Stories We Keep: A Yoga as Muse Anthology

By Dawn Curtis, Robin Bourjaily

To understand the nuances of Yoga As Muse, imagine your body as a clay bottle. It contains truths, memories, image-shards, and wild impulses that can be wielded into words and glazed into phrases. Our bodies hold stories. They are, in the most direct sense, story keepers.
But how do we stay with and shape these stories on the page? How do we tend to these stray pulses that arise in that imaginative nether world that is not mysterious and yet is?
Yoga As Muse gives writers the means to do just that. It gives us the tools to engage our bodies, breath, and self-awareness as part of the writing process.
~Jeffrey Davis, from the Introduction to Stories We Keep: A Yoga As Muse Anthology

Stories We Keep: A Yoga As Muse Anthology is a diverse collection of tales that have a common thread—the practice the authors share to spark their creativity: Yoga As Muse (YAM for short). These are authentic writings of new love, betrayal, and coming of age, brought to the page through movement, meditation, and the breath. And enjoy a few yam recipes thrown into the mix to sweeten things up!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dawn Curtis, Robin Bourjaily
• Release date: Oct 10, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465773470

Book preview

Stories We Keep: A Yoga as Muse Anthology

Writings by the YAM Tribe with an Introduction by Jeffrey Davis

Editors: Dawn Curtis and Robin Bourjaily

Stories We Keep: A Yoga as Muse Anthology

Writings by the YAM Tribe with an Introduction by Jeffrey Davis

Editors: Dawn Curtis and Robin Bourjaily

Copyright © 2011 by Dawn Curtis and Robin Bourjaily

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

YAM Tribe Press

13190 Sunset Circle

Clive, IA 50325

USA

All stories in this anthology appear with permission of the authors.

The stories in this anthology are works of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to persons either living or deceased is purely coincidental.

Editors: Dawn Curtis and Robin Bourjaily

Artwork and cover design by Adele Bisaillon, www.artbyadele.bisaillon.biz

One keeper stokes the fire throughout the night.

One keeper protects the nooks and crannies for mystery to continue.

One keeper holds the channels open so we may continue to flow.

One keeper maintains the space between, that we may always straddle both worlds.

And one keeper assures that hearts smile wide so we can sustain love.

A keeper stores and protects some corner of wisdom. A keeper holds space for others.

In this anthology, each keeper also generously gives.

Jeffrey Davis

Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

One keeper stokes the fire

Editor's Notes

Introduction

Jeffrey Davis

Swan Song

Bhavi Rivais

Excerpt from Butter Girl, a novel

Dawn Curtis

A Cold Minnesota Day for a Rape

Catherine Holm

Excerpt from Motion, a novel

Tanya Robie

Excerpt from Throwing Like a Girl, a novel

Robin Bourjaily

About the Tribe

Editor's Notes

When is a yam not a yam? When it’s a sweet potato!

The authors and editors acknowledge that there is a keen difference between the sweet potato and the yam. While the orange-fleshed tuber found most widely in North America is not a yam, it is both the featured vegetable in our recipes and in gratitude for the Yoga As Muse™ process, we’ve called it a yam. Substitute sweet potato as you like!

Spelling conventions

To preserve the voices of our authors, we have presented British and American English spellings as written.

Stories We Keep: An Introduction

by Jeffrey Davis

On hot midsummer nights in Texas, lightning bugs lit up the dark with promise. One dusk, my eight-year-old hands grabbed one of my mother’s mason jars and I dashed out the door, my long blond hair the yellow of the bugs’ tails I chased. Within an hour, I returned, pulsing jar in hand, and took a steak knife to jab breathing holes in the tin lid. I fell asleep with my private nightlight and dreamed, I’m sure, of yellow and magic and the quiet shape of hope.

When I awoke, well, you know the rest of the story. The light was dead. Over tearful eggs and toast, my mother tried to explain to me the short life of insects and the reasons we cannot contain everything we love. It would be years before I appreciated her words and even longer before I stopped trying to jar all I wanted to hold onto.

How do we keep something and still let it be free? In fact, how do we keep something for the sake of freedom?

That’s a question this anthology contains. For it’s a question, I suspect, about stories and their