Stonebender’s VoxBox

I saw this incredible picture by silverdrake posted on Flickr today, and I realized it was the one that I wanted to come back to my blog with. This "homage to Wyeth" feels like a homecoming, and it felt right.

This is one of the most stunning treatments of a Second Life canvas I've ever seen. No surprise as it comes from a very talented denizen of the SL community.

Hope everyone's well. I've got some catching up to do.

Cheers, all :^)

Sue.

I am writing because I have to.  I need to.  It's how I sometimes process things that feel too big: talking out loud, writing in a diary, here in a blog where the people you value might have some nugget of wisdom to clear the smoke.  Right now I'm listening to one of my favourite songs:  "Change" from Tracy Chapman's "Where You Live" CD.  I've tucked the lyrics in with this pic on Flickr.

Rambling alert: this is the "talking out loud" part ...

The past few months have been increasingly chaotic.  It's an odd thing to say when the past year was actually one of profoundly poor health, and this is the part where I'm supposed to breathe easier because I'm getting better and most days feel pretty damned great.  Thing is I'm having one of those "Aha!" moments where you cannot breathe at all because you're hovering between the grief of leaving the old and familiar behind, and that incredible feeling of anticipating when you're brave enough to let yourself imagine new things.

Why is it so hard to change?

If you're not entirely happy with the status quo, with parts of yourself or your life or your choices, then why is it so damned hard to let them go?  Human nature is contained in such a predictable set of boxes at times, one of the big ones being this false sense of safety and normalcy so long as we keep doing what we're doing, whether it makes us happy or not.  We learn to a certain extent to control things and survive them by developing a handful of coping strategies.  Sometimes that means giving up on dreams, or unhooking important parts of ourselves like feelings or needs or pieces of our character that are actually very important parts of who we are.  I know because I've done this, over and over and over again, for years.

I have little notes scrawled on pieces of paper around my desk, tucked into favourite books, slipped under a coffee cup.  One of the ones staring back at me accusatorily right now says this:  "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results".  Pretty damned wise.  So why is it so hard to take to heart and translate into some sort of meaningful "do something"?

Do something.

I've said that phrase hundreds of times.  I'm usually saying it in light of my role as a better world scout.  It's a challenge statement as much as an invitation, and rolls off my lips as easy as could be ... until I listen to it in the context of my own life.

In March of 2003 I was driving home and stopped the car only two blocks from my house.  I turned and looked at my kids and said "something big is coming.  I don't know what.  I don't know what it means for us, but I know it's going to turn our lives upside down and we have to be ready".  A week later I got the phone call.  My mum was dying and my father had collapsed, and I had to go home to ... well ...

I had to leave my own family behind, young kids, and make unspeakable choices for my parents that haunt me to this day.  Not to belabour the details of that time in my life, but I'm thinking of it now because there is that same sense of ominous foreshadowing going on the past few days, and it leaves me restless and full of anxiety.

I don't do well with the unknown.  I'd rather have the difficult news full on, however bad it might be, so I can begin to wrap my head around it and prepare.  Essentially I am a control freak, and what I know I can set into order to whatever extent I can.  I don't like my back against a wall.  I don't like not having thought things through so that I can react intelligently and safely and sanely when the time comes, whatever "it" might be.

What's driven me to sit myself down and simply write about this today is sort of the perfect storm of coincidences in my life at the moment: personal, professional, community, all of it.  It's like the universe is conspiring to dump me the hell out of that comfy bed where I'm hiding under the covers and right onto my feet pointing, frowning, saying "Choose!"

Sounds like a whole lot of hubris going on ... ~laughs~ ... but this is in fact how it feels right this moment.  Sometimes coasting along is okay, if the choices that placed you there were healthy and wise.  Sometimes it's just lazy and irresponsible, and at the moment, I guess I'm leaning toward the latter.  I've got a handful of decisions to make.  Some of them are really bloody hard.  Other's have been taken out of my hands completely.  In any case, here I am, at a turning point, recognizing that like it or not it's time to choose, and if I'd let myself believe it, the perfect time to see the opportunities I've just not been brave enough to consider.

