Sunday, November 6, 2016

An excerpt

I have been working, ever so slowly, on my NaNoWriMo novel. I thought I would share a little bit that you can't see anywhere else. So here you go:

"Humans are not unique in that they breed men who wish to rule above others and use cruelty to do so. Nor are they unique in that they breed those who wish to rule without cruelty. They are not even unique in that there are those who wish to not be ruled at all. They instead are unique in that they breed all three at once and that all three will fight to defend their right to do as they wish. To the last man they believe they are right, that "other" is wrong and that death is worthy if fought in this cause.

This book is going to be an "outsiders" view on humanity. As we become closer and closer to actual manned space exploration and possible colonizing of planets, I thought it would be interesting to conjecture what other beings would think about us and what we might bring to the table.

It is basically one large thought experiment. If I weren't human, how would I see humanity? I know it's been done from a lot of different angles, but this is different (I hope). If you have ever seen those "meet the breed" books out there that is what this is supposed to be like. A series of facts/conjecture/some mistakes about man and how well they may play with others.

Sunday, October 23, 2016

It's been a year...

I haven't written a blog since we moved, and I have now done some self-publishing and well...it's time.

We live in Tucson now. I am living a lifelong dream. I have always adored the Southwest. Now I am here and I love it even more. I haven't been able to do a whole lot yet, but I will...oh I will. I am now going to acupuncture regularly (community acupuncture, it's a thing and it is awesome!-there is probably one near you!) it is helping with migraines and pain and so much more. I am about to start baking again. I am getting ready to start NaNoWriMo again. I am going through years of photographs to get together for publication and I have found a self-publication venue that works for me.

Things I want to do: 1. Get a new camera and all of the gear-I had to sell my old DSLR when we hit hard financial times, as we are getting better financially I am looking forward to purchasing a new one, 2. Getting equipment and supplies for a paint studio, 3. create a website to sell my things on, 4. find a place to get prints done of my artwork so I can sell them on that website, oh and 5. finish that quilt...oh yeah, oh yeah!

So, to do those things (the first two, the last one is all about motivation) I have done a few things:


  1. Live for sale on Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/Live-philosophical-fiction-Dawn-Cowan-ebook/dp/B01M3T4UC1/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1477274590&sr=8-1&keywords=Dawn+Cowan
  2. Life Cycles for sale on Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/dp/1539683788/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1477274590&sr=8-6&keywords=Dawn+Cowan
  3. Amazon wishlist if you are feeling especially kind:   https://amzn.com/w/20WGE51NY2F2S
  4. Dick Blick wishlist for same reason:  http://www.dickblick.com/lists/wishlist/6P81UKBLH5JB3/publicview/
  5. Want something for your money and don't want to go through Amazon? Go to Patreon!  https://www.patreon.com/creativedawnc

I will be updating I am sure...after all NaNo is around the corner and I'm going to be writing the "Encyclopedia of Man."


Monday, November 9, 2015

NaNo Through the tulips

As you have been reading I am "doing" NaNoWriMo this month. Unfortunately I fell very behind due to getting cellulitis in my arm at an IV site from two weeks ago ER trip. Ah, the joys of being me!

So I set at around 8,000; I should be at 13,336. I shall be working to catch up and hopefully by next week will have the requisite 25,000 words for being half way through the month.  Then we move. No literally. I have multiple doctors appointments and packing to do but I am also going to be trying to type 1700 words per day. On the day we move we should have done close to 37,000 words. Then while other people are enjoying Thanksgiving I will be unpacking and praying we have a home in Tucson before my husband has to go to work on the 30th at his new job.

Please remember that we do not have time to edit in all of the rush and be kind with the rough draft you are about to see.

Yogi Ramacharaka wrote of the seven principles of man. From the physical through to the spirit. The principles of the physical, mental and spiritual selves. As a spirit moves through them it learns, advances and begins to choose, until, finally, it is done and joins with the whole once again.



Part 1
Base Principles
Simple. Not right or wrong. Basic. There are no complex thoughts. Often selfish for lack of thought and advancement. The spirit either moves rapidly through these Principles or slowly. All depends on the attachment that it has to it’s physicality. Reveling in taste, touch, and smell is often a thing that slows the spirit’s growth. Only time teaches the lessons of moderation. It is a simple test that takes a long time to understand. Enjoy your humanity, don’t harm yourself or others while doing so.
Pure Physical
To live is to experience. What we experience seems to be up to fate. How we experience it, however, is up to us. Take two lives the differences are in the mind. One literally slaves away; the other rejoices in the work. There are many lives between the first and the last. Many ways to realize that things are not as they first appear. Many times to learn, to KNOW. Then it is time to move on, to learn the next lesson.



