Creative Writing Samples and Excerpts

 Blood and destruction shall be so in use

And dreadful objects so familiar

That mothers shall but smile when they behold

Their infants quarter'd with the hands of war;

All pity choked with custom of fell deeds:

And Caesar's spirit, ranging for revenge,

With Ate by his side come hot from hell,

Shall in these confines with a monarch's voice

Cry 'Havoc,' and let slip the dogs of war;

That this foul deed shall smell above the earth

With carrion men, groaning for burial.

~ Antony, Shakespear, Julius Caesar

To utterly destroy a thing is a rare deed boy,

few are there who ever gaze upon that secret.

Why is that so Magister?

You must come to Know it,

you see

and there exists but one way to truly Know a being, a thing or any system...

- VIII Lost Grimoire of Inonaz
________

Prologue, The Hound of War (writing currently in progress)

        I had been in my therapist's office talking about night terror's I had been having since coming back from covering the war in Libya and suddenly the therapist had looked slowly more and more horrified as I described what I spoke to in my dream. There had been a sound. A subsonic crack that had made my head feel like it was splitting. He stood and faced something coming through the space to the left of him while simultaneously making a sigil in the air and pushing me back into a nothingness. There was a rush of what felt unbelievable speed and a terror felt familiar, like the smell of something from early childhood I couldn't quite place.  I was sent back; back before I had become even human. There was a deep cold around me, contrasted by a deeper warmth within. A feeling of freedom so inherent breathed through me. A woman I loved looked at me adoringly. She wore coat made up the coats that my fathers, mothers, sisters, and brothers had left behind. The ones that lived hovered around the edges of a great bonfire and were howling into the night.

       A part of me was aware that I had in the last moment changed forever. Mora, had cast a very powerful spell. I had been intelligent for one of us. I wasn't the strongest but I won when it mattered and the others followed my lead. I wept and howled my gratitude to Mora, I knew she had separated part of her soul to raise my consciousness to the complexity of a human being. I would never be wolf again. She was for all terms and purposes my first human mother.

         Exhausted, she dropped her arms and slowly sat down before me.

       " By the One's grace, I knew he would grant you this my dear Hrovitnir." She smiled through tears,  " you're now burdened and blessed with a nine pointed soul."

         I wanted to say how grateful I was but I squeaked and yapped instead and walked over to her and nuzzled her. She ran her fingers through my coat and my family howled and yapped and gathered close excitedly. They knew I had been rewarded. They did not know how but they playfully and respectfully displayed their love. Mora stood up and checked the fire and then looked off into the night. I barked to settle the pack and turned to stare in the direction of she was looking. Alert to her shift in mood. I sniffed the air and caught the scent of snow, water, bark, some barely interesting foraging animals. Nothing of threat but I felt her tension rise and growled and wined at not having the scent of what was disturbing her out in the darkness.

         " The Seider draws near. " She turned to me, " He must not be allowed to become Magister, Hrovitnir. If I die you must carry the grey tablet beyond his reach." She looked at me. I wined at what that would mean and barked my agreement.

         We were running as the sun rose over the horizon. I lead the team with my uncle and the rest pulled behind us in unison. The wind in our faces. His strength pulled us forward and my senses guided by Mora's tug in the harness of her sled behind us led us forward. There had been strange thunderless lightning spotted some hours ago which we had turned away from. We turned away and adjusted to go around the wooded valley and were halfway to a point where we could dip below hills and hide from any who would see us at a distance. We were focused and sprinting hard, knowing we were vulnerable.

           Sudden bursts of that soundless light struck us in quick succession. The concussive sound of it's thunder followed on it's heels as we were blow across the field. The power had been focused on Mora. I stood too quickly and both disoriented and still barely caught on the harness, I fell, the painful wining of those still alive and my concern for Mora sent my rage to a fever pitch instantly. I turned and sunk my teeth into the rest of my harness and tore into it for what seemed like an eternity. One side gave way. The Horses were coming.

