THAT DAY

I'm working on maps for Inversia, an alternate Earth where up is down and down up. Pacifica, Atlantis, Indiana... and the American, African and Eurasian Oceans. I've been hesitant to tackle it, as I'm not totally clear how much of the southern highlands will glaciate. And the sheer amount of land to tackle! 2.3 times Earth's land. The biggest project in all Planetocopia, if I do tours on the usual detailed scale. I won't be able to, I think. Even more than in Siphonia, I'll have to skim the vast barrens and icefields, especially southern Pacifica.

THAT EVENING

I read two oddly similar graphic novels:

1. Witchlight by Jessi Zabarsky. Weird--all the good characters look chubby-cuddly-dumpy-sexless. Only one's clearly butch or femme--Lelek's creepy brother, who tries to murder her for being a witch.
2. Moonstruck by Grace Ellis & Shae Beagle. They have the same equation, chubby/androgenous=lovable. Most skinnies are jerks. A few like Cass the psychic are nice, but all are losers in love.

Feel-good soup! Makes me feel bad.

Just before bed, I read one more short book: Karl Hiaasen's Assume the Worst: a Commencement Address that'll Never be Used, with cartoons by Roz Chast. He advocates a skepticism I instinctively feel--I don't assume people are competent, honest or sane. But for years, I felt guilty about that, thought I was pessimistic, negative, looking for trouble. Hiaasen reassures me that's not cynicism. He and I don't assume people are stupid, crooked or crazy; we just face that they can be. Open-minded. Denial is the true negativity.

Feel-bad soup! Makes me feel better.

THAT NIGHT...

For Planetocopia, my series of model worlds, I'm building a dry little planet--its seas just a quarter of the surface. I've built three versions:

1. The full-sized planet, nearly 10,000 km across (3/4 Earth's size), though it's just a phantom on the Net.
2. A relief-globe made by altering an old Earth globe just 10" across--not too detailed, but handy for quick reference.
3. An intermediate size, one kilometer wide, inset into the meadows above my home on Bernal Hill, like the ball in a ballpoint pen or an eye in a socket, with the hill as the pen--or skull. Only a continent or so is open to the sky, a bulging eye; though we can choose what part to bare by pushing the planet around in its socket.

But I don't like her lines; too straight. They should zigzag a bit between wells and oases, and wriggle as they follow streams or wadis. Wobble makes it real.

Still, she's tireless, enthused, adorable, and working just for... kicks. Fits my budget! So I'm not inclined to whine.

I watch her brace on that fulcrum boulder, and move the world. From my vantage on the world's rim, dry grass shines gold, backlit. Silky's silhouetted, nearly lost in the glare--haloed in luminous gold, like some world-kicking angel.

I suddenly wish she could kick our world, too, into shape. Wobbly or not.

And wake.

• Planetocopia, mid-size globe, address just one patch at a time: today I tweaked two maps for some of Inversia's first regional tours.
• Intern: Silky, my familiar, dream lover, and spirit wife... I feared she was impatient with these regional tours, but the dream reassures me she thinks it's worth it, laborious though they are.
• Lean, leggy, muscular girl: Silky's thumbing her nose at the pudgy-androgenous bias of Witchlight and Moonstruck. Her fitness is sexy AND gives her power--literally the power to move the world!
• Fulcrum, moving a planet: Archimedes, on the principle of the lever: "Give me a place to stand on, and I shall move the world."
• Caravan track should zigzag, linking scattered oases: I think those oases mean dreams, and the track between them is dreamwork, which (inherently) can't be a straight Roman road or planned-out Career Track. Wobble makes it real.
• ACTIONS:
  1: Walk up Bernal Hill to the library and grocery today. Maybe round the summit. Stretch those legs.
  2: It's OK to be thin & like other skinnies. "Inclusive" types can label me a shallow loser for it. Boo hoo hoo!
  3: Go on with Inversia. Silky approves.
  4: Zigzag, why not? I'm guided by dreams. In Don't Push the River, Barry Stevens wrote "I don't want a career. I want a careen." Amen.

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