Oktober Sky: Changes in the Air

 Walking beside the water just before sunrise, her soft shoes barely disturbed the sand. Her footprints were subtle and hard to read, for she had learnt a pattern of stepping that caused little sound and less imprint. It worked with sand, with dirt, with grass, even in the underbrush of a forest, and her muscles were long since trained to the peculiarity of those movements. The slight ache she might feel after a day of travel meant less than travelling free of followers.

 Though she avoided being tracked routinely, today it was a conscious choice. Her plans if known could call up trouble of a serious nature, and she had built towards this day, this working, for several months in order to avoid notice. The gathering of materials, the choice of a meeting place, the precise wording of the envisioned spell had been pieced together with a seeming randomness, a delicate embroidery of many hands moving at scattered times. No loose ends had been left, she was assured repeatedly, and she'd verified each assurance. Now, on the day itself, a sense of watchfulness filled her like an omen of pain.

 She had been very careful indeed, was still approaching her point most carefully, and yet the sky had filled with ominous clouds, grey edged with yellow; the wind had died to a damp stillness; the normal, gentle sounds of the sea and shore ceased; all the world seemed to wait with indrawn breath.

 Her actions, and perhaps intent, had been noted, and she paused to let that knowledge settle in. To carry on might mean death, or worse... to stop meant the end of her mind's peace, perhaps insanity.

She breathed deep the dank air around her slowly, tasting the clammy tang of her own indecision, then gathered her skirts and ran full out, unmindful of the clear path left on the sand behind.

 

Oktober Sky: Changes in the Water

 To work strong magicks effectively, the practitioner must prepare in many ways-- she must cleanse herself of dirt, and of cares, clearing mind and body to be a proper conduit of the energies she will use. She must prepare the area wherein she will cast her spells-- this may require cleaning, adding objects to an altar, oiling candles or other special preparations; the practitioner must, in every case, be aware of each mote of dust, each dim corner, each sunlit leaf, each crawling ant that lies within the space where her spell will be built. In this way, she retains as much control of the spell's result as possible.

 Total control is not possible. To keep your spell tight, you must work hardest before the moment you conduct the pure flow of energy, then let it go freely, with a calm and clear mind. Some will say this isn't so, wanting to save themselves time in the beginning of a spell, but all such haphazardly approached enchantments end up weak in effect, or worse-- they may turn against the spellworker. The clearest, strongest, best magick is made by strong and deliberate actions taken by careful, patient spellcasters. A lazy individual, a careless magician or one who seeks haste in the working, will get little good from their indifferent attempts.

 A good spellcaster takes her time in all things. A good spellcaster watches her tea even as it steeps, noting the changes in the water. Thus informed, all her deeds are well done, and life tastes sweet.



  

Oktober Ski: A Night at the Overlook

 The reflection in her eyes tipped him off-- the man behind him, as he lifted his arm to hit Mack, showed as a blurry glitter of movement-- Mack slid aside, kicking out as he went, dropping the surprised attacker onto the floor. In a flash, the edge of Mack's hand came down on his throat, and he was out of the game. The girl didn't stick around to see the results; she turned and made for the door as fast as she could, scattering her scarf and cheap bag in her hurry, and Mack let her go.

 He could have caught up at the elevators, maybe, but it didn't seem important. He knew who'd sent the pair, and he knew why. It was the ring, again, always that damn ring. Sitting in a safe ten floors below, it had managed to call trouble to him, for the third time. A cursed sapphire, not technically the legal property of anyone for over two centuries, although Mack's employer claimed hereditary ownership. His own short guardianship made Mack wonder why possession of this weirdly cut stone in its old-fashioned setting was so hot on everybody's list. Each day since he'd acquired it had brought some new problem, and he had five days left till delivery-- a meeting he'd begun to wish was happening a lot sooner, despite the luxurious accommodations he'd been paid to enjoy.



 

Oktober Ski: The Miso Diary

Day 6 of the diet that can't possibly miss--

 I have to pee every five minutes, all day long. Not sleeping for more than two hours at a time and my skin looks like hell. Forget sex. Forget watching a movie. I may have lost some weight just from all the running to the bathroom.

 My supervisor hates me now, for the constant up/down/up/down during her big-ass meeting yesterday morning. I left 5 times to urinate. She spoke to me afterwards and pretended to understand, then told me to see a doctor if "my problem" doesn't change for the better-- immediately. She's not going to let me do that again-- looks like it's adult diapers during the morning training montage.

 More later-- I have to pee again.



