Sightseeing in Alternate Realms

“This is the first time I’ve been to New York City, ‘cept for driving through.”

That’s what I woke up to about an hour ago, having walked across a river and standing on a Manhattan Island that could never have existed at any time in our history.  I was telling this to a very pretty red haired woman who . . . well, more on that in a moment.

The above statement is almost true:  I have been to New York City once, but it’s not like you would imagine.  I had to fly to Hyannis, Massachusetts  for software training in the the summer of 1988, and since we (the people I was with, my manager and project leader from Playboy) were flying cheep, I flew out of Midway and landed at Newark, which was no the airport it is today.

But how to get from Newark to Hyannis, you ask?  We flew in a very small, eight passenger twin prop job that never flew higher than a thousand feet the entire way–after we were out of NYC air space, that is.  We left Newark going east, flew right over the Statue of Liberty, then headed up the East River at an altitude of maybe five hundred feet.  It was still light, and the day was clear, an I was on the left side of the plane, so out my window I had all of Manhattan laid out before me, watching the city in a beauty pass shot right out of a movie.

That is my one and only exposure to New York City.  When I say I’ve only driven through, that happened in a dream I had maybe six months ago.  I drove over the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, when into a part of the city seemed like the Battery, then headed into Brooklyn.  I met with a woman later on what may have been Long Island, or it might have been near the Tappan Zee Bridge, because there weren’t nearly as many building around when we sat for coffee, but it wasn’t the city proper, I know that.

I have a hypothesis as to why I might have had this dream last night.  David Gerrold, otherwise known as the Father to Tribbles and The Oldest Red Shirt Ever, posted something on his Facebook wall yesterday.  It was one of those strange, simple meme statements you find popping up all the time on Facebook when people are posting pictures of cats, or trying to guilt trip you into liking something by saying you’ll go to hell if you don’t share a post being against pistol whipping bulldogs.

The statement was simple:  ”If you could go back and tell your younger self something, what you would say?”  A very science fictiony concept, because if you could go back and tell your younger self to do something that you haven’t done, you’ll set up another reality that you, the teller, will never see, because quantum physics gives not one fuck about you, but that’s beside the point.  The question is: what would you say?

David had left a statement, as had several others.  I normally don’t respond to these things, because I’m a pain in the ass bitch, but with that point, I was compelled to respond.  I said, “Transition and to hell with what people think, and go to her, you know where she lives.”  Why would I say that?  Well, those are two things that have become important to me . . .

Neither would make the present me happy, because nothing would change for me, but for New Past Me, there something might happen.  One can only guess if I’d decided not to get married in the early 80′s and started my transition, I may have had a twenty years jump on less insanity.  I wouldn’t have my daughter, that is true, but I might have had a lot less sadness and hurt and pain.  Or I might be dead.  Can’t say, you know.

The second part . . . Harlan Ellison’s story Grail tell of a man who spends most of his life in search of a cup that will show him his true love.  After decades of search he finds it, looks into is and sees his one true love . . . and as he states at the end, I will met her in death, because she died before I was born.

Last night I walked across the Hudson into the city with a woman who was younger, and who had red hair, but I knew her even though that disguise.  I remember saying to her, “I was told you’re nice and curvy,” and she looked at me with a sideways glance and smiled and said, “Yeah?  They said that?” and I replied, “Yeah, and you’re soft an warm, too.”

And we stopped after crossing the river and turned to each other.  ”You know that for a fact?” she said, and I took her in my arms and said, “Oh, yeah.”  And then I kissed her and said–

Isn’t this where I came in?

The Wait Demands Its Tithe

There is always a moment, after events are handled and preparations are completed, where one feels an emptiness come over them.  What to do, what should be done?  There is nothing, however, and trying to fill the time with something usually leaves you feeling like you even more empty.

Right now I’m feeling that emptiness.  The majority of my prep work for NaNo 2012 is finished, in the bag as one might say.  A few thing to puzzle over, and some street names to add to notes, but that’s it.  So it means that I have no . . . real . . . writing at the moment.

I was in this position last year.  I burned through most of the prep work for Her Demonic Majesty, and with a couple of weeks to go I had little to keep me occupied.  So what did I do?  I wrote a story.  Actually, I finished a story, because I’d started writing it near the end of September, and I finished it up before getting deep into NaNo.

What became of that story?  It was Captivate and Control, and I sold that sucker to Naughty Nights Press.

Is that what I should do now?  Get into another story, knock it out in the next two weeks, then give it a quick edit when I have nothing better to do, and send it out?  Not this time.  I spent the end of October getting Captivate and Control edited, and submitted it because I figured I had a chance to make a sale.  I was right, I did, and the rest is, as they say, history.

The thing is, I am writing other stuff at the moment.  I’ve finished up my story Replacements on another blog, and I have another that is just about to wrap up.  Those two stories–once the second is complete–amount to about twenty thousand words.  Looking at it that way, I’m not exactly sitting on my butt doing nothing.  Well, I’m sitting on my butt, but you know what I mean.

This is where writing plays with your mind.  You get tired of working on a story after a while, and you want it to finish.  You get into an edit, and it feels like it’s taking forever to get things correct.  But have nothing to do for a few days, and you get this itch to create.  You want to find something to discuss, to describe.  You want to show people another world.

It’s almost as if you’re being punished for sitting around.  If you aren’t thinking about writing, you’re writing.  And if you’re not doing that, you’re being tortured by something unseen.  Most likely it’s your conscience telling you to get your ass in gear.

(I know, I could say it’s my Muse, but she is a lovely Muse, save when I’m not doing as I should.  Then she digs the spike heels into my back.  I know, trust me.)

Tonight, I felt like I should be doing more.  I felt as if I should have busted my butt on my novel, when the reality is, I’m pretty much ready to crank out the wordage.  I’ve got a couple of weeks of downtime, and I should use it to relax, because come one minute after midnight, 1 November, I’ll put out at least five hundred words, just as I did last year, so I can get my feet wet.

I know the water will be chilly, but that feeling vanishes after you’ve put ten thousand words to your back.