young or old I say that love is still the same

Yesterday, two dear friends joined their lives on the grid. It's been a long time coming, and I was humbled and grateful to be allowed to act as witness.

Of course, the event was not without its little hitches--it was a wedding, after all! I'm still learning how to design clothes, so my plans for a self-designed dress rather fell by the wayside, but when Edward sent me a message--saying, as soon as he'd arrived on the grid, the butterflies were waiting!--he offered his help. Between the two of us--he made the skirt I wore, in the MacPherson tartan that comprised his wedding attire--we got me presentable.



Edward and I surveying the lovely chapel as the guests arrive.

Neither Edward nor Christine asked me to be human, a notable change from other weddings I'd attended. Something about the proceedings made me want to be, though, or as near as I can imitate, because it just seemed to go better, if that makes any sense.



The outside of the lovely little chapel.



Coming in from the front side, Edward and I waiting for guests to arrive. I believe I'm reminding him to breathe.



Reminding myself, after reminding Edward, that I can breathe, too...why I was nervous, I have no idea, but I was, as the time wore on.



TotalLunar Eclipse arriving, my opposite witness, looking very elegant indeed.



This is where I may get into trouble...I think this is Duchess Gabrielle Riel? I may be wrong, though, and have them switched. Do correct me, someone!



Ms. Tensai Hilra, Steelhead's own Warrior Goddess, managing somehow to look both demure and evil. I'd love to know how she does that...



Mr. Amplebeak Tinlegs, looking quite dashing. Whatever that lapel pin was glowed with its own firefly lights.



Ship's Cat of the ETC, Miss Kiralette Kelley, looking very fetching and not a tad nervous herself.



And--again, could well be wrong here--Duchess Eva Bellambi and Mr. Hotspur O'toole. Lag had picked up by this point, making camera focusing a tad difficult. I regret this immensely; for a pink dress, hers was quite lovely.



Wide shot of the handfasting, just as they were beginning vows--Miss Christine with her witness, Lunar; Edward with his witness, me.



The sharing of the vows.



The hands being bound, as with all traditional handfastings, as vows are spoken.



Edward preparing to kiss his lady bride. Drat it all, I missed the kiss itself! Anyone?



May I present Ms. Christine McAllister and Mr. Edward Pearse, handfasted for this year and day, in the company of dear friends and witnesses to the truth of their vows. May this next year bring all joy they could imagine, all comfort they desire, all passion to warm them. Bi beannaithe; blessed be.

After the ceremony, we all departed for Steelhead, some of us having more trouble with the traveling than others, and saw the new hotel. I will post pictures of that soon, as it's quite the phenomenal Italianesque structure, that Lunar built in a scant few days, to be ready for the reception. Amazing work. Amazing build.

On a personal note...my neko will be traveling soon. I wish him safety and remembrance of me, but I don't know what will happen, as he will be even less able to find his way to the grid, after he leaves. I told him his picture will remain on my profile, as what bond I could offer, and he told me...

He said, if it was ever time to take it down, he would let me know.

...After that, I crawled into the kitten's skin and spent the night dancing, and trying not to think about it.

this is the noise that keeps me awake, my head explodes and my body aches

Bunnies! It might be bunnies!

Okay, last night, Pirate Night at Activ8. Cute little place, mentioned it for their Doctors and Nurses Night, me with the world's largest needle and the cinnamon-flavored zombie.

Pirates, well, I can do pirates, and I didn't actually expend a ton of effort--I didn't intend to win, mind, just to have fun. Threw on the little short-short Boneflower outfit and went and danced the night away.

Long after the DJ left, and the host wandered, and the crowd dispersed, we were still in the club dancing. And that's when the bunnies began to surface.



First evil bunny sighting. Note evil nose bling. This one was seen several times inching closer sideways, fluffily crab-like, sinking below the floor--Stealth bunny! NOOO!--and drifting back and forth against the wide expanse of dance space like a fur-covered Roomba.



First evil bunny head-on, staring at me with those dead black eyes. Possessed bunny of DOOOOM!



Second evil bunny sighting. This one has more evil--it was floating for most of the night, just turning in midair. And getting closer.



Our poor innocent dancers. Note presence of evil second bunny in the background.



