Three Poems

My RL self did National Poetry Writing Month in April; 30 poems in 30 days. I thought I’d post three (at least) of them here, because they have some Virtual World content.

This first one, from the 29th, is notable for having inspired a machinima as noted the other day.

Dactyls are Dharma, too

Here in the midst of the ten thousand thingummies
Hearing the voices of ten million throats,
Feeling compassion for those who have aching knees,
Those who build bridges and those who dig moats.

Sitting in zazen and counting the in-and-out
One and a one and a one and a one,
Mind somehow caught in this insistent rhythm, I
Tick like a clock sitting here in the sun.

Dharma is silent but Dharma is noises and
Dharma is stillness but Dharma is speed,
Why should I think that the circling second-hand
Isn’t precisely the sound that we need?

One commenter (commentor? commentator?) somewhere said they’d learned two new words from it; I’m guessing “dactyl” and “dharma”; both good words to know.

The second one, from the 9th, is very relevant to lil Spennix:

A long way from Kharanos

Well it’s a damn’ long way from Kharanos
To th’ Gate o’ th’ Settin’ Sun,
But the beer is good an’ the beds are soft
When th’ daily slaughter’s done.

I left a dagger in Thermaplugg,
All those long hard years ago,
Took a bit of his gear as a souvenir,
Of Gnomeregan below.

But that crazy old coot was nothin’,
‘gainst the things that they’ve got ‘ere,
Bugs an’ Mogu an’ lizard men,
And hungry ghosts o’ fear.

Someday I’ll go back t’ ol’ Col’ridge,
An’ sit on the porch with ‘em all,
But ’til then I’m out here in the Vale,
Killin’ bugs up on the wall.

Well it’s a damn’ long way from Kharanos
To th’ Gate o’ th’ Settin’ Sun,
But the beer is good and the beds are soft
When th’ daily slaughter’s done.

… and here is an Action Shot of “Killin’ bugs up on the wall”:

(Click through to the shockingly-redesigned flickr for the same picture larger, and in a confusing interface.)

And to close, this one from the 17th. Note that it’s not actually about Second Life, since that has real people in it, not just simulated ones. But still…

Walking Cross-Country

He says he’s writing a computer program
to simulate
walking cross-country
in an unknown place.

Where you might follow a brook upstream
and be surprised by
a forest lake
sparkling in the sun,

And follow a path around it
to a ramshackle house
at the end of a dirt road
where a woman with dark hair and soft eyes
opens the door
and smiles a welcome.

And I say that that sounds cool,
and I also say,
that the real world has surprises like that, too,
and even soft-eyed women,
and he should maybe go for real walks sometimes.

He turns to me,
like he’s about to say something,
but then he just shakes his head
and goes back to the keyboard.

Reflect On This: Dactyls Are Dharma,Too

Reblogged from Digital Rabbit Hole:

• 

Where to begin?
I will not make this post too long or long-winded..I really just invite you to scroll down and see the YouTube at the bottom hopefully in HD and Full screen.
I use this little creation as another perfect example of crazy creatives getting together to produce a few minutes of visual and vocal insanity. As those who read my blog regularly know, one of the things I most love about our Second Life, is the possibility to collaborate on artistic projects.

Read more… 205 more words

Y'all know how shy I am and reluctant to blow my own horn :) but I can't resist passing this along. I did National Poetry Writing Month in my RL weblog (maybe I should post them all here too!), and shared some of the results (one poem a day for a month) with a few SL friends. Karima Hoisan (see prior post) liked the rhythm in one of them, and to my enormous surprise she and her frequent collaborator Nat made this extremely neat machinima around it. From little nuts do mighty oak trees grow! :)

Fantasy Faire!

So I hardly ever go to Organized Events, at least not much; I’m not entirely sure why, maybe because there are so many more disorganized ones :) and I often like them better, and organized events tend to be crowded and/or laggy and/or drama-filled, and in general I have this self-image as being too eccentric and/or 133t to do anything that lots of other people are doing, or…

Whatever. :)

But v good friend Michele has been actively weblogging the 2013 Fantasy Faire this year, and I’ve now been there all of twice, and apparently it’s still going on at least for today (they are having a live auction of various parts of the Faire sims and builds, which seems really cool) and maybe for longer although I’m not sure, and I took a couple of pictures that I like, so here I am weblogging about it myself!

