . Until the day . . . To Delta, it feels as if a nightmare unfolds every time they get together. It started at their senior year graduation party when a group of daredevils led by Tanner slipped under the safety rope and tumbled into the dangerous, fast-flowing river. One of their clique died following his lead. It all seemed spontaneous at the time. A thoughtless deed. But since then, there have been more deaths, more "accidents." And the question hovers, unspoken: who's next? They die . . . As the body count rises, Detective Chris McCrae, one of Delta's classmates and a long ago friend of Tanner's, realizes that stopping the terror means digging deep into the past. Hidden beneath the conflicting stories, gossip, and scandalous half-truths are secrets that someone will kill again and again to protect--until there is no one left to tell . . .

The Librarian of Boone's Hollow by Kim Vogel Sawyer

A traveling librarian ventures into the mining towns of Kentucky on horseback and rediscovers her passions in this powerful novel from the best-selling author of A Silken Thread. During the Great Depression, Addie Cowherd dreams of being a novelist and offering readers the escape that books gave her during her tragic childhood. When her adoptive father loses his job, she is forced to leave college and take the only employment she can find--delivering books on horseback to poor coal mining families in the hills of Kentucky. The small community of Boone's Hollow is suspicious of outsiders and steeped in superstitions that leave Addie feeling rejected and indignant. Although she finds an unexpected friend in an elderly outcast, the other horseback librarians scorn her determination to befriend Nanny Fay. Emmett Tharp grew up in the tiny mountain hamlet where most men either work in the coal mine or run moonshine. He's the first in the community to earn a college degree, and he has big dreams, but witnesses the Depression robbing many young men of their future. Then someone sets out to sabotage the library program, going so far as to destroy Addie's novel in progress. Will the saboteur chase Addie and the other librarians away, or will knowledge emerge victorious over prejudice? Is Emmett the local ally that Addie needs--and might their friendship lead to something more?

The Vanishing by Jayne Ann Krentz

Forty years ago in the small town of Fogg Lake, "The Incident" occurred: an explosion in the cave system that released unknown gases, causing peculiar effects on its residents, such as strange visions and ominous voices. Not wanting the government to get involved, they chalked it up to the hallucinogenic effects of mushrooms. Little did they know these effects would linger through the generations.... Residents Catalina Lark and Olivia Dayton have been best friends for years and own an investigation firm together, using what they call the "other sight" to help with their business. When Olivia goes missing, Cat frantically begins the search for her alone when the town does nothing about it. When scientist Slate Trevelyan shows up, she has no choice but to accept his help even though there's something about him she just can't trust. The duo discovers someone is hunting the two witnesses of a murder in Fogg Lake fourteen years ago—the very one Cat and Olivia witnessed as teens, one that they couldn't prove happened. Cat and Slate's search for Olivia takes them down a rabbit hole that is far more dangerous and mysterious than they ever expected, and with a killer in their midst, neither of them can foresee who will come out alive.

[rikrakyarnncrafts]

Halloween Bone Chilling Zone

Spoiler alert – someone at KP Headquarters is going as a lady cat for Halloween (raises hand).  More specifically, a lady cat who purr-furrs to multitask while styling photo shoots.

In the spirit of all things Halloween, the Knit Picks staff brings to you our list of freaky holiday favorites!

Lee aka NKOTB (New Knitter on the Blog)

I love so much about Halloween! I love that it’s a time when a lot of people get crafty who aren’t normally crafty; I love seeing creative homemade costumes and decorations! I love black cats and bats. I love silly spooky scary stuff that isn’t actually scary. I love adorable little kids in costumes, especially if they are weird or unusual costumes that clearly came out of the mind of a genius tiny person. (My friend’s daughter went as a “Science Fairy” when she was around 5, with wings and a lab coat, because why not?) I love the color orange. And I love candy, of course! What’s not to love?

  Hannah aka Treat Maker Extraordinaire

It’s my personal tradition to wake up the day after Halloween with all sorts of great costume ideas that I regret not making and vow to make for next year (a thing that has never actually happened). This year I was going to be Beverly Crusher but then life happened. BUT! I do manage to break out the bakes with the slightest excuse, and Halloween is no different.

First on my list is Smitten Kitchen’s Apple Cider Caramels. It’s not Halloween without mind-bending quantities of candy so save yourself from yourself and make them from scratch! I find that if I have to stand over a hot pot for what seems like a lifetime, I’m never in the mood to actually eat all those beautiful candy myself once it’s all finished. Finally, a way to save some of that candy for the actual trick-or-treaters! Bonus, they are absolutely fabulous and well worth all the stirring.

Second, my all-time favorite treat is Smitten Kitchen’s Salted Brown Butter Crispy Treats. One extra step (brown that butter!) elevates this classic to something I love to bring to every party. This is also the treat that gets the most recipe requests and ALWAYS results in a totally empty tray. Trust me, it takes ten whole minutes to make these beauties and you’ll be the ultimate dessert destination.

Kate aka Theme Party Fanatic

It’s no secret that I am HUGE fan of theme parties.  Give me ALL the Rocky Horror Picture Show dinner parties you got. I will be in heaven. Every good party needs a playlist that sets the mood, and this one I’ve whipped up is sure to get your party haunted. If you’re a brave soul, you can get my Halloween playlist* here!

*probably not for the kiddos

If all that Monster Mashing and Transylvania Twisting leaves your throat feeling bone-dry, try the delightfully frightful Beetlejuice Cocktail. You’ll have fun telling your party guests the name of this spirit; just don’t say it 3 times in a row!

Beetlejuice Cocktail from breadboozebacon.com

  Daniel aka Ace Bibliophile

As a reader, I’ve always leaned more towards weird fiction and classic ghost stories than contemporary Stephen King-esque “horror”. I’m just as likely to spend my October evenings reading a quick short story as watching a horror movie. Here are a random selection of my favorites for getting creeped out, getting the willies, the heebie jeebies, the shivers, etc.

“Oh, Whistle and I’ll Come to You, My Lad” by M.R. James A great ghost story by a master of the form.

“The Open Door”, by Charlotte Riddell Perhaps the most well known story by one of the most popular authors to come out of the Victorian ghost story bonanza.

“The Voice in the Night”, by William Hope Hodgson Known better for his longer seminal work House on the Borderlands, I really like Hodgson’s nautically-themed ghost stories and weird fiction.

“Onion”, by Caitlin Kiernan Fair warning: Kiernan might be the least accessible writer on this list, but if you can plug into her dense language and daring themes, she will get under your skin and blow your mind in disturbing and delightful ways.

“The Willows”, by Algernon Blackwood One of the best by another acknowledged master, this one is often cited as ‘the best ghost story I’ve ever read’.

“Home”, by Shirley Jackson A nice, short alternative to her more well known The Haunting of Hill House

“The Color Out of Space”, by H.P. Lovecraft I actually prefer Lovecraft’s work outside of his well-known Cthluhu Mythos and this is one my favorites.

“The Black Cat”, by Edgar Allen Poe Best. Ending. Ever.

Image from https://ift.tt/1gQxyaZ

  Alexis aka resident Film Buff

I actually like to get scared (in a safe environment). Growing up my best friend and I created a version of hide & seek called “Spook Me” (email for details) which either instilled or evolved my love for that adrenaline rush scare. What better way to get that rush now then a horror movie? I prefer the more psychological thriller to gore, however Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) is a classic.