Dancers on the floor, bunnies getting closer.



Dancers on the floor, bunnies closer still!

...I guess it's a good thing we got out before...MORE OF THEM CAME!!!

They are bunnies, after all.

won't somebody come take me home

"Now there is the sexiest lady I know," he said, and then said very little else. Flashed me back to the last time I'd been given such heady compliments--the one who spoke then said I was the most beautiful girl on the grid--and he left me. What use are compliments when such actions follow? I tend to profoundly mistrust them.

Oh, I'm possessed of female heart and mind in full measure, I like to hear them. Just as few women born can know fabric unless they touch it, unless their hands know it, I am a woman, I'm partially fueled by pretty speech. But the rational side of me discounts much of it, because after the third man left me, while holding me the sweeping beauty beyond compare...it doesn't mean that much, does it?

I thank everyone who calls me pretty. I blush, or simper, or giggle in turn. But pretty, eh, it's surface, and the surface can easily be replaced. Admire my invention, my turn of phrase, tell me I have wit, intelligence, style, compassion--anything other than I'm pleasing to look on? Trust me, my undivided attention will follow such praise, because it feels less effortless, and much more real.

For all the other reasons I've listed, besides, I think that's the one thing that keeps me bound to my three--none of them default to the easy compliments as a matter of choice. Oh, they praise me for beauty, too, but that's part of what being in love is--those you love you find fair, become fair in your eyes when you love them. How could it be otherwise, they find me pleasing? I look upon them and cannot conceive why all women the grid over don't fall at their feet, and some men besides, for they are magnificent, glorious, essence of beauty--hearts, minds, spirits, skin--and it's always been that way for me, for those I love. I have a critical eye, I have a rational mind--at least part of it--but the part of me that loves, loves totally, and with rare reservation indeed.

Thou art all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee, says the Song of Solomon, and it's as true now as it was then.

And I'm not immune to the lure of the physical, obviously. Dress my loves up and I fall at their feet. The highest compliment, they seem to think, is to reduce me to the point I can't form understandable words. And so be it, if they wish to go to such lengths--I love them, and love seeing them, and yes, love how they make of me a singing chord, a creature bound only by skin around reaching want, thrumming to a single question I desperately hope, each time, will be answered in the affirmative.

And I'm not above saying they look attractive. Among the fae, after all, if someone's made an effort to be attractive, it's considered rude not to notice. And oh, I do notice.

But just as I'd rather hear anything other than "you're so pretty"...I'd rather compliment them on how well they design, how well they build, how well they dance. The intricacies of their minds, the deep compassion of their care, their dry-as-David-Duchovny-in-the-desert wit.

I'd rather say anything, than say something that just stops at the skin. Regardless of how handsome I find that skin to be.

And so I'd rather hear, myself. I won't say it's effortless being pretty. But there is so much more to me than that. And when the compliments stop at skin level...it makes me think they don't care to learn who lies underneath the skin.

leave your conscience at the tone

Found a mention of the ongoing controversy here. Best thing, that one link gives you a ton of other commentaries on the LL policies of late, and an interview Daniel Linden gives with Wagner James Au that is absolutely meaningless, but very prettily stated.

But again, that's not what I want to talk about.



Let's tell this as a story.

Once upon a time--and I never heard that she left--there was a girl who lived in Rivula. She'd had some heartbreak, and had turned her back on her seeming of human guise, preferring her neko roots and the comfort of fur over the rejection of her smooth-skinned face. She had been a dancer, but the dancing had stopped, and she was trying, desperately, to find some sort of new meaning for her life.

She took to building--impossible structures that would never find homes, skyboxen to float in defiance of all gravity's laws, small jeweled spirals, a mourning armband to mark her days. She took to building in places humans wouldn't go, so as to avoid human faces. Because she was attractive, by the standards of neko fur, at any rate, she was approached. As gently as she could, she turned away all who asked, for she wasn't willing to resume even her secondary job during her time of suffering.

One morning, an incredible sight walked out of the early mists as she labored over some intricate, and ultimately flawed idea. She watched him come, cloaked in pride and amusement, and waited for the traditional inane banter to begin.