Slave
“Slave!”
It has been so long, I do not remember having another name. No other job but that of lifting buckets filled with dirt and rock and taking them to the fire building. The fire building is hotter than even this desert…
“SLAVE!”
“Yes, overseer?” time enough for thinking after dying. Thinking is bad for the doing.
“Take the water from the boy to the fire tenders.”
A special kind of torture this, to carry water in a desert. I take the water from the boy and begin the hottest trek in a desert. Carrying water across fire to fire. The fire tenders are lean dark men who have given up trying to stay cool and just sweat freely and work in the smallest of loin cloths. They waste no water in cooling themselves and drink deeply of the water. The last one to drink, a man just recently moved from the mine, gives me back the vessel with several swallows left in it.
“Thank you for bringing us water.”
I drink deeply of those brackish swallows, they may be all of the water I am allowed all day. The other fire tenders laugh and say to the new man, “over time you will learn not to share water with even a friend.”
I shrug and head back to the mine. The man is not my friend. I have no friends. I have the mine. The lifting, scooping, hauling. Screaming muscles, a tightening stomach and swollen feet.  This is my life. I live it under the beaming light of Ra. I remember the life of complaining about the wet. If I ever escape this desert I will never complain about water again. Heading down into the mine I stop. Laid out before me is the vast pit. Sometimes we find stones, those go to the overseer; he reports to the prospector; but this mine is deep already and stones are rare indeed. Most of what we dig is dirt and sand. We dig and we carry, we carry and we dig. The dirt and sand are loaded into baskets.  The baskets are carried to the top. The copper is separated and taken to the fire. The fire purifies. And we dig. And carry. At the end of the day we sleep. We are given enough of everything to stay alive. Enough water, enough food, enough sleep. Sleep on hard desert. Some do not wake. Osiris takes them in their sleep. Someday it will be the same for me. I do not know how I came to be here. I was once the water boy. I grew into a man here. I will die here. Dig, Carry, Eat, Sleep, Die a miner’s life.



Lau Po (Wife)
The baby slid from me easily. I had been made for this life. It was easy and I loved it. It was time to clean up though not to be content. This child is a girl. It was not a great omen, but it was not bad either as my first two children were boys and one was still with us. He had lived through two cycles and was even now learning from his father how to reap the rice we ate and sold. Small hands have a good touch for such things. I cleaned my daughter and gently placed her in the sling that allowed me to work and her to feed at the same time. Now I can clean the small hut where she had been born. It was not our home; our home was nearby. None of that mattered now. As the child found the nipple and the drink that would nourish her it was time for me to go back into the patties and harvest as she would when she grew tall enough. Soon enough my husband joined me, trusting the boy with his task. He did not ask and I did not tell. This alone would convey that the child was a girl.
As the sun moved above us we moved through the patty, our son moved from his task to playing with the birds we kept for their eggs. When dusk came we moved out of the patty without saying anymore than we had all day. Husband went to take care of those birds and the ox we kept for milk and transportation.  I moved to finish our dinner. We ate our own rice and eggs with some meat from one of the older birds. This was the last of this meat. We needed to trade our rice to get more. The birds were too precious to kill another. We were eating a bird who had stopped producing. Everything we do or have has more than one purpose. It is the way. Husband and I plant, harvest, reap. Birds and Ox give of themselves and we take care of them. Now that the sun has almost set I look at my new daughter. She is sleeping. She has been quiet all day. Warm, well fed and snugged by my side she had nothing to cry about. She is small and dark with the round face of our people. I smile as I clean the cloth she has been in and hang it for tomorrow.
“Our harvest is larger than I thought.” Husband begins, “I think we will be able to get a young ox as well as more birds this time.”
This is good. We are a growing family and having more animals means much to us. War and warlords are far from us, but when we travel to the villages to sell our rice we must pay taxes and levies. Husband has been a good provider, but more he has been a careful one. We have saved and are now ready to go on a longer trek at the end of harvest. We will go to a place where rice is not so easily grown and trade for a new, younger male ox and more, perhaps different kinds of birds. This will enable our small family to grow and care for more patties, which helps us grow.
I was given to husband only 5 years ago. Three babies and new animals so soon shows what my mother said was true. It pays to be given to an older man. They care for the land and the land cares for you. The whims and energies of a younger man are gone. The steadiness is what I need and what makes our family so happy.
“We need to bring some ratters back as well. It hasn’t made a difference yet, but it will and we need our part to make it through until it warms.” It is my job to know this and keep track of the mice and rats who could eat us out of food for a year. We will be traveling through the beginning of the cold and that would drive them into our rice. I must go with him to help bring home the animals and any food we trade for. Since I will be going, the children will, of necessity, come with me.
“I am hoping for a young pup or two but even a cat would be good.” I don’t like cats, one scratched me when I was young and I was ill and unable to work for days.  Puppies would be good for children as well.
“That is an excellent idea Lau Po. We are going to look like quite the prosperous family coming back with oxen, birds and puppies.” He smiled, but he also looked nervous. It wouldn’t do to look to prosperous when travelling there were always raiders. I hadn’t thought of this. Yes, he was indeed a good husband.
“Perhaps, then it would be best for me to travel back with the puppies and birds right after our trades and you can follow on the oxen soon after?” A woman and two children with puppies and birds would not be as tempting, nor would a simple man on an ox.
He smiled. “I am indeed a lucky man. Lau Po is smart and a hard worker!”
It is settled then. We both know the harvest is all but done and that the trek will begin soon enough. Our son is not yet old enough to travel with and learn from his father on this trip, but he will be for the next one. The puppy or puppies will ensure that we can keep larger amounts meaning we won’t have to travel every harvest and can wait until we have enough rice for what we need in the coming years. Yes, I was made for this life. As I lay beside husband I smile up at the moon.