           I heard Mora's voice and I paused and looked up, she was hurt but the strength in her voice steady as she quickly called out wards. I howled and those with the strength to join howled with me. She sent a spell that strengthened those of us still alive and our howls deepened with added power. We were instantly able to break free of what remained of our harnesses.

         I went to move close and Mora looked directly at me and she did something that filled me with an anger that would haunt me for lifetimes. I fell where I stood, eyes open, locked in place. I watched as she made fire arise quickly from nothing surrounding us and go out just as fast.

         A dozen or so horsemen and their rancid sweat scent closed, horses skidded and fell, we were among them and the men with blades died, a giant warrior and a fat one made their way through and killed a younger brother. My aunt aunt took the strong one's knee and a cousin leapt and sunk his teeth into his neck just wide enough to grasp his soft spine, his strength left and his life followed. The fat one sunk an ax into my cousin severing his head in retribution. Two more men crawled free of the mess of wolves and men that remained on the perimeter.

         Mora was among them wielding sword and staff. One was touched gracefully in the chest as he got momentum enough for a strike and was burnt to crisps from inside. He fell with his eyes smoking melted holes. She kneeled low underneath the next one's huge club and spun so hard her blade cut clean through his feet and bringing him down hard. She swiftly made a small leap and brought her sword down through his face into the snow packed earth beneath and struck his desperately flailing club hand away and stabbed down quickly several times to finish him as she looked up. The tattooed faced, dark cloaked figure, Mora called the Seider, cleared the mass of horses and men and raised a hand.

Mora crossed the staff and sword and I could see what looked like a strong sudden gusts of wind rose up from all directions as the cloaked man slowly pointed his finger. Mora looked like she would be blown away until she spoke a word of power. Thunder clapped between them and the affect of the wind on her vanished and waves of heat rose at a barrier that formed just outside her cross. He stepped forward and the waves of heat turned into flame just before her sword exploded and sent her flying into the air. The concussive force was deafening.

           I could her groan in pain. The rage in me at this point reached a state of near madness. He walked calmly towards her.

           " I told you not to run Mora. Your position as keeper of the tablet makes you a librarian not someone who decides who uses what you keep. You knew it was my destiny to be a Magister."

         He stood over her and looked down at her broken body. " I've come to care for you in my own way you know. You were such a fascinating woman. "

         My Mora struggled to breath, the explosion must have crushed or damaged her chest and lungs, nonetheless she managed to speak, " I underestimated you. It..." She paused to gather more breath. " The tablet is yours, it's in the case."

         He seemed sincerely surprised. " That's generous of you. I thought I would surely have to question you, quite forcefully in fact. " He leaned down and I heard him go through the what was left intact in Mora's belongings. He stood and held to tablet before him and his composure broke for a moment as he looked on in genuine awe. I could hear him whisper to himself, " the hidden tablet, mirror to the Emerald Tablet its... "

           Mora shouted a word of power with all the strength left in her and the tablet shattered into a cloud of dust. The Seider let out a cry of despair. My heart swelled at her victorious laughter following right on the heels of his outcry.

" It's better this way." She said and coughed.

           He stood looking at his hands and calmed his breathing, brought one of them to his lips and ran his tongue quickly across his index finger and sampled what was left of the stone.

         " Ingenious and as the stories told, pure crystal, impossible to metaphysically reconstruct." He walked over to Mora and in a low voice imbued with a sense of savoring what was to come. He spoke, " Yes Mora, you're more right than you know. "

         He turned thoughtfully for a moment and raised his hands. Those of my family who were dead, those whose bodies were fundamentally physically capable of movement. They fed on Mora slowly as he questioned her as to the exact design of the hidden tablet and its secrets. He allowed her to die when he was finished, the bodies of my family he used to torture her fell and he left. I lay there unable to move until sunrise of the following day.