He surprised her. He was not inane. He didn't want to know if she had a cam. He didn't ask how much she charged. He didn't greet the sight of her building with open shock, or worse, condescension. He...talked to her, and the door of her heart opened a crack, so she could peer out and see him.

He stood, unselfconscious, curving white horns with a white tiger's ruff, white and grey-blue scales covering his torso and his arms, clawed hands, clawed feet, and spreading arched striped wings, quirk of a smile to his lips. He said he was a white tiger Drakonian, ancient vampyr cursed with change, and as she'd never seen anyone who looked like he did, who was she to doubt?

They talked for two hours, of building, of the world, of furs and their relations with humans, and sometime toward the end of that time, he let slip that he'd only been on the grid two days. And she was amazed, because usually, there is a period of settling, a period of uneasy flesh, until the form is found that translates the mind inside it. The grid is an odd place, shapeshifting being a more natural expression than fixed forms, and no one seems to register it.

He charmed her. He wooed her. He seduced her heart from hiding, and she was astounded that any would want to. He friended her, and she let him, and he kept popping up, sending her idle comments, mind-to-mind, over the course of the day. And towards the end of the day, the other amazing thing happened--she said yes, when he asked her to spend the night with him.

It was the first night she'd spent in someone's arms, beyond her neko lad's, in nearly a month, since her greatest heartbreak--the loss of her club, and the vampire princeling. That she was accepting another vampire, in place of the one she lost, never really occurred to her, and mayhap it should not have--they were, they are, radically different, each to each. Save for the ego, which honestly, may fall down to simple vampiric structure.



Here's where I might have to break proscenium a little. He was the closest anyone ever came, up until recently, to a "Master" for me in world. Even then, I fought the collar, and fought him, tooth and nail--sometimes literally. There were days we blooded each other, and had he not had vampiric regeneration, I not been a shifter, we would both bear deep scars from the coupling. As it was, some days I limped, some days I bore deep claw marks over my fur--because vampire marks do take longer to heal, after all.

That's him now--he's managed, in some small part, to abate the curse, now choosing to show the white tiger only at will. I took that photograph last night, when he wanted to meet the statue, judge his worth--as so many have requested to do.

And he said something that made me think, is still making me think. He said I'd asked him once, how sadistic he could get, when I'd commented about fighting him. And it made me wonder--yes, my natural resentment over being someone's little toy, mindless, helpless, capable of no voice of my own, no spirit, nothing but a thing designed for pleasured use--oh, yes, that plays into it. But was the rest of the fighting, the hands around my neck, the claws raked down my skin, the whip scores that opened down to bone--was that because I'd asked for it? Because I'd wanted it?

Because I know, full well, he was capable of gentleness, this Drakonian. I know because he demonstrated it, more than once, because in spite of everything, he's still a friend, still someone I'm pleased to know. Living in a world that swarms on all sides with vampires, demons, beasts with flashing eyes, weres without conscience...pipes that nigh-burst with human blood and Hellspaces that can be visited, and enjoyed as others enjoy going to dance clubs...where there are active groups dedicated to gynophagia and the sexual torture and death of women...

...maybe mine's still the greater darkness. It's not the most comforting thought of an afternoon.

But I'm getting better. Maybe now it's just something to cling to, but...eventually, it will be just another statement of a life. I am getting better. Maybe, ultimately, that's what I should strive towards, and the rest of the life will take care of itself...

hey hey you you

Hey! Hey! You! You!
I don't like your girlfriend!
No way no way!
I think you need a new one
Hey! Hey! You! You!
I could be your girlfriend

Aggressive. I have rarely been aggressive unless it's a matter of personal defense. Put my life, my preferences, my choices, my appearance on the line? I'm there, I'm ready, bring it on, best two out of three falls, and you'll still hurt more than I will when you stand.

But for everything else? Is shy and retiring too much of a misnomer? Or going along for the ride? Or maybe ridiculously accommodating, maybe that's the key.

