Providence – Part 2
Let’s get real here. I normally reserve this space for lighter fare. For a chance to discuss story, creation, and what goes in to make each post. It’s a chance to share what it means, and what it takes, to sit down and pound out words day in and day out.
You see, I haven’t been doing that all too much of late. Honestly? I haven’t been writing here at all.
I’ve let weeks of posts slip by. I’ve told myself that it was because of what I needed to do with the podcast. I told myself it was because I was sick. I told myself that it was because I needed to take care of my meat sack. I told myself it was because I found out I was going to be a dad again, and all the nonsense that entailed.
Do you see what I did? Because if you’re smarter than me (you are) you saw at almost the start of this list where I was going, what I had been doing.
I, Justin G Wallace, writer of two years and two months, starter of his own business, man who has grown more than he ever thought possible from the first word to this day, was making excuses.
It’s not an easy thing to admit. It’s not a fun realization, to know that you’re deliberately keeping yourself from doing the one thing you need to be doing in order to advance your life, your career, and your dreams. And to know that it’s not because of any of the things I just mentioned. Oh, they are horrible and wonderful and awful and everything in between in their own right. Don’t mistake me. I am not making light of the things that can happen in life. They can take years, if not a lifetime, of therapy and medication to get a handle on. Some things you can’t get a handle on, and simply try to live your life around the damage.
The key word there is live. You must live your life around the damage, around the pain and madness that is simply the price we all pay to exist. That is the only test of strength which truly matters. Are we capable of rising above our past, of moving beyond the struggles that can so easily drown our ambitions and goals under their suffocating strength? Or are we one of the few who finds themselves wearing a mantle that they do not know how to bear and somehow we find the strength to soldier on, finding out only later that our shoulders have widened until the mantle we wear is ours in truth as well as (mis)fortune.
It took me several hours to get these thoughts down. They weren’t easy for me to type, to externalize in a way which conveys even a tenth of what I am feeling about things. That is the real challenge of being an author: to convey what occurs in our mind to yours.
Onward. Because I am not here just to tell you my story. I am here to tell you stories of places far away, of times long ago or yet to come. They aren’t unfamiliar, but they are stories still worth telling. And that’s my job. Not because I’m ready for the mantle, but because I’ve found that it’s mine to wear so I may as well try to soldier on as best I can.
Providence – Part 2
Janet let out a luxurious sigh halfway through dressing, one designed specifically to tease and taunt the only other occupant inside the small shipboard flat that members of Clan Inoue’s management staff could utilize whenever they came across one of their transports in the Tube. Toshiro groaned appreciatively, and Janet let out more of her trademark wicked laughter the mischief her gesture had managed. She finished dressing, somehow turning the utilitarian process into a lavish show, each piece covering more of the thing which Toshiro desired still. Twenty hours in each other’s company had hardly been enough time for either woman. Toshiro would have to put in a sleepless night or two to make up for the lost paperwork time the privacy and lack of distraction aboard the transport had cost her. Janet’s smile grew a little wider at the thought, and the kiss she planted on Toshiro’s lips held promise of sweet wickedness yet to come.
She strode across the apartment, flourished a bow, and swept out of the apartment just as a laughing Toshiro threw a pillow at her retreating back. Janet’s swagger was a story all its own as she made her way back to her transport. She even began whistling one of her favorite tunes, a habit after every pleasant encounter. She had no idea what Sir Mix-a-Lot had been lord of, but he was quite right about his song material. The swagger was also in part because Janet had caught Toshiro in one of the lovely, unrecorded private business alcoves that Clan Inoue was so very fond of. It might cause the occasional infidelity or two, but it also gave the Clan a chance to relax apart from one another from time to time.
Or a chance for me to spend time with such a wonderful woman. The playful thought doled out in time to phrases about buns and huns.
The small war cutter hummed back to life under her guidance, and she had slipped out almost three hours before the sedate transport would make the turn into the Osiris system’s hallway off the main Tube line. It would never do for her to arrive after the transport carrying Toshiro. No amount of distance would convince her hawk-eyed wife that no foul-play had occurred. So almost immediately upon exiting the dock, Janet gunned her engines for all they were worth. It was time to prove the merits of her six-year long stranglehold on the top spot in underground racing. She let out a whoop as the acceleration pushed her back into her seat, easily outgunning all the craft near her. She swooped and dove, rolled and rose around and under and over everyone in her way. She flew with the poise and grace of the ballet backed with the cast-iron which girded her every nerve. More than once ships would begin a hasty maneuver, only to find she was long gone before they had a chance to do more than notice she’d been there. All told, she closed the three hour remaining travel time of the transport in a little under ten minutes. She was sweating from all the maneuvering, flushed from the adrenaline high of the flight, and more than a little smug at just how far she’d been able to push it.
One day her luck would run out, but until that day she knew how the game was played. Put all your chips on the table and simply refuse to blink.
to be continued…
Mixfully,
The Unsheathed Quill