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Oktober Ski: Cantrip Castle

In my first novel, I wrote a throwaway line about a book two characters had read, called Cantrip Castle. I've worked on the real book since, but never finished. Here, I begin again, adding from the middle.


CANTRIP CASTLE


 Lil dropped the frog onto her bed.

"You're not going to stay there for long," she warned him, "so don't get comfortable."

He hopped over her pillow and onto the nightstand, looking around him. The room was full of pink things. Pink, and frilly, and dry.

 "I'm amphibious, baby. Cotton percale duvets aren't exactly my idea of cozy. Can we get a basin in here, with a couple of stones in it, maybe?"

"What's a basin?" Lil asked.

The frog sighed.

"It's a big, deep bowl, preferably with some water in it."

 "Oh! We have one of those."

 She jumped up, heading for the pink-on-pink door.

"Not too cold!" he called after her. Her head nodded as she skipped out, and the frog found a place on the nightstand to wait, and ruminate on his options. Clearly, this relationship wasn't going to be easy.



---Mari Kozlowski

  

Oktober Ski: Fiction, Fiction, Fiction

After many beginnings in September, most having gone unreported here, we are into Oktober, which is always reserved for instant fiction. This year, the plan is to alternate between a few prospective books, adding some new work to each. The first is a fanfic I've just dreamed up, a gathering of stories that may or may not become interwoven, called:


A NIGHT AT THE OVERLOOK



 His wife was trying on earrings now. She'd picked up ten different pairs so far, holding them near her head in turn, assessing their effect against her perfect coif.

 Brennan sat heavily in one of the Overlook's leather club chairs, realizing he might have to wait another half hour or more just for the jewelry to get picked. Then she'd need to decide on shoes, and last of all, a wrap. All of this to go downstairs and mingle with the richest scum in America on a cracked ballroom floor under aging chandeliers, while they ate dried out canapés and lobster that was sure to be overcooked.

 He grabbed a newspaper, bored already. His wife turned from her vanity mirror, hands on hips.

"What do you think about these?"

 He lifted his head from the sports section just as the first bullet ripped through her middle.

  

September Essay Cafe: On Beginnings.

 On this first day of my favorite, or nearly favorite month-- September has been a month of high changes and great starts since childhood, when it meant the first days of school, cooler weather, earlier bedtimes, new TV shows, and for me, my mother's new semester too (she was a college student back then)-- I have begun yet another course of study. The forward-looking energies of September make for a good time to start any project, and I often use them to get myself going on something new.

 This is in addition to the makeup artist certification I've been working on steadily, the online songwriting course I let languish and want to go back to, the guitar study I've put off recently, the liner notes for three CD's that I am supposed to finish writing for a musician friend, and the ongoing self-training as a pastry chef that I give up during hot weather and crave to go back to when Autumn comes around again. Not to mention my less important side projects, drawings, songwriting challenges, singing performances, the novel & Kindle books and short stories I'm working on, keeping up with my blogs, the cat's new daily dental regimen that I must administer, and oh, the new gaming podcast my hubby-man and I are trying to create together.

  You may see that I don't follow through on everything, and it may seem to others that I don't follow through on anything, but it isn't so-- I just take my time, generally. In the end, stuff gets done. This new beginning is a course of what could be called Creative Healing, or Healing for Creatives. It's meant to unblock us from whatever is keeping us from getting ourselves going or keeping ourselves going.

 Clearly, I need the latter. It wasn't so long ago, though, that I was crazily tentative about starting projects. Worry and fear of success (or failure) kept me from dozens of opportunities. The chances I took, moved slowly. I mean, I had a subscription to Walking Magazine for a year before I got into walking and hiking like crazy. I read about baking yeast bread for several years before it became my normal daily grind for a decade. I thought about vegetarianism from age seventeen on, but didn't go full veg till about 29. My college career didn't start till 26, though I had my GED at 17, months before my old class had graduated.

 I was taking my time, getting used to the idea of big lifestyle changes or little ones that needed to be taken seriously. Also, working though the baggage of childhood, teenagehood, love's first mistakes, etc. Like many women, I spent my youth feeling like a talented incompetent, my twenties roaming around searching for guidance, and my thirties claiming my competence. My forties have been a slow reclaiming of life goals and skills, while I try to heal from a disease I may never fully throw off.