Hey! Hey! You! You!
I know that you like me
No way! No way!
No it's not a secret
Hey! Hey! You! You!
I want to be your girlfriend

Plus, I don't do jealous. Though I get it now, and that painful knowledge will live in me until the end of my days, I still see no earthly use for it. I don't care if it's a 'natural' emotion or not, it's useless, and does no one good, and deserves to be purged along with appendices and people who can't pronounce nuclear properly (handy tip: if you pronounce it as if it's spelled "nu-cue-lar"? You're so up for the purge when I'm Empress).

You're so fine
I want you mine
You're so delicious
I think about you all the time
You're so addictive
Don't you know what I could do to make you feel all right?

But this song...this stupid little bouncy song...I can't get it out of my head, some nights, it's scarily infectious. And some part of me responds to the attitude. Of just walking up to the one you adore from afar and telling them to their face. Of walking up and stating your case. And telling them to throw away the one they have, because they're not the one they need.

Always a gamble though, innit? What if you're wrong? What if they don't feel the same way? What if the one they're with is good for them? What then?

Don't pretend, I think you know I'm damn precious
And hell yeah
I'm the mother fucking princess
I can tell you like me too, and you know I'm right

Plus, arrogance. Such arrogance. Knowing the lay of the land because you laid it out. This is girl hubris in its purest form: I'm the one you think about at night, and I know it, and you know it, so get over it already and get on my side of things...

It goes beyond stating the case into giving the other no choice, and again, while it's not my way, never will be, there's some small part that giggles in absolute glee over the idea.

She's like, so whatever
You could do so much better
I think we should get together now
And that's what everyone's talking about!

I have always felt the big test in relationships is not pressing the point, in choosing your battles, but in watching and learning and seeing, on your own, if you're what the one you love needs. If you are, you'll know it; you'll have no doubt. If you aren't, hey, you'll learn that too, and then it's your job to do your best to detach and walk on your own.

Of course you should talk to the one you love. Of course if fights occur, you should have them. Controversy stretches and strengthens us, betters us, makes us abler to fight off other challenges.

I can see the way, I see the way you look at me
And even when you look away I know you think of me
I know you talk about me all the time
again and again (and again and again and again)

A long time ago, back when MTV was just starting out on the odd idea of "music television" without music, they filmed a series of public service announcements. Very arty, very high concept, usually black and white, occasionally featuring Denis Leary. One of them had images of a very emo boy, and a voiceover stating that, if you ever really wanted to get to know someone, needed to know them very quickly, you should spit a mouthful of milk in their face.

This accomplished three purposes, the voiceover said. It teaches you, instantaneously, how they deal with shock, hurt and anger. And these things are essential, especially the latter, because sometimes, knowing exactly how someone will react when angry? Definitely essential.

So it goes with love. While I never recommend picking fights, sometimes choosing a small battle tells you how the large battles will go--and sometimes that's better in the long run than trying to keep the peace to the exclusion of all else. Relationships are organic--there will be failures and successes, there will be controversy and clemency, there will be times the relationship thrives, and times it sickens. Anything worth doing is worth doing well; that's just truth. But more than that, anyone worth loving is worth any effort expended.

So come over here, tell me what I want to hear
Better yet make your girlfriend disappear
I don't want to hear you say her name ever again
(And again and again and again!)

I've never wanted to be someone's whole world. Partially, that's because it's too much responsibility, but also, because there's so much world out there, how can one lone person replace all of it? And even more, because my heart is called to others, why would I ever restrict theirs and their wandering? (A lesson learned at great cost earlier, not that I hadn't known it before...)

So yeah, at times I may dislike the people my others are involved with. There's rarely been one I completely fail, in any regard, to get on with, though I can't say it hasn't happened. But it had to be something there that drew my love's eye, something precious and fine and true, and I can't discount that. We don't always know why we love, just that we love. And it's not my place, unless there is ongoing harm, to try to dissuade those I love from loving others, just because I don't always see eye to eye with those others.

Hey! Hey! You! You!
I don't like your girlfriend!
No way! No way!
I think you need a new one
Hey! Hey! You! You!
I could be your girlfriend

Hey! Hey! You! You!

Hey. You. I wanna be your girlfriend.

Oh, but wait...I already am.

*grins*



(Lyrics are somewhat intact, and from the annoyingly bouncy Avril Lavigne song, "Girlfriend")

preach all you want but who's gonna save me?

Okay, this is serious. I need an old priest, and a young priest.