There is the left half (depending on exactly how you’re viewing this) of a picture of me standing looking out at the dragon in the Lotus Valley Dream harbor; click through to see the whole thing, bigger sizes, usw.

And here is a closer-up of the Dragon emself:

(or the left half, depending); enthusiastically friendly, no? Or maybe just hungry…

That’s just two shots from one gorgeous sim in a big collection of gorgeous sims in varying and wonderful styles. While I understand and sympathize with the tendency to use SL to make ourselves into our sort of RL ideals (90210-style, if you will), this is the kind of SL thing that really delights me: going beyond the RL-possible, into fantasy, and dream, and creativity, into worlds and realities beyond the ones that we happen to be born into. And the fact that it’s for a great cause, Relay For Life, just adds to that.

Also dragons are cool. :) Not to mention, shopping!

Here’s the group pool for the flickr group for the Faire, where you can see lots more. And assuming I post this in time, you can maybe still go yourself!

Paths through virtuality

So a bag-zillion years ago I weblogged (probably more than once) about an interconnected random adventure in SL, where a friend and I landed in some cool place after skydiving, looked up the picks of the creator of some neat object there, went to their store or something, and so on through various hours worth of fun randomness.

It’s been too long since I went nude skydiving :) but I still have these kinda small adventures all the time, I just don’t weblogify about them as much, because I don’t weblogify about anything as much, because I am lazy person.

But here’s one!

As extremely long-time readers will know, one of my very early living places in SL was a little shack on the PIER sim (which I found in turn from making friends with a bartender at The Elbow Room, which stretches the story back just about to my first months in SL I think), and when that sim shut down I started renting a room in Extropia.

Eventually the Extropians redesigned the sim and didn’t have those little rental rooms available anymore, but I stayed in the Extropians group because it was interesting, and after awhile I started to notice cross-posting in the Extropians group from the Dakini Land / Western Geisha / Companion’s Guild group, see for instance this probably-related video.

I visited the Dakini Land sim somewhere in there, but as I recall I was heavily RL-distracted at the time, and couldn’t really figure out what it was. Then I got a notice about (I think it was) some graduation ceremonies that were going on there, and there was going to be dancing and music and poetry-reading and stuff, so I went, and it was a good time, and the people were very friendly and interesting.

(I eventually did figure out a little of what was going on, which led me to start watching old episodes of “Firefly” on Netflix, where I was by coincidence already watching old episodes of Buffy; everything connects!)

Probably the performance that struck me most at that ceremony was a live on-voice reading of original poetry by Karima Hoisan. I took her picture and gave her a copy (as I am constantly doing, which is one reason my friends list is so absurdly large), and she looked at my profile and saw a Pick there from New Toulouse, which I had added to replace a Burn2 pick when Burn2 ended, and having connections with New Toulouse herself, she IMd, me and we talked, and continued talking now and then thereafter.

Eventually she and frequent collaborator Natascha Randt were working on this machinima about scripting, and I happened to have a script that fit into it nicely, with the result that some of my LSL code ended up in a machinima, which was extremely cool. (Note that it’s not a dry and geeky machinima, either; you must watch it if you haven’t, it is amazing.)

And then later on, looking around at random things on the web as I constantly do, I came across Karima’s machinima series “The Two”, and realized that I had randomly watched an episode from the middle of it somewhere many months before, but not had enough focus to figure out its context or anything.

Ms. Hoisan wisely suggested that if I wanted the full effect I should first read / listen to / experience her “Colored Dreams” pieces first, and then “The Two” in order.

So I did that, and now at the end of this particular branch of the chain of causality (rather than, say, the one that includes having a lovely tea ceremony on a satellite), I am highly recommending to you my readers that you experience both in that order also:

The Colored Dreams (page one page older to start at the start of Part One)

and

The Two (Also page back one to start at the start)

Don’t expect to consume them all in one sitting :) I found that I wanted to stop for hours or days in between just to sort of let it all sink in. It’s hard to describe or characterize; might be called fantasy or even SF, or a series or dreams, or meditations on the human condition and the nature of power and love and trust, or lots of other things. But really, like all good art, it tends to slip away from any words that you try to tie it up in.