Am I brave enough to walk away from a career that's made me a public figure and provided me with some of the most incredible moments of serendipity in my life?  Do I have enough faith to believe that I've got the power to create something better and that really fits?  Do I have the power to walk away from an online community of better world scouts that I've been part of for three years and that is soon shutting it's doors, and figure out "what next?"  Do I have the power to imagine myself as something other than a fulltime mum when that part of my life is over so very soon?  Am I brave enough and do I have enough faith to hang in there with personal relationships that are in turmoil because of life's changes?

I've always considered myself to be strong, brave, a person with great conviction and faith.  Today I'm sitting quietly, feeling very uncertain, and recognizing just how comfortable it's been to live with the status quo.  Thing is, it hasn't made me very happy.

So now what?

I'm trying very hard to dig down deep to see if I have what it takes to reinvent once again, not on one front, but on many, maybe simultaneously.  I've watched someone I care about very much doing exactly that, not easily, but bravely.  It gives me hope, and yet I feel like such a coward.  What's familiar is comfortable.  Sometimes you have the luxury of choosing to piss your life away continuing to walk that path until it's very deep rut and almost impossible to get out of.  Sometimes the choice is taken out of your hands.  In any case, when you're standing there at that turning point, it's scary as hell.

Mostly, this is just talking out loud because it's how I wrap my head around things that I really don't want to be thinking about at all.  Doing it in my blog is admitting I don't have it all figured out, and because I'm wondering how other people find the courage to make big changes in their life and get on with it.

I think I've nearly worn the tracks off of Chapman's "Change", and yet I just looped it again, because I still need to hear it.  I really need to hear it today.

 

I'll be the first person to admit that I use my blog for purely selfish, cathartic reasons.  Sometimes I use it to hold myself accountable (if I say it outloud, I'll do it).  Sometimes I use it to celebrate something wonderful in my life, first and second.  Sometimes I use it to work through issues that are bugging the hell out of me, or simply beyond my grasp.  This posting is the latter.

Tonight my youngest son was attacked.  I'm struggling with this for a lot of reasons, including the obvious ones like not being able to protect your children from things no matter how well you think you've prepared them.  I've got another monkey on my back tonight because my son was -where- he was -when- he was because of me.

He called this evening to ask if he could stay at a friend's house much later than planned and if I would then come and pick him up.  On asking a few questions I found that he'd not been entirely honest with me this morning when he went there.  He rode his bike to the other side of town, requiring that he cross a number of our city's most dangerous intersections, and he's lost his bike helmut.  My rule was no more arse on the bike until the noggin' is covered, but he rode in spite of this.  He went both where he was told not to, and how.  I was angry when he called because I felt manipulated, and the car wouldn't be home until much later in the evening, so I told him no I wasn't able to pick him up and that he could not stay any longer, and to come home straight away before it got dark.  I also told him to expect to sit down and have a talk with me when he arrived home.  My last words to him were "please be safe!".  He hung up.  I had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, but it was in worrying that he might have an accident on the way home and that he wasn't wearing a helmut.  For almost an hour I sat fretting, feeling guilty as hell that I'd put him back out there on that bike to come home.

When he walked through the door, I nearly passed out.  He was covered with cuts and scratches, had a black eye, stomach stripped raw like sandpaper, head hanging down and walking with a limp.  He'd not been hit by a car.  He'd been jumped.  Because he knew I was angry he took a shortcut home -- one where there wasn't a lot of heavy traffic, but it was one of the roughest sections of town.  As he crossed the bike path on the train tracks to go into the park, two boys jumped him and beat the living hell out of him.  They yanked him off the bike, got him down on the ground and started kicking him repeatedly in the stomach, face and head.

As we sat talking to the police, it was all I could do to keep from falling apart.  He was someplace he shouldn't have been because I was angry, and he was more afraid of getting into trouble than he was of going through a dangerous section of town.  That almost killed me.  I don't lay hands on my kids, but they do know when I am angry because of that "mum tone of voice".  I'm lousy with discipline -- often too soft -- but my kids know when I am seriously disappointed in them and they hate it.

So what the heck does this have to do with tolerance and acceptance?