Here are some of my must watch movies when the calendar flips to October. You might need to start a blanket project for something to hide under while watching these.

High Scare Factor: The Shining (1980), Poltergeist (1982), It Follows (2014), Carrie (1976), Let the Right One In (2008), Gaslight (1944)

Fun Scare Factor: Cabin in the Woods (2012), Shawn of the Dead (2004), Phantasm (1979), Scream (1996)

Hillary aka the Crafty Queen

While I am not a huge Halloween fan, I LOVE crafting for Autumn! There is something about the colors and pumpkins that make me so happy. Our sister company, Artist’s Club, has the cutest resin pumpkins and I have been so inspired to craft with them lately.

White Crackle Pumpkin

Diane made the cutest Autumn themed pumpkin using crackle paint and some add-ons. This pumpkin could be made in an afternoon!

Mason Jar Pumpkin

After seeing chalk painted mason jars used as vases on Pinterest, I wanted to recreate the look with a Fall twist!

Resin Pumpkins: 3 Quick and Easy Projects

These pumpkins are so versatile! You can also make them into scarecrows, jack-o-lanterns or paint it with chalkboard paint to make seasonal signs.

Happy Halloween everyone!

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[biancalevan]

In truth, it has been challenging to be here — in a new place and focused on art in a way I haven’t done before. It’s uncomfortable for sure. So. I drowned myself in music and podcasts. But in the last 2 days, I’ve craved and embraced the quiet — spending time in silence and stillness. ————————— Wherever we are, what we hear is mostly noise. When we ignore it, it disturbs us. When we listen to it, we find it fascinating. — John Cage ————————— I’ve been doing some composition studies, which is new. It’s fun to block out shapes and think about what might go into those spaces later. ————————— Photos: (1) Papercut date. (2) My first finished papercut, started at home but it still counts, right? (3) Studio in the afternoon light. (4) Me (hello!) ☺️ (5) Outside the studio waiting for the fixative to fix on the charcoal. (6) Charcoal composition studies #1. (7) Charcoal composition studies #2. (8) Making a mark; me working on a sketch. ————————— #chalkhillartistresidency #warneckeranch #artresidency #charcoaldrawing #healdsburgart #johncage #silence #naturesongs #papercut #papercutting #guildofamericanpapercutters #biancalevan #closeuppapercut (at Chalk Hill Artist Residency) https://www.instagram.com/p/CU31crVlG4X/?utm_medium=tumblr

[artistopencalls]

And these👉 @allianceofartistscommunities NEW JOBS! Interested in working for an artist residency program or in support of the field? Our job board has tons of new positions! 👉 https://linktr.ee/allianceofartistscommunities 👈👀 . ⭐️  Virtual MacDowell Production Manager | MacDowell (Peterborough, NH) ⚡️ Curator/Program Director for Art Omi: Architecture | Art Omi (Ghent, NY) ⚡️ Business Manager | Ucross Foundation (Ucross, WY) 🌟 Finance and Operations Manager | Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts (Edgecomb, ME) ⚡️Part-time Program Assistant | Chalk Hill Residency (Healdsburg, CA) 🌟 Glass Studio Teaching Assistant | Ox-Bow School of Art and Artists' Residency (Saugatuck, MI) ⚡️ Development Director | Platteforum (Denver, CO)  🌟 Residency Program Coordinator | Fogo Island Arts (Newfoundland, Canada) ⭐️ . See all listings at Job Board link in bio. ⬆️ @macdowell1907 @art_omi @watershedceramics @platteforum @oxbowschoolofart @chalkhillartistresidency @ucrossfoundation (at USA) https://www.instagram.com/p/CNB32vVlp7D/?igshid=7iuniqtoea2h

[williammarksommer]

On the Road – Solo Exhibition

William Mark Sommer’s “On the Road” is a collection of three unique series of black and white analog photographs that examines aspects of Western America and its prevailing highways. Starting with The Loneliest Highway, Sommer seeks to document his feelings of loneliness that were propelled by the Covid 19 pandemic through the empty road across Nevada. The Lincoln Highway, is Sommer’s way of redefining his concept of home and trying to find connection to his past along the main street of his childhood hometown. And Dusted, a series that journeys into America's past and present within the destruction of mining throughout the West. In combining these three series Sommer seeks to give a breath of his 10-year personal journey of finding meaning on the road.

[longlivekookie]

London Calling? See the City's Top Sights Free

Cool Britannia. London is the town that lives and breathes its ancient beyond, yet its colourful pulse sets the traits that the sector watches. In subculture, fashion, song, structure and the arts, thoughts, no where else is just like the London. Constantly-evolving, usually unique, it is the city that have to be right at the pinnacle of your should-see list.

However, London may be expensive, a real shock to your pockets. If you are looking for correct cost accommodation, web sites consisting of Hotel.Com.Au/London, have dozens, no make that hundreds of resort alternatives inclusive of serviced residences in all the famous districts. Check it out. But there may be an upside to the cost of London. The capital offers not just dozens, but masses of free sights and points of interest. From museums to art galleries, historic parks to scenic walks, they won't fee you a cent.

Buckingham Palace. The Changing of The Guard

A rousing army march marks the begin of one of the oldest and maximum famous London attractions, full of pomp Remodelling jewellery, colour and that well-known British stiff higher lip. It's the Changing of The Guard. This royal ceremony is carried out outdoor Buckingham Palace each morning at 11.30am and lasts approximately 45 mins. The Queen's Guard typically consists of Foot Guards in complete-dress uniform, sporting bold red tunics and bearskins. A New Guard exchanges obligation with the Old, followed via a band gambling music. This levels from the conventional to the stylish, or even songs from West End indicates.

Park yourself for free.

London is a completely inexperienced town sprinkled with delightful parks. At 350 acres, Hyde Park is one of the largest open areas and makes up one of the four Royal parks, the others are St James's Park, Green Park and Regent's Park.

Head out to Hampstead Heath.

Take the subway (the Tube) to fashionable Hampstead, it's simply 4 miles (6.4km) from valuable London. Hampstead is complete of old fashioned leafy streets, captivating boutiques and smart cafes. If you are into celebrity-recognizing, you may even see a few acquainted display biz faces and fashion models as you loosen up with a quiet latte. Hampstead is likewise domestic to the Heath, a huge place of grass and wooded area, covering 791 acres with sweeping perspectives across London. Perfect for lazy afternoons and picnics, the Heath is a notable vicinity to exercising. Play tennis, pass jogging, outdoor swimming or why not strive your hand at cricket, a piece like baseball, only gentler.

See Kenwood House free

The 18th century mansion, Kenwood House sits elegantly on a hill in Hampstead. It became remodelled for Lord Mansfield by means of the wonderful Robert Adam. Among its great interiors hangs the super Iveagh Bequest of artwork, including masterpieces by Vermeer, Rembrandt, Turner, Reynolds and Gainsborough.

Visit your past and destiny unfastened

London has amazing museums, lots of them are free. Probably the maximum famous is The British Museum at Great Russell Street. Among the gadgets on display are the Rosetta Stone and the Elgin Marbles. Founded through an Act of Parliament in 1753, the British Museum turned into the primary national public museum within the global - and the primary to belong to a nation in preference to a monarch or personal client.

The Natural History Museum, South Kensington

This is the UK's country wide museum of natural history and a centre of scientific excellence in taxonomy and biodiversity. A high-quality way to spend a few hours exploring and enjoying the wonders of nature.