Astral
We aren’t going to talk about every life. We need not dwell on all of those who carried the spirit forward. Not all of them lasted for very long. Not all of them learned. Each of them moved the spirit a step forward. Each of them made the spirit ready to go forward another step, no matter how small. There is no falling back in this progression. Even if you are only inching on, you are moving on. Wearing the spirit down from stubourn ignorance to enlightenment. There is truly nothing like learning. Sometimes the teacher is pain. Pain of the heart, pain of the body and pain of the mind.



Kassandros
“The number one thing is to trust in Apollo. His divinity will insure your capabilities. Even when you don’t feel him within you he is guiding your hand.”
That is the first thing you learn here. It is repeated by you, to you and around you several times every day.  In the 10 years I have been here it has become a part of my blood and my bone. I was only 5 when the first fit took me. My parents led me to the temple the next day. I had told them to during the fit. I had actually said quite a few things. My father followed the things I said and my parents were now rich and well-respected elders. From that first temple all the way to Delphi have I traveled. I have been here now for almost 20 years. One of a very few oracles who continues after their manhood has arrived.  The priests were worried that the fits would leave me. I am the only oracle here who foretells via fits. The others rely on the words of their mentors and “the guidance of Apollo’s heat within” to tell those who come what they want to hear. Any more I am not allowed to speak to the general populace. My fortunes are only for those who not only want them, but can take them. Come to the temple and ask about the future of your child? You don’t want to hear that he won’t even grow to manhood, but will die in a freak accident. People don’t want the future told to them, they want gentle nudges and suggestions to the “right” way of things.
I doubted this when I first came here. Actually I doubted this until the man tried to kill me for telling him that it wasn’t his son that his wife was bearing. It was a daughter, but he didn’t wait for that. Neither did the woman. She jumped from the mountain because she thought it was a demon child she carried. I could do nothing to prevent either thing for I was taken by the fit.
The fits are inconviences to fortune telling. I don’t fall down and wail incoherently, nor do my eyes roll back in my head and I speak an anciently language that only my “handler” can intreprit. No for me it is only a blank face and the truth. I never remember the truths. I am also now never left alone with anyone and I tell my futures in a locked room so no one ever dies again.
A woman killed herself because some idiot inside me told her that she was carrying a daughter in a vague manner. She and her child are gone. They cannot climb back off the spire they do not rise and be glorified. They are dead. Because of me. Apollo and I.
The locked door hasn’t stopped them by the way. Hearing of the absolute veracity of my fortunes people come from all over our known world to hear from the mouth of Apollo. Sometimes what I say isn’t good. Sometimes it has nothing to do with what they want to ask. Generals told of cheating wives when asking of battle plans. Gossips told of incoming severe weather not the local news. Whosoever has the geld may speak with me. There is no guarantee they will receive the answers they seek. Sometimes even I, Apollo’s Mouth, am forced to “rely on his divinity moving through” me. I am just the only oracle who knows for certain that I am just giving advice or making it up as I go along. If I don’t have a fit Apollo isn’t in the room.
Why does Apollo need geld for his oracles? Apollo doesn’t. The oracles do. It is said that when fortunes were first told they were told for free and the tellers died of starvation. Tell a tale and get paid. It is good enough for bards it is good enough for the gods mouthpieces. Building a temple to a god is a great way to make certain you draw people to you. What god?  Well which god do you want to build a temple for? Are there temples to that god already in the area. It doesn’t really matter because the gods are vain so what’s one more temple?  Actually it does matter-to you! You aren’t going to be making any money if you don’t have something to sell.
Of course we aren’t in this to make money. We are here to serve the gods. I serve thus I have cloths, food and a place to sleep. We eat well here, we sleep well here, and we are clothed well here. That part is hard to complain about. Accidentally killing people? I never know how to deal with that. After all they came here claiming to want to know. Once they know they obviously didn’t want to know.
After the first incident I found that even when Apollo stayed away I could tell what the questor was wanting to hear. Not really wanting to hear, but what they needed. I realized that the colors around the people weren’t something others could see. The bright red as the man who attacked me was pulled off of me The deep darkness around his pregnant bride as she ran screaming from us. Even just coming out of the fit I knew nothing good would come from either color.
