walk away 'cause you're breaking up the girl

Would your love in all its finery
tear at the darkness all around me
until I can feel again
until I can breathe again

I kneel in Desolation, more desolate than before, now that the club known by that name has been pulled back into the shadows that spawned its brief, tormented life...I watch the tree I didn't want to put up being adjusted by hands not mine, so there may be a way it can be placed on my patch of Rivulan home, now the only home I have left...I kneel, and my soul is in flames.



(The first of the tree.)



(The main trunk.)


(Initial platform layout for the interior.)

'Cause I'm a train wreck waiting to happen
waiting for someone to come pick me up off the tracks
a wild fire born of frustration
born of the one love that gets me so high
I've no fear at all

The beginning of the tree that is gone now, mayhap never to return. Later today Alazarin Mondrian's single-room Tree-F-O returns, larger than the Maneater, but still not what I wanted...I wanted, bad or good, surreal or natural, to make something that was mine, to have a home in which I could touch any surface and know I'd created it by my hands, my mind, my vision.

The vision is shattered now. The beloved looked at my art and found it tragic and unappealing. Asked me to build a pine tree instead. Told me to move it from his view.

I kneel in Desolation and the name is hauntingly appropriate. There is nothing to do but take it down.

Would your eyes like midnight fireflies
light up the trenches where my heart lies
until I can see again
to find my way back again



(The initial four-chamber construction.)


(Interior, once some separation had occurred.)


(The copper-clad roof.)

To fall so deep into you
lose myself completely
in your sweet embrace
all my pains erased

It took me not a few days, and hundreds of Lindens, to track down the textures I wanted, ensure they were free for all uses, and upload them. It took longer to decide which direction I wanted this to go. While the design may have been haphazard, because I was building it as I went, without real plan....the coloration was not, the style was not, it was what I wished to do.

I lined the ceiling in raw copper, gleaming against the copperwood tones, and spent six hours all told finishing all end surfaces, even those that would not be seen, so nothing would be exposed bare wood. When I got around to needing hanging moss, I fairly flew to Malkavyn Eldritch's shop, because I remembered he had a texture, and used my newly learned technique of applying a completely transparent texture to top and bottom so there wouldn't be bleed-through.

As much as I was learning as I went, and discovering new techniques--as with all building--this was going--at least generally--in the direction I wanted it to go.

From your mouth it's all that I wish
the mercy of your lips, just one kiss
until I can breathe again
so that I can sing again



(Tree with moss, and ferns around the base.)


(Close-up on ferns.)

To fall so deep into you
lose myself completely
in your sweet embrace
all my pains erased

It was coming together. It had taken three days of my life, at high cost to personal interaction and personal finances, a level of focus which distracted me from virtually everything else in the world, but it was coming together. It was a replacement for my lost home in Lumindor, for my lost half-Drow who left me, for all the loves I never see anymore, for the clients I don't have, for not giving in to Cattyshack and their terrifying pink evil, for not suborning my ethics and crawling back to another BDSM club to play sub for profit, for not being able to open Taiyou on time because I cannot GODDAMN afford to refurnish two GODDAMN skyboxen...

...It was a reaction against the way Lumindor has been so tackily redecorated since the forced departure of their last architect, as every single unusual tree, shrub, bush and mushroom that made it lovely was removed and replaced by weeping willows, cedar trees, and PONDEROSA PINES...

...it was a reaction against entering a date auction in which I drew slightly less than two thousand Linden--which, don't get me wrong, helped me pay rent and immediate back debt--while others drew nine thousand, eleven thousand, twenty thousand...and this was literally a "date auction", not "anything goes"...

...it...was...ME, it was the work of my hands, it was the standing embodiment that I can still make things in this world, that I am not a throwaway commodity, that I have value and substance and dare I say it, some modicum of personal style...and it was my chosen expression, and what is it my friend Neurosis says? Never apologize for your art. And I'm not apologizing now.

But I'll be damned into a colder hell than the demon's in now if I'm going to build something my acknowledged primary loathes and have him move in with less than love in his heart.

IT WILL NOT SERVE. AND I WILL NOT LET IT STAND.

[0:50] Emilly Orr: Most women at this point would be throwing furniture and shredding your clothes. I am BEING understanding.
[0:51] Emilly Orr: But it hurts nonetheless, and it's all tied up in why I had to leave Lumindor, and people leaving me, and that hurting more than I expected, and the satisfaction of building things, but the reason of building things being that I'm having to borrow from people to pay rent, so I'm HAVING to work harder than I had to before, just dancing and being pretty, and shall we also mention I'm the escort with zero clients at this point?
[0:51] Emilly Orr: And ALL of that is tied up in the tree, which you called FUGLY



So I kneel in Desolation, and feel the tears hit the barren soul, and know the taste of ashes in my mouth. The tree is gone. Long live yet another replacement I'll tire of in six months.

(The song is Sarah McLachlan's "Train Wreck". And, so there's absolutely zero confusion on this point, no, it DOES NOT refer to the goddamn neko who hated my tree.)