Mothers...Tricycles... & Dancing with tears

User-Created Public Domain Image courtesy of Karen Ogilvie ******************************************************************* A few random thoughts.... Actually many of my thoughts are random...or disconnected at best. In no particular order.... As a parent you hate to see your child leave home... My gosh I was a veritable basket case when my daughter decided that she was old enough to ride her tricycle around the block at age 5/6. Keep in mind we lived in a housing tract in Huntington Beach a long ways from traffic... in a tract that had no cross traffic, and she wouldn't have to cross a street. It was an upper middle class neighborhood and it was noon on like Tuesday. Yes, she was fine. And there comes a time when you realize that your child must leave home. Many of my residents seem to view me as a Mother figure... and often I suppose I act like it. I have met so many of them when they were very new and I wanted to make Secondlife as special for them as it has been for me. Lori IMed me last evening asking me if I would come and give her my opinion on a parcel that she wanted to buy. I did go...her choice of parcel seems to be a good choice, covenant looks good, cost per prim nice, and then my heart did that little "jump" because my *daughter* wanted to ride her tricycle around the block! She has made what is likely a good choice for herself and is going to be fine... just as my daughter was 35 years ago. ********************I will miss not seeing Lori here**************

Everything seems to happen as it's supposed to...no matter what I think. Raven just a day or so ago approached me about a few more prims and I told her I'd get back to her. I explained last evening that there were a couple of options to achieve that... certainly one of those plans is to wait for a few days and see if angel is going to be well enough to return. With me, you see, it's not all about the money. I owe Angel a certain amount of allegiance, she was the first resident here as well as a close personal friend. The parcel she ended up with was the Secondlife home she had always wanted, so a few days grace is both in order from her standpoint as well as giving Raven a bit of time to think. I see it as a good thing for all. *** I spent a portion of last week exploring old landmarks. Secondlife is a rapidly changing environment and locations often change quickly. There are places in Secondlife that have endured... {see this link to the start of a 40 odd post series of very early Secondlife places.} http://lalotelling.blogspot.com/2010/06/seconderth-deep-map-preface.html Many of the landmarks I had from 2 or 3 years ago are now gone. I can tell you that to teleport in and land in a living room on someones coffee table gives one a great way to start a conversation! *** I want to take a moment to personally thank both Poly for spending some time with me today, and to Raven for and invite to a music venue this morning. Think about this for a minute...at any given time there are upwards of fifty thousand plus people on line...two of them decided to spend time with me. Thank you both. *** Curious. I wonder if there is a set quantity of tears we need to shed in a lifetime? Just joking...a little. In these last couple of years I seem to get emotional over the darnedest things. Today when I was over cleaning up Loris parcel and chatting with Poly I had the TV idling in the background... I was ok with the movie "Dirty Dancing" playing in that background, until the very end, when the last scene started and "The Time of My Life" started playing... I sat in stunned silence with tears just running. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpmILPAcRQo

(30,927,637 views of this video)

Really, it seemed like a much better movie in 1987...but that end dance scene with the Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes duet as scene music just did me. (I'm such a sap for stuff like that)

And so it goes

I love you all, brinda

Namaste

नमस्ते

Learning...Teaching...Being

Secondlife never ceases to amaze me, both with the almost unlimited ability for content creation, and for the people one can meet here. I spent much of yesterday and the evening before with people. Now I suspect that most of you come to Secondlife primarily as a social gathering place, you come to meet friends or lovers, or to engage in some form of interaction with others that share your emotional view of what Secondlife has to offer. There are those of us that often spend a lot of time in-world alone, my friend Immy has been talking about that very thing as well. Very recently I ended up spending almost every online minute with friends here. My friend Drew and I met while we were both using alt accounts to mentor nooblets on the old Help Islands, Drew logged in and I talked her into going to Inworldz for a bit and looking around. When I returned here to Secondlife I was just in time to see Bubbles log in, we went to SL7B Bear Island to check out the collection of Linden Bears and to set a landmark for the Secondlife Birthday Party. Secondlife Officially turns 7 on June 23rd and there will be a week long party here.... http://slurl.com/secondlife/SL7B%20bear%20Island/128/128/21/ While we were there I IMed Lori to come and check out the bears....Barbara from Berlin showed up briefly, my day was getting busy! *******************************************************************************