Others did not react the same way. The priests told me later that this was obviously a new gift from Apollo; that her sacrifice had been made so that the mistake would never be again. I was old enough at this point that I questioned that rationalization when they moved my oracles from outside to in and gave me an interpreter I didn’t need and who carried a weapon. I started to use the colors. I can’t stop the fits if they are going to come; but if they don’t come? Well, I tell people what they want to hear. Again not what they say they want to hear; but what they have truly come looking for.
I have no need of faith. I am touched by Apollo’s hand. I doubt everyday that I serve any good or purpose in this world. I have a purpose. I know the care that the gods take towards their creations. Is it all just a game? Am I just a piece to be moved to be played?
After 25 years alone first among equals, not a priest and not a simple man how do I continue to serve after yet another loss and such a large one at that. They wanted to know how to move their troops. They came to the great oracles at Delphi. All of the oracles except one told them not to move, to stay safe within their city walls. That one, me, I told them to move out and when and how and apparently so very much more for I was drawn to sleep and eat for days following the prophesy. All of the men lost. The city sacked and taken. I told them what they wanted to hear. I know this. They had so many other opinions but they wanted a reason and I gave it to them. Still it stings. Still it burns.
There is only one thought as I stand at the precipice and look down upon her bones.
Why?
Why did I get the gift? Why couldn’t it be anyone else? Why does what I say cause so much pain and fear and strife?  So much death. Just why?
There, for the first time, is an answer.
Because you care.
What? You are there?  There is no fit. Have I gone insane?
No Kassandros, my son, you are not insane. You aren’t blessed either and I have seen that. I must stop you from taking that step though. You are needed.  What you do is not just important it is essential. People must be in certain places at certain times for things to happen the way they should. You are the way I have to get them there.
So, I am a pawn.
If you chose to be such. For me, you are a path. When those with destinies choose a path away from them I use you and others like you to point them back towards the path. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t.
Are you Apollo?
I have used that name.
Was the war necessary?
Yes. It became such when they became so arrogant that they thought they couldn’t lose. Anyone can lose. I have lost. All of those who died were losses for me as they were for you. Worse for I heard their cries and felt the slices as the blades went through them. You have just imagined it in the aftermath. I have mourned and buried my dead and celebrated with the living, so now I come to you and ask what can I do for you? Would you have me take the gift…
Gift? Really, don’t you know this is no gift to me. I would that you could take it. But I know the truth as well.  You cannot take it. Not really for I didn’t just advise one side. The priests knew what I had said to both groups. One came to hear of their victories. One came to protect their people. I know the truth and I keep the “gift” you say I have.
Is there nothing?
I want a family. A life outside of this temple. I need a breast upon which to lay my head at the end of the day. Lives that share with me and allow me to know that there truly is a reason to live. That we define the contest not in the dying but in the living. I want a family. Where I can be, just a man.
What of your “fits”? Do you not fear passing them on to your children? Would you wish that upon another.
No, no I wouldn’t. I do not ask in vain though my lord. I have seen a woman and her two children. She is a recent widow. I do not ask for her specifically, for she is courting in our yard nightly with another man. No I do not lay specifics upon you, but I ask that I have a family. A woman. Her children. One who has survived this war and needs a tired oracle to lay her head upon the shoulder of and weep with. Speed does us no harm as it does us no ill. The largest problem is that the priests fear losing me. I cannot leave the grounds. How am I to ever meet anyone? For 25 years I have been held here neither a prisoner nor a free man. How do I NOW say that I want to meet and wed a woman when I have not insisted before.
A family you shall have Kassandros. It will be arranged. It has been arranged. It will not stop the prophecies but perhaps you shall rest easier. Remember you do not do the killing. You only do the telling. What they choose to do with the words depends upon how closely they have listened to them.
I turn back. Now I must have faith. Now I must believe. I cannot be insane or I would have jumped. Surely this isn’t a lie. There is the kind blonde widow and her herbalist suitor, her children play in front of them as they talk quietly. There is the priest come to get me for my latest fortune. I smile. For the first time in years I actually smile and I feel it. The thing that I thought I had lost forever. Hope.




