I’m feeling a bit rubbish this week due to some unfortunate spider bites in tender places and so my creative urge is a bit limp or maybe just itchy, either way it’s not at it’s best.
You do have to be of relatively sound mind to produce half way decent writing and the creative urge does tend to be a bit of a drama queen and falls apart at the slightest blip in your mental equilibrium and slopes off for the equivalent of a lie down in a darkened room.
When this happens either one can sit around and wait for the creative urge to get over its little tantrum and in the mean time do useful stuff like defrost the freezer or prune the garden or you can drag it out of the darkened room and make it work.
Habit is a wonderful thing and writing is a habit and so setting yourself to produce something eventually gets a result and blank pages fill up with words. They may not be great words but you can always go back and change them later.
It’s all very well sitting around crying “My muse has deserted me” and other such dramatic 19th century wails but if we all waited for the Muse to show up, clock in and get on with the job of feeding us with perfect prose we’d be here forever.
Whilst I go threaten my creative urge into producing the goods here are some pictures from around the village which right now is beautiful and busy and gloriously cooler as the heat of high summer ebbs away giving us the perfect days of autumn that we all yearn for during August and will fondly remember during January.
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- Figs and honey – afternoon snack
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- The neighbour’s cauldron, boiling bulgar just outside the house
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- Pepper garlands
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- Yet more peppers drying
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- Dried herbs in the sunday market
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- Village Jam
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- One of the village elders at the tea shop
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- Red onions
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- Last flowers of summer
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- Blissful cooler nights under a new moon
I can’t set foot outside the house at the moment without being dragged over to someone’s impromptu street kitchen and made to sample spiced wheat and tomato salsa, or encouraged to sit a while, to loiter and chat and nibble on figs and walnuts whilst my hair gets full of the smell of woodsmoke.
Everything is about preserving this month and between the cauldrons canning tomato sauce and boiling bushels of bulgur, the strings of peppers garlanding the houses, the stacks of herbs in baskets and the urgent jamming of seasonal fruits it is like living in a walk in larder.
Nothing is going to get my creative urge back to functioning faster than a bowl of just cooked bulgur wheat, pale gold and softly salty, burning hot on the fingers as you scoop it up and stuff it in your mouth. It’s one of those things you just can’t stop eating and it’s surprising that there is enough left to make it worth hauling it up onto the flat roof to dry by the time everyone in our little corner of the village and every passing body has sampled some.
It is real comfort food and just right for the soul feeling sorry for itself.
You really have no excuse, do you! (OK, you can still blame the spider bite.) But truly, what a feast for the senses you have around you! Drink it in, eat it up, breathe deeply – it will surely be transformed into something absolutely wonderful in the coming weeks, as always. Axxx
an early spring-clean to brush away the cobwebs might help 😀
With deep shame I have to report that the spider was in my pants. Which will teach me to check them having left them lying around. Can’t really blame the spider under the circumstances 🙂
Poor you. I am resisting the temptation to titter at your mishap, really I am but Alan’s cobweb comment made me laugh out loud. My mother taught me never to mock the misfortunates of others. I didn’t listen 😉
We only got back from Blighty this morning but so far our neighbour has passed food across the courtyard three times. The empty plates are stacking up!
Feel sorry for the spider, anything that bites me dies!
Tradition demands those plates must be returned full so get your pinny out, baklava is sooo easy. xxxx
Sorry to hear of the spider bite and I hear you on the muse. As someone with dyslexia, I have my own rounds with the temperamental lass myself, and may end up putting stuff out that is not quite fully ready for harvest, however…if this is your worst writing, you are in a good place! I love the verbal (and photo) images of the goings-on about the village and am looking forward to my own home canning which will commence next weekend! 🙂 Would that I were back on the Ege Deniz to do some magic with figs, et alia. For us, it is all tomato, tomato, tomato and pickles.
It hasn’t been a brilliant year for the figs to be honest, further up the coast where they had more rain they were fantastic (even made the New Yorker!) but our figs are smaller this year and not so plentiful, they taste great though. Today has been all about blanching beans and the tomatoes are coming to an end finally, I have one plant in my garden that is yielding a couple of late ones every day. Funny how lovely a simple tomato sandwich is with a just picked fruit and a sprinkle of salt. Enjoy your canning 🙂 Karen
Well the Muse’s tantrum seems to be over, Karen. Lovely post and pictures to make my mouth water. Sorry about the spider bites. they can be really nasty 🙁