It's been hours since the police left and in that time a recurring theme has presented itself again and again, first in one of the questions asked by the police: "do you want to press charges?".  Why did I feel guilty about that?  Later when my son was safely in bed and sleeping, I turned on the tv to watch West Wing to try to settle myself down.  Two separate storylines wove back and forth, both underscoring age old conflicts between both countries and peoples because of labels, dogma and just plain stubborn human nature.  At the end of the show, I snapped the tele off and picked up the "Developments" magazine that arrived today.  The first thing I opened to?  An article dealing with those same age-old conflicts between cultures and people, and the seemingly insurmountable nature of quelling them.  A glaring fact in the particular issue dealt with by this article?  That one of the main reasons there was so little impetus to change was the almost "inexhaustible supply of slaves".

Of course, this lead me back here, thinking about the very emotional conversation we've been having as we've planted our elbows in this virtual kitchen table.  I've been sitting and thinking for some time on this.  There are a handful of things I keep coming back to again and again.  Conflict happens for a host of reasons, but there are some that are well within our control to change right now:

1)  We can choose to listen actively and without judgement to our peers.  In meetings I often catch myself "tuning out" the person speaking, waiting for them to hurry up and finish so it can be my turn to speak and I can present my own point of view.  I'm not really listening at all, and I'm certainly not interested in being swayed to their point of view.  In joining a discourse if our goal is merely to hammer other people over the head with our own position and spin, we're already in trouble.  Taking the time to share our thinking, especially when it's emotionally charged, should include a commitment to find some level of mutal understanding, whether we agree with each other or not.

2) We can choose to put issues in the center of the table, not people.  I'm the first to admit I've had a good rollick coming to the rescue of a friend or two who'd been bashed by the fashionistas on various blogs.  I was full of righteous indignation, and on some level felt justified in doing a reverse character assassination on people I felt desperately deserved it.  Regardless of motive, when attacks become personal, they are damaging, rob us of our integrity and make it almost impossible to get beyond position and spin.  One of the hardest things for me to choose when I arrived in Second Life was "acceptance", not "tolerance", and there is a difference.  About 5 years ago a friend of mine gave me a sound kick in the arse for not groking that.  Tolerance implies that we are merely "putting up with" people who are not the same as we are, or who have a different point of view.  Acceptance means celebrating that we can have different beliefs and opinions and still have common values and common ground.  Working to find those things provides an awesome foundation to build on.

3) We can choose to practice non-violent communication.  This is not an intrinsic part of my nature when someone messes with my kids!  Nor is it an easy thing to practice when someone shares an emotional point of view that just plain pissed me off.   A few years ago I met a woman who introduced me to the idea of this.  When I became profoundly ill again last year (one of the more unpleasant symptoms of my illness was not only depression but rages) I chose to actively seek out the principles of non-violent communications because I hated that my words were hurting the people I loved most.  Most recently a lovely woman introduced herself to me as a colleague not only here on Vox, but also as a Second Life citizen and someone from yet another online community that I care deeply about: omidyar.net, and she too teaches NVC.   I suppose it's not a coincidence but rather serendipity that keeps presenting the notion of "non-violent communications" in my way.

Not only does the net at large throw us into one massive bowl of raging diversity, it gives us places like Second Life where it is in our face in all it's glorious colours.  Gor, furries, gender-benders, age play, mafia, violence-based roleplay groups and a veritable buffet of issues-based rp that may or may not synch up with our personal values.  We can react in fear, shield ourselves with indignant epithets and absolutes, or we can choose to say "fuck it -- I'm going to open up and actively listen, and while I may not like everything I hear, I'm going to allow myself to expand the personal context that I have in which I relate to people".

Two things lingered when I sat quietly tonight and had to deal with the very mixed emotions I've had today, some because of the loaded language here in the slavery thread which at times makes it feel like a minefield, and some because of two young men who chose to hurt my son and the fact that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time because he was worrying about my being angry with him.  The first thing I kept thinking about was something that my brother said to me when my mum was dying a few years ago.  He tucked a little book about compassion into my hand and paraphrased one of the most important parts for me, and the thing I hung onto most was this:  the more anger we fill ourselves up with, the less room there is for the good stuff.  The second thing I keep thinking about tonight is this:  that whether or not we agree with the notion of slavery as part of active roleplay, the entire concept of freedom is based on the right to choose.