Mercy
I know what I am. I can be honest; at least with myself, I just prefer not to be. Honesty doesn’t pay for a cot and a meal. Selling myself leads to more trouble than I want to deal with and the men who “run” ya take most of the money anyway, if they don’t get you addicted on somethin’ and take it all. Nope, lying is my game and I’m a professional! With the black death all over the place the best thing to lie about? You guessed it, how to not die. It’s easy to set up on a street corner selling “professor blah blah’s magic elixer.” The hard part?  Doin’ so on a corner where the people can afford to keep ya’fed and clothed. People in me neighborhood can’t afford their own so they not gonna giv’it t’me. S’meh corner is a good one. Merchants for people with just a little more who will give me somethin’ for a bottle of flower juice n’ alcohol. I use meh big words to show them I gots some education and sez the professor saved me with his elexer and how I drink it everah day. I do ya know. That part isn’t a lie. I drinkz it right there in front of ‘em. Tell ‘em I was on deaths door and was saved by the magic flower bits. I sell each small bottle for a sixpence an for returning custom I get a groat, a three pence if iz just fillin’ the bottle.  I have a pretty good return bizness and mosa dem keeps dere bottles. Bout onctweek I go to the country and gets the flowers. I process them and mix the juices with enough alcohol to mask the horrible taste. The elixir is can make the weak constitution stronger. Often the difference between life and death is simply the ability to make it from one day until the next. When I see someone who is especially ill I make certain to stay strong by taking another swig. Better to need to beat an addiction to the stuff than to lose to the death they carry with them. This is a terrible time to be alive, it is worse to be alive and poor. I am doing my best with it. The cold, the death, the hate is laid thick over everything that happens. When one in three are dying there need to be scapegoats. For those who live, for those who have lost. First it was the cats. Now that they are almost all gone and it is just getting worse they are looking for larger targets. Witches and demons and such. I don’t sell my potion to just anyone because of this. I can’t take a chance on someone who is too sick tryin it and their family saying it didn’t work because I was a withc with a grudge. I don’t haz no grudges. If the money spends my customers are good customers. I gots to stay clean too. No one wants to buy potions from someone who sticks or is filthy. That means I gets washed everyday, the clothes and bed stuff once a week. It’s a cost of my business. I was well on my way to moving up. Making the leap. My potions and lotions smelt good and did the simple things I said they would. I was gonna open a shop. Have a flat over it. I was gonna be respectable. Then the death came. No one wanted simple. They wanted miracle cures. Me gran’s simple flower recipes didn’t handle cur’in. The recipes were the only thing I had from me gran. I like to imagine what she would have looked like. Apparently pretty angry really. M’mum came to London following her own “Professor” I was already in her belly and gran had kicked her out. Ma never found the professor but she couldn’t go back either. So she took a job at an inn. She cooked and served custom until I was born and weaned. Then she earned her livin’ on her back. I didnna have to turn to that after her death purely cuz she saved ever’ penny she made so that I could have a better life than her. I gots some education from one o’ her fellers for free. Well not really free if ya gets my drift, but Ma said it was worth it if I never had t’do it to. She taught me how to make gran’s potions and lotions and how to pick what I was gonna use in each. What she didn’t teach me I kinda picked up. It was like a knowin’ when I lookt at certain plants I was known’ what they could be good at. Ma said I had gran’s gift. That it would help me climb. Then she went bout seducing an apothecary…it was that which kilt her. He taught me lessns alright. He also slit her throat when he found out she was a whorin on the side still. Hez the one who taught me t’lie. He was so good at it that he almos didn’t have to pay for killin Ma. That’s when I learnt myself how to make poisons. Those sell well too now, but that clientele is pretty elite and very sporadic. When you are dealing with assasins you make sure you deal with the right ones or you are going to end up on the wrong end of one of your own potions. The right ones found me after the apothecary “mysteriously” died. They knew it was me. They knew it was one of my mixes. The hadn’t ever seen one like that. They wanted it. The first offer took my breath away. It was the assasins who was gonna pay for the store front. I just had to wait long enough for it to look like I had earned the money on my street corner. Then the death came. We had heard stories of course. People were fallin down dead everywhere. We jez thought Londontown was safe. So much was here…it had to be safe right? Well itz not. I lost two assasins to sumthin they couldn’t kill before I found the elixir. I’m pretty good at elexin’ and I knows it. The assassans knows it too. We worked together to make sure it was right. Nobody died who wasn’ gonna already from it. That’s not the stuff that does it. They jus snuck it into peoples ale and watched em for a few days to make sure they were getting’ better. With there help I figured out how to do dosages and stuffs. Now I sells it and they get a percentage. They deliver it to some folks who can’t be seen buyin’ from me and tell me if’n we will make more money simply by given people plain alchohol instead of the elixir. If we all live we have created an amazing network to run out of my shop and apartment. So far so good on the livin’ thing. The ones that did it was before anybody knew it was the Death. We all felt so safe. Now no’un feels safe. I have to have a stable place to brew and live. I have to have the ‘bility to go to a place that isn’t city. What I have chosen is expensive, but it looks like it’s going to keep me alive and safe if anyone can be. The elixir is a good bribe. Everyone knows it works. Or at least everyone who’s tried it. The dress maker let’s me sleep in ‘er attic. The junk man who took over the apothecary let’s me use the basement to brew. They keep me secret and they and theirs stay alive. There are times I feel bad. Like I’m doin’ sumthin wrong. Should I be profitin’off of other’s misfortune? Then I remember the blood of my mother running into the dirt floor and the ease with which everyone but me forgot about it. I am sellin’ my wares publicly. You can buy them or not. Doesn’t matter to me. I’m clean. I’m healthy. I’m warm. ‘n I plan to stay that way. Meh stashed money is growin’ again. I don wanna be noticed so I’m not buying the shop right away. The junk man isn’t doing as good as he should be; no one buyin other peoples stuff cuz it might have the death on it. He’s gonna need to sell soon…and I’m conveniently right here ready to make my mother’s killers house my home…he’s in the river so it’s not like he’ll need it.



