Fifteen

Who knew I would last in Second Life this long? When I first started in SL, I figured I'd stay a couple of hours. That's a very long couple of hours. :)

Wolfgang and I got back together earlier this year. For a few months.

But, as I said, a lot has happened in real life. And I couldn't justify losing sleep for a relationship that keeps me an arm's length away. I had to take care of me. Alone. We never stopped communicating by email, and we're starting again to see each other inworld, but rarely.

The friendship is still there. And he keeps his promise to never leave me no matter what happens between us.

I did not move to Washington State as I had planned last year. A lot has happened that caused my moved to be postponed several times. But I finally moved back to the Pacific Northwest late last month. Just across the Columbia River. That's this year's almost-August significant change in my life. :)

Life feels lighter at the moment. However, there has been a lot of uncertainty the past few years. The past year with COVID and the blatant racism in the US made me feel that uncertainty so much more. I try to quell the anxiety that's just lurking under the surface. I am well aware that life could change in an instant.

In my first couple of years in SL, I experience the pain of the world's transience. It was the nature of virtual worlds to keep changing. People and places disappeared quickly and too often. Lately, it feels like real life is imitating virtual life. 

I've never deleted any of my many alts. I've put them in hibernation, yes, but I can log them in again anytime, if I wanted to. Can't do that in real life.

But maybe I still have a few decades left. In RL and in SL.

 

Tears for the past

"Paradox Olbers, former ISM President, passed away on 13 November, 2019."

Kat Lemieux, founder and current president of the International Spaceflight Museum, sent me an IM today to tell me the news and to ask if I had made a Morphing Portrait for Para and if I wanted to create a memorial for him.

I saw her message as a notification from GMail as I was getting ready to leave work in the evening. I cried in the dark night as I walked to my car. And I don't know why.

I didn't have a close friendship with Para, but I worked closely with him when we were both active in the museum. It was a distant but warm professional friendship. When he took over the ISM, I was amazed at how he was able to keep it afloat financially, using his connections with donors and supporters.

But grief is a selfish emotion, and I knew that my tears were more for me than for him, although I am terribly sad that he is gone.

My last two years have been very difficult, particularly this past summer. In July, I had a cancerous tumor removed from my left kidney and that has not yet healed completely. In August, my mom passed away.

In the past few weeks, I've been missing Second Life. Not SL specifically, but the quietness and peacefulness that I have felt in the first few years of my virtual life. The wonder, the curiosity, the creativity. The innocence.

This week, I set up a trust and I'm still writing a pour-over will. In the process, I'm jotting down instructions for my successor trustee and executor. And the to-do list grows. I have a long list just to handle Opal's and Treasure's affairs. That task started my trek back into the past. And maybe that's why the tears came easily.

Paradox is one of the first few people I met in Second Life. His passing makes me feel like the past that I've been missing is slowly fading away piece by piece, because he was a part of that time in my life.

Many friends from that time have left SL too. No matter how often I log back into SL, I can't go back to that time. I can't step in the same river twice.



UPDATE 2019 Nov 30: Memorial created.

My SL flashing before my eyes

I don't know why, but I feel incredibly sentimental today. Memories float in and out of my mind.  Memories throughout the past six years.  Events, places, lovers.

It's like my life is flashing before my eyes.

I feel homesick for what used to be.  What SL used to be.  What *my* SL used to be.

It's like that time when LL introduced windlight.  The light inworld changed and it felt like a whole different world.  And I missed the old light.

It's like when LL first allowed you to change the volume for the UI and the wind separately.  They turned those sounds down and it felt like a whole different world.  I had to turn up the UI sounds, and some sounds are different now.  And I never heard the wind again.


I'm scrambling to finish the book trailer before Friday when I plan to get the book live on Amazon.  If I weren't busy with the book trailer and with current lovers, I'd probably be more an emotional mess.  I cried after I finished sorting out the formatting issues for the upload.  I cried again today because the release date is so close.

I guess I always feel like this during life transitions. My old SL is dying.  I suppose my old RL is too.