Yes, there are people who enforce their will on others.  Yes, there are people who are not well equipped to make healthy choices and will fall prey to people who will exploit them.  These things, however, are not the entire picture anymore than I am representative of all women in Second Life.  On the issue of slavery in roleplay, as I continue to see unfold more and more throughout the course of the very thoughtful discourse before this, there is also a healthy, informed choice made and exercised by smart, compassionate, healthy people who find in Second Life an outlet to explore an aspect of themselves they might not otherwise be able to choose.  This is not synonymous with sexual exploitation or lack of consent.  It's the right to choose.

I don't just tolerate it, I accept it, and I continue to want to learn more because of the immense respect I have for the people who have stepped forward to continue to talk.

How entrenched are we in pushing a personal agenda?  Do we have the will to ditch the position and spin long enough to actually listen to an uncomfortable point of view?  Is it possible to have an intelligent dialogue with a diverse group of people and not only -not- kill each other but learn something along the way?  Based on the "slavery" thread before this and how it seems to be unfolding, I'd say "hell yeah!"

 

F. Scott Fitzgerald had a nice way of summing up the challenge we have before us:

"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time, and still retain the abilility to function".

Not on the crazy train just yet ...

 

In the past few months two women that I truly admire have left me scratching my head on my very entrenched position on virtual slavery in Second Life and other immersive online communities.

It's role play. I get it. What I've never quite come to understand is why.

Daequix Scarborough posted a composite photo that cut to the chase, inviting a discourse on a subject that represents one of the true digital divides in online culture, and perhaps one of the most controversial and likely misunderstood issues:

http://flickr.com/photos/daequix_scarborough/758894526/

On one side the image depicts a woman wearing silks, something characteristic of the Gorean rp that makes up a significant part of the cultural experiences within Second Life.  The other side of the photo depicts the same woman wearing business attire. The word "slave" flanks each half of this image. The pic's creator then pokes us with another stick, tucking the following challenge statement beneath:

" It is my opinion that in any form, women (as well as men) are slave...whether it be to one Master or many."

Talk about food for thought! I immediately "favourited" (my English teacher would beat me with another stick for trying to turn this word into a verb ... ~laughs~) this entry, and left a little comment about the powerful and provocative metaphor Ms. Daequix had presented us with. Here was her reply:

I don't always think people really get that there are many different slaves and slavers....as well as, many different freedoms. It's just in our choices.

Are we more bound and gagged by our system or by a chosen Master....are we more freed by being a kajira or no?

Enuff said! LoL..."i must the soapbox put away" (a little known quote by Yoda)

I'm so glad she opened that door a crack wider, because this is one of the things that I find myself driven to distraction by more often than not, and that I crave an honest dialogue around. Here's the "why" in my own response ...

_____________________________________________________

Actually, don't hurry on putting it away. You wield it very capably. I have to admit that this is one of those issues that has plagued me from the moment I joined SL. I never quite understood why any woman would make giving up her personal freedoms (and part of her personality?) a conscious fantasy choice in RP. This is not a judgemental statement so much as an honest curiousity and need to understand.

Part of my own bias comes from my first life where I've spent a number of years working to help free little girls from the child sex trade in various countries, including in my own. Anything that robs a woman of her right to choose and her voice essentially drives me around the bend, and that has certainly been coloured by the drama of my first life experiences with this.

It seems something entirely different to people in the context of SL, and I have to admit you are the second woman I admire who's made me do a double take on this issue in the past few months. The first is a fellow Canadian -- very bright, articulate, thoughtful business woman in first life. I've never been brave enough to simply ask her about her choices in SL at the risk of offending her, though some how I suspect she wouldn't be surprised if I did open that door.

This picture of your's was such a stark kick in the arse on the hypocrisy of our choices. On one hand there is the literal choice to rp as a slave; on the other something less obvious but in some ways more insidious because we often feel (unlike the first example) that we have no choice.

So, bravo for inviting a discourse on this! Ignore Yoda, wise old soul that he may be. I hope you -won't- put that soap box away, because you've actually hit on something that is an intrinsic part of the SL culture and I suspect is misunderstood by a lot more people than myself.

Thanks for the chance to stop and reflect, and for providing a safe forum to explore this in where some of us are simply too damned afraid to ask. Looking forward to what transpires here ...