Maria

I have no more tears. I have laughter and smiles; they are not hollow. Loss is a part of growing old. I have lost two husbands, six children and already two grand children. My mother and father and my brothers and sisters all died of the cholera. I had already married Tomas and we were on his land when the dirty water killed most of the city. Tomas’ family land had a deep spring well. We survived because we didn’t go into the city, we did not even know what was happening until it was too late.
I remember that I went into town to tell my mother I was pregnant with her first grand child. The city was quiet. I had never heard this kind of quiet in the city; the quiet of Tomas’ land had kept me awake most nights as I wasn’t used to it yet. When I turned down the lane on the donkey that Tomas’ father had given me for the errand and in congratulations I saw the smoke. The entire section that my family had lived in was burned. We had not been poor or my parents would not have been able to afford to have me married to Tomas. They had agreed to use their markets to sell the products of the farm and stables. They and their markets were gone now. Burned to the ground in the earliest attempts to stop the march of disease. Not knowing it was in the water. They learned what it was after they had killed many people who had been stuck in the markets. A family friend consoled me by telling me that my family had been long dead by the time the fires happened.
I never rode into town alone again for as long as Tomas lived. He was always a very protective man. He had already been married twice and lost them both before there were children. When we married and I was pregnant so quickly he was so excited. I remember him picking me up and spinning me around. He was such a large man and I am indeed small. He had been made for the work he did. His parents were gone soon after I gave birth to Juan our first child and the eldest boy of six living children within the decade that I had Tomas. Tomas had a heart seizure soon after we celebrated that time together with the birth of Rosita. Our property was large enough with enough people working it that we had our own chapel and priest. Tomas’ grave and those of the three children who did not make it to their first birthday were the first of a graveyard that has grown beside that chapel and the three priests who have served here are buried beside our family. Now I have grown grandchildren who run the ranch and even a son who is the priest here. He has just finished laying my Miguel to rest and like all of my children looking at me as though I will fall apart. I have no more tears.
Miguel was the husband of my heart. He came for the land. Despite the fact that I had been running the ranch on my own just fine for five years men would come and try and convince me to sell. They said it was not good for a woman to be doing the work especially with six young children. Ha! The childers were growing up knowing their father’s land as intimately as they knew the color of their skin after working under the field master’s eye all day. We had fields and horses. I had men I could trust. The homes and food I provided for them and their families were nice and comfortable. The fact that we paid as well and gave them land of their own to work was a bonus, but Tomas’ family had taught me well. Take care of the men and they will take care of you. Their women and children helped with the house and small kitchen garden. The children took their lessons beside my own. They would go on to work for us in different capacities OR go out on their own. We had favorable deals with many a ranch owner due to those policies as they were owned by former workers or their families.
Oh, I am sorry, the mind wanders now and again. Miguel, even now the thought makes me smile. First he came, like the others, to tell me to sell to him; it was interesting that while we talked he changed his mind. He had thought my land would be easy for him to take over and begin to make his name with. He found a woman who knew her lands and raised her children and had no need for a strangers interference in either. He has always said he fell in love with me while I told him off that day. He certainly became a quite earnest suitor from that day until the one in which he died. We married long before that day came, but every one of those days was special because Miguel was in them. We were seldom separated and he even encouraged me to continue managing the land asking only that he be able to work with the horses as that was what he had wanted of the land. The man rode as though he was part of the horse. There was never a thought to say no.
All of the children loved him as dearly as I did. Manuel, my eldest, took longer to warm to him but in time was the closest to him due to the love of horse running through both of their veins. It was that love that killed Manuel before he could marry. He went out in terrible conditions to try and save one of the prized breeding herds that had been turned out to summer pasture.  The lightening burnt him into a statue upon his favorite stallion and they both swept away in the wind upon the first touch.
Miguel and I had five children to add to our large family. Thus before Manuel’s passing we had 11 children who were running through our house at any given time! Finally we built a new bunk house closer to the stables and turned the old one into a room for the children connected to the main house via the kitchen.  This was a good choice, as with 8 of those 11 being boys they thought with there stomachs more often than they didn’t. The bunkhouse also became the classroom for all of the children on the ranch. My parents had believed that education was essential to everyone and I had benefited from an education that enabled me to hold onto the ranch and make profit with it after Tomas’ death.
His brothers and sisters mourned Miguel, but they also learned from him. All ten were married and working sections of the land with their families or committed to God before they had hit their 18th birthdays. My son Pablo was the priest upon our lands and seemed contented to go no farther with his calling. He was our youngest and often lost inside his head. When he spoke of his calling it was an explanation, he was hearing the Lord’s voice as it moved through him. Elizbet and her brother Luciano had left long ago however. Elizabet to the convent were she spent her days in devotion and Luciano to Rome where he was now a Cardinal. I must say I am proud to have given so many children to god. That they are grown and safe is also a dream come true for a mother. Their brothers and sisters are good people who work the land with joy. None of that generation had the touch with the horses that Miguel had had. It was Julia’s first boy who was riding by the time he was two. He could work with any of the animals even the mostly wild ones who were brought in would calm to his touch. He feels their pain with them when they ail and seems to feel too their joy as he rides upon them barebacked at top speed in the field. He is named Miguel after his uncle that he never met, and a more appropriate name I could not think of.
It is Fernando’s son who rules the land now. We have grown into an empire or so it seems. For as long as one can ride in a day it our land, that of mine and my children. On this imaginary ride you would have to take much longer before you reached the borders of land that wasn’t worked by men and women and children that owed their allegiance to us; some of them for multiple generations.
Miguel had passed in his sleep. Growing cold beside me until I woke of it and screamed. The witching hour was upon us and Miguel was with God. There was nothing anyone could do. I spend a lot of time in this small chapel and the burial plot next to it now. I talk to those who were lost. I know the children worry, I am sorry for that, but it feels like what I need for now and I feel god and their ears with me at those times.
It has been 80 years since I left my parents home at 15 to marry Tomas. Miguel and I had had 50 years of joy with our children around us. I believe Tomas would have been pleased and I know that my parents would have been. I have great grand children who bounce on my knee and smile up at me. I feel my husbands and their children calling me to them. I will be sleeping forever very soon with little worry for my immortal soul. I have lived a good life. I have given to my church and my world with mine own blood and with coin earned upon this land. I believe I have just enough time to say goodbye to each of the children here and give them the gifts I have set aside for them. Bits and pieces, not as valuble as what they already have, but a memory or two. The top that Tomas carved, Miguels’ favored halter and leather reins worked and patched many times over the years they hold beauty and I know they will be appreciated. The pictures they drew when they were young at my feet. Remembrances I have kept for them. Things they can point at in coming years and remember. They should remember with joy. I have no tears left. Not because I grieve, grieving is short lived when you have faith. You miss those who have gone before you; but you know they will greet you when it is your time. Perhaps Tomas, Manuel, and Miguel will have horses in heaven waiting for me. No I have no tears left because there are no further things to grieve. I will be with the Lord and my men soon. There is no grief.  There are no tears. There is only joy. I know I will be welcomed into his bosom. There are no doubts. Soon there will be no breath and I will break free to the joy.

