sleep, sugar, let your dreams flood in

Hear your heartbeat
Beat a frantic pace
And it's not even seven AM

You're feeling the rush
of anguish settling
You cannot help showing them in

She walks again, moves through the world, the lady that was lost in kitten dreams. I see, I notice, I think it's a precursor of good things, but I admit I watch the world warily, these days, when I watch at all.



(December 2008, the signs to sell Rivula go up. Home and more than home, for my staggered starting footsteps on the grid. It was one of many signs of change to come.)

So hurry up then
Or you'll fall behind and
They will take control of you

And you need to heal
The hurt behind your eyes
Fickle words crowding your mind

I am back to feeling spiderlike, the dreamer in the web, tugging on strings tied to secrets. I never sell, I never barter, everyone's entitled to things they don't want the world to see. But all information is valid. And more information helps me fit the pieces together.



(Part of an initial photo session featuring an outfit I still haven't released yet, due to difficulties with the flexi skirt--but mostly I thought afterwards that 'sad mime' really wasn't the best way to present the combo...)

So
Sleep, sugar, let your dreams flood in,
Like waves of sweet fire
You're safe within
Sleep, sweetie, let your floods come rushing in,
And carry you over to a new morning

The puzzle of any community is in its people. Caledon no less than any other, real or imagined. The trick of Caledon is that it's so interwoven, such a complex weave--truly closer to a tartan than a web. Tug on one strand it might weave tighter, or it might slip free of the weave entirely, making the structure in that place more fragile than it was.

Best not to tug at all, but...knowing. Discovering. Sometimes, just a little pull, just a bit, thin thread of possibility between thumb and forefinger...Sometimes, it's difficult to know when to stop.



(Sometimes the poetry slams get out of hand. This one, held in the satellite consulate in Kittiwickshire, featured poems honoring Caledon and growth. When word went around that Miss Qlippothic Project's poem on Caledon had not been heard, I tracked down my copy and read it aloud. I was then covered head to toe in pies and Bibles. They liked it a great deal.)

Try as you might
You try to give it up
Seems to be holding on fast

Its hand in your hand
A shadow over you
A beggar for soul in your face

Every step is a new discovery, every pause is a moment to breathe, to walk away from nearly-forgotten wreckage. Old lovers who last year were bitter and acrimonious this year call me dear. New lovers...well, there's been a paucity of those, at late, because I rest content with what I have. Contentment is new for me, still inspiring some slight unease of mind--but slowly I begin to relax, readjust, reclaim those parts of me that never saw the dawn before now.



(Clockwerk contemplating height requirements for world takeover.)

Still it don't matter
If you won't listen
If you won't let it follow you

Sometimes I forget I'm not the only one healing. It's easy to be selfish and view my pain as the only pain; but others around me, near and far, grieve too. Every heart breaks at some point; not every heart heals correctly. So it has to be broken again; maybe the second time it will heal properly.

I watch the signs of heartbreak, feeling spider in the web, and sometimes I can help. Sometimes I can't. Not everything's about me.



(Fawkes Allen's dreaming sun, thirty-eight prims of he-was-bored-one-night. I get bored and I find new forms to change into. He gets bored and he creates universes.)

You just need to heal
Make good all your lies
Move on and don't look behind

We walk, and our steps drag. We walk, curled in on ourselves from old and new pain. We walk until we're used to hunching, afraid of the next blow to come.

It's harder still to stand up, clean-limbed and exposed, and not flinch from the next imagined blow. Reclaiming is also about strengthening, remembering who we were before the shatter, and reshaping who we are now. We don't have to live in pain, in fear, if we don't want to. We don't have to hold the hurts of all our bitter yesterdays closer than children.

Let them go. Let them all go. Walk away; we don't need them. We can't use them. We are walking forward, to new love and new pain, new understanding, and the end of the time of trial...or at least, this time of trial. There will always be others.



(Another image from the poetry slam, this one from Winterfell Absinthe and der Hut des Jaegers, the usual home of the Thursday event. The tangle of Bibles and woodgrain is an avatar entirely comprised of guns. Only man I'd ever met who could cover an entire crowd, no matter which way he was facing.)

So
Sleep, sugar, let your dreams flood in,
Like waves of sweet fire
You're safe within
Sleep, sweetie, let your floods come rushing in,
And carry you over to a new morning



(I don't even remember where this is now, but this was taken on one of the odd Yule hunts...the green poseball is a sit pose, in one of the loops, but inside was a cuddle bed.

(...At least, I hope it was a cuddle bed.)

Day after day
Fickle visions
Messing with your head
Fickle, vicious

Fretting over the past does one thing, very well: it traps us there, held more fast by the chains we create than any shackles ever made in the world. We are our pasts, just as we are our futures, that never changes; but we can choose which past we reflect to the world. And we must never forget, any of us, all of us--it's never too late to change our pasts. The mirror looks both ways.



(Part of the floor of Miss Allegory Malaprop's store, Schadenfreude, in Starlust--aka the veves marking of Erzulie, voudon goddess of love, pain, beauty and beauty's loss, and the battlefield of the heart.)

Sleeping in your bed
Messing with your head
Fickle visions
Fickle, vicious

And the one thing we cannot do, must not do, must never do--is stop listening to our own heart, wounded, battered, bleeding, hurting. Caution, it counsels us, caution, wariness, it teaches us to pull back from passion's burning: all this we must listen to, embrace, understand, before we can leave our pain behind. We understand, we listen, we begin to believe there are better ways of relating than hiding behind our wounded hearts--or even worse, hiding our hearts behind armor.

The fist shelters us from harm, we think at first. But the open hand held out is the greater risk, always.

Take the risk.



(Captured during the candy-cane hunt in Malkavyn Eldritch and Candy Cerveau's marvelous Magic of Oz sim--in the light side of Oz, even--these two idiots gesturespamming with large, oddly-colored, misshapen--well, you get the idea, from the "censored" bars.)

Sleep, sugar, let your dreams flood in,
Like waves of sweet fire
You're safe within
Sleep, sweetie, let your floods come rushing in,
And carry you over to a new morning...

Take the risk. Whether the world feeds us glass shards or gold dust, take the risk. If you hear nothing else, hear this: take the risk. Because the longer we hide, the deeper we go inside. When we can no longer see ourselves, just the shadow of all our armored protections, from shoulder crenellations to the barbs between our lips...we've lost more than the chance at future love.

We've lost ourselves.

Don't lose. Take the risk. Take the step. And walk. Friends, enemies, and everyone in between, walk.



(Found yet again during some winter hunt, this one between several Japanese sims: a moon, pure and perfect, hanging in midair; with a port post sticking out of it next to a tree and a flower. Very Little Prince. We took the port and found ourselves inexplicably in the moon, on a small platform with chrome rails. And with no other way out seen, we began to explore, where, at the very bottom, we found this lone visitor counter.

(Let's hope they've had more visitors since.)

Lastly, things I never wanted to know were on the grid, part 72: "Low-rise" jeans take on a new meaning:



Um. Just a thought, but really...once they're this low? They're really tall legwarmers. Or footless tights that have fallen down.

I mean, not to be crude, but if the model wasn't completely bare of all nether fur? This would really be eye-catching. And not in a good way.

Still, if you want a pair of your own, I feel obligated to tell you to repair off for Sassy Kitty Designs. They run currently between sixty and one hundred and twenty Lindens. By all means, have fun.

(Lyrics taken from Poets of the Fall, their song "Sleep".)