_____________________________________________________

I truly am looking forward to the other elbows that get placed on her virtual kitchen table there, and invite you to at least peek in if not tuck a thought or two of your own in the comments section of this very thoughtful exploration:

http://flickr.com/photos/daequix_scarborough/758894526/

So thanks, Dae, for the chance to scratch a truly perpetual itch!

Whenever I'm about to reinvent myself in a significant way, I find myself reading a lot of Emerson.  Today I came across something he'd written that I'd not heard before, but I found it both provocative and essential:

     “I find that the Americans have no passions, they have appetites.”

        -- Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Being neither American nor inclined to want to be beaten with a large stick ~grins~, I'll simply say that this observation spoke to me personally.  It identifies one of my greatest internal conflicts: stickiness.

I have always considered myself to be a very passionate person.  Having said that, this nasty little poke with a stick from Emerson's 1800's brand of wisdom has me asking myself if I have the right to claim this label at all.  I do feel things fiercely and deeply, and that is wonderful fuel spurring me on when I go running headlong into the next thing that calls.  But there's the rub: so many things do call, and my ability/desire to stick with them is often my greatest challenge.

This is a problem if you look at it in almost any light: makes it tough to stay put, stick to a career, be happy with one person, or to ever really feel full or know the true sense of the word "enough".  Some people might call it OCPD, or ADD, or simply fickle or even selfish and irresponsible.  And yet I've managed to be successful in spite of it.  While I do look back and feel at times a sense of grief over recognizing this as a deficit in the traditional sense of a person's life, I am also deeply grateful for living in the place and time I do.  In the niche that I've managed to carve for myself it's served me well.  As a journalist, being constantly propelled by "the chase" is a delicious habit.  It keeps me hungry, curious, always running after the next story to share.  As an artist, it keeps me buoyant and colourful and constantly inspired.  God bless the internet and Second Life, for those two mediums have provided the most provocative and fertile playground for the two most intrinsic parts of my inner life as a breadwinner and insatiable consumer.

Where this is a challenge is in personal relationships.  There are people that I connect with in a very rich and heartfelt way, and yet no matter how much I enjoy their company, I rarely seek it.  I do tend to hold people at arm's length.  Even my closest friends and family know what a gigantic pain in the ass I can be when it comes to simple, normal things.  I hate talking on the phone.  I don't do well with a lot of small talk, and within minutes of reconnecting I am often restless and uncomfortable again.  A pretty boring, run-of-the-mill personality disorder I'm sure, but an inconvenient one when you really do care a great deal about the people that you have so much trouble wanting to connect with in a deeper way.

There are exceptions.  It's at odds with my bleeding heart, because at my core I remain a better world scout and always will be.  My partner Baron is also an anomaly in many ways, perhaps because he's so much like me and doesn't question or seem critical of the quirks.  But Emerson's observation does have me scratching my head and asking myself how much I may want or need to confront this particular issue if I really want to move forward in my life.

Do I really have passion, or merely appetites?  Constant, glorious, intense appetites, but appetites nonetheless.  It's not that I haven't found my niche.  In fact, I've found it again and again.  It's that in spite of the thrill of the chase, and often getting what I want, I still feel quite empty at the end of the day.

I know because of the few anomalies that do exist in my life that there is a great reward attached to cultivating a more mature and intimate relationship with the people and opportunities in my life, and in my gut I know that I do want to know what it feels like to say "this is enough" and finally mean it.

In those instances I've allowed myself to let it in, what I am gifted with is richer, deeper, simpler and more enduring happiness and peace of mind.

So, tonight I'll thank Emerson for poking me with a stick, and hope that I'll be wise enough to really listen and finally choose it for myself.

Today is my friend Pierre's birthday, and it's got me thinking about the value of a life.  While there are some people who would measure it with extrinsic successes -- money, fame, toys -- P's a guy who kinda challenges you turn that on it's head.  Doesn't matter who he is in terms of labels.  What moves me is his ability to mobilize people beyond that numb, too-much-bad-news, hopeless kind of place we some times get stuck at.  Sort of turns the question "what have you done for me lately?" on it's head and shakes it till it's heart falls back down into a chest cavity somewhere and does it's thing.

While I was busy making digital pianos and baubbles, Mr. O. was out trying to kick the great unconscious response to a global flu pandemic in it's flabby tires.  Instead of the kind of movie-of-the-week fear mongering that some folks tend to do, Pierre was not only providing global leadership on this, but doing it through a set of small, thoughtful, pragmatic little bloglets that spoke plainly to everyday people about what something like this might mean, and what we can reasonably do about it.