And if you’d like to hear the artist live :) she will be doing another reading this very tomorrow, and I recommend that also, and so we tie the story up to the present day.

So! That’s my path through virtual space for today. Now I will go and find some more. Or maybe I will take a nap…

Tuesday

So! I have been not-in-world for a terrible number of days, due to being out traveling in RL to a place where not only is the cellphone service awful but also, if you can imagine it, the internet is so spotty that nothing at all demanding (like say WoW or SL) stays up for more than about two minutes before crashing and/or disconnecting.

It was horrible!

A few random links that I have saved up and might as well post here:

A video of a cool device made by one Frigid Cyrotank, that displays graphs on command inworld. (I ran into him in a sandbox the other week while playing with my maze generator, which I think is another thing I need to weblog about sometime, and meant to do a weblog posting just about him and his device, but have now forgotten most of the information but fortunately still have this link at least.)

The transcript of an Aether Salon session on favorite steampunk books, which I have been meaning to read (and most likely acquire books from) since like last November.

A posting on the Meta_Body project, including a like five-minute video that I’ve also been trying to find time to really appreciate, for months.

A forums post on multi-face sculpties, which do in fact seem to exist and work; I helped a friend make one following the instructions in the thread there. Potentially useful things! I think!

A very useful-looking, if a bit pricey, inworld mesh creation tool from the Marketplace, that I am thinking of buying. Then I could make mesh things! (Update: I just bought it! More later if I ever get a chance to try it!)

And finally and relatedly, a note in passing that DAZ 3D has some really amazing deals on 3D-type tools, including Bryce 7 Pro for US$19.95, and Daz Studio 4.5 Pro for US$0.00 (cheap at a trillion times the price!). I had a really old version of Bryce a really long time ago, and it was awesome; am eager to try out 7 (to make SL textures and/or terrains and/or just neat pictures) when I get some time.

Ha ha ha, “get some time”!

:)

And speaking of Sn@tch!

I was exploring a store called “POST”, after seeing it mentioned positively over on The Train Wreck Love Life, and as I was camming about (more on that below) I saw a green dot appear near me on the minimap, and thinking it might be (say) the store owner come by to fiddle with things and I could gush about how great the place was, I pulled my camera back, and it turned out not to be the owner of POST, but instead…

it was Ivey “Murderdoll” Deschanel herself, owner of Sn@tch the store I was gushing about in my last post.

Zomg!

So I fanboy’d all over her in IM (well, I tried to be restrained), and she was humorous and friendly. I’ve spoken to a celebrity! :)

The store POST is very neat. Here’s the Marketplace version, but I really liked the inworld one. Both the store and the products are very well and subtly textured, as Emilly says, and there’s a sort of early-1800′s Europe / Russia feel to it all. Lots of good use of mesh in the objects, so they are low-prim, and many of them are art or book related in some way. Prices range from 0L for various random things lying around here and there, to multiple hundreds for more elaborate objects and structures.

Any store that sells (or gives away!) a copy of “Salome” left open face-down on the floor, a copy of Picasso’s “Ma Jolie” for the wall, and an open notebook with sketches from the Voynich Manuscript (as well as nicely worn rugs, sidetables…) is marvelous in my book.

(Tip for Firestorm and probably other viewer users: you can apply a filter and have the Area Object Search show you just things that are, for instance, for sale for between 0 and 50L, and sort them by nearness. Great way to look for bargains!)

Fishing, Shopping, and Art

I have been doing lots of things, just not weblogging about them. :) I did some tiny bit of the Twisted Hunt, and Steam Hunt 8, and I’ve been building some houses for fun. Might even put some of them up on the Marketplace or in a store or something. But that’s for another post. :)

This one is about fishing while shopping! And Art!