Almost exactly eight years ago, as I was preparing to move to Minneapolis to start my MBA program, I wrote something in my RL personal blog about "Lea soup."  Here's an excerpt:

"... while on the treadmill, I was reading an article in "O" (Oprah's magazine, of course) about how we go about reinventing ourselves. It started with a story about how caterpillars actually shed their skin in a cocoon and become a glop. "Caterpillar soup," the author said. The article went on saying that we also become "people soup" when the world falls apart, when the ground shakes.

"Maybe this move is forcing me into the "people soup" phase. If I bring only the bare necessities, I give myself room to be redefined, to be reinvented."

It's like SL has been my cocoon for the past five or six years.  I had "hidden" from the real world and became a glop as I searched for who I am and who I am meant to be.  And now, the cocoon is cracking.  My wings are unfolding.

And that is damn scary.

The lost pilgrim

August had been significant in my Second Life.  This past August, I thought it was the disaster with 6969 that was the change in SL.  What I didn't realize was that there was something else as well.

The same day I met 6969, I met two pilgrims who followed me up a mountain and through a labyrinth.  The next day, both pilgrims contacted me separately at the same time and we had another quick but funny exchange with the blonde sending us pictures of him doing the belly dance.

With a trip and the affair with 6969, I didn't find reason to log in as Alt #11 for a long while.

Last Sunday, in between the Burn2 temple burns, I logged into Alt #11 since I was too wound up to nap.  Besides, I was worried that I wouldn't be able to wake up in time for the 3am burn.

I found the Irishman online and said hi, which was lucky for him because he was figuring out why he lost his legs after taking off his boots.  After we got that sorted out, we sat down at Kannonji for a chat.

He said that he and the blonde had gotten together and became lovers.  The blonde is polyamorous and has other lovers.  And it sounded as though the Irishman wanted to be one of my lovers as well.  "You were the person I most wanted to see again here at SL," he said.  So, he was going to ask the blonde if it was alright with him.

The blonde said no.

I don't know how the conversation went, but that was that.  I asked if the blonde would allow us to remain friends.  The Irishman said it was fine; in fact, he thought that the blonde was also "smitten" with me.  But I had the feeling that he was broken-hearted.  He was torn.  He adored the blonde; he said so repeatedly.  And he adored me.

It didn't matter to me.  From my perspective, we simply wouldn't have SLex. It would still be more than a casual friendship, so I'd make time for it.  He asked if I would ever spend time with both of them at the same time.  I told him that I don't really have time for casual get-togethers, but I would make time for climbing the mountain again.

That conversation happened yesterday.  This morning, I realized that, if I continued to see the Irishman alone, it would eventually undermine their relationship, so I left him an offline.  The blonde was online so I tried to contact him, but he wasn't responding and I had to go.

So I went through my day, then in the evening, I checked email and found messages from both of them.  The blonde said yes to meeting.  The Irishman said the blonde left him for his female lover, and he added that he was leaving SL and he said his goodbyes.

It upset me unexpectedly.  All I could think of was going back to the mountain, and I walked up it without stopping.  I was on a pilgrimage again.  At the entrance to the labyrinth, I cried.  I hardly know him, but I still felt deep sadness.  I walked the labyrinth.  It was a prayer for him to heal.  I sent him a message that I walked it for him.  Afterwards, I stood just outside the labyrinth and reminisced.

Not long after, he logged in and responded.  I tried to teleport him; he refused to come.  Thinking it was the memories associated with the mountain, I went to Kannonji.  He still refused to come.  But in the conversation, he happened to mention he was in Dublin because it was at least somewhat familiar.  I searched for the Dublin sim and teleported there.  Then I found him with the radar and teleported there.  He was sitting on the bridge, so I sat next to him.  And we talked.

I found out about the lies.  He and the blonde had been lovers long before SL, and the blonde had told him to pretend that they didn't know each other when we met.  He had told me about the D/s nature of their relationship.  Tonight, I learned about the abuse from his childhood.  I learned about his deep love for the blonde, about the last time the blonde left him, about his attempted suicide, about his hopeless dreams for a future with him.  I was crying the whole time.

He said he was leaving "this world."  I made him promise not to take his life, and he promised.  In the end, he promised to send me a message that he was okay.  He wasn't going to take anything electronic with him, but I suggested that he send a postcard to his friend in the UK and ask her to send me an email.  He agreed.

Then he left.  On a new pilgrimage perhaps.  To heal.