*****************************Polys Bear Collection ************************** Returning last evening, the parade of people continued...and so did my education. I have always been a very curious person, as a child my Mother found that sending me to my room wasn't punishment, I just promptly picked up a book and mentally escaped. I've come to learn that Secondlife is much like my room was as a child... I come here to learn. Drew is in Japan so my evenings are her noons, we chatted for a few, Raven came and all three of us went to The Lost Gardens of Apollo where Flor joined us for a chat at the dance floor. ***

Returning to Benares, Drew invited Ines to join us and this is finally where I have been headed with this post. Ines is from Indonesia and is a school teacher in both real life and Secondlife. Because Secondlife has allowed me intimate exposure to cultures from all over the world I am able to be quiet enough inside to sit and learn how much we all are alike. Many years ago I learned that to communicate with anyone...you have to speak their language. That doesn't mean I must speak Indonesian, or Japanese, or anything else. It does mean that I need to speak from my heart. {And yes, out of courtesy refrain from slang or Internet shortcut chat } As many of the followers of this blog know, I spent the first couple weeks of February in Northeast India... it's amazing the reaction I got from two simple exchanges. ठनक यू , (the Romanization is D'hann Yavaad) Thank you, in Hindi, and प्लेअसे (Kripaya), Please. That's the total of my Hindi, but the emotional doors those words opened were amazing.

If people understand that I care enough to try and really communicate it enriches all of us. I said I come to Secondlife to learn, to escape to Australia, or Romania, or Turkey. I think I come to teach as well. "We teach best what we most need to learn" And so it goes My love to you all, brinda Namaste नमस्ते

Changing Worlds..sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly

*********** Is This Perfect? Was It Done Perfectly The First Time? **********

*************************************************************************

This part of my life's story started about 1985 when I returned to a place of confinement 'one more time'. Most of you will never know the pain of watching people you first meet at age 18 in 1960 still sitting in prison 25 years later...it's been another 25 years since then, and if those people are still alive... they are still sitting there. Together we watched the news as Carl Chessman was executed in 1960... we saw the Manson girls come... we watched so many of us maybe waste this life. One of those people turned me onto a book in 1985 that eventually changed my life. The book wasn't a religious text, I have remained an atheist since my first glimmer of *What If* in 1958. The book I was given was Jonathon Livingston Seagull, a story by a writer named Richard Bach. It was written in 1970, became a best seller and a cult hit. Five years later for me came, Illusions, The adventures of a reluctant Messiah. Here's a Youtube that has some of the quotations from the Messiahs Handbook. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3PfRw3xCpk&feature=related Yesterday I found Bach's latest work in my favorite bookstore. Hypnotizing Maria. While much of Bach's premise on who we are hasn't changed, the way it's expressed has and should. So often it's not what we say...it's what another hears. I hope some of you take the time to find these three volumes. *** I realize this rambles...I suppose it's a measure of where my head is today...and has been since I read that last book. Hypnotizing Maria is a small volume, 154 pages, about an hour and a half's read...it will take a lot longer for me to absorb though. It's so difficult to remember your objective to drain the swamp when you're ass deep in alligators. I don't know if anyone noticed that I said "maybe wasted" this life in the early lines above. I'm certain I didn't waste mine. When the student is ready... the teacher will appear. Who would have ever thought a person spending their life inside a prison would free me from mine? If they did free me.......was their life wasted? Our world here in Secondlife is changing...will it be better, worse, or just different? Have we wasted this time? We have the power to change the outcome. I hope we do it together.

