Benchmarking beauty

Noni Abeyante asked the MODA Spotlight models to create a comp card. I didn't know there was such a thing until now. Apparently, it's like a mini-portfolio / business card for models.

Anyway, after looking at several examples on the web, I came up with this, which is laid out more like a magazine spread.



The hardest part of the process is choosing which pictures to include, even after limiting my choices to the ones where I'm wearing my current skin.

And the paradigm shift of the day is when I looked at old pictures and think, "Oh, my god, I'm so ugly!" even where I thought I looked drop-dead gorgeous when the picture was taken. This is the exact opposite of my reaction when I look at my old RL pictures and realize that I didn't look as bad as I thought when I was younger.

And I've come to the realization that, not only do we not own our beauty as Black says, but our perception of beauty changes, depending on who we are at that point in time. And, maybe, it is also influenced by how much control we have in how we look.

Nesting... in a tree

A glass house... a New York studio apartment... a ship... These were homes I had shared with lovers.

The glass house is now a gallery of sorts for my morphing portraits. The last time I called it "home" was in my first month in SL. The NY studio (Alt #9's home) is back in another alt's inventory, and the ship (RP alt's home) will be back in my inventory this week.

Opal's home is set to my work loft, which is mostly bare. After all, when I'm alone, I work. And I'm mostly alone.

But I'm nesting again. This time in a tree. A tree house to be precise. On a floating island. It would be the home of my RP alt and her new elven lover.



There is something very heartwarming about setting up a home with a lover. There's a sacredness to it. And as time goes on, the place is imbued with meaning and sentiment because of the moments you share in it.

I've had to sell the parcel where the ship was and I sent an email to the Captain to let him know that he would have to pick up his objects. But when I went there to gather up my objects back into my inventory, I became intensely emotional and I literally could not take anything back. So, instead, I moved the ship next door to the same parcel as my work loft, and sent the Captain a new message to move the objects instead. Of course, I forgot to turn off the auto-return, so his objects were returned to him anyway.

The NY studio wasn't as difficult, probably because all the objects were mine, so I could easily just rez it if I miss that time in my life. But the Captain owned the gardenia bushes and those had a predominant presence on the ship. It just isn't the same without those gardenias. I don't really want to bother him to come back into SL to set them out, just because I'm feeling sentimental. So, I'll be taking the whole ship back into my inventory to free up prim space.

Hopefully, I won't be feeling sentimental for a long time, because I'd be too busy creating new sentiments in this new home.

The light changed

I've never met a lover through my RP alt. She was created for a lover and I've moved another lover to her, and both times to hide from the cricket. But I've never met a lover through her. Until now.

I met him a week ago. He came back the next day, and the next. He's a busy man, and we both established that neither of us can log in often. But he is compelled to come back to me, so he returns even for just a short time, and I go there to be with him.

When I met him the second day, we found a quiet place that had a bench where I could lay my head on his lap. The intensity of those few hours... the emotions... the words we exchanged... made me heady in real life, like a deep infatuation. I had not been romanced like that in SL before. I thought, if I gave him sex, he'd be satisfied and move on. But he came back with the same intensity, focused on the romance.

At first, I thought it would only be roleplay, but we're discussing the possibility of moving out of the roleplay now.

"When you appeared and spoke to me....the light changed...," he said today, remembering the day we met, "no one in [RP sim] that day mattered...I could not see past you." He said it out of character.

The things he says, they fill my heart with comfort and quiet joy. I'm afraid to hope. But I am grateful to have met him anyway, even if it doesn't move out of roleplay. I'm just savoring every moment while I can.



"It must be time to move on now
Without the fear of how it might end.
I guess I'm ready to love again."

If ne'er the twain shall meet,...

Here's my question....

A lot of people say that SL is SL and RL is RL and "ne'er the twain shall meet."

Well, in SL, my alts are different people. And the only link among them is the human behind the avatar, and that human is in RL.

So, if SL is SL, then they should think of my alts as separate individuals, and they shouldn't care if my alts have other lovers.

Correct?

*grins*