Imperial War Museum

The Imperial War Museum is particular in its insurance of conflicts, particularly the ones related to Britain and the Commonwealth, from the First World War to the cutting-edge. Exhibits range from tanks and aircraft to pictures and personal letters; film and sound recordings and twentieth century paintings.

Royal Air Force Museum Hendon

Take the educate, subway or bus out to North London to this high-quality museum of flight. The Royal Air Force Museum Hendon is situated at the historical web site of the authentic London Aerodrome and you may see over 80 plane from around the sector, at the side of brief movie clips and interesting exhibition regions.

Museum of London at The Barbican

London was a Roman town. This museum strains the growth of London from prehistoric times up to the modern-day, using a mixture of fashions, artefacts and reconstruction. There is also an impressive Roman interior, with its original mosaic pavement, a set of jewels courting from 1560 to 1640 and an illuminated model of the 1666 fire of London.

Look for ancient Blue Plaques

If you spend a touch time in London, you'll spot small Blue Plaques on the facades of shops and houses. Some of those homes are grand and imposing, others look remarkably normal. The connection? A well-known (or infamous) man or woman lived or worked there at a while inside the beyond.

Actors, authors, politicians, painters, scientists, sportsmen, campaigners and reformers - humans from unique nations, cultures and backgrounds - have all been commemorated on this way. You can see where Dylan Thomas, Charles Dickens, John F. Kennedy lived and wherein Karl Marx stayed. The borough with the most plaques is Kensington and Chelsea with one hundred eighty. The largest category is Writers with 180 recorded.

Personal favorites: plaques for composer George Frideric Handel and guitarist Jimi Hendrix stand aspect-through-aspect on 25 and 23 Brook Street, in Mayfair. Despite being a fictional individual, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "Sherlock Holmes" has a plaque at the meant web site of 221B Baker Street.

To marketplace, to marketplace! London is full of deals

Just about every a part of London has a street marketplace of some kind. Portobello Rd, west of Marble Arch, (featured in "Notting Hill", the popular movie with Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts) is home to marvellous antiques, jewellery, coins, garments, bric-a-brac, meals and trendy merchandise. (The vintage marketplace opens every Saturday. The wellknown marketplace typically runs 6 days every week.)

Go alternative. Camden Markets

Alternative, funky, goth or punk...Fashion lives in Camden. Camden Town, some miles from valuable London, is in which to go bargain recognizing, in particular for original style. Camden Lock Market, through the canal, changed into the unique craft marketplace, hooked up in 1974, but over the years, the marketplace scene has gown and now gives a miles wider spectrum of products. Walk the mile between Camden Town and Chalk Farm Underground stations, and you could stop, and store in all the markets of Camden. There's also plenty to revel in on this lively area...Restaurants, bars, pubs, clubs, theatres and cinemas.

Covent Garden. The domestic of speciality purchasing in London

For more than 150 years, Covent Garden become London's biggest fruit, vegetable and flower marketplace, covering 30 acres. In the Seventies, the market relocated south of the river. In 1980, after careful recuperation, Covent Garden re-opened as London's first and first-class speciality purchasing vacation spot. Today, almost 1,000,000 humans visit the well-known Market each week from all parts of the sector. This is a very special retail-therapy enjoy with the entirety from leading fashion and stunning gifts to specific toys and games.

Get arty. The National Gallery, Trafalgar Square

After you have fed the pigeons and taken shots of Nelson's Column, visit The National Gallery, domestic to over 2,three hundred pix dating from 1250. The series consists of all of the predominant European schools of portray and masterpieces by using many fantastic artists. Access to the permanent collection of paintings is free.

The Tate Modern, it's unfastened if you are

On the South Bank of the Thames, this former energy station has been superbly converted into the World's biggest collection of Modern Art. The  big floors cowl the whole century. Stark, modern-day, interesting - and often a bit crazy. It will get your mind ticking over with a new appreciation for present day artistic expression.

[ownerzero]

luba zygarewicz

This is “RISORGERE” (meaning, to rise again). It was created by New Orleans based installation artist Luba Zygarewicz while she was at Chalk Hill Artist Residency in Healdsburg, California. Here are Luba’s words on this very moving installation: “[RISORGERE] is comprised of hundreds of remnants from the Sonoma Fires of 2017, which I collected at a Fire […]

The post luba zygarewicz appeared first on AWorkstation.com.

source https://aworkstation.com/luba-zygarewicz/

[cooperhewitt]

Cooper Hewitt Short Stories: A Manor of Collecting

In last month’s Cooper Hewitt Short Story, Matthew Kennedy revisited the Ringwood Manor guest books, pulling out delightful images that spoke to the summer season at the Hewitt’s country estate. In this month’s segment, Ringwood Manor historian Sue Shutte explores Cooper Hewitt’s extensive online collection to find enticing parallels to those items found in the family’s personal collection.

Margery Masinter, Trustee, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum Sue Shutte, Historian at Ringwood Manor Matthew Kennedy, Publishing Associate, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

In addition to Sarah and Eleanor founding the Cooper Union Museum for the Arts of Decoration, many of the objects now in Cooper Hewitt’s collection were donated or bequeathed by members of the Cooper and Hewitt families. In searching Cooper Hewitt’s online collection, one can find ceramics, textiles, artwork, and more that closely resemble or are exact matches to an items also in the collection at Ringwood Manor. How could this be? At times, the Hewitt sisters may have purchased two of the same items—one for their own personal collection and one for the museum collection. The family was also engaged in increasing the museum holdings at the same time they were planning to donate Ringwood Manor to the state of New Jersey as a historic site. Pairs or groups of items that were intended to go together to one location may have accidentally been separated during the packing process. Whatever the case may be, these commonalities suggest parallel collecting practices of the sisters and their family and help us to illuminate the personal taste of Sarah and Eleanor.

As we know from firsthand accounts, the sisters did not necessarily see a strict boundary between their personal effects and the collection of their beloved museum. Eleanor wrote regarding her mother, in Making of a Modern Museum: “As she looked about her devastated home, would often say, ‘I wonder where that is?’ or, when visiting the museum, ‘didn’t I once have something like that?’ thinking she recognized some cherished object.” This pillaging referred to the family’s New York City residence at 9 Lexington Avenue; but assuredly the properties at Ringwood afforded a similar fluidity.

Below is a sampling of items found in the collection of Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum that are remarkably similar to pieces the Hewitts kept at Ringwood Manor. Explore how the Hewitts collected and lived!

Drawings

Drawing, View of Mount Chocorua, from Hill to Right of Albany Road, September 12, 1854; Daniel Huntington (American, 1816–1906); Graphite and white chalk on brown wove paper; 29.2 x 40cm (11 1/2 x 15 3/4in.); Frame: 44.8 x 60.3 cm (17 5/8 x 23 3/4 in.); Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum; Bequest of Erskine Hewitt, 1942-50-222

This graphite and white chalk sketch is by artist Daniel Huntington and was a bequest by Erskine Hewitt. A similar landscape sketch by the artist can be found hanging in the Great Hall of Ringwood Manor.

Drawing by Daniel Huntington (American, 1816–1906); Courtesy of Ringwood Manor.

Print (France); Bequest of Erskine Hewitt; 1938-57-1614

This French print depicts an architectural rendering of a structure, showing both a floor plan and elevation. This piece of artwork was also a bequest of Erskine Hewitt, who enjoyed these types of works enough to have one on display at Ringwood Manor.