And so it goes I love you all, brinda Namaste नमस्ते

Imagine....

Imagine... Imagine a world where you could be anyone or anything you wished to be...a world where you could create objects of beauty or utility out of seemingly nothing. Imagine a world where you could visit with people from all over the world.... instantly. Where you could go and experience their culture.... instantly. A world where the deaf hear, the chair ridden can dance, the halt can fly. Imagine a world where you can create communities, where, if you've the talent, you can earn a living. Now, imagine the rulers of that world decide that those things you have created are worthless to them... that your creative skills are as nothing. What if those same rulers made arbitrary changes to financial agreements you had made with them? Imagine if those "rulers" decided that the very thing you used to visualize their world was to be something that made it terribly difficult for you to create.. or to immerse yourself in their world. You watch it turn into "their world" now... not your world or your imagination. Would you be angry... would you want to retaliate? How could you do that? Could you be so angry you would attempt to destroy "their" world? Would you enter their world over and over forcing it to fail... or forcing the remaining residents to have a bad experience? Maybe. Would I...no. Enter those we call griefers. Perhaps some are angry for the reasons above. The sad thing I think is that those griefers don't come and destroy a world for reason. They come and destroy for the lulz... for the laughs... for a vicarious sense of power... they come because they can. *** Imagine... Imagine a world where you could be anyone or anything you wished to be...a world where you could create objects of beauty or utility out of seemingly nothing. Imagine a world where you could visit with people from all over the world.... instantly. Where you could go and experience their culture.... instantly. A world where the deaf hear, the chair ridden can dance, the halt can fly. Imagine a world where you can create communities, where, if you've the talent, you can earn a living. Imagine that when you logged into this world... the creator of that world was standing there to greet you. That the creator personally took you to a freebie shop and helped dress you so you didn't look so noobish. A world where you could go to a welcome area and find a mentor and tell them that you have invited so and so to join and please keep and eye out. A world where, when that new person arrived someone said, "Hi! We've been waiting for you." There is a place like that.... Inworldz.

The coffee house at Inworldz...Just to the left in this image is where new residents arrive.

***

Now imagine that many of the same people that wanted to destroy that world where the despotic rulers gave them "cause" came to this new world... and did the same things they had done before.

That is what I base my belief on, that those that come to harm and destroy, have no legitimate cause.

As a practising Buddhist I have great difficulty in seeing the middle path where this is concerned. You see... there is a solution. It's not palatable... it's illegal..it's, from a Buddhist perspective, immoral... but it would work.

(A legal disclaimer here... I am not condoning, or encouraging anyone to follow this train of action)

I was smart enough in school to not take Latin... so I can't give you the Latin phrase for this...

"Where there is no police car... there is no speed limit"

Many years ago my neighbors husband physically attacked her. Another neighbor across the street was standing outside the next morning when the attacker was headed to work. The wife beater didn't go to work that morning.....and he never touched his wife again either.

People know who these griefers are... Publicise their names and actions...don't let them hide in their mothers basement anymore.

I remember looking at ones real life photo...trust me, he couldn't have even visited Frontera... much less a mens prison.

If you do know who these people are, ostracize them... stop condoning their actions. I'm not sure there aren't legal actions that could be pursued... civil suits, restraint of trade..I don't know.

***

I also know less now than I did a few years ago...I looked at my fish bowl last weekend, it looks so full still...and yet a qwik mental calculation is that I'm likely just under 600 weekends left now. There is so much to learn...and so little time this time around...