  Being blessed or cursed through my heritage to have a multiplicity of talents, I had no smooth path to follow, to get where I wanted to be, or even find out where that was. When you have no easy template for life that fits you, decades can be wasted just looking for parameters that don't cut you up in the middle. I searched, I honed some talents to a fine point and left others for later. I worked like crazy, to prove I could. After getting sick at 41 and becoming unable to work regular jobs, I've been opening up those closets of unworn talent, reaching out in many directions. In doing so, I found a fantastic asset, one I had all but lost-- the Beginner's Mind.

 Beginners have hope, joy, and excitement. They carry an easy confidence that they will learn through the challenges; they have a false bravado that becomes calm acceptance of the known, in time. They can be persuasive, engaging, intoxicating to be around due to the energy they give off-- fun people. They are, most of all, willing-- willing to try, to focus, to create space for the new, and to make mistakes and learn from them.

 The Beginner's Mind carries you through the fears of the first moments, through the financial rearrangements that new projects call for, through the cleaning out of old junk (metaphorical or literal) that has taken up room better utilized for that new beginning, and through the first realization that you might have more work to do here than you had thought. If you can hold on to it, you find it carries you through the harder, later stages of learning/trying as well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQ4yd2W50No

(He is wrong, BTW).

 I'm writing all of this just to tell you, for my sake and yours, that it's okay to start ''too many'' projects and to let some of them lapse for days, years or forever. It's better than okay, it's fucking great-- because beginning means effort, and motion, and willingness to try. If you begin well, it means learning and accomplishment aren't far away, either. Beginning does, often, lead to a finished creation, or situation. When it doesn't, you're still closer than when you were afraid to begin.

 Not to go all new age-y on you here, but focusing solely on end products kills much creativity. There is a middle ground between constantly flaking out and soulless "success" that feels as bad as total failure, but only beginners have the chance to find it. The more beginnings you make, the more chances. Whether you're beginning to learn how to play an instrument you've never picked up before, or beginning a better health regimen for the twelfth time, start it up. Find out what it would take to do it well, and prepare-- but not too long. Some things you can add on to as you go-- take it from a perpetual beginner. 

 And lest you think I'm fooling myself, soothing myself with fantasies of Someday while I tote up a million false starts, let me tell you what I've finished lately:

 Since November 2008, I've finished the first drafts of four novels, written hefty amounts of several other novels, dozens of short stories and poems, something like 300+ songs, many of which I've collaborated on with musicians from all over the world and some of which I've performed with my band; I've donated some of my precious time to care for children from several families that couldn't afford full-time daycare; I've become the organizer of a great critique group and helped bring it back from a very low point of participation; become a consultant for a young writers group in a local high school; been published in an anthology; I've helped talk a person dear to me out of suicide; I've done artwork and voiceovers for a successful niche podcast; learnt to make the best coffee ice cream on the planet and a perfect cherry pie; learnt to play Happy Birthday on the ukulele; kept my household together through agonizing financial difficulties and illness; and had some of the best writing experiences of my life.  

 Those are just the big things.

 I could have focused hard on one dull task, and made enough money to buy a new couch, maybe. I could have spent all of my time working on my figure, trying to heal my body, or writing bland internet content I wasn't proud of. Instead, people I respect speak of my work with respect and occasional awe. Children I love have been an intimate part of my life, and I know I've influenced them in at least a few good ways. I have turned the sad death of a friend into 2 good songs, and the death of a friendship into at least three songs and a short story. I've gotten better, very slowly but through effort. I've kept myself from getting sicker, too. And screwed up thousands of times, and learned a great deal. To boil it down to one truth, I have lived and thrived after utterly losing my hard-built career status, my dreams, my health and all of my former plans-- and it was all because I started a crazy writing project in a rush, on a whim, throwing myself into it with my whole will, and immediately finding that it sparked dozens of other ideas for projects.

 These lists of accomplishments aren't meant to glorify myself, but rather to glorify and rejoice in the idea and practice of Beginning, which has gotten some bad rap recently. By now, people are tired of the whole Resolution thing each January, and the Western World seems to willfully misunderstand and mock the Eastern ideal of revering a  process, no matter how far ahead the Eastern world gets through actual production following this reverence. We shame those that make a good try, and we ignore what we could get from trying again and again. Instead we focus on the end result to the exclusion of any beginning without solid guarantees for immediate or substantial profit.

 Good beginnings have their own immediate profit-- excitement, the joy of discovery, a shaking off of old habits, the prepping of our minds to receive instead of produce. It's worth more than you'll ever know, if you don't jump in and start something you might not be able to finish on schedule-- but then again, you might.   


Happy September! Peace, Mari