Prana
Time moves much more swiftly now. There is little need for many lives. The lessons are learned quickly and well. We use the breath force of life to move quickly and learn faster. Which lessons are we learning and which are we teaching others moving through their own evolution.




Adele

Men don’t expect intelligence from a woman. Put some color on the skin and speak with a creole accent and they barely think you are human. It is this that aids me in making the money and learning the secrets that keep my community safe. I am their “Voodoo Queen” when they want a show. It is ridiculous really as even the darkest practicioners would not do the things these men think of to see me do. Slaughter three goats to determine a fortune from their entrails. Work “magic” to make things “disappear” and “re-appear” this is my job. In the sticky heat that is New Orleans I spend my evenings on stage making men drool and lose their minds while I stay out of their reach. The show is a dark burlesque. We have fortune tellers and strippers and clowns and I stand amongst it all and the money rolls in.
My husband did not expect intelligence either. He says now it was a pleasant surprise that his “creole wife” was so much smarter than his white wife. It’s a marriage of convenience for me. I am convenient for him and he pays for the house and the theater. He is an idiot who has never thought to ask if we are making any money with the show so I have managed to gather quite a fund for the times when I am not young and beautiful.
It is not vanity to call myself beautiful. My looks are a commodity as much as my skills in stage magic and my knowledge of the songs of real magic that the performers and I dance to upon the dark of the moon. Voodoo is not what the white men thank it is. It is beautiful and dark, simple and wonderous. Voodoo is men and women working together to create magic; it is not killing and blood and scaring the white men. None of that matters though, as being what they think we are makes all of us money! To them I am a voodoo queen, to myself and my performers I am just another traveler on the road. We all sing the songs, we all learn the lessons.
My mother was the treasure of her white master and now I am “married” to his cousin.  There will be no children from this marriage as I have no desire to increase that family. I am young still I have another decade of being ripe. My husband does not have so long. He was old when my mother gave birth to me. He has gotten no younger, he has his son by his white wife. His children and his wife will inheret everything. I will get nothing. I know this because I am careful. He has no need to leave me anything. He has already deeded the house to me. I have boxes upon boxes of useless baubles he has bought me to sell when the time comes. My father died in the war. My mother still serves his wife as a housekeeper, she doesn’t know how to be free; she never learned. I did. It is a lovely feeling.
Women don’t make the decisions in most partnerships. For me it is easy. I don’t pretend and convence him it was all his idea; I simply don’t consult him at all. It is my home and my business thus there is no need to consult anyone.
We meet for church in the theater. Unlike on stage I do not take the lead. I follow Gerard. He is a powerful man. He is magic. He was brought here from Haiti to be sold on the block as a young boy. He survived the war by hiding and calling upon the mysteries. He still has the gift. Soon he will be mine and I will be his we are matched in spirit. Our children will flourish.

Thursday, November 5, 2015

Then there were complications

So yeah. Last two days word count so far? Let's just say there are more in this blog post so far. Yesterday was an errand outside the house day. Not a problem I would write when we got home.

Then the right arm started giving me trouble. I had an IV site that had been acting weird. It was now hurting on the "wrong" side of the arm. So long story short? Cellulitis. In my dominant arm. ER visit. Got home after 11pm.