Forgive my games of hate and jealousy...I'll try harder

And so it goes

I try to love you all, brinda

Namaste

नमस्ते

Some Goodbyes are Harder Than Others

I received more bad news last evening. The entire week past has not been a pleasant one for me and it's difficult for me to imagine how those directly affected can possibly feel. Tom Hale lost his job at Linden Lab...and I don't care. Mr. Hale is a professional and I suspect he will land on his feet and bring viewer 2.0 or another tragedy to somewhere/someone else. He was certain that Secondlife was there to augment real life and had no culture...I don't mean he saw no music or art here...he just didn't seem to understand that for so many of us, Secondlife is just that...a secondlife. Brinda exists...the Google god believes...{brinda exists on 8 pages last anyone looked}. We develop friendships and "familys" here that transcend these pixels...it is another life...a secondlife. *** I came and sat on the parcel below for a few minutes this morning...just numb. This was Angels. Angel is from Australia...she was our first resident, I still remember her and Ling standing where Lings house is now on the Southwest corner of mainside. I rezzed a freebie jukebox and the three of us sat and talked. I had great dreams here and Angel was the first to help bring those dreams to life. Her dream that evening in early 2008 was to have that 4096 corner. While she didn't get that corner she did move first to where Porter is now, just one of the four places shes owned here. There were a lot of ups and downs in Angels Secondlife...believe me this parcel was finally home।

This was her dream come true...her own little private islet out East.

I got the note card below at log in last evening...by the time I accepted it...and looked at friends list she had logged off. Coincidence... maybe. I've learned how hard it is for family here to say goodbye. As another friend told me in a goodbye note, they had planned and wished the note to be a lot different...deeper perhaps...it just turns out to be incredibly difficult to say goodbye.For me, this is so much more than an empty parcel.......... Right now it's a hole in my heart... There's time left...I have hope.

***

The image below is from the Rouge "graveyard" where the impromptu memorial was set up for the Lindens that lost employment last week. I had chatted with a few over these last three years, most just a passing chat or a one line IM. One seemed to find my independent mentoring a thorn in her side... and then came Mia. Mia came in during those last few months of the Secondlife Mentors and she and I had several chats. She was good... I know she saw what I was doing as a good thing and would "speak to me" because she was getting various old line mentors ragging on her. I remember one evening at the Sutherland Dam meeting where Dirk Talamasca was chiding me for alting on the help islands...telling me that what I was doing was improper and that I knew it. (while perve camming my boobs...guess he wasn't aware or didn't care that Emerald allowed you to see where anothers camera is focused.) My response was... "Ask Mia Linden".

I guess he did ,{or someone then did}, a day or so later I got an IM from Mia telling me there were a lot of ways to help, and that she was in a meeting just then. Subject closed. Mia cared... She was one of us.

And so it goes

My love to all, brinda

नमस्ते

Words of Hope...A Goodbye to Many

Two things today...You know it's funny how sometimes I wake up in the wee hours of the morning with what I see as a great idea for a post here and upon logging in see things happening in Secondlife that so dovetail into my "plan" {no laughing out loud at 'plan'}. ****************************Woodstock Burleigh************************

Yesterday I mentioned meeting an interesting person at leogan Magics Speakeasy music venue. As is my habit anywhere I go, I start looking at rezz dates. I am always interested in what people that came to Secondlife before me have to say.

Woodstock Burleigh... When I read his profile and his quote from a recently departed icon of the United States political system I felt the same feelings I felt in 1980 when I first heard these words.

"the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die." http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/tedkennedy1980dnc.htm

I have known for many years that I don't have to know how I know things...I just need to know when I know things.

I didn't conciously know when I read those words that *The Benevolent Monarchy* was about to make a business decision known that will have such long range consequences for so many of us. For those of you new or relatively new to Secondlife, the original advertising had a famous line... a line so many of the early people believed in... "Your World....Your Imagination".

The Lab has changed a lot of that... what you see today..no, what you saw eighteen months ago was that dream. Today Linden Lab has changed that dream for us. Today they actively compete with in world content creators... and today they actively compete with both small land owners such as myself as well as those that own in excess of one hundred regions. {Yes, I said one hundred regions!}

That corporate competion is what brought Ted Kennedys quote home to me...

