My apologies for this post: merely another whinge about wanting to be elsewhere.
But first: where am I now? At home; the apartment is pleasant and, on the side away from the western winds that are bringing us a last dose of winter, relatively warm. Small patches of snow in the corners of my downstairs neighbor's plant boxes. It is nearing the end of the term; vacation days are coming – but there is plenty of work to do (especially an article to write), and I am disinclined to do any of it. I will probably go make some food in the kitchen – something comforting that makes me feel as though I've done something useful (lentils with some clever combination of spices, perhaps).
Catherine, my dear downstairs neighbor, has gone to New Zealand to join the reality program Castaway. I hope she does well in it – she is smart and learns fast, but they have made it a bit tough for her by bringing her in alone two weeks after everybody else arrived. (Prediction: the other women, most of whom aren't as good-looking as she is, will immediately discover reasons to dislike her. Sigh.)
Probably reading too much Greg Egan (Aussie science fiction author; lots of brilliant ideas, many of which imply enormous change and alternate destinies) plus sleeping too long the past few days (my digestion was miserable today, which always makes me conk out); and my desire to move on from northern England (no news, and probably no movement for a year or two or three) and even the news that my application for a salary increase was successful (which doesn't please me as much as it should, as this was in place of the promotion I really want – all of which makes me feel trapped in a rather dull little rat race); plus, of course, the general lack of V.; is moving me to imagine and/or remember an alternate reality for myself.
***
All simple enough: instead of standing by this window, looking out at the rain that keeps transforming itself into snow and then back, I'm standing in an apartment in San Francisco. A neat, pleasant, light apartment, books strewn on the table and the pale sun of City afternoons coming through the window; neat because of me, not because of Paulo – he is of course a hopeless slob, but I've managed to keep him in line. (Necessary corrections to occupy this universe: I returned Paulo's calls, and he never met Christian.)
I work part-time for Apple; we live in a heavily, trendily computerized household. (Necessary correction: I got some computer chops at some point in the 80s, having realized that music was a bit of a dead end.) At Christmases I help my sisters with their Macs; sometimes the world seems a bit too digital, a bit too variable, too unstable and unreal; but it remains pleasant, a constructed reality that works for both of us. And we feel in the midst of change, near the center of what is happening right now, where the culture really is: not on some distant periphery of unimportant makework.
There is money, and not much debt (my only debt is student loans, and I'm nine-tenths of the way through paying those off); and there are friends, casual dinners in favorite restaurants (of course there are people who now matter to me whom I've never met in this alternative; but instead I don't lack for friends, and have had to say good-bye to fewer of them). Australia never happened, Hong Kong never happened – even Los Angeles and Berlin are places I have only visited (I don't know much German – just what was left from a year's study long ago – but have enough Portuguese to chat with the in-laws, and fairly good California Spanish). Travel for us is a rather bourgeois pleasure (I haven't grown through travel, loneliness, and the repeated necessity to start over again and pull myself out of various disasters; but am, nevertheless, not entirely shallow; and less susceptible to depression).
And Paulo comes into the room, limping as always, curly black hair and warm grin: a sweet, sexy guy, and the one I managed to figure out I could love (in time, rather than too late); rattling on in his charming, boyish fashion about his new idea for Palm software, one of many that has made him a guru in the computer world. A hug....
***
Lives like slides in a projector, flashing past: as production assistant in LA, in the film industry; as research scientist (that one branches away from 'reality' around the age of sixteen); as....
Here, the snow is thick and swirling. A story by – was it Leiber? – about the need to be careful when leaving the house during a storm: because the storm is actually a shift in realities, a turbulent blend of the interfaces of different universes, and you could end up – anywhere.
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