That is me fishing! While shopping! Or actually while waiting to see if any Ds will come up on the lucky boards. As it says under the picture on Flickr, Sn@tch is one of my favorite guilty pleasures in SL. It’s a big sprawling clothing store, not high couture in the slightest, a bit punky and trashy, but a huge variety, much of which I love (I have to ration my trips to the outlet annex for the sake of my clothing budget).

AND they have this great Game Room with lucky boards and mobvends and gatches, and a 7Seas fishing pool where you can catch not only the usual 7Seas fish and stuff, but also parts of special Sn@tch outfits. A great place to just veg out in consumer mode.

And where but SL could you fish casually while waiting for your letter to come up in a clothing store?

:)

Then less rabid-consumery, here is a great short film about Gracie Kendal and her RL self and their art: A Comfortable Skin. Definitely worth watching!
 

And that is all for now, off to fiddle with houses more.

Block

There was something otherworldly about it….

(Submission to the Single Frame Stories thing, for the prompt “Block” announced here.)

And yeah, it’s a bit of a geeky in-joke. :)

became a blur, because they moved so fast…

Here is a machinima (machinema?) of a poem by v talented friend Karima.
 

 
I am happy to brag :) that I contributed in a tiny way by providing scripted examples of ways to make papers sort of blow around, one of which ended up in the video. Yay me!

Nat (the videographer and cat) and Karima (the poet and voice) do all various neat things; you should “check them out”.

Objectification ain’t the half of it…

So there’s this Single Frame Stories thing, which has a weblog and a flickr group and everything, and once a week they post a Prompt, like “grave mistake” or “depth perception” or (this week) “objectification”, and everyone (well, not everyone, but…) either emails their pictures or posts them to the flickr group, and the picture is allowed to have One Standard Tweet’s Worth of text along with it, and they all go up on the weblog for everyone to admire, and there’s no lame “voting” or “winners” or anything (I don’t think), they are just there.

And I’d known this was going on because I admire botgirl and Whiskey Monday for (their hawt AVs, and) their enormous creativity, but I hadn’t been doing it myself because really it was good enough that other people were doing it, and I was busy leveling my DK’s Inscription skill and dancing in random Australian sims’ dance clubs, and similarly important things.

But then there was some popular demand from one of the very creative people who was doing it, and I am nothing if not a pushover, so…

My (first?) entry for this week, “Objectification ain’t the half of it”:

Best viewed larger, of course, and just what the heck is actually going on is left to the reader and/or viewer.

But there we are! I am pretty much pleased, and may do it again some decade. :)

The Cube Project: 20 sims, 5 days!

Pictures! Very few words! Click through for bigger! Etc!

(Friend Michele an’ I happened to be wearing mostly black and white; very in-theme!)

(Dancoyote Antonelli’s enormous thing is made of cubes that mysteriously vanish as you get close (mostly) so you cause entertaining dents by your very presence. Also, those cube-shaped frames were schooling about everywhere.)

(Speaking of mysteriously vanishing, that is a phantom Oberon Onmura! (Click through his name there to his flickr stream for lots more pictures.) He was not actually there; even though I could see him, Michele couldn’t, and when I right-clicked on him he suddenly disappeared. Very amusingly SL!)

And several of the enormous cubes had a QR code on one or more faces, leading to the web page.

Many of the enormous whole-sim-scale constructions of cubes were great fun to fly around in, watching the Windlights changing, walking up the steps, being surprised and/or delighted by the interactive things, admiring the creativity, and generally it was all a Good Time.

Go while it’s still open! Go go go!

Yay, Maps!

So Inara Pey writes about this very nice Maps of SL exhibit.

Here I am at it, in the distance:

It’s a lovely little gallery build, very subtly steampunk-feeling, on a pleasant sim that I didn’t have time to wander around as much as I’d have liked. The exhibit itself has sections (as you can see in the pitcher) on Magellan Linden, the early grid, the Steamlands, Nautilus and the Blake Sea, and so on. The other wall has things about transport, the railroad lines, the Zindra monorail, and all like that.

Well worth a visit if your at all a fan of maps, as I certainly am. :)

(And for good measure here’s a reminder about the Continent Detector, so you can tell where you yourself are!)