French architectural print on the second floor hallway of Ringwood Manor. Courtesy of Ringwood Manor.

Books

Sample Book, late 19th–early 20th century; paper, leather, cotton, silk, and wool; H x W x D (b): 60.1 × 40.4 × 3 cm (23 11/16 × 15 7/8 × 1 3/16 in.); Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum; Gift of Eleanor and Sarah Hewitt, 1931-88-151-b

Eleanor and Sarah Hewitt donated numerous sample books to their newly forming museum. The books were originally utilized as research tools for design students taking classes at Cooper Union. Perhaps this sample book in the Ringwood Manor collection was too beautiful for the sisters to donate. Or perhaps it was accidentally overlooked!

Sample book. Courtesy of Ringwood Manor.

Sample book. Courtesy of Ringwood Manor.

Sample Book. Courtesy of Ringwood Manor.

Ceramics & China

There is no shortage of decorative ceramics to choose from that seem to be long lost pairs! It’s possible that at one time these items may have even been displayed together in the Hewitt family’s home.

Basket (England), ca. 1770; Pierced and glazed earthenware (creamware); H x W x D: 6.6 x 24.6 x 17.4 cm (2 5/8 x 9 11/16 x 6 7/8 in.); Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum; Bequest of Erskine Hewitt, 1938-57-396-a

The woven glazed creamware basket, a bequest of Erskine Hewitt, could seamlessly be displayed alongside the one found on the Dining Room table at Ringwood Manor.

Creamware basket. Courtesy of Ringwood Manor.

Sauce Boat (England), 1750–60; Manufactured by Worcester Porcelain Factory (England, GB, United Kingdom); Glazed soft-paste porcelain with overglaze enamels; H x W x D: 12.6 x 23 x 10 cm (4 15/16 x 9 1/16 x 3 15/16 in.); Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum; Bequest of Erskine Hewitt; 1938-57-430

This delightful floral sauceboat was another contribution from Erskine Hewitt. But perhaps he also meant to donate this soup tureen to the museum as well? It rests with a collection of ceramic items in the china hutches at Ringwood Manor.

Soup tureen. Courtesy of Ringwood Manor.

Brushwasher (China); Porcelain; H x diam.: 7 x 5.6 cm (2 3/4 x 2 3/16 in.); Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum; Bequest of Erskine Hewitt, 1938-57-350-a,b

This Chinese brushwasher that Erskine Hewitt bequeathed to the museum is stunning in its simplicity. A piece with a similar silhouette and proportions resides in Ringwood Manor’s parlor.

Brushwasher. Courtesy of Ringwood Manor.

Furniture

Cabinet On Stand (probably England), 1675–1700; Marquetry inlaid, veneered and joined oak, deal, walnut, and other wood, bone, brass; H x W x D: 171.5 x 133 x 55.8cm (67 1/2 x 52 3/8 x 21 15/16in.); Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum; Bequest of Mrs. John Innes Kane, 1926-22-43

While not a piece that the Hewitt family donated to the museum, the gorgeous marquetry cabinet is one that would display well at Ringwood Manor! Numerous marquetry furniture pieces, including china hutches, desks, tables, and chairs are scattered throughout the interior spaces of the Hewitt country home.

China hutch. Courtesy of Ringwood Manor.

Courtesy of Ringwood Manor.

Textiles

Square, 19th century; Silk; H x W: 83 × 78 cm (32 11/16 × 30 11/16 in.); Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum; Bequest of Erskine Hewitt, 1938-57-1163

This silk square may have once hung as a flag waving outside a home, or perhaps gracing an entrance hall or parlor as wall decor. Ringwood Manor has a piece of similar size and material resting in its storage area. This particular textile showcases light blue and cream colored stars flanking a central design of a cherub riding a dolphin.

Silk square. Courtesy of Ringwood Manor.

Tiles

Drawing (Netherlands), ca. 1920; Brush and watercolor, graphite on paper; Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum; Gift of Sarah Cooper Hewitt, 1927-16-2

The current “Hewitt Sisters Collect” exhibition, located on the second floor of the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, features tiles that were donated by Eleanor and Sarah Hewitt. The sisters also collected drawings and watercolors featuring designs for tiles, many of which were donated to the museum. Those Dutch tiles must have been a favorite of Mrs. Sarah Hewitt, as they were utilized in the design of the fireplace surrounds in the library of Ringwood Manor!

Courtesy of Ringwood Manor.

Courtesy of Ringwood Manor.

There are many more objects found in the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum’s collection that match ones found at Ringwood Manor. If you have not done so before, I encourage you to peruse the online database. And then visit Ringwood Manor- things may look familiar to you!

Sources

Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum online collection.

from Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum http://ift.tt/2u4En5q via IFTTT

[phynxrizng]

Dandelions

How I Found Paganism:

The Origin Story of a Druid Priestess

July 4, 2017

by Melissa Hill

Religion was a method of exclusion. It was not fair. It was not kind. I learned this as a child. I felt it when I stayed overnight with my friends and ended up going to church on Sunday morning with them. When I had to stay awkwardly in my seat while all the good Catholics went to get their sacred snack. I didn’t know the code words or the songs, I was alone in a sea of people who knew the chorus. I was unclear about this Jesus guy.

They all said he was so great. I wasn’t so sure. I had read the Bible, or parts of it at least. As a young person, probably 11 or 12, I started with Genesis and then read all the books of the Bible that were named after women: Ruth and Esther. I can’t say as I was super impressed. Time went on and my best friend in High School was a Jewish girl.

Her family wasn’t very intense about their religion. They had a Hanukah bush and I learned to love the latkes that her mom made. My favorite lab partner was a Muslim girl who was shy about why she wore a hijab and so I learned not to ask because I didn’t want to upset her. I was just grateful that she was careful, competent, and was fair about sharing the fun tasks, unlike the boys in our AP chem class.

I decided I was not Christian. I refused to participate in a system that would send my friends to Hell because they were in a different religion club. Assigning someone to eternal torment because they had different songs and different handshakes seemed insane to me.

My boyfriend at the time was horrified. He wanted me to get in line and go to his cutsie poofy cloud land when I died. I told him I’d rather not.

So I entered into a time where I was agnostic. Because no matter how much I resisted their handshakes and their songs I was a deeply spiritual person. I knew there was spirit that resided within and throughout this world because I felt it. I interacted with it. As a young child there was no difference for me between the “unseen” and the “seen” worlds.

I remember speaking with the gnomes that lived under the pin oak in my backyard. I also remember learning to talk to the cardinals by mimicking their speech. Those were both real things for me. I had dreams of the future and knew things I couldn’t have known. My mother told me the story of how when I was a baby she always knew when a relative died because the night before I would cry incessantly and then she’d get a phone call from her mother the next day.

This was just my experience of the world. Going to school was an education in many ways. I found out I was too sensitive, too smart, too weird, too awkward. I did not fit in with my bird songs and stories of the witch woman who lived in my basement.

I learned to keep silent about my visions. I learned to choose my own path independently of the crowd. This was in the days before Silver Ravenwolf and Harry Potter. I sought for traces of understanding of my own experience. Narnia, Dune, The Secret Garden, the fairy tales of Anderson and Grimm all taught me bits of wisdom. It was a fiction book I read in college that finally led me to find my religion club.

I don’t even remember the name of it now. It was about people in modern North America who turned into these magical save the planet elf things. It mentioned two books: Starhawk’s Spiral Dance and Margo Adler’s Drawing Down the Moon.

