stay and see the smoke, and who's still standing when it clears

Quiet nights. After the mad run of events, and planning, changing into outfit after outfit. Professional and perky and smiling on cue. Afterwards. After all my loves have gone and I can hear footsteps echoing down the long imagined halls of Caledon virtual, when most of its most active residents are long asleep.

I surprise myself again by reminding myself of old habits. I once had a perpetual habit, constant habit--I've always saved amusing or meaningful quotes, but the phrases I loved that someone had said, strong friends or loves, I'd save them, but I'd save them in that reserved space on the profile. I'm sure there are quotes and sayings still out there, on friends I've long forgotten, friends who left the grid and never came back, and I stopped caring to find their names.

I strolled through the ones I do remember, have remembered, hold dear, and remembered why I held them dear in the first place. Treasured words, declarations, movements of inspired tiredness, amusing banter, butterflies and poetry--it's all there.

I wonder how long it's going to be until I forget again.

In the meantime, I'm still working to keep the inventory to a dull roar--I haven't (yet) ended an evening over 57,000 items, but I've pressed to the limit of 56,900. Still, it's my line in the sand, I'm drawing it. We'll see how it goes.

Moment of irony I'm reflecting upon, though--I wanted to change my profile picture. I wanted something seasonal. So I went to a sandbox and ended up rezzing out, attaching or creating over one hundred and fifty separate prims of holiday treats--including the full backdrop, a striped full floor, the holiday scarf, a hanging light, face light, a sparkling lit tree, a box full of prim lights and candy canes, the Mystitool platform I used to get me up to where I wanted to create this...

...yes, all that for a picture. Which I'll likely change in three days. Maybe less.

Irony.

In other news, I can't decide if Secondhand Lands is something I want to join, or something I want to run from--at speed. (Watching the trailer does not help with the wanting to run part, by the way.)

I go to bed tonight remembering first nights. The urgency of love, and the addictive drowning yearning in waiting. And not waiting. How a smile from one of my loves still lights my heart. Moment to moment, moments of attention, moments of shivering bliss. My dreams will be sweet.

In the meantime, I'm running out of time to plot a holiday gifting of my own. I may well end up running something at the store from December 25th through to June 5th--Twelfth Night--and end things then, take the tree and gifts away.

I'm thinking holly bats, house slippers, maybe a dress or two...try my hand at earrings...see how it goes. It will get me building again, at the very least!