Talk about your out of body experiences...and then, I lost my arms.



Beyond strange adventures on pose stands, it's been fairly quiet. I had some time today and spent it building, getting four new items--three variations on one facial piercing, and one pack of all three--up on Kartiny, so I have this tidy little sense of accomplishment now.

I admit this--I need to talk about change, I need to talk about consequence, and above all, I'm nearing the middle of the month where I need to start thinking about rent, which is the why behind the spurts of building, but...I have this...peace, and I don't want to disturb it.

Eleven months I've been on the grid, eleven months I've been learning, exploring, interacting, surviving, and...I've never had peace. I've been happy; I've been in love; I've been giggly and playful and exultant and content.

But this...this peace...deep and spreading through me, the pool of still clear water, nourishing me down to the roots I no longer acknowledge, and...I just want a few more moments, where I am on absolutely steady ground, before everything lights on fire again.

That's all I want.

But instead, I get Exorcist moments in sandboxen. Go figure.

there's nothing that can't be turned around

It's been a dizzying few days, the train wreck's deep in the mountains now, where the footing goes treacherous so I'm actually glad I'm on rails...even if the fires rise. I think things are easing, the fires aren't steady-burning, but oh, the warmth from the metal grows intense.

In the meantime...where am I now?!?



Apparently? Babeli. In the middle of a pool, deep-flowing cistern waters from the pipe below. Well, at least it's not a box...

But after that, things got very interesting.



Wau, I couldn't live here. Okay, so a friend of mine heard about a protest Angela Ge was staging, and she'd arranged a meet with Torley Linden at Torley's office in Linden Village.

Yeah. Torley's office. It's like a watermelon exploded, I'm not kidding. The bench I'm sitting on is the exact shape and shade of the Brach's coconut neopolitan candies, or those old-school licorice Allsorts that were so popular from the fifties to the seventies. (In finding that pic, I'm amused to note, there's a site devoted to licorice everything, which amuses me greatly.) Just about everything else is shiny shiny shiny.

At any rate, we gathered...and waited...and gathered...and waited...and snarked some...and joked...and waited some more...Apparently Torley was on a conference call and couldn't break away, so Frontier Linden came in and said he was looking for someone else, please be patient, and if we had any questions he could answer...?

About seven people asked him about the vagueness of Daniel Linden's blog post, and he fled.

While later--I'd crashed, and came back just after he arrived--Matthew Linden arrived, the tech support manager. He had no connection to public relations or the social implications, he knew the tech.

The protest was doomed to fail.



Mostly, I sat and stared in goggle-eyed amazement, wondering at the kind of mind who loved watermelons so much, they had to live inside one. But more than that, I thought it was important, even if I didn't say much, to come as a doll. My tag said "Doll Advocate/Emilly Orr". It was my small statement of protest in and amidst everything else.

The questions limped to a halt, having unsuccessfully redirected from deliberate vagueness and the need to tighten and further define language in the ToS, to system security and server issues, and one by one, we left, generally unsatisfied with the whole thing. But I did go. I was there, at least.

I guess that's something.



Now, if I can only figure out why I keep sitting behind benches...The Art of Bench has failed for me. I must practice more. Apparently, it's a skill one needs to keep sharp.

for people like us, in places like this, we need all the hope that we can get

And when the world dissolved around us, all I had left to comfort me in limbo was the memory of his touch. But tonight, this long night, this very early morning...it was enough.

When did it become time for my searchlight soul to stop looking? When did I turn around and say, I have enough, I am satisfied, this is all I need? When did one person have the power to convince me both that I am replete, and also, of how deeply I felt for others in the life?

I have counted down the grid with others, a double handful of times before. Some days with dear friends, greeting the oncoming silence with silliness and jests. Some days with lovers, holding each other close while we watched the light fade. Once, once memorably, with an utter bastard who will never be forgiven for what he did in the last moment of breath and light.

This moment, this late night, this very early morning, felt like it was all the time we had to say what we truly felt. And for the first time--though I've said it lightly before--I stated my heart with meaning, and knew my love returned, and spun off into limbo with a lightness of spirit I've rarely known.