So maybe groking 28-weeks-later come to life doesn't hold the cool factor for you?  He and his wife, Pam, have quietly started a revolution in every-day things people can do to connect with each other and mobilize healthier, more sustainable communities globally.  Instead of throwing fistfuls of money at things, they invited discourse, set the table and asked everyday people to put their elbows on it and start talking, collaborating, imagineering at a place called omidyar.net.  In many ways it seemed like a pretty audacious experiment, but it was the kickstart to my own tired-out bleeding heart when I reconnected with a handful of better world scouts who were just quiet, everyday people like myself looking for ways to make a difference in their own way.

It's what lead me to want to find a way to give back through my success in Second Life through the SL Ubuntu program.

You might not know Pierre, but you probably know someone like him.  Someone who challenges us to think beyond ourselves, to care deeply and actively about each other and the world in a non-tree-hugger kind of way ~winks~.   Whether you do it for Pierre just because I say he's intrinsically cool (down to his geeky-sweet, über-techie core), or as a tribute to that person you know who shakes you out of that soul-comma and back into actively caring, I invite you to give a gift from the heart, and I've even got the cajones to suggest what that might be ~grins~ ...

1) Read his blog entry on preparing for a pandemic, think about it, and share that wisdom with at least one other person.

2) Visit omidyar.net and simply trust fate to take you where you need to be.  She's a pretty smart gal and has a habit of guiding our path in spite of us.  Connect with at least one thing that calls you there, whether it's a project, or a challenge, or simply the words of a kindred soul.  Just pick a small, simple place and dig in.

3) Just get off your ass and do something nice, for somebody, somewhere out there today.  Doesn't matter who, or how, or why.  Just do it.

So, Pierre, my gift to you today on your 40th birthday is a "ripple".  I'm sending one out hoping it will make more, and spread the way your own do in such simple, heartfelt ways.

Here's to your integrity, your insanity, and your very great heart.  Here's to another 40, then another 40, and yet another 40 more ...

Rock the world, baby.

Sue.

(and you know I'm going to be walking around in those damned socks and sandals today, humiliating myself just for you, bud-dee ~grins~ ) 

 

Pretty powerful question when asked in the context of exploration, not abuse.

Consider yourself invited to dig into your own scarred psyche and hermetically sealed beautiful soul and come up with some creative answers through photo stories:

http://flickr.com/groups/findme/

Simple rules:

• No blatant pornography, no matter how hot you think you are ~grins~
• You're welcome to link to other resources (might be your blog, a related web site, or some groovy mixed media to enhance your point) where you think it might be relevant.
• Saying "keep it tasteful" may be a broad definition at best ~winks~ I tend to be a pretty open-minded girl, but I'm tucking in the caveat up front that if I find what you share to be patently offensive (you know, torturing cats, threatening small children, showing me on a bad hair day, etc ...) I will quietly remove said treasure from the pool.
  
  

Play nice in the sandbox, capiche?

And dammit, have fun!

That Stonebender Chick.

It's been a long time since I've posted here.

I find that I often explore a new tool, crawl inside of it and make it home for awhile, then move on.  There's a lack of friction with so many of the social networking tools.  I don't want to date, toss a shout out to a new band, or increase my network.  I don't think anybody hanging out over the Twitter watercooler really gives a damn about what I just put in my coffee or fed my cats.  In first life I'm a public figure, so in my second one I find myself compelled to hide.  Running a successful business means being swallowed whole by IMs most days in Second Life, and the lack of any truly tangible privacy tools there makes it really damned tough to get a day's work done.