I skipped my classes and took the bus to the bookstore the next day. I had to know if they were real books. They were real, as most of you reading this know.

MORE PAGAN ORIGIN STORIES AT PATHEOS PAGAN

How I Found Paganism by Voodoo Priestess Lilith Dorsey at Voodoo Universe My Paganism: Nature, Nurture, or Choice? by John Beckett at Under The Ancient Oaks How I Found Paganism When I Wasn’t Even Looking by Angus McMahan at Ask Angus Amen And a Couple of Women by Annwyn Avalon at The Water Witch. How I Found Paganism From a Kitchen Witch  by Rachel Patterson at Beneath the Moon The Many Phases of My Paganism by Bekah Evie Bel at Hearth Witch Down Under Finding Paganism by Jason Mankey at Raise the Horns

That rather silly story about people turning into elves changed my life completely. The words spoke to me of a religion club I could belong to. Some place where I was not insane, awkward, or going to Hell. A place where the things I had seen in fact had Names. Where the energy I had felt, the healing I had done, the spirits I had talked to were Real. My lived experience of life was validated by others who knew more than I did. I was ecstatic.

I read Cunningham during lectures on the physiology of the brain. I built an altar in my dorm room and took it down every time my parents visited. I saw a chalked invitation to “Green Spiral: MSU’s Eclectic Pagan Network” written on the university sidewalk. It took a great deal of bravery for me to go to that first meeting, but go I did. I began long journey that has never ended, that led to me meeting my husband, my vocation, my children, my life.

I am a priest, a spiritworker, a friend, a teacher, a writer, an artist, and an activist for the earth and Her folk. In a very real way paganism has shaped my entire existence. I found the place where I was willing to learn the songs and the secret handshake. A place where no one was excluded who wanted to be included. Where no one had to go to eternal damnation for being different. Where more than one way to the divine was encouraged. I found my home.

FILED UNDER: COMMUNITY TAGGED WITH: AUTHENTICITY, CHOICE, DRUIDRY, NATURE, ORIGIN STORY, PAGANISM, RELIGION, SPIRITUALITY, THEOLOGY «

Source found in, PatheosPagan/ DANDELIONLADY.COM

About Melissa Hill

Melissa Hill combines ancient lore, modern science, and the best that druidry has to offer to explore ritual design, sustainability, and spiritual artistry. She posts every other Wednesday.

REPOSTED BY, PHYNXRIZNG

[glittership]

Episode #40 - Fiction by Nicky Drayden and Pear Nuallak

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Episode 40 is part of the Spring 2017 issue!

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    She Shines Like a Moon

by Pear Nuallak

  It’s cold in London but you glow with warmth. You travel limbless and limned from your core, throat crossed with black silk just as it was in your first days. Yes, you were naked then, washed clean in monsoons, dried by storm winds. When was the last time your sly hunt was wreathed in rice flowers? Do you recall how dtaan-tree fronds stroked your secret self as you rose, star-bound?

  [Full transcript after the cut.]

  Hello! Welcome to GlitterShip episode 40 for May 23, 2017. This is your host, Keffy, and I’m super excited to be sharing these stories with you.

  Today we have two reprints, “She Shines Like A Moon” by Pear Nuallak and “The Simplest Equation” by Nicky Drayden.

  Pear Nuallak is a writer and illustrator whose work has appeared in Interfictions, Unlikely Academia, and The Future Fire. Born in London and raised by Bangkokian artists, they studied History of Art jointly at SOAS and UCL, specializing in Thai art. Thai and British recipes appear semi-regularly on their food blog, The Furious Pear Pie, and they have an upcoming illustration this summer in Lackington’s magazine.

Nicky Drayden is a Systems Analyst who dabbles in prose when she’s not buried in code. She resides in Austin, Texas where being weird is highly encouraged, if not required. Her debut novel The Prey of Gods is forthcoming from Harper Voyager this summer, set in a futuristic South Africa brimming with demigods, robots, and hallucinogenic hijinks.

    She Shines Like a Moon

by Pear Nuallak

  It’s cold in London but you glow with warmth. You travel limbless and limned from your core, throat crossed with black silk just as it was in your first days. Yes, you were naked then, washed clean in monsoons, dried by storm winds. When was the last time your sly hunt was wreathed in rice flowers? Do you recall how dtaan-tree fronds stroked your secret self as you rose, star-bound?

Now your London home shivers you into clothes. A length of black at your neck doesn’t suffice; you add to old habits—night journeys sensibly hatted, the frank, coiled shapes below your neck wrapped in silk layered with batting and wool, each piece hand-made by the wearer herself. No other clothier would believe your particular sensitivities; only krasue know krasue.

(You make a fine new flying outfit each season. You like having things, you’re the lord and lady of things.)

London’s cross-hatched with forgotten waterways, the Krungthep of the Occident, murky and decadent. The Heath hides the Fleet in its hills, earth over arteries water-fat; it surfaces as a rivulet, gleams and whispers and winks knuckle high in leaf-lined silt before it talks away, louder and deeper into the festering heart of the city, but you drink it here, the source.

The tumulus field brings food best savoured like an egg with bael-sap yolk—slowly, thoughtfully, the red of it so rich on your tongue after eating bland pale without. In the viaduct pond you dump his fixie and clean your face.

After the meal you play with foxes. Your city friends have great thumping tails, on hind legs they yelp delightedly.

(When you first heard sharp cries in the hills you thought it was another krasue. Foxes came instead, sniffed you wonderingly, ears flicking. You didn’t find each other appetising in the least.

Their company is brief, precious: city foxes live a year each.)

You peer into the Hollow Oak. When you were new here you asked your first fox friend, lovely old Chalk Scrag, if this was their den.

No, friend, no—my burrow smells like forest all dark and close, she says. This smells like witch. One day I will show you the best smells of my home, yes, yes, but not that witch tree, no; that is hers to show.

You wonder if she’s shy. You think about whether she’s a person who also knows what it’s like to be apart from others. Under the bark and earth there’s always the smell of black tea and sugared fruit, sometimes cake, sometimes curry.

That one’s never come out, says Liquorice Grin, who counts Chalk Scrag as eightieth great-grandparent. She is busy. Leaves us gifts, but never comes out to play with us like you do, friend.

Four score years you’ve hunted here and no corner of Heath is unexplored but this. (You’re shy, too.)

Before setting off home, you linger by the Oak as you always do.

She is shy, she is busy, but you can ask.

So for a change, tonight you say, “Your home smells wonderful,” into the hollow. Your eerie heart beats strong as you fly home.

Strong teeth and supple tongue open the night-hatch to your flat. You shed your flying clothes and look at yourself on the bed; in your own light you consider the soft limbs, the clean red hollow between your shoulders. What are you truly hungry for?

You enfold your secret self with a body that accepts you neatly and completely.

The black silk remains at your throat.

It is good to lay your head on the pillow.

In the morning your longer self stretches her limbs, washes, thinks about being ‘she’ as she pulls on a turquoise jumper, so good on skin the colour of tamarind flesh, a long skirt in pig’s blood, Malvolio tights, black boots laced up.

Before a mirror she wanders her hands over the pleasing stubble on the back and sides of her head, dressing the length on top into a sleek pompadour.

(Your grandmothers’ hairstyle is now subculture fashionable but you wear it anyway, you’re the age of two grandmothers together and want to remember what you had.)