All in my mind

"The Train Has Left," said NicoleX Moonwall in this video.  When she sent out this video link to the MaMachinima group today, it brought back memories.

I associate some places with certain people.  I associate AM Radio's "Far and Away" with the first Young Monk.  I had gotten too emotionally involved; he didn't want a relationship.  So, almost a year ago, we said our final goodbyes.

Today, I was reminiscing and looked up his profile to see what I had written on it.  It's no longer in Search; he had deleted the account.

Soon, the wheat fields too would be gone.

Maybe that's a good thing.  When all traces of the affair are wiped out, maybe my mind would question if it really happened.

On the other hand, it was just all in my mind anyway.

Some say that the only thing that's real in the universe is our experience of it.  The transience of a virtual world painfully makes it even more obvious.

Non-attachment is a very difficult lesson to learn.

Love logs

I log my chats.

Like so many things in SL, some people don't mind and some people do. The debate about logging has gone far back, since before I joined SL. These days, it's pretty much assumed that everyone logs chat.

I think it was MAMJJ who was the first person who expressed that he was worried that I logged chat. I explained why I do.

When people worry about logging chat, it's because they fear their own words would be used against them. I have no intention of doing that. Although chat logs have helped me when I caught someone in a lie.

The primary reason I log chats is a selfish one. I want to remember the good moments, the intimate moments, the heartwarming moments. Moments that pass all too quickly. So I could re-live them. So I could feel again the same contentment or passion or joy. So I could feel loved again, at times when I badly need a hug and there is no one there.

They're not chat logs; they're love logs. And I found much love in those logs today.

Muted whisper

Once upon a time, I met a whisper and fell in love with him.

It is difficult to describe what we had then. But I know for certain that it is one of those unnamed things that are the best that virtual worlds can offer.

It's like Pinocchio becoming a real boy. It was a fantasy, a roleplay, that has become so emotionally intense and has taken root deep into our psyches that it has become real. Not real as to be part of the "real world", but real nonetheless.

I spoke with him in Skype today. As we would in real life. He said that he deleted the account. And I cried. I cried as though a real lover had died.

I wanted to tell him that I love him, but those words in the context of "real life" feels disrespectful of his real life. All I could do was thank him, but even those words aren't enough for the tremendous impact his presence made in my life. And when I tried to give homage to what we had, every word I said merely trivialized the experience.

What we have of this virtual world is so flimsy, so fragile, so transient. And places and people are gone with one click. Places and people that mean so much to us. Places and people who have been significant in our virtual lives.

And it seems so unfair that they could easily be gone just like that. With no warning, no preamble.

The whisper turned into silence.

And I grieve.

Transience

I am standing in front of my store at the Sea of Mer sim at the Fantasy Faire. I had just finished running the entire loop through eight sims. In a sense, that run was a practice run for the actual relay in July.

But practice wasn't the reason I ran tonight. Nor the reason I came here again tonight.

We don't have to clean up our stores since Linden Lab would just delete everything anyway when they clean the servers. That's not what I came here for either. I came here because I feel this unexplainable deep sadness about all this going away.

I've always been a sentimental sap. I own parcels and builds of friends who are no longer in SL. I've preserved my first 512 sqm with the same objects that I created in my first week in SL.

But these sims have only been here for barely two weeks. How could I have gotten attached so quickly?

Barcelona del Oeste

Barcelona del Oeste is gone.

Well, the sim still exists, but the build is gone. When you teleport to the sim, you end up in a store up in the sky. At ground level, there's a sign that says:

REMODELACION SIM
"BARCELONA DEL OESTE"
ESTAMOS TRABAJANDO EN ELLO
DISCULPAD LAS MOLESTIAS

It saddens me. The original Barcelona del Oeste was also a mall after all, but it was more than just a mall. It had character. With monuments, a beach, park benches, a cathedral. It was a nice place to hang out and mellow out.

I had wonderful memories with friends dancing inside the Cafe or sitting on one of the tables in the plaza. I remember skating around the perimeter of the sim.

Now, it's gone. Like many of the treasures of Second Life.

