down a hollow to a cavern where the sun has never shone

here I go again
slipping further away
letting go again
of what keeps me in place

Unintended controversy in the Kitties: a staunch supporter of the group, a donator of land for the group's HQ, and an out (RL and SL) lesbian has left, in rather dramatic fashion. I fail to see why this is a gay issue. As I put it to her:

I'm married to a woman off the grid (this is known) and I'm all but partnered to two men and one woman on the grid and this is also known.

I don't talk about it generally in the Kitties because it's not relevant to a group dedicated to freebies, cheapies, fun hunts and Lucky Chair contraptions. But I don't feel that I can't bring up my life, my ideals--as they relate to freebies on the grid--either.

How is any choice not to talk about being gay in a political sense, in a freebie group shoving you in the SL closet?

I still don't understand. I'm sorry she's leaving, she's been someone I consider a backbone of the Lucky Kitty Crew, and many crew members will miss her. But I don't understand why the issue arose in the first place. She started talking politics; we are a mixed group of liberals, conservatives, anarchists, Republicans, furs, humans, gays, straights, and that's not even touching the whole pagan/Christian split--and by and large the only drama that comes in is when X wants to discuss something that offends Y, and by and large that's all it is--a request to stop talking about something, and we do, we move on, controversy over for the most part.

If someone brings up something that upsets another group member, generally, a request to cease conversation on that topic is all it takes. Mayhap more than one, but that's all. We are far from the raging dramas of our past, yet...this particular individual? Never let it go. Kept, in fact, bringing up the same discussion.

Yes, California sucks for voting in then voting out gay marriage. Yes, it impacts real people and real lives. The Lucky Kitty Crew is a freebie group. Move on.

I like it here
but it scares me to death
there is nothing here...

We went hunting last night at Dare Designs, since there are a scant few days remaining for their Balefire hunt.



This isn't a hunt location; but what it is is somewhat more intriguing. This is the most faithful adaptation of the Ocularum Infernum (or at least the machine used to open it) from Thirteen Ghosts that I've seen.



On the other hand, that will get you into the sim. Then all you have to do is find thirteen very small sculpted red pentagrams that are on fire.

Have fun!

the light is beautiful
but I’m darker than light
and you are wonderful
but this moment is mine



I admit, I stood for some time, just watching the machine turn, thinking about things. Life, death, existence, love, change...weighty thoughts for a scavenger hunt, but Dare Island is oddly appropriate for such mortal pondering.

all of this dust
all of this past
all of this over and gone
and never coming back

I've been reading a lot of Travis McGee books lately.

"These are the playmate years, and they are demonstrably fraudulent. The scene is reputed to be acrawl with adorably amoral bunnies to whom sex is a pleasant social favor. The new culture. And they are indeed present and available, in exhausting quantities, but there is a curious tastelessness about them. A woman who does not guard and treasure herself cannot be of much value to anyone else. They become a pretty little convenience, like a guest towel. And the cute little things they say, and their dainty squeals of pleasure and release are as contrived as the embroidered initials on the guest towels. Only a woman of pride, complexity and emotional tension is genuinely worth the act of love, and there are only two ways to get yourself one of them. Either you lie, and stain the relationship with your own sense of guile, or you accept the involvement, the emotional responsibility, the permanence she must by nature crave. I love you can be said only two ways."

John D. MacDonald said that in 1964, in a book called The Deep Blue Good-by, and outside of language variants, it's still pretty much true. And it pretty much applies in any realm.

But Second Life is that curious mix of fantasy and reality; most of us, most females, I should say, enter the grid and find ourselves, at some point, facing a dance pole or a client, and contemplating the ethics. Not everyone, obviously, and not everyone makes the leap from walking around to spinning around a pole naked.

But enough of us do.

all of this forgotten
not by me
I find comfort here
'cos I know what is lost

So, on the one hand, outmoded concept or not, I know what it is to "guard and treasure" ourselves: while I'm no proponent of virginity until marriage, it does aid us to be picky, to be choosy, to be discreet.

This is a lesson I've been long in learning.

hope is always fear
for the pain it may cost
and I have searched for the reason to go on
I’ve tried and I’ve tried
but it’s taking me so long

Here's maybe where I don't understand, though, again: most people on the grid have short memories, because life moves so quickly. Those four-hour days pile up, and soon a gridweek is a gridmonth, a few gridmonths become gridyears, and sooner or later, no one remembers what happened way-back-when--because even way-back-when is not as far back as my own memories.

Forget my ability to retain information: what does it say of me, my ways, my habits, when few others remember the indiscretions of my past?

I might be better off
closing my eyes
and God will come looking for me
in time

Moreover, is that not, in a sense, spinning around again to that place where I can choose whom and why, and when, and where I can "guard and treasure" myself again, free of any past sensationalism--all that anyone remembers, you see, being that I once was scandalous in some fashion?

all of this dust
all of this past
all of this over and gone
and never coming back...

All of which only works, of course, if everyone's on the same page. And there are a few that aren't. There are a few who will always view me as a danger; as a scandal too deep for words; as the worst sort of false-faced "friend" imaginable; as a thief.

I admit, for at least part of the time on Dare Island, I was pondering the value of character assassination--in the sense of, how much value should I put onto the proclamations of my detractors? Or should I spend a single moment worrying over what they may say, what they may think?

I can see myself
I look peaceful and pale
but underneath
I can barely inhale

I say no. I say my life is my own. I say my choices are my own, and I know why I made them, good and bad, everywhere down the line.

And if I now, in the fullness of time, view a demon with more nostalgic favor than an elf, then it is my choice. If I choose to treat one as a fond fancy and the other as a danger to me, that is also my choice. But over and beyond all choices, it is my choice to fear, or to stand firm. To accept that mistakes were made, to accept that I made some of them, and then to move on.

I'm choosing to move on. I have been at this crossroads before, I have made this decision before, but this time I'm closing the door I've been holding open to my past. The past...is just that, past. And while I do believe pasts can be changed, as well as futures, I am choosing not to change my past. I am moving far from it.

I can hear myself singing that song
over and over until it belongs to me...

There are things in my past, in any world, that I regret. I have made the amends I could. Now it is time to stand strong and look forward, not back. That, too, after all, is "guarding and treasuring" myself. And all of us, at least once, should try to do that. After all, we are precious and our time is finite, here. It is not ego nor is it self-delusion to decide to treat ourselves better.

If we know great care, then we can give back great care. If we know pain and fear, we are only able to give back pain and fear. The simplest of equations is this: we are the emotions we surround ourselves with.

I'm not saying everyone needs to be shiny happy people. I am saying it's time and more than time that we realize we are what we eat, and if we eat only suffering and bitterness, we will be bitter and we will make others suffer. Melancholy is not the problem; hatred is.

I am choosing to be better, if I can. I am choosing not to focus on bile and misery. I will be no less dark and brooding, I will overthink things, I will dwell. But I have better things to do with my time. So do we all.

Oh, and there's a new dress upstairs above Autogenic Alchemy. Go over to the blog for directions on how to get there. And we're getting a new name for the upstairs. Things will slowly be converted over.

It is time and more than time for that, too.

(Lyrics taken from Sarah Betten's All of This Past.)