         I was finally able to close my eyes. I kept hearing her crying out She never once begged for her life. She never spoke the tablet's secrets. I dreamed of his scent, of hunting him, and eating his heart.

When I woke up, I stood and walked over to what was left of my human mother. Only her scent remained, I gave into my instincts and rolled onto where her legs had been and I covered myself in her blood. I lay for a time, looking at her unrecognizable remains. I howled and cried into the wind and then slept again.

         On the next day I chased the buzzards away and ate horse meat until I was satisfied. I then began to trace to move in the direction he had left. After some time his scent finally grew fresh enough to follow. I began to stalk the would be Magister. He was not moving with any sense of urgency.

I wondered at his abilities as I drew closer and closer. The rage driving me forward. I could not let him kill me before I had the chance to sink my teeth into him. He gave no indication that he'd felt me watch him torture and kill Mora. The sheer emotional impact of the thought was like nothing I'd ever experienced as a wolf before. Now it was a storm in my chest and the memories when they came on were a white heat. The white hot rage would catch me and I caught creatures as I passed and tore them to pieces.

             Just before sunset, during a lite snowfall on the seventh day, I came close enough to know that in moments I would be on him. I lay in the snow, thinking. Weighing probabilities in ways I had never been capable of. I followed and I paced, I contained my desire to howl and let my pray know I was close.

I wanted to see him. If I could see him and he knew of my presence, I knew I would die in the attack. If I closed on him and stalked him and he was as unaware as the rest of the things I have hunted through forest, over mountain, and under snow; his throat would be mine. I wanted to feel his spine snap in my jaws.

           The smell of a fire drifted my way around the bend of the downward slope between the low hills of the forest he'd entered a day ago. I could smell water ahead. He had stopped and set up camp along along a stream. I was close enough to smell that he was unworried. Did it mean he was unaware of me? Or did it mean he was unconcerned by the fact I was hunting him?

           Being so close now, the rage to avenge Mora consumed me, to see him would move our lives to the edge of our fate. My mind was devoured slowly by the rage and I allowed it to intensify my focus as I moved slowly through the forest towards him now. I hid my steps among the sounds of sudden soft gusts of winds. I kept my body between the trees and where his scent was strongest. I hungered to catch the first glance of him; a foot, a hand, or the briefest site of him and I would know who was the hunter and who was prey.

       I moved closer and waited, heard a gust of wind come from the direction of the fire and walked closer as the wind's touch through the trees masked my steps. I stopped as soon as I caught a glimpse of the fire and crouched low. I slowly made my way closer and closer. More of the camp came into view.

         As the sun set, his horse was tied to a tree. I made sure to approach against the wind. It was unaware. He had a cloth laid out in the snow, his back was to me as he knelt facing the setting sun. Cloak set aside despite the cold air. His tattooed back swirled with runes and sigils. The desire to sprint seized me but the horse would warn him. I moved closer and closer. I would attack as soon as the horse became aware of me. The Seider looked to be deep in trance or prayer. These human emotions were overwhelming, but amongst their fire a single thought occurred to me. No master of the ways would enter true prayer or trance without wards. I should attack him in mid-journey. As soon as the thoughts occurred to me I discarded them. I would in all likelihood not survive the attack and I could not be certain I would be as close now without going unnoticed again.

    I moved in quickly. The horse whinnied and rose on it’s hind legs as I powered forward. My entire life went into the burst of speed that brought me towards this man as I leaped into the air to sink my teeth into his exposed neck. As my jaws close in, I could taste his swear as the man moved just outside my grasp. He rolled forward and his right arm rose up to make contact with my body and used our combined momentum launch me forward into the air. I tumbled and went down into the barely covered snow and I quickly recovered and ran back seeing a surprised yet alert look upon him. He had not expected me. I closed in on the most dangerous of prey.