Karima@Poetry Reflections ~ Costa Rica Sims ~ Re-scehduled to Thursday May 3rd-1pmslt

Reblogged from Digital Rabbit Hole:

I want to cordially invite you to my upcoming reading this month, at Poetry Reflections on Costa Rica Sims of Dream Seeker Estates. Those who have attended before, know what a beautiful venue it is, a true Arabic Salon for poetry, and I promise you a full hour of my best poetry, music, and imagery combined. I will be reading for the first time, three new ones, that I hope you will enjoy.

Read more… 127 more words

Live poetry readings highly recommended! This one is probably too early in the day for me, but I've heard Ms. Hoisan elsewhere, and she is Teh Awesomes... (Also: what does this "reblog" button actually do?)

NeoVictoria Photo Contest

So I got a note about this awhile back, but I am lazy and/or busy so now of course it is almost over, but not quite! And anyway this is a steampunk sort of place that I hadn’t run across before, and those are always fun.

Click through the poster above there for details, or go to the page via this link here.

Lt. John “Pepper” Pike

We interrupt the combat-scripting exercises :) for this important bulletin. This must-have item is now available in the Marketplace, apparently for the very affordable price of 0 (zero) Lindenbucks:

(If anyone doesn’t know the story of “Pepper” Pike and his elevation to memehood, see for instance this HuffPo piece.)

I saw this by the side of the road and knew I had to have one. :) Not being swift enough to look in that there new-fangled Marketplace for it, I left an IM for the creator, who very kindly not only gave me a copy, but pointed me to the Marketplace link.

So spread the word! Defend SL against dissent and nonviolent protest! Or even just annoying weeds!

For something like a second

She stands before you naked
you can see it, you can taste it,
and she comes to you light as the breeze.

Now you can drink it or you can nurse it,
it don’t matter how you worship
as long as you’re
down on your knees.

So I knelt there at the delta,
at the alpha and the omega,
at the cradle of the river and the seas.

And like a blessing come from heaven
for something like a second
I was healed and my heart
was at ease.

O baby I waited
so long for your kiss
for something to happen,
oh something like this.

And you’re weak and you’re harmless
and you’re sleeping in your harness
and the wind going wild
in the trees,
and it ain’t exactly prison
but you’ll never be forgiven
for whatever you’ve done
with the keys.

O baby I waited
so long for your kiss
for something to happen,
oh something like this.

It’s dark now and it’s snowing
O my love I must be going,
The river has started to freeze.
And I’m sick of pretending
I’m broken from bending
I’ve lived too long on my knees.

Then she dances so graceful
and your heart’s hard and hateful
and she’s naked
but that’s just a tease.

And you turn in disgust
from your hatred and from your love
and she comes to you
light as the breeze.

O baby I waited
so long for your kiss
for something to happen,
oh something like this.

There’s blood on every bracelet
you can see it, you can taste it,
and it’s Please baby
please baby please.

And she says, Drink deeply, pilgrim
but don’t forget there’s still a woman
beneath this
resplendent chemise.

So I knelt there at the delta,
at the alpha and the omega,
I knelt there like one who believes.

And the blessings come from heaven
and for something like a second
I’m cured and my heart
is at ease.

– Leonard Cohen

With thanks to Calli. :)

More Pictures!

Okay, so the vehicle that I mentioned needs pictures.

(Some of the below don’t seem to have compressed wonderfully well; click through to flickr and press “L” or look at the larger sizes for perhaps better renders.)

That’s the Carmageddon Tank from L+N Signature Designs; I am standing smugly by it in the Hunt outfit from Cosmic Stream Designs and the Deconstructor part of The Machine from Radeon Automatic.

And then inside…

… and showing off the cannon, boom!

… and the machine guns (in the dark) pocketa-pocketa!

Of course it also flies…

… and rises up on its mechanical haunches for driving over lesser things in the twilight.

It also leaps up into the air (all of this controlled by buttons on a not overly huge HUD), but I’m not up to a video.

Okay, enough of that. :) Here are a couple of things from NS6 Engineering:

A cursed tower and a Cloudrider airship, both nice and free, and if they are a bit old-SL in style well that’s nice and nostalgic.