The morning walk to the cafe brings smells from the flats: running water and clean skin, burnt toast, bacon fat sizzling, hot dusty radiators. There’s strange comfort in witnessing others’ routines.

Coffee is taken quickly before the man with a rough-haired jack comes for his—tame dogs never like you, the cafe’s too small for a scene.

For two decades you’ve been teaching. You like interaction structured around things you know and love, boundaries defined. Every 5 years you make yourself move; you enjoy this while you can.

Knitting today. To make the cowl you’ve planned, students discard needles and knit like this: thick yarn knotted onto wrists, loops drawn over fists, wool on skin, weaving on flesh. Your students’ concentration is your delight; it staves the hunger somewhat.

Once you tended silkworms and cotton bolls, had a great loom under the belly of your stilt house; your family once wore the fabric you grew, span, wove.

Now it’s only you, the narrowness of your single self.

(But the cowls will warm your students, so this will do.)

That evening returns you to your alma mater. Female Abjection and the Monstrous Feminine in Thai Cinema, the email said. Open to all. It’s sure to be diverting.

You’ve not yet been to the Bloomsbury buildings—when you studied languages, it was the School of Oriental Studies at 2 Finsbury Circus and you were a man hatted and trousered, as it sometimes suits your fancy. The institution’s re-invented itself: cosmopolitan, international, politically active, inclusive.  (Coy about its hand in training Empire: to control a people you know their tongues, their hearts.)

You sit and are lectured on a self Othered through others’ eyes.  Except for one Thai man, the lecturer cites theorists and academics like her, white and Western.

She says, “There are no feminists in Thailand—Thai women don’t really identify as feminists; it’s just not done. People talk about South-East Asian women having power and ownership, but…” she shrugs.

(It’s never occurred to the lecturer to ask what a Thai woman thinks of herself, let alone a krasue’s view of her own condition.)

You think of spitting in her tea. Wouldn’t make much difference to the taste; your lips are primed. But her words will survive a thousand years: she’s adding to the sum of human knowledge. She doesn’t need your curse—no, it wouldn’t make much difference at all.

There is loyalty, still, though you’ve been here so long and it’s your countrywomen who fear you most, who have always kept their distance from you, who would reject and destroy and silence you instantly if they knew your tastes.

But you were made by them. You are their monster. It’s hard to believe others would believe you. The hunger you’ve mastered, mostly, but grieving anger and loneliness thunders through your whole interior.

You suck your teeth and go home, fill yourself with sweet warm rice. A collection on your kitchen shelves: rice scraped white, rice left red or brown or black, rice so delicious wives forget husbands.

(Is it good or bad you’ve only found husband-forgetting rice? Perhaps men are more easily forgotten by wives. You’ve no inclination for husbands: the sum of your knowledge on this subject is that they’re common.)

Once your fork and spoon are closed, an invitation appears, curling hand tracing bright in the air:

You are invited to

A Midnight Cake Tasting

for the delight of the Witch Ambrosia

at the Hollow Oak, Hampstead Heath

You hesitate, chewing your lip. Perhaps she’s only inviting you out of kindness, politeness, obligation. Perhaps she won’t be there. Perhaps this is a trick. But she’s asked, and you accept.

You go as yourself, your honest, smallest self. When the clock strikes the hour you hover, unsure.

“Come in, love, I’ve been waiting so long,” says Ambrosia.

The witch leads you in, steps winding like shell chambers into the earth. Her home smells like a home should, is full of things neatly kept, herbs bunched, cables sorted. In the lamp light you see her fine umber self dressed in a gown of fresh plum, face framed with raincloud hair in a thousand braids. You know at once she is splendid.

“Oh, is that for me?” she says as you give her a rich saffron scarf. Thanks is a gentle touch to your cheek.

The table is spread. Together you enjoy black rum cake and rose-bright sorrel, dark fruits wondrously spiced.

You begin with, “I thought I’d say hello.”

“So did I,” says Ambrosia, “it was about time.”

“Will you come with me tonight?” (why are you so awkward, what could she possibly—)

“I was thinking you’d never ask,” she smiles.

Up above, Liquorice Grin says, Ah, you’ve brought a new lovely friend.

You dance together, fox fur coppered in ghost light. Ambrosia shines like a moon. Your heart shouts. You are full up of her.

  END

    The Simplest Equation

by Nicky Drayden

  I’m doodling in the margins of my Math 220 syllabus when she walks into the classroom like a shadow, like a nothing, like an oil slick with pigtails. She scans the empty seats in the most calculating manner and I shudder when she spots the one next to me. Her knees bend all the wrong ways in her jeans as she walks up my aisle, and her head is a near perfect ellipsoid that could’ve fallen out of any geometry primer. She sets her backpack on the floor between us, then maneuvers into the chair with the grace of a lame giraffe.

“I hope I’m in the right place,” she says as she finally settles—her English impeccable, though she exhales the words more than speaks them, typical of her kind. “Partial Differential Equations?”

I nod, trying not to notice all those rows of tiny pointed white teeth crammed into her mouth, but then she smiles and it becomes impossible not to. I swallow hard, somehow managing to extend my hand.

“I’m Mariah,” I say, my eyes tracing along the brown of my skin until it intersects the blue-black of hers.

“Kwalla,” she says. “Two syllables. Not like the bear.”

I force a laugh. It comes out easier than expected.

“Nice doodle,” she says, looking at the squares and swirls and meandering lines. “Very symmetrical.”

“Mmm…” I purse my lips and cock my head, then with a single tap on the screen, I reset my syllabus to its virginal form.

She’s not the first Ahkellan I’ve met. There are a couple hundred here on campus. They come to Stanford when they can’t get into Vrinchor Academy or Byshe, or any of the other prestigious schools in their system. Bring us your next best brightest, has become our new school motto. Yale, Harvard, and the other Ivy League schools split a couple dozen Ahkellans between them, but California’s consistent temperatures are much more appealing to a race that goes into involuntary stasis when the weather dips below forty-three degrees.

After brief introductions, Professor Gopal drones on about semilinear equations. I listen and take notes attentively, afraid to let anything slip past me. I used to love math. Now it’s the bane of my existence, always more of the same lifeless problems. But I’ve got too many credits and too little money to think about changing majors now. So I buckle down and frequently pull all-nighters just to squeak by with Bs.

I glance over at Kwalla who’s busy solving problem sets on her notebook, two chapters ahead of the professor already. This class is probably a joke to her, just a way to rack up a few credits before applying for an interstellar transfer. But she seems pleasant enough, and none of the other Ahkellans I’ve met have ever shown anything that resembled a sense of humor, or an appreciation for art for that matter.

“Hey,” I whisper, keeping the resentment out of my voice. “You looking for a study partner?”

Kwalla nods, then smiles at me again. I desperately resist the urge to protect my soft spots.

    Every Tuesday and Thursday evening, we meet at Meyer Library, hustling through the stacks for table space among towers of old, dusty books. When my grades slip, we add another study session Saturday afternoons in her dorm room. It smells vaguely of sandalwood, and the paneled doors of her closet are neatly lined with posters of angst-ridden Ahkellans. Their slick, black faces are dour and their postures nonchalant—reminiscent of late twenty-first century brood bands, stuff my parents used to listen to.