So, I became a bit of a hermit.  Okay, a lot of one.  And I liked it.  (And yes, I admit that it's a real hardship holing myself up with Baron frigging Grayson to build and play ... ~cough~)

I really have enjoyed reinventing myself as a recluse the past two years.  I'm a workaholic, and having a partner that shares the same insane work ethic and obsessions has made it all the easier still.  So much for the best laid plans ~grins~

Second Life has been a grand retreat, but the past few months I'm finding myself drawn into a very different kind of playground: one that doesn't exist in a single online community, but rather spanning a handful of mixed media tools and sites.  It started when Baron rekindled a love of seeing the world through old film cameras again.  He began posting notes and discoveries on his own blog here, and some rather cool, kindred spirits were gathering round.  Several were people we'd aleady connected with in Second Life as customers, and those connections were rarely more than a handful of brief encounters because of the tendency to cultivate a precious reclusiveness for the reasons I talked about above.  But I noticed something odd happening here.  In sharing a picture and some personal nugget, we were swapping stories.  It wasn't a transaction.  There was no obligation on either end.  It didn't demand lengthy, real time responses, dropping things in the middle of an inspired work session to reply.  No, this was more like slinking down into a favourite old chair in a beat-up pair of slippers with a big mugga joe in your hand, and quietly inviting familiar hearts in.

This began to spill over onto Flickr when we started posting pics there too.  Same faces.  Same fun, easy-going way of connecting.  People that I once thought of as customers I now think of as friends.  You see there's this odd little backyard fence, and it doesn't inhabit a space between just two yards, but bridges many, making them feel like the same kind of small, intimate shared space instead of some overwhelming digital geography.

omidyar.net, Second Life, Vox, Flickr, Twitter ... they all feel like rooms in the same house right now.  Where before I once dreaded the demands placed on my time by the human interaction, I now find myself craving it.  I watch Thaumata's video blog about her grandma Dorothy and am moved in ways I cannot describe.  I see this tender, vibrant person, and not just a name on a posting.  I watch Arteer romp through digital playgrounds and master them and make them so much fun.  I see her pictures on Flickr and her little notes and often end up laughing or connecting to some idea in some new way, and I love it.

It's sort of silly to just share these two women, just two names, but they are both such marvellous examples of the very thing that made me want to come back and post today:  a sense of kindred spirits with elbows on the kitchen table, and people I'd love to know in first life.  Zeke Poutine, Riversong Garden, Pam Omidyar and Callie Cline were people I connected with that way several years ago, and the ability to dive into Second Life together and culitvate our relationship in new ways was pretty damned incredible at times.  Okay, so I admit that having Zeke as a fairygodmother-in-garters (her words, not mine, but damn are they good!) with the same insane fetish for chocolate has less to do with social networking and more to do with Adventures with the Estrogen Army, but that's another post for another day, and my five minutes are up.

Would love to hear how others are thinking and feeling about connecting simultaneously through mixed media and networks.  Maybe you'd consider sharing some of your own favourite digital haunts with me here?

 

 

Yup.  Totally self-indulgent, just because I can.

 

A picture I took of Baron Grayson when we were out working on our new Templum ex Obscurum sim.  He set the chapel back out there in the sunset along the sea, and has done some gorgeous landscaping.  It's a breathtaking view, and I just happened to catch him looking up as he was working and couldn't resist stealing the moment.  How could I not?  ~grins~

One Hour to Madness and Joy

[Walt Whitman (1819-1892). Leaves of Grass. 1900.]

ONE hour to madness and joy!
O furious! O confine me not!
(What is this that frees me so in storms?
What do my shouts amid lightnings and raging winds mean?)

O to drink the mystic deliria deeper than any other man!
O savage and tender achings!
(I bequeath them to you, my children,
I tell them to you, for reasons, O bridegroom and bride.)

O to be yielded to you, whoever you are, and you to be yielded to me, in defiance of the world!
O to return to Paradise! O bashful and feminine!
O to draw you to me -- to plant on you for the first time the lips of a determin'd man!

O the puzzle -- the thrice-tied knot -- the deep and dark pool! O all untied and illumin'd!
O to speed where there is space enough and air enough at last!
O to be absolv'd from previous ties and conventions -- I from mine, and you from yours!
O to find a new unthought-of nonchalance with the best of nature!
O to have the gag removed from one's mouth!
O to have the feeling, to-day or any day, I am sufficient as I am!

O something unproved! something in a trance!
O madness amorous! O trembling!
O to escape utterly from others' anchors and holds!
To drive free! to love free! to dash reckless and dangerous!
To court destruction with taunts -- with invitations!
To ascend -- to leap to the heavens of the love indicated to me!
To rise thither with my inebriate Soul!
To be lost, if it must be so!
To feed the remainder of life with one hour of fulness and freedom!
With one brief hour of madness and joy.