Or, maybe it's symbolic. Maybe what I'm really grieving for is the end of my last affair. He hadn't been in for weeks now. I've lost count. I sent him email and joked asking if his doctor forbid him to come into Second Life because I'm likely to cause him a heart attack. He laughed. He replied that it's his computer technician who prevents him from installing Second Life. I figured if he really wanted to, he would find a way; I even told him about the text-based clients and offered to communicate by Skype like we used to. I think he really doesn't want to. He loves me, but he doesn't want to see me. And I couldn't accept that fact. Until now.

I had asked him to play an Il Divo song for me in his radio show when he thinks of me. Now, I listen to Il Divo and, instead of feeling immense joy with the rousing notes, I feel deep sadness.

So I stand here on the empty Barcelona del Oeste beach. After more than four years, I'm still not used to the transience of places and people in this world. And I may never.

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.

Constancy

The good thing about Second Life is that it is always changing. The bad thing about Second Life is that it is always changing.

The grid keeps getting bigger. There's always new content, changing content. Residents keep creating, and more creative people keep coming in. There's always something fresh to look at, to experience, to explore.

But, sometimes, things and people that you've gotten attached to also eventually go away. They've changed and you've changed. There is less constancy in virtual worlds than in the real world.

Ah, well. We'll always have our memories.... And our chat logs....

One last night at the Blue Note

I remember loves lost, friends lost, chances lost. All in the past year. A very long year. Or maybe it felt long just because it was bursting with memories.

And a lot of those memories are at the Blue Note, one of my favorite haunts since Headman introduced me to it. But very soon, the BN will be closing its doors. And I sit here with my memories. Lingering, hanging on to the memories a little longer as though they would fade away with the Blue Note.

SL would never be the same without the Blue Note.

Pity

Have you ever had moments when you'd hear a song or you'd smell a scent or you'd see a certain sky color, and you'd be so homesick? But the problem was that you count off the places you've ever lived in and the places you've ever visited, but you're not homesick for any of them. Instead, you're homesick for a place that only exists in your mind. Maybe you dreamt it one night, maybe your imagination created it while you were reading a book, maybe you saw a glimpse of it in a movie or a painting. However your mind created that place, it exists in your head and you're homesick for it.

If you're lucky, you could reread the book and live in that universe again. Or you can watch the movie over and over. Or stare at the painting for hours on end. If you're not so lucky,... Well, let's just hope you're a great builder. ;-)

So I pity the people who never discovered the joy of virtual reality, of bringing worlds into existence. Worlds that were, until then, locked up inside someone's head.

I pity the people who still haven't experienced walking into a dream while fully awake.

I pity the people who hang on tight to their narrow definition of "reality" and so miss out on out-of-this-world experiences.

If you've discovered Second Life and virtual worlds and realized the potential immensity of this reality, count yourself lucky.

Grieving non-loss

How could you lose something you never had? How could you grieve over something you never lost because you never had it in the first place?

After my divorce, I grieved for a lot of things I lost. The love we once had, his companionship, the moments we shared, the intimacy. But I realized that what I grieved more deeply about was the loss of our future, of the dreams we shared, of what could have been.

But when there is no possibility of a future with someone, -- not even a virtual future, -- when there are no dreams to look forward to, when all I have is each present moment, which instantly fades away, what is there to grieve for?

And yet my body shivers, my hands shake, my lips quiver, my tears fall. I grieve. But I don't know what for. Nothing changes after all. I didn't lose anything. I had nothing to lose.

(Yes, dear reader, two blogs in one day. Aren't you lucky! :) )

Remembering Headman

I remember a man who listened to his intuition and logged back in during the wee hours of a November morning, right when I badly needed a friend. And he stayed up with me sitting by his fire on the roof of his house until sunrise, listening to me and keeping me company as I sorted out my feelings.

He was the same friend who introduced me to the Blue Note, who noticed every detail about my gowns, who lifted me up effortlessly in a ballroom dance, and who sang along with the songs with me. A sweet man, a wonderful friend.

I missed him today.

So I go in-world in the wee hours of the morning and sit by his fire on the roof of his house. He has seats now so I don't have to sit in the fire. The Christmas tree and the poinsettia plant are gone. And the Christmas music isn't streaming in anymore. It has been too long since I last saw him, and this house is all that remains of him in-world.

