If I wondered what all of my work in my Second Life employment had been preparing me for, it was Day One of the 2009 VWBPE- Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education conference. I and both of my alts were in full use all over the many venues of the conference. I was pressed into service this morning to sit in Muse Isle partner site, to allow an overhead display of the broadcast in a faculty access lab, as there were issues with sound access on some of the computers. At one point in time, all three of us were participating actively in some fashion simultaneously. I know I wasnt the only one testing personal limits of managing simultaneous IMs this afternoon. I was managing 3-6 IMs on 2 different log ins at two different conference venues, and following a presentation at still a third and slipping in a comment or two. Not something I would want to do hours on end - but today it would have to be classified as sheer fun. Ha ha - you millenials - you aint’ got nuttin’ on me.
Looking forward to what is coming up. 
by L-C on February 8, 2009
I don’t often dwell on the past. Perhaps it means I have been successful, to a degree, of incorporating the honimyo spirit into my psyche. Perhaps it is because simply that no one likes to revisit a nightmare.
To speak metaphorically, it is as if I was forced to cross all twelve lanes of a Los Angeles freeway. The price of my survival was to be transformed from a magical gazelle into a dusty banged-up turtle. My chances of survivial were slim. But I did. I have been making my turtlish way through life since. Most times I do not think of how far I wish to go versus how fast I can travel. Or how often I am forced to just stop. There are times though, I raise my eyes up and blink through the dust, and realize that it isn’t just a patch of iffy weather stirring up the earth. It is the herd of gazelles and all other long-legged creatures passing me by.
I know then, that they will probably reach those purple mountains in the distance, and perhaps even decide that they wish to go on somewhere else. I am reminded then, that I may never get there. My terrain today is greener and softer than in previous times. I have the company of the occasional butterfly and bird. I do not struggle so for every step. I treasure the beauty when I find it. I savor those moments deeply and passionately.
I get it though. My journey is NOT to be the one I wished for. It is going to be the one that it is. I do not have the simple luxury of ordinary choices. I have lived the sonnet:
| When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes, |
| I all alone beweep my outcast state |
| And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries |
| And look upon myself and curse my fate |
The challenge is to remember that it is not the glass half full vs. the glass half empty. The simple truth of my life is that I still have the glass.
by L-C on January 29, 2009
My experience in Second Life has been “paradigm shifting” as they say in the education and business realms. I call it soul opening. I didn’t realize how limiting the perceptions we and others have of this biological avatar we call our body can be - how deep, unchallenged - and erroneously perceived as truth. I am understanding why mask theater can be so potentially therapeutic. The mask cuts the twisted knot that binds us to our (mis)conceptions of ourselves. However, this experience is nowhere near as liberating or illuminating as that when we don the “mask” of our avatar.
In Second Life, we create our own mask, our own character, and our own scene and dialogue. We Can experiment and modify. We discover that some dreams we had were less satisfying than a Second Life cocktail , and uncover new ones that unleash passions surprising in their direction and intensity. We are attached to this avatar-mask only by our essential core of being. Without reimposing our usual perceptions of self, our core this has unfettered voice. If allowed, it will speak.
by L-C on January 20, 2009
Today someone I’m acquainted with will be sworn in as the Vice-President of the United States. Don’t get all het up. This is Delaware. I picked up trash along the Red Clay Creek with another of our Senators whose name is now part of the retirement planning lexicon. It doesn’t mean I’m on his holiday card list either.
However, unlike most other inaugural ceremonies, I do plan to televise the ceremonies during my class periods as appropriate. I am still a seasoned enough cynic that I don’t feel assured that the coming four years are going to be any better than the last eight. I did not sit out in near zero (degF) temperatures on Saturday, like my sister and numerous friends, to hear the speeches at the stops along the Obama Express. I welcomed the excitement in my sister’s voice when she reported back to me by phone about the speech in Baltimore. I felt it was historic, but my cynic’s voice said - “Keep your feet warm. Watch it on TV.”
I am, though, cognizant enough that this inaugural is significant. I do not want any of my students to wish they *could* have watched it live on TV. And I myself, want to make my own impressions and not be dependent upon the infotainment business for my understanding of what happened.
by L-C on December 19, 2008
I’ve been so immersed in Second Life for future projects, my blogging time has been seriously usurped by EllCee’s needs to “speak”.
finished my Acting for TV class at the Walnut Street Theater School yesterday. I did a creditable, but not super job on my monologue last night. I just can’t step over some fear I have, that I can breeze on over on stage, in public speaking, in clown. In those situations, I have no trouble “showing up” as our mentor, Melissa Quilty Eddy puts it. It is hard to find myself … or how to let myself out … when my physical language and movement has been toned down for the subtlety of film work. I feel like I came further than I had planned, and have seen that I can go farther… I hunger to do so. But I don’t understand how to make that path open up for me, for myself, by myself. We were so fortunate to have such an insightful guide, who saw where we were, what was wrong, and was replete with innumerable strategies and tricks to help us slide over the hurdles to experience where we needed to be.
by L-C on November 3, 2008
Blogging from my desktop – but not in Web Browser – from Microsoft Word – What is the advantage? Less html bother and more like word processing?