Going to try and dictate to my tablet later. I'm not officially 3400 words behind on NaNoWriMo. I will catch up. I'm just not going to get my 30 day badge at the end of it...maybe next year.

Wednesday, November 4, 2015

So yeah Not Worried Now.

NaNo has messed with me so bad I am writing this the night before it is posted! So much for my one week of lead time Huh?

All this month if you see a post it will be the crazed babbling of a woman who is trying to move cross country, write a 50,000 word novel and make sure all of our holiday special orders get done for Shadoe Stones.

I wrote yesterday about my Day One panic.  I had written two out of 9 characters.  I had hit my word goal for the day, but I had COMPLETED 2 OUT OF 9 CHARACTERS. Panic set in. One day and two characters was bad.

The good news? I have completed 3 characters now on Day Three. I am well into the fourth.

The other news? My last two characters have been completely different from how I originally thought of them. The spiritual oracle turned disillusioned and suicidal and the waif selling patent nostrums became a gang leader basically.

Every Friday in NaNo I will try and post where I am in the story, but only if you all realize that I am not going to be editing until December.

I have to tell  you a secret though.  Since I only have like 10 views on my posts per day I am fairly certain it will be safe.

I have never in my life enjoyed the hard stuff as much as I am right now. My life is like the farthest thing from easy. I have my friends, my family and my art. Oh and the cat. With all of you supporting me I am creating again. I am wildly in love with creating. I want to do it everyday, now and forever. Try it. Seriously try it. Whether you are a secret writer, artist, film maker...whatever. Do it. Do it everyday. Lose sleep, drink too much coffee and create. Create a meal, create a happy moment for your children, create a good day for the person behind you in line by paying for their coffee. Just create. It's good for the soul!


Tuesday, November 3, 2015

Panic-NaNoWriMo Day 1

It all began innocently enough, I guess. I had my outline and even an excellent beginning plotted out. I had my outline. I was ready. I hit my daily goal early in the day. So what could the problem be?

Yeah I was already at the fifth section of my outline and had just barely hit my goal. Panic much? I had known as plotted the beginning would be thin. I just hadn't known how thin. Editing is verboten during NaNoWriMo but padding is not. I am already planning the padding. Heck, I am already padding. When I run dry on ideas I will go back to that thin beginning and start with the padding. Sometimes padding is good. Here is hoping it will be for me.

If you are looking for me on NaNoWriMo look for FluffyFox. I will be your buddy and your cheerleader!

Day 1 is in the books. Day 2 has begun! 3,000 of 50,000 words have been written. Strap in boys...here we go!

Monday, November 2, 2015

Where I Talk About Ego

No artist feels good enough all of the time, some never feel good enough; it is part of the dilemma of the artist. We often don't feel our work is good enough to show to others, not even those closest to us. It is not a desire to keep it a secret it is a fear of being told we really aren't good enough; or worse hearing the placating tone while they lie and tell us how amazing it is like we are 6.  Confidence when we are done with our words, photographs, music, etc. is often lost.

Artists must have confidence to start a work and work on it until completion. Skill is not the only requisite of art of any form. Confidence is vital. Many a lovely piece have lay uncompleted in a drawer or closet because an artist lost their confidence mid way through. There are artists who do not have a problem with confidence, who start and finish everything they decide to work on. I have not met them, but I am sure they exist, like Moby Dick out there waiting for a critic's spear. There are those who have enough confidence to start an infinite number of projects but none will ever cross the finish line because they don't have enough to keep them going OR to know when they are done. They just keep adding or refining infinitely. I think most artists are the type that never start. I think most of us are artists and just don't have the confidence to get started. The few who can work from beginning to end AND get themselves to let their work go in front of a harshly judging public need to be commended. Their art, in whatever form, may not be our "cup of tea" but it is their soul so be gentle in explaining this to them.

That was all the long way around to talking about budding artists. The young have all of the confidence in the world, until we take it from them. Robert Fulghum tells of giving talks to kindergarten and senior classes and the differences between the two. How the difference between "YES WE CAN" and "YES I CAN" and "Yes, they can" and more happens. Some of what is lost in those possibilities is confidence, the idea of the possibles bag is a gift of confidence. We can do that every day with people by just reminding them that someone believes in them. You never know what kind of a gift you are helping to bloom.

The artistic ego can be a funny one. Once we have the confidence in our gift we REALLY have it or we wouldn't be able to show it to anyone. At the same time we are insecure if what we are doing or showing is even a gift. It can be confusing to deal with, especially if you haven't before. Remember that we are all caught between "Yes I Can!" and "Do You Like It?" Each and every time we "deliver" our gift and it might help you.

As of Sunday NaNoWriMo has begun. This is the point where my entire blog is going to be taken over by writing. This is the point where I might not make any posts at all or might make more than one a day, depending on how well my novel is going (hint, the second one will mean not well). I have my research, I have my idea, now it is FINALLY time to write.  If I don't get to posting before December I will see you then and I will be seeing you from Tucson!