    He quickly waved his hands in pattern and I heard a word of power but I ran forward, he had time enough for a mix of anger and confusion as I leapt towards him. He unexpectedly dropped low and leaned into me with his shoulder and sent me spinning to my side. My tempered rage made my desperate recovery quick and I growled as I turned and leapt at him. His look of surprise has vanished and been replaced by something else. He raised a hand as I leapt at him again and I felt my entire body's strength vanish. He turned out of the path of my leap and I fell right where he had stood.

  “ What are you my angry friend?" He said in wonder as he walked around me.

"You are very very peculiar aren’t you?”

He knelt down and I growled. As I saw him move close, I tried to move desperately. He was so close.    

    “ You must have been Mora’s favorite dog. Where have you been? How did I manage to miss you?” He patted my matted hair still dark with Mora’s blood. He adjusted my body, took my face in his hands, and knelt in front of me and held my head up squarely. I could feel the weight of his mind like a giant boulder rolling and smothering my awareness flat and gazing at the pieces of my new mind like leaves individually laid out before him. “ Mmm, you are quite special, aren’t you? It disappoints me all the more that she’s being so stubborn. This is something that I do not know the makings of. You disturbed the moment we were having just now. “ He turned and pulled something from the cloth he had been kneeling before. It was the top of Mora’s head, including her eyes and he had left her with no lower jaw. I looked in horror as some part of me knew, she was still there. He had not allowed her die.

    He looked at me for a moment then looked back and turned what was left of Mora’s face towards him and I saw her eyes move to see his face.

    “ How did you do that sweet Mora? You remarkable woman.” Her eyes held his gaze then turned to me as he let her head drop and he tilted his head as he studied me. I saw her look at me and close her eyes for a moment. As he stood up and began to turn she looked at me again and in the last moment he turned away, her eyes stayed upon me, I felt my paralysis vanish. A surge of hope filled me. She must have waited and saved all the energy she could for one last action to prevent his ascension to Magister.  I lay completely still for moment. I was mistaken earlier that he would be caught unaware in his trance, in actuality he must have had every ounce of his being at the human peak of alertness. I must attack now. I sprung from where I lay and in less than a stride I was upon him, the brief sound of me made him move, involuntarily flinching as if to duck beneath my attack but I adjusted in the air and locked my jaws around his neck and sunk deep into him as the momentum sent us in a spiral around.

    Remarkably I felt his body surge with strength and he almost stood and his grasped at my mouth with a strength beyond human. I could feel my jaws could not close completely. I held and pushed with my paws with all my might and I squeezed for all of my love, for all of my rage. His blood was mine. I could taste it. He was mine. He was mine. I felt his spine snap and he fell to the ground. Something in that moment made me release him. It was an unknown emotion to me but I desired to see the light in his eyes fade away and to feel that I had avenged us. I had avenged us all. I looked upon him and I watched in shock as he twisted his face in rage and hoarsely screamed a word of power. I could feel all of the living things in earshot tremble in their foundations. My mind went weak for a moment, I felt my attention drift and his attempt to speak again brought me back and I refocused and leapt towards his neck felt his voice catch in mid scream as felt his warm blood rush into me as I tore it out and continued to tear at him in uncontrollably.

    When I was finished, I lay next to Mora’s head and howled. I cried out as night fell. I cried out for my sadness and our victory. I could not look at her. I slept briefly and in nightmares, I saw myself eat the rest of Mora. I saw it several times before waking very late into the night. When I awoke. I slowly made my way over to Mora. She had been dropped by him in the attack. There was dirt upon her open wounds and on her face. I lay low and dropped my head in front of her. So that she could see me. She cried and I saw an image in my mind of me eating what was left of her. It had been her. She wanted me to end her life. It was the only way. I licked her face clean of dirt as well as her wounds. I howled and I paced. As the sun was rising I looked at her and she held my gaze for a long time, then she closed her eyes. I barked and whined but I knew she would refuse to ever open them again. I ate what was left of her completely in minutes and then I lay there near the fire.