We sit cross-legged on her bed… well, I sit cross-legged, and she sits in some variation of the lotus position that teeters on an optical illusion with all those joints of hers. Our notebooks are spread out between us. Kwalla’s explaining Fourier transforms to me for the third time, and we’re both beyond frustrated. I try to listen, but my mind drifts, and before I know it I’ve created a doodle that spans half the page, covering the miniscule amount of calculations I’d started.

Kwalla sees and makes a purring sound I’ve come to recognize as mild irritation.

“Sorry,” I grumble. I lean back against the wall and stare out the window at her prized lake view of Lagunita. Students horseplay on its shore, blue-gray water lapping at their ankles. They laugh, living life and enjoying the “college experience,” while I’m cooped up in here, breathing stale circulated air and staring at integral curves until my eyes bleed.

I heave a sigh. “Maybe I should drop the class. Drop out of college. Drop off the face of the Earth while I’m at it.”

Kwalla smirks. “You’re depressed. Good.”

“Good?” I slam my notebook shut, turn away from her, and fume like a shuttle on its launch pad. Just when I was beginning to think she was a pretty decent person, or Ahkellan. Or whatever.

“Yes, it means you’re close to understanding the story of this equation. It’s a classic tale of love and loss. It’s meant to be depressing, yet beautiful at the same time.”

I roll my eyes as she resets to a clean page and starts the equation again. She works downward, shuffling constants and variables, swaying like a concert pianist. When she’s done, a single tear trickles down her cheek.

She glances up at me and notices that I’m crying, too. “You saw the story this time?” she asks with hopefulness in her voice.

I slowly shake my head, more confused now than ever. “Not even close. I was just trying to figure out how to tell my parents that I’ve wasted their hard-earned money and the last two and a half years of my life. I hate math.”

Kwalla recoils as if my mathematical slur negates her very existence. “You shouldn’t say things like that.”

“Give me a break,” I say, rubbing my eyes. “I might not get your ‘stories’ but you don’t get how incredibly hard this is for me. I wasn’t born a genius like you, solving proofs while still in the womb.”

From the grit in my words, I expect Kwalla to ask me to leave, but instead she lays a spindly hand on my knee.

“I’ve worked hard to get here, Mariah, but what you say is partially true. Math is our first language, and we crave it when we’re born like you crave your mother’s milk. It is our first friend. Our first love. Our first everything.” Kwalla pauses, face riddled with uncertainty, then draws a black pouch from her backpack. She unties the drawstring and slips a large, tear-shaped crystal into the palm of her hand. Hundreds of facets speckle the ceiling with light, so beautiful. “I’ve never shared this with anyone,” she says timidly.

“It’s amazing…”

“I haven’t even started yet,” she says with a laugh, then leans close so I can get a better look. Foreign symbols are etched into each cut side of the crystal. “It’s a yussalun, a calling piece. It’s similar to your auditory instruments, except… well, it’s probably easier just to show you.”

Kwalla holds the piece up in front of her like a trumpet, but several inches away from her mouth. Her thin fingers tap across the facets and the air above the piece crystallizes into an intricate fractal pattern, a living snowflake that blooms sideways and then stretches for the ceiling with all its might. Buds gracefully unfurl to the rhythm of an inaudible beat, stirring up a sense of wonder within me. Then the ice crystals slow, becoming thinner and more delicate until they peter out with a hopelessness that fills me with inexplicable grief.

“That was the equation we’ve been working on,” she says after we’ve both had a chance to catch our breath. “Now do you see?”

I nod, feeling wounded and vulnerable. There’s a terrible rawness inside my chest that I wouldn’t wish on anyone, and yet I crave more. I need more. “Do another,” I whisper.

So she shares her favorite stories with me, and together we sit pensive for mysteries, hold our breath for thrillers, and giggle at the titillation of cheap romance—each fractal evoking an emotion, pure and intense and untamed. After the sun no longer shines through her window, each fractal leaves a slight chill in the air, so we slip halfway under the covers and Kwalla shares with me a fractal with a perfect heart at its base that dazes me with childlike joy—an equation simple enough to solve itself. Then we throw the covers over our heads and I can’t tell where I end and she begins, so I giggle and Kwalla giggles, then she laughs, and I laugh.

    Our professor posts the scores to our midterm exam outside the classroom door. With great trepidation, I type in the last four digits of my student ID and the page slowly scrolls down, pointlessly melodramatic. My finger shakes as I trace my way across the screen over failure and mediocrity and more failure until I reach the grade for last week’s exam. My chest explodes with delight when I see the 98.5.

I’m so giddy I can barely stay seated as I wait for Kwalla to arrive. Thanks to her, I’ve rediscovered my passion for math. I busy myself solving practice problems that tell tales of triumph in the face of adversity. I’ll pick the best one and share it with Kwalla tonight. In these last couple weeks, she’s taught me how to play her yussalun, turning water molecules in the air into icy fractals the size of a toy poodle, though mine pale in comparison to hers. The bluntness of my fingertips makes it difficult to tap the right facets, but what I lack in accuracy I make up for in perseverance. I’ve caused more than my fair share of fractals to wilt, however, when I get it right, math and story collide, forming something exponentially more magnificent than the sum of its parts.

Her seat is still empty. I wait as long as I can stand it, then ditch class a few minutes into Professor Gopal’s lecture. The phone rings and rings as I race to Kwalla’s dorm. Through her door, I can hear her speaking in an Ahkellan dialect sounding something like a rooster trying to fog up a mirror. A deeper voice follows with the tin ring of an IVT, an instantaneous voice transmission, cheapest way to call intragalaxy. Against my better judgment, I knock softly. Kwalla answers with an uncontainable smile, and nods for me to have a seat at her desk.

Her conversation stretches on for another ten minutes, and as she paces barefoot across the blue carpet, I admire all the ways her legs bend from beneath her skirt, and how the fluorescent light overhead glints on her skin—like iridescent rainbows set adrift across the night’s sky.

“I can’t believe it!” she shrills after she finally disconnects. “It couldn’t be more perfect! I’ve been accepted, Mariah. I’m going to Byshe!”

“That’s wonderful!” I say, and despite the rip in my heart, I really mean it.

Getting into Byshe is worse odds than matching all the balls in the Bippho Trans-Galactic pick-twelve. Optimism has never been my strong suit, but maybe if I study hard and get my grades up, I could apply to Byshe next year. Kwalla could tutor me the rest of this semester and maybe even a few weeks into the summer. I nod to myself, impervious to the laws of probability and blissfully ignoring the fact that I can barely afford out-of-state tuition, much less out of solar system.

“I’ve got some news, too,” I say.

Kwalla sits down next to me, and her eyes get wide and glassy. “You passed!”

“Nu-uh. I nearly aced it!”

“This calls for a celebration!” She pulls her yussalun out from its pouch and hands it to me. “Here, you play something nice while I pack.” Her voice trails off at the end, a whirlwind of excitement deflated by a sudden prick from reality.

“Pack?”

“If I don’t catch the next shuttle up …” Kwalla says, voice pitched high and words running together as she tries to stitch together some sort of excuse for wanting to get the hell out of here. I don’t blame her, not with the life she has waiting for her across the stars. Kwalla tilts her head forward, and after a weighty silence, she leans against my shoulder. “I’m leaving for Byshe in the morning.”

    I can’t let her go without showing her how I feel, so after she’s fallen asleep, I slip out of bed and onto a spot on the floor where moonlight from her window falls across my dimly backlit notebook. I work through the whole night, scribbling down the story of us, the fun we’ve had in our short time together, and all the could-have-beens for our future. It becomes unwieldy, our equation, and even with the tiniest font, it still won’t fit on one screen. By the time I finish, my fingers are cramped, my brain is tight, and I can barely see straight. But the story is magnificent, engrossing, tragic.