On Easter weekend I took a whirlwind trip to Chicago. Only staying one night, I didn't have a lot of time to venture out into the parts of the city with the grandest gothic architecture and some of my favourite haunts, but I did manage to take along the Minolta that B gave me, and I had an absolute riot shooting up the city in black and white.

I took many of my shots at night, and didn't expect them to turn out at all. Having seen the first set that's come back I've been pleasantly surprised at how hard it is to screw anything up with this particular point-and-shoot baby. I love the Minolta. B got some extraordinary shots on it when he was doing the steam engine graveyard on one of his own treks, and while I've yet to capture anything that dramatic yet, I've had a hell of a lot of fun running around learning to be unapologetically brash with a lens.

When I went to pick the pictures up, I was disappointed to see that only one of the three sets that I had shot was back, and that they had messed it up processing true black and white film to a colour format, and that they had also seemed to lose the other two sets. I was relieved to find that the first set turned out rather cool inspite of the processing mixup, and that the missing film showed up and I was able to pick the negatives up today. I've not had a chance to look at them yet, but I wanted to share some of my favourite shots from the first batch.

 

By rights this shot should never have turned out.  It was taken in a glass elevator that was descending rapidly, so I expected some level of motion blur, but there was none.  Chicago is magic for me, and the architecture of this building is one of the reasons why.  A combination art deco and Middle Eastern gothic.  Your head is constant whirling around and looking up to take in the forest of extraordinary builds all around you.  How could it not be a grand city with the influence of Frank Lloyd Wright?  In this particular shot (unretouched) I love the way the modern skyscraper in the background pales in comparison to the sturdy old deco build in the forefront.  Kind of a cool metaphor for what makes this city so spectacular.

 

This was also shot in the same glass elevator, now almost at the bottom.  I was again surprised by the absence of motion blur on the taxi that was racing by.  Not a spectacular shot by any means, but I love the architecture of the builds.

 

 

Every single time I visit Chicago this bloke is out on one of the main street corners in the Magnificent Mile.  I've never heard him utter a word.  He covers himself head to toe in thick metallic paint, and does the robot dance next to a massive boombox.  There are always huge crowds around him, and I find myself just mesmerized watching him.  This was at the end of a very long night, when he was just packing up.  I asked if I could snap his pic, and caught my breath as he leaned so far over I thought he would fall.  He has amazing control of his limbs beyond the dancing, locking himself as rigid as a statue.  Was just thrilled to find him once again on the visit when I was photojournaling a city I'm so in love with.  He's one of my favourite memories every time.

 

This was just a delicious little piece of serendipity, since I'd just finished making a set of Victrolas for my studio in Second Life.  I was walking along the street at night and stopped dead in front of this window.  The Victrola was gorgeous, and sat beside a handful of other antiquities that made this shop window absolutely stunning at night.

Atlas ...

Poor guy's shoulders must get tired.

Cannot remember what building this clock is atop, but it looked terminally cool at night.

 

 

 

Almost seems wrong to be whoring pics of shop windows when there is so much more to Chicago, but of all the cities I've been in, the shop fronts in this one are so much more like art.  I was amazed that these pics turned out at all given so many of them were taking whilst walking, and without a flash.  It's the first time I've used true black and white film in about 25 years, and it was the perfect city to shoot in that format.  An odd little accident that the photoshop accidentally processed the film to colour instead, which uses a very different set of chemicals in the development.  I groaned when they handed me the negatives and told me about the mistake, but actually kind of intrigued by the result.

 

 

 

You know how during a shoot there is that -one- shot that you desperately want to turn out?  This is that shot.  I was walking across the road and found this gentleman standing on the corner playing the sax.  I'd caught him earlier and just loved listening.  There was a crowd around him, and I was sure that given the absence of the flash, the fact that it was very dark at night, and the movement of my walking while snapping would have made this a write-off.  This Minolta Roan sent me is my favourite camera to shoot with.  I get the coolest vignetting around the edges of some shots, interesting light leaks and scratches, and a rock-steady picture in spite of whatever jostling I may be giving it in the process.  This bloke is part of the flavour of Chicago and one of the reasons I love wandering about at night so much.  There is always something going on.  It feels like the city never sleeps.