I still have the dream... I've said before that I will stay as long as they let me.... But yes, I am making contingency plans... plans I hope won't be used.

Part Two Below

A few sad moments this morning. If you haven't heard by now...likely in excess of one hundred Linden employees were terminated yesterday... http://bit.ly/aVyKh6.

I took these images this morning at Rouge

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Rouge%20%20/161/68/29/

If you look carely, you will see not a few Lindens as well as some well known names among those of us there to say a goodbye....I'm hoping it was only a goodbye to Lindens.

And so it goes

Farewell Mia Linden My love to you all, brinda

Namaste

नमस्ते

Miscellaneous...Music Harassment Voice

Miscellaneous stuff that's come to mind these last few days... As many of my closest friends understand, I'm not a terribly social person. I realize just how odd that sounds coming from someone that has been here in Secondlife for three years and committed several thousands of real life dollars to this dream but it's true. My friend Porter IMed me last evening inviting me to come to Speakeasy Live music venue http://slurl.com/secondlife/Eyefliez%20/192/218/21/ and listen to a couple of musicians, Joe Paravane and Sandywater Solo. I encourage anyone that wants to have a good music experience to visit leogan Magics place, Speakeasy. The team he's picked do a heck of a job at making every single person feel that you don't get an automated greeting, you get a greeting that shows a genuine interest in your being there.

Both of these guys are great professional musicians...(this image from stage doesn't show Sandy's "casper".) I invited one of my friends and she had a good time as well...it was about time for her to have a good time. Sometimes it's easy to get hooked up in drama that you don't want and didn't start. More about drama in a few lines. *** Music in Secondlife is a place that sees a lot of oldbies... those that have been in-world longer than I have. I did come across a guy at this venue who's profile text... and my ensuing IM chat was wonderful. I want to devote an entire post to this guy and his message...it's not a new message...but a worthy message. *** More about drama. My friend Boyd has recently posted this:

http://parktownprogress.blogspot.com/2010/06/sexual-harassment-and-stalking-in.html

I did have some indirect "help" from this avatar a year or so ago. I had met a very nice, smart woman from the UK at the Hanja welcome area. While I never did get all the story...it was a general opinion from more than one of the more stable people I know there that the avatar that has been considered persona non grata in several areas was one that spread a lot of "tales" to my UK friend and not only put a stop to my friendship... she has in effect caused that woman to stop coming to Hanja and perhaps to Secondlife.

***

While I agree with all that Boyd has said...I did find one bit of his post that makes many of us uncomfortable.

Quote, "What's most surprising, this serial stalker of women in Hanja presents themselves consistently with female avatars, even though they've never used voice to confirm that as their gender."

I know that Boyd uses voice almost exclusively as do many of those regulars that call Hanja a second home, that's fine. As far as presenting herself as female?... who really cares, unless one plans to have a "relationship". Total immersion in Secondlife is a lot easier in text and impugning anothers motives for not playing Linden Labs game to make this into a 3D chat room is unfair.(See the link below to soronishi's post... do follow her link @ 'Read more here")

{My gosh! You mean all those dragons at Cathedral aren't really dragons?}

What about those accounts that have speech impediments? Or those that are deaf/mute? Only 40% of Secondlife accounts are from the United States, the vast number here use English as a second language. Who the heck am I to judge anothers motive for any decision.

I've found it very difficult to multitask in Secondlife if someones using voice... my immediate reaction is to think that the person using voice has decided that my listening to them is the most important thing in their world. With text I can always return to chat history and see what has been said.

http://sorornishi.blogspot.com/2010/06/shit-hits-fan.html

Having said all that...I was pleased to see that my estate manager beat me to our estate ban list with the accounts mentioned above. re: "stalking"

***

OK...that's enough prattling from me for one day...(please do read soro Nishi's post...one hundred Lindens got fired!) might be hard to beat the rats to the life boats.

And so it goes

My love to all, brinda

Namaste

नमस्ते