Careful not to wake her too soon, I cradle the yussalun in my hands and prepare to share. Our story takes nearly thirty minutes to play, and when I’m done, I sit back and let it expand into the room. Two concentric buds sleepily emerge and form a base, then sprout three arms each, spiny like a starfish. They curl and coil, each arm to the beat of its own drummer. I marvel at the beginnings of their different stories, and my heart flutters as I try to keep up with them simultaneously.

At a meter high, I start to rouse Kwalla so she can see it as the first bits of sunlight shimmer across the fractal’s crystalline surface, but just as I lay a soft hand on Kwalla’s shoulder, the fractal begins to wilt. It steals my breath as I watch, my mind churning over the equation, wondering if I’d made a bad calculation or misplayed a note. But I couldn’t have made a mistake, not on something this important.

All at once, the arms spiral up with the grace and might of a dancer, recursive shapes predictable yet mesmerizing. My creation reaches for the ceiling, and I grin in anticipation of the final blossom, but the fractal is thickening like an insatiable sapling and not tapering into delicate buds. I exhale and my breath lingers in the air, coldness striking through my nightshirt as I realize this thing is far from stopping.

“Kwalla!” I scream, lips cracked from the moisture being sucked from the air.

She doesn’t respond and I shake her. Kwalla stirs for a moment, as if trying to fight through impending stasis, but then she goes still.

I take a swing at the fractal with her desk chair, smashing off one of the frosty tendrils, but it grows back with a vengeance until all is symmetrical again. Logic gives way to adrenaline and I scoop Kwalla’s body up into my arms.

“Fire!” I say, over and over through the hallways at the top of my lungs, figuring it will draw more attention than yelling “fractal!”

Someone pulls the alarm, and we all scatter outside and across the street. I rub warmth back into Kwalla’s limbs as onlookers wait for signs of smoke and flames. Of course they never come, and when rumors start circulating about a prank, I think that maybe I’d overreacted. An explosion of terra cotta tiles silences those thoughts as the fractal pierces the roof of Kwalla’s dormitory. Exposed to the night air and the moisture from the nearby lake, the fractal accelerates, busting brick and shattering glass. It’s odd, but no one panics or frets over lost possessions. We just watch, completely captivated.

The fractal doesn’t slow until it’s demolished both wings of Lagunita Court and the adjacent parking lot, and even then, it’s not quite finished. A single thin stalk stretches up for the stars, and it reaches, reaches, reaches—wispy recursions sprouting like a vine on its way to the stratosphere. With some effort, I pull my gaze away and watch the crowd. There’s not a dry eye to be found, including Kwalla’s, her body cradled comfortably against mine.

“I had no idea,” she exhales weakly, “…that you felt so deeply. It’s the most incredible story I’ve ever seen.”

“I’ll miss you,” I say before she has a chance to make well-meaning promises we both know it’d be impossible to keep. I savor this moment, because in a few hours, she’ll be on a plane to Houston, just one small step on her long journey home.

    There’s a flurry of media coverage and threats of my expulsion, but the Board of Trustees changes its tune when news of the fractal reaches Ahkel and impresses even their most renowned intellectuals. Suddenly I’m no longer a disgraceful delinquent, but one of Stanford’s brightest scholars, and any blemishes on my academic record are written off as me being a genius misunderstood in my own time. I laugh at their antics. At least it distracts me long enough for the numbness inside me to fade.

A week later, my phone hums in my pocket while I’m doodling in Professor Gopal’s class. I fish it out so I can check the caller ID. My heart slips to my toes when I see it’s an IVT number, and I scramble out of the classroom on rubbery legs.

“Hello?” I say into my phone. “Hello?” I say again, harder this time, as if it’ll get my words across subspace faster. There’s only a slight time dilation, but the seconds drag on like days. I hang onto the sounds of rustling static, waiting for Kwalla’s voice.

Only it’s not Kwalla. My disappointment is short lived, however, when the caller identifies herself as the dean of the Mathematics department at Vrinchor Academy. She says she’s eager for the opportunity to take a closer look at how I derived my equations, and that if I’m interested, there’s a spot for me in the upcoming school year, full scholarship. I don’t bother holding back my elation, and even though a billion miles separate us, I’m sure the dean’s ear will be ringing for days.

I return to class and respectfully gather my belongings, though my classmates couldn’t have missed my screams. I nod at Professor Gopal, and he smiles knowingly. I can’t believe I’ll be living a dream, studying under the best minds in the galaxy, devouring math in all its forms. And of course it doesn’t hurt that I’ll be a quick shuttle’s ride from Kwalla, just two planets away.

I race across campus, cutting through manicured lawns, dodging traffic, and pushing myself through the knot of tourists gathered in front of our fractal. I fall to my knees, chest heaving and smiling wider than any sane person ought to. My warmed skin braces me against the deep chill the fractal emits. Despite my best efforts not to look like a complete fool, I still draw stares and the attention of a camera lens or two.

From the corner of my eye, I swear I see our fractal moving. Changing. Of course that’s impossible after all this time—probably just an odd reflection of sunlight or the shadow of a passing cloud. Doesn’t matter. I’ve got a date with destiny tonight: a passport to find, flights to book, a whole planet to say goodbye to and above all, I’ve got a new story that’s itching to be told.

  END

    “She Shines Like a Moon” was originally published in Lackington’s and is copyright Pear Nuallak, 2015.

“The Simplest Equation” was originally published in Space and Time Magazine and is copyright Nicky Drayden 2014.

This recording is a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license which means you can share it with anyone you’d like, but please don’t change or sell it. Our theme is “Aurora Borealis” by Bird Creek, available through the Google Audio Library.

You can support GlitterShip by checking out our Patreon at patreon.com/keffy, subscribing to our feed, or by leaving reviews on iTunes.

Thanks for listening, and I’ll be back soon with a poem by Joanne Rixon, and an original story by A.C. Buchanan.

Episode #40 – Fiction by Nicky Drayden and Pear Nuallak was originally published on GlitterShip

[eyevan-tumbleweed]

Work In Progress, 360 degree found wood female form created during a period in residency at Chalk Hill Artist Residency Program, Healdsburg, CA

#BennettEwing #chalkhillresidency

[biancalevan]

One week in and I’m still getting into a rhythm. In the morning, I’ll make a coffee, walk out to the studio to open the doors and windows, then go on a short walk while I drink my coffee, and head back to the studio. ————————— I’ve been playing with charcoal, which is completely foreign to me, but I like the freedom in it. There’s also an interesting quality of seeing the erasure of it - a visual record of what was done. ————————— Photos: (1) Papercut date in some grape vines. (2) Studio right after I moved furniture around and set up. (3) Tree-lined path that will hopefully find its way into a papercut. (4) Studio in the afternoon light. (5) Charcoals and other tools. (6) Excercise: Drawn line by line with no plan. (7) Never too many tree photos. (8) Left is a charcoal sketch of an oak tree and right is a test with liquid graphite. (9) A more lived-in space. ————————— #chalkhillartistresidency #warneckeranch #artresidency #charcoaldrawing #healdsburgart (at Chalk Hill Artist Residency) https://www.instagram.com/p/CUqu0F6lrtz/?utm_medium=tumblr