It will be a scant few hours in one sense, it will be an eternity in another, before I see him again. And on Thursday, if there is time, time must be found to sit under the darkened moon and divine our future. And today, if there is time, I must find a way to reach out to the neko and make sure he's well.

But in between, before and after, and all the moments that can be spared...I will be happy to be at his side. When he's free, when I am, when he's not otherwise occupied, when I am not...when we are not both relentlessly busy...For I know I love him, and that love colors my life now, and all my decisions.

He is my brightest thing, and he shines a light on how much I love the others I care for, and it takes my breath that he can be both joy and revelation to me.

I am humbly grateful for each moment I spend with him. I am beyond amazed how I was given the care of such radiance. I am surfeit with soaring delight that he understands my life is also spent with the wandering moon, the neko, my own friends. I am happy and charmed to spend time with those he cares for.

Today, my limbo is not featureless and grey. Today, my personal vacuum is lit with memories of him, strung with his words to me, touched by his presence. I watch the sweep of his sable hair in memory, just as I still watch the swirl of cloud-colored silk, or watch spiky-brushed blue, turn and turn, eternally turn. Bearing smiles to see me, and in truth, I should thank each and every one of them, that they find me worth spending time with.

Today...my limbo is not limbo. Today, I have enough.



"Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness blow the rest away. When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares." (Henri Nouwen)

just give me what I need, give me a reason to believe

And when the change came, it was total, it was paradigm, it was a shift in thinking and affected me down to the atomic level. One agreement ringing the changes in a life...and it was only after that the brain kicked in again.

So, I understand part of it is the still-nonfunctional Key, flinging me in and out of limbo on a moment's passing whim. I understand part of it is commercial, part of my job which I still do, from time to time, that takes me far from the arms of love. But part of it--and the largest part--is simply staying awake too long, forcing myself--and those I love--to wakefulness.

Yes, there seems to be little other time, but...that can't be a sufficient reason, not if it results in the beloved dropping to the floor in exhaustion, or worse, my pulling the same trick, waking up later to a cold and empty bed, and sighing.

So now I have to stand up and make demands I'm not prepared to make. I need to say when, and I need to say stop, and neither is going to be easy to say. I need to set limits, and...I am painfully ill-equipped, because the largest desire in this is mine, and I can't sacrifice the rest of my time for sleepy, addled, exhausted time with him. As much as I want to.

"But I'm good at being uncomfortable, so
I can't stop changing all the time..."

There never seems to be enough time anyway, and I think a large part of that is sleep deprivation, occurring at long last. I want to be able to build things, I want to be able to organize what I carry at long last, I want to try the prim trick and see if it works better for me (the prim trick: inadvertently the reason I have the best-armed floor rug in Rivula, because I accidentally dragged the folder of weapons into the rug prim, and thus. So it may be the easiest way to organize my inventory--those dozens of items I don't necessarily wish to delete, but don't want to see every day--how about finding or making a convenenient prim, and loading it with furniture, foods, clothing items, notecards, whatever--the things I need, but don't need now). I want the time to socialize and dance and build and organize in addition to my other demands.

And I think the only way to do that, do all of what I want, is to rise earlier in the morning, and sleep earlier at night.

I don't discount the touch of his skin is addictive, his words in my ears nearly the sweetest I remember, his kisses dizzying, intoxicating, driving me to excesses I'm only now beginning to regret. I don't, at my heart, want to enforce these changes.

But if I'm to survive, if we are, if my larger relationships are to be given any more time with me at all...I need to enforce the change.

"I seem to you to seek a new disaster every day
You deem me due to clean my view and be at peace and lay
I mean to prove I mean to move in my own way, and say,
I've been getting along for long before you came into the play..."

But it won't be easy, and I'm not even talking about his protestations, should there be any. I'm referring to mine. I'm referring to my unwillingness to stop staying up.

And it's no accident my fingers unfolded a note first written in January, about my neko lad's considering of leaving, and we are yet these few more months down the path, and what he said would make him leave...still hasn't changed. And at some point, at some point soon, we must address that. For all I don't wish to do that, either.

Days like this...it's not the trapped-in-limbo that bothers me, anymore. It's the amount of thinking it makes me do, thinking I want to avoid like deadly plague, because it's going to push me in directions I don't wish to go.