Relaxing in one of the plusher venues of the Hunt:

This one the Royal Thai Gallery (a lovely build, although I had some trouble figuring out just what they were selling, or displaying, where), but in general a delight of this hunt is the wide variety of places, all vaguely tied together by some variously fictionalized notions of Victoriana and technology and adventure.

Compare and contrast with, for instance, the Undertaker’s Parlor from Noctis:

(All 88 prims worth, not including the simple floor and wall prims that I threw up for photographing.)

Lots of things not directly in the Hunt, but still good finds. I’m always looking for more (cheap) bookcases in SL, and this Bookcase Loft from S&S Clockworks was a mere 4L!

(I don’t think I’ve opened the actual Hunt prize from there yet.)

Eventually I actually finished the Hunt! Still far from finishing opening all the packages, though…

Shortly after that, as I was vaguely considering trying to get back to the Rise cross-country from wherever I ended up, I noticed it was time for the Pre-release Party for 1000+ Avatars, Volume 2.

So I went and did that. :)

And a good time was had by all…

Wizardhat

So I looked at the Picks of a random interesting person met at Originalia, and went there (it was very neat, but I’m not weblogging it right now), and then she arrived also and we IMd a little, and she recommended another interesting place, and it was like wow.

This is only a few of the pictures I took; a few more are in this flickr set I made for them.

It has little dancing and cuddling spots, a sailbaoat you can sail, a couple of small art galleries, lots of gorgeousness to look at; it even has its own Facebook page!

Go there!

But not too many at once, eh? :)

New Originalia show opening tomorrow

I got an invitation to, and then got confused about dates and so missed, a blog-o-sphere preview of tomorrow’s opening of a three-artist show on the Originalia sim. But I have snuck in :) between the preview and the opening, and can confidently recommend that you go.

(I notice that it’s currently an Editor’s Pick in the Official SL Destinations (which is possibly a bit premature since it doesn’t officially open until tomorrow, but hey), so it’s not like they’re going to be hard up publicity-wise, but still…)

Here is also Chestnut on the show.

Here is The Official Poster:

And the Announcing Notecard, lightly edited for weblogifying purposes:

‘Travel to Originalia’ is the newest art exhibit on Amase Levasseur’s Originalia sim.

The show includes three exciting exhibits by award winning artists. In keeping with the theme of the sim, the exhibits include fresh new work that has never been seen before in Second Life.

‘Travel to Originalia’ includes “Postcards Home” by Callipygian Christensen, “Adapt or Perish” by Cherry Manga and “Gateway to Hell” by Fuschia Nightfire. As a special treat, visitors will also be treated to a reprise of the much loved exhibit “The Docks” by Scottius Polke.

‘Travel to Originalia’ opens to the public on Saturday 10/22 at 1pm SLT

Follow the SLurl below and enjoy your “Travel to Originalia”.

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Originalia/38/154/21

All of the creations are well worth a visit. Calli Christensen has some lovely SL landscapes intriguingly cast as postcards home (we only get hints of what’s written on the backs), and “Gateway to Hell”, “Adapt or Perish”, and “The Docks” are all, well, not to spoil the experience… all builds eminently worth seeing.

So go! Tomorrow at 1pm or later, that is!

(And don’t mind the newborns who clicked on it in Destinations and are now wandering randomly or standing in Edit Appearance for hours; they’ll get the idea eventually…)

Steam Horse

So I’ve been meaning to do a weblog posting about Carriage Trade forever (I have some really nice pictures), and this still isn’t it :) but I got a chance to ride on a very cool Steam-Horse, and I got pictures of that, too.

(Click through to flickr for larger versions.)

The horse is actually an AV (and I am riding it through the usual trick of that we are actually both sitting on a rezzed invisible vehicle), so one can also have fun being the horse and riding around solo.

In the background of that shot, you can see another rider, riding an also very impressive skeleton horse. (Even further in the background you can see my Dreamliner parked over the Park, and not quiiite rezzed yet.) These horses and various other Hallowe’enish and otherwise things can be found at Carriage Trade North.

So very SL. :)

(Oh, and I will proudly mention that I did a little script to fix the rotation of some of the gears on the steam horse. Yay, me!)