Today, I become acutely aware how fragile everything is in SL. People come into our Second Life, touch our souls, and then be lost to real life. Eventually, even this structure that he built would be gone too, with nary a pixel left to indicate that it was ever here.

Sometimes we don't realize how we affect people's lives and how they affect ours. It's only when we see it happening again that we are reminded of the past. In this case, the sentimentality is triggered by a sinking feeling yesterday morning that I'm about to lose another friend to real life.

Yes, I am deeply grateful for the time I had with all those wonderful people and for the time I continue to have with other wonderful people. But I do miss the ones who are gone.

As Headman himself once said, "I think we miss the connection we feel with someone."

Every time we say goodbye, I die a little.
Every time we say goodbye, I wonder why a little.
Why the gods above me, who must be in the know,
Think so little of me. They allow you to go.*

* Written by Cole Porter

Forgiveness and gratitude

They say we cannot start healing until we forgive. And that entails forgiving the other and ourselves. However, it is easier to forgive another person than it is to forgive ourselves. Maybe it is because, in order to forgive ourselves, we first have to confess our sins. And to confess our sins is to admit that we are not as perfect or as good or as virtuous as we deem ourselves to be. So we have to first forgive ourselves for being imperfect before we can even forgive ourselves for our transgressions.

And when all the forgiving is done, we're still left feeling that something was taken away from us. As though we were denied future happiness, as though our dreams were snatched away. We lose trust in the other; we become defensive. And we close off a part of ourselves from the world. Instead of opening up to new loves, to new joys, to new experiences, we become more cautious. And we shield ourselves from precisely the experiences we're looking for.

But, now, I realize that forgiveness is only the first step. Perhaps even an unnecessary step.

You see, it doesn't matter why a relationship -- whether romantic or platonic -- ended. Not at all. That's because the whole relationship -- from the moment you meet until the day you part ways -- is a gift. A shared gift from both souls to each other and to themselves. All the joys, all the laughter, all the memories. Even the ending of the relationship, the transgression, is part of the gift, as well as all the other lessons that came with it. The ending of the relationship teaches us to appreciate the gift in its entirety and all other gifts we share with other souls. It teaches us to cherish each moment of that gift because it is transient, as all wonderful gifts are.

When we are given a gift, we don't say, "I forgive you." No, we say, "Thank you." And when we say thank you, when we are grateful, our hearts remain full and overflowing. Nothing is taken away from us; everything is given to us. There is nothing to forgive; there is no lack either in ourselves or in the other; there is no transgression.

And the next time we are offered a gift, we reach out and accept it gratefully. Because we remember that the last gift filled our hearts with joy and our minds with wisdom.

"To err is human; to forgive divine." -- Alexander Pope
"To err is human; to forgive wise; to be grateful divine." -- Opal Lei ;-)

Gracias. Mahalo. Danke. Tak. Merci. Arigato. Dziekuje. Meda wo ase. Diolch. Doh je. Komapsumnida. Grazie. Efharisto. Shukria. Xie xie. Salamat. Obrigada. Thank you.

AWOL

Bunny Rabbit (that's what I call Song Clanger) has a term for it -- Vanishing Avatar Syndrome. He said it's "a common affliction." He should know; he has gone through many romances in SL.

He surmises that people disappear when the affair gets too "real" and it "becomes too much for people and, rather than confront, they just fade away." For whatever reason. Too much emotion, complications of taking it out of SL, existing real life relationships.

"SL is life times 500," the bunny explains. "Everything is amped up. Expectations through the roof."

I understood. Somehow, we expect more, precisely because it is a fantasy. We're used to being in control of our own fantasies; we can have anything we want in our fantasies. But we forget that, just like real life, this shared fantasy has its own limitations because the people who build it and participate in it are only human. Humans with their own limitations, with their own expectations, with their own fantasies.

When someone in our Second Life doesn't follow the script of our own fantasy, we panic. The panic manifests in different ways for different people. For me, it's in hiding my identity from a man I learned to love so much that I toyed with the idea of being with him in real life. Perhaps, for January lover, it's in pulling back, distancing himself, fading away.

I told Bunny Rabbit that I wished I had this talk with him months ago. He asks, "Why? How would anything be different? Nobody listens!" :-D

Well, I suppose he's right. I am a stubborn one.