But....I have to. This change, I have to make. Whether I wish it or not, whether he wishes it or not, whether we both agree
"we'll be fine", and "we'll be better", and "it'll pass"...because we're not fine, and we won't get better, and it's not passing.

I love him. Poet, inventor, creator, statue brought to life, as he's brought my doll to life...I do. I do love him. As much, though in different ways, as I love the wandering moon, as I love my neko lad. But no more nights ending in mornings. I can't do that. I've reached a breaking point. I can't, cannot, no longer, no more.

No more.

(Lyric bits from Fiona Apple's song "Extraordinary Machine".)

come to bed, don't make me sleep alone

And I watch him fade from me, mind gone long before his body turns, and I can raise no hand in protest, no scrap of voice, I must kneel and wrap my arms around me and tell myself I will not die for want of him--

This isn't what I wanted to talk about.

I'm still concerned that the dragons on the grid now belong to the gods who set it up.

Let's be fair here--it took a friend from elsewhere to point this out, but it's true nonetheless--the Lindens don't have to respect free speech, fair practices, or even business concerns of businesses not theirs. I let myself forget this, true. But now I've remembered, and...it's more acid than the anger from earlier.

Because it's their playground, essentially, we're forming our societies, interrelationships, ways of behaving both right and wrong...as individuals who can be banned, evicted, sent home--at any time, because nothing in there is ours. Even the textures we bring in, the snapshots from other lives, the music we play, the art and objects we create--we created all of it with the tools they gave us.

The Lindens give, the Lindens can goddamn take away, and it is their right to do so. It's their home, not ours. Their rules do apply.

But it galls nonetheless. There is a small voice within me, stamping her foot and saying it's unfair, this treatment, that they don't have the right to do this to us, their citizens, the ones who have chosen to live our lives in their world...

...but fair? Fair doesn't matter in business. Fair doesn't matter, free speech doesn't matter, diplomacy and democracy don't matter. It is not a democracy, it is, it has always been, a commercial enterprise, a benevolent dictatorship.

That they've hidden the claws caught in the silks should not have let us conclude the claws weren't there.

And all this is too cynical a topic for this morning.

*spins off into limbo, curling into a small ball, sighing*

we are nowhere and it's now

I'll inform the participants of this later, but for all of me, Taiyou's on hiatus until I figure out what the hell the new rulings from the gods of the grid exactly mean.

To wit, I quote:

"Real-life images, avatar portrayals, and other depiction of sexual or lewd acts involving or appearing to involve children or minors; real-life images, avatar portrayals, and other depictions of sexual violence including rape, real-life images, avatar portrayals, and other depictions of extreme or graphic violence, and other broadly offensive content are never allowed or tolerated within Second Life."

Um...yeah. So what does that mean? Places like Jessie, where people go to hassle the redneck elves that run the place, practice heavy-armament combat, killing for the sport of it? Is that verboten now? Or do we go all the way down to a happily married couple, say, where the wife's in a collar by choice, and submits to the will of her husband, nothing more offensive than kneeling in public? I mean, who says what's offensive?

My definition of offensive may be radically different from yours. My definition of offensive may include things that would make people at the Labs drop stone dead at my feet. But I have a friend on the grid who's very faithful to his version of God, very respectful of the rules of Abraham in this new world, and what's offensive to him? Is everyday fare for me.

Who draws the line? And will that line change? Are we moving to a place where any sexualized behavior--in public or private--will no longer be allowed on the grid?

And who defines extreme violence? Does that mean the gaming sims are dead? Redemption, Lumindor, Toxia, Dark City, all the others? Does that mean Dark Life folds up and goes home? Who decides what's extreme? Who decides what's too much?

I didn't come to to the grid to live in a sandbox. Creativity's fine, but I am an adult, I want to live my life in adult ways, and sometimes, just sometimes, that means sex, that means adult situations, on occasion that has meant violence. We are learning beings, creating what joy we can, but we are not without our dark sides. And I wouldn't have it any other way.

So Taiyou? Not opening until I get some clarity. I will not endanger Miss Kattrynn's sim on a whim that may change when the wind changes at the Labs.