    I lay there still when it went out and cold. The horse broke free after several days. I lay there where she had looked at me. The crows drew near to the man’s body and ate his remains. I lay there without moving and did not move as I began to starve. I did not want to hunt. I did not want to drink. The days blended and so did my dreams and the moments I was awake and in the coldest darkest moment of a winter night. Sometime later I never woke again.

     Except when I would in another life as a human child as cousin to the boy that would become Alexander the Great, then later the childhood friend of Sun Tzu, a mortal enemy of Napoleon, a minor prince in Czarist Russia, a journalistfrom England in Egypt a decade before WWI and a child in WWII. In each life, the Saider stalks me with full memory of every life and I, always lost in the blissful oblivion between life scramble to survive and hunt him in turn. I can see now in the in between that this all happens simultaneously. Time is not sequential. He almost had me in that office. Now I know who we are. I remember his scent. The hunt begins.

The Harmony of All Things: from the Emerald Med Arts blog

Students that have been in class have noticed by now that every lesson ends with at least four closing movements. We stand and together, let our hands rise up above us with our palms up as we breath in. We feel for the harmony of all things and at the apex point above us, the palms turn towards our bodies and slowly float down as we breath out. As they drop, we look to realize our oneness with that harmony. We then finish by bringing the feet and palms together and filling ourselves with gratitude and bowing together. I then turn towards the class and bow to them in thanks for joining the class for the lesson that day. 

All of us have our own way of connecting to this part of the practice of any of the healing arts. What the closing moments highlight however is something that looks to move deeper than our own ideas, either in favor of the concept or against. It's natural to feel resistance to the ideas and sentiment behind the closing for as long as one holds to a limited perspective of what it points out. This is not meant to denigrate any way of seeing things. It's actually meant to encompass all perspectives and see them only in terms of what serves the purpose we have set in front of us. The hope is that we've gathered for a moment to study our selves and to cultivate the inner physical and psychological environment that heightens and strengthens our natural ability to heal and live through our bodies in the most powerful way we can. The words, Tai Chi after all translate to literally meaning, the act of embodying the supreme ultimate.

When we feel the harmony of all things, we feel for the utterly awe inspiring complexity of events in the history of the Universe that brought us and our loved ones and all of existence into being as we are, right now. Breathing in as we feel into that actual fact is followed by the out breath and the palms facing the body as we observe how we have also, through every decision and action, served that same wave of harmony that brought us together. The wave that we are is a part of the entire ocean of all being.

The mind may leap up and resist this entire framework. Where is the harmony in tragedy? In disease? In violence and injustice? Where could it possibly be in the face of death? In our practice we look to observe deeply into the remarkably elegant response to the question, that we, as small as we may seem in the vastness of things, are seeds of the harmony we ache for. In the face of tragedy we seek out to comfort and support one another. In the face of disease and accidents, we are the ones willing to explore ways to heal ourselves and others and rebuild. In the face of injustice and violence, we stand up for ourselves and the people we care for. We are agents of the justice we seek and that is a perfect part of the harmony of all things. We naturally act when it is within our power to do so and make peace with the what lies outside of our ability to change. 

Last of all, and essential to integrating the art into our lives is the cultivation of a profound sense of gratitude and humility for the richness of the lessons we take part in together, not just in the actual hour or so we spend together but the lesson our entire journey here together is. The final closing seals the practice properly in our mind for maximum effect. Research has shown that gratitude has profound positive neurological and psychological benefits. In my view, the main component that fosters the health benefits both mentally and physically is the fact that it helps us to see our existence and it's elements clearly. It empowers us to celebrate and make use of all that we have at hand to enrich our lives and those around us. Most importantly of all, it reminds us to not miss the extraordinary gift of our time together. It banishes the illusion of what our mind lazily labels the every day, the mundane, the routine. In a state of gratitude our eyes sees every moment shine as it truly is; awe inspiringly precious.