Today I had the pleasure of reading a friend’s latest blog post, his first after quite a long hiatus. http://bit.ly/2Fjreve
And reading Ricco’s post had me pondering my lives – atomic and Second, and how reclusive I am, and always have been.
In the beginning of my Second Life it was primarily due to my PC being less than capable of allowing me to see the wider environment. It simply could not cope.
So I stayed ‘at home’ and built with a vengeance!
Perched on my platform all day I cobbled prims into a Something or Other. And I was very happy to be doing so.
It was the reason I first entered Second Life – to make, and create ……and without all the fuss and mess and bother that usually accompanied my entire life.
No more wood shavings under my feet, no gesso dust in my nostrils – or the constant lingering smells of glue and paint and turpentine.
To have my kitchen used solely for the purpose it was intended for – food! Not as the place I washed and hung my paint brushes and tack cloths to dry.
To grow my nails!
I had found my new workroom in a pixel environment.
True, it did not make me a living as those other things had done, but it served to fulfill my need to create. Something. Anything.
And now, even though I have a machine with more than enough capability to explore – I’m still perched in the sky on a platform!
Nowadays I don’t build quite so much, but I spend hours creating backdrops, and digging through my inventory for just the right piece of clothing or hair to complete the vision I have for a picture to be made.
I know I possibly ‘should’ explore, there’s no reason for me not to. But I don’t.
I rarely interact with others in either life. I think perhaps I am a natural, and long standing, recluse.
Not that I don’t care for the few friends that I have, I do, I care very deeply about them.
And hope that each of them knows they will always find a shoulder to cry on, and an ear that can be relied upon to listen.
And the ability to ‘forget’ whenever it is politic to do so.
In the atomic world I worked alone. Occasionally I had a little company – perhaps a trainee, maybe a workman patiently readying where I was about to work. Clients – of course. But they were merely a necessary evil, never company!
Perched on a ladder, squeezed into a corner somewhere, sitting at my work table, washing my brushes at the kitchen sink – I was alone. And happy in my solitude.
I am never lonely, but almost always alone.
But in writing this I have had the sudden realisation that I DO travel! ………. but not to places.
I travel the routes of knowledge. I visit the sites of learning.
And here was I thinking I had been merely pootling through life!
In the last six months I have taught myself to mesh. For sure no Artist – but capable enough, and the possibility is there to be one if I work hard.
And I am about to start learning again. This particular platform could almost have been created with me in mind! Clothing, fashion, textiles, design. Things that have been the very foundation of my life, that have lead to all of the other paths I tread.
I have Second Life to thank for these new and thoroughly enjoyable pursuits.
For without it, and the need to learn how to make the best of the machines I had, I would still be muddling through in that other, messy existence.
Still be drifting through life trailing the scents of turpentine and oils rather than Fragonard.
Still be wondering just how the wood dust and the silver leaf got to be in my bed.
Still finding a pot of sequins where the salt should have been.
And would never have known the utter joy of beautifully manicured nails!
And still ignorant of this brave new world of computing and science that we find ourselves in.
I bestride two worlds …….and their horizons are only limited by my imagination.
I AM an Explorer!
Boudicca Amat 