Following a challenge in one of my ever-present writing guides, today I'm introducing you to my favorite word, grey. You probably already know the word and may be already correcting my spelling. The variable spelling is, in fact, why "grey" is a favorite.
Needing an essay description for a shading? For the color creeping inexorably from your scalp? "Gray" is your word. Need a word that rings with major-key practicality? "Gray" is your descriptor. Need a way to drag blue into your shadows? That "a" does it (for me, anyway).
On the other hand, if there is a conjugation needed to make those shadows firm enough to step into, to draw up the lichen-green bark into a dryad's girdle, "grey" is the spell(ing). Grey is the Lorien cloak beneath which I slip into the fantastic. It is the neutral border between two bright fields, the fog beyond the fields we know. It is the minor key modulation that opens the threshold to the haunting.
A favorite word functioning as a talisman to keep me fixed on the difference between obscurity and clarity, between familiar and alien, between what is revealed and what is concealed, "grey/gray" is a good symbol of the shifting that lives in fantasy.
What's your favorite word?
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