Lets try a pic too -
exciting pic – eh? But Great Texture source …. Wot?
by L-C on November 3, 2008
Not just as the occasional player, or as a substitute for my real life. I have rented a brownstone on Postoffice Street in the Galveston Island SIM, applied for an SL job at Club Sky on the eLab City West (UC Riverside) SIM.
Otherwise, I am fair. My Second Life has helped my first life. It is quite a creative outlet that has the promise of future possibilities. The stifledness of life in sluburban Delaware is then ameliorated a bit. Quite a bit. I feel lighter, more hopeful. And more motivated to housework in my RL (real life). And that is saying quite a lot.
Lady’s eyes are doing a little better. That is good too. All in all - I am far off track in my original plan for this fall term, but somehow I think I am right on schedule. I will keep on, keeping on - with the hope the road will rise to meet me.
by L-C on October 15, 2008
“We can see the performing arts as a chain with numerous links, where at one extremity one finds art as presentation (theatre in the strict sense), and at the other extremity, art as vehicle. It s something very ancient, rather forgotten. For the persons doing, the doers, the performative opus is a kind of vehicle for the work on oneself, in the sense that, as in certain old traditions, the attention for art goes together with the approach of the interiority of the human being.”
Programa Fondazione Pontedera Teatro : the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards
by L-C on October 15, 2008
I am saddened to hear of the difficulties of Guy Ritchie and Madonna. They are divorcing, and having to settle on their assets ($35 and $525 mil respectively). What will the poor guy do if Madonna leaves him high and dry with only his puny $35 million? NOT.
I am truly troubled by all the recent layoffs of my friends. Now these are the real struggles - how to keep your only house (not divvying up your multiple abodes). Or the friend who invested in Lehman bonds - one who is going to have to keep working instead of retiring. I guess I am like a lot of folks, not confident at all that the financial powerhouses in the markets who have the capability to ruin my life in bad times, (yet do NOT share with me in the profit of good times), have settled down. Personally, I don’t care what “bottom” in the market is - I just want to get it. Soon.
Perhaps all of my work learning street busking tricks WAS a long term investment strategy after all - I will be able to work any street corner for spare change with more pizazz than the young lady squatting reading a book on 42nd street with her sign “Stranded - Need $12.00 to get Home”. ~~ I was tempted to give her $12 bucks to see if she would be there when I got back.
by L-C on October 11, 2008
Was in my Vietnamese squat outside Swatch at west broadway and prince in SoHo. It was a dizzyingly beautiful October Saturday - bluest of blue skies, sunny and perfect blend of cool to warm and back again. My feet were tired after a fruitless search for a birthday gift for the 18th birthday of the daughter of one of my husbands lifelong friends. He is traveling to Great Britain just for this event. I had picked out a nice little something from the flea market stalls on Houston. Once my husband learned I had bought a gift, somehow that became THE gift, leaving me once again giftless. Of course he had rejected all of my previous suggestions, and had come shopping without even ascertaining her correct size. In a way that was fortunate - no temptation to buy haute couture - what lunacy it would be to spend $120 on a T-shirt or wAy more on something more substantial if one is clueless on the appropriate size. Not like she is going to pop downtown for an exchange from Kettering UK.
On the subject of couture: it is official. I am off the size charts in European couture. The largest size, 44, does not circumnavigate my big booty. It misses by about 3-4 cm. The salesgirl was so sweet- she laughed when I asked if there were sizes for big fatassed people like me It is sad. I now look stumpy; once the clothes get big enough to fit I start looking short instead of chic. The real comeuppance was my middle aged upper arm was also almost too fat to fit in the sleeve. Big sigh. However it saved me $250.00.
Found some of what I’m looking for at Mood Fabrics. However I am surprised that there has yet to be a major meltdown shopping on Project Runway. It to me 2 hours to pick out three fabrics. I do NOT know how they do it on the show in 30 minutes.
I’m having a spate of heartache watching the nighttime Manhattan skyline drift by on my way out of town. Although footsore this afternoon in SoHo, I was content. I fit. Now it’s back to my bithplace and current abode where I have never fit. It is so nice not to be weird, even if it is only for an afternoon.
