Second Life Explorations...

A few weeks ago, I got an email from my ex-bf Matt, who moved to Japan to teach english 6 years ago. I had shown him some drawings I'd finished and he told me I should try to sell some art in Second Life. I had not heard of Second Life. Was it a gallery? Some hep Tokyo Pop Art store? I Googled it, went to the website, and discovered what thousands of curious World Citizens are discovering.

I downloaded the software, opened it up, clicked "connect" and I was born. Again. But with a lot more control this time.

It looks like a game. I'm sort of a cartoony looking character, called an avatar, that represents me in the world. I have a name: Ko Kalok. I can walk around with the arrow keys on my keyboard. I can see other people's avatars, whose names float over their heads. I can chat with them by typing and reading messages. When I type on my computer, my avatar types in the air, signaling that I am about to say something to anyone watching.

I was led through a series of sign-led tutorials on how to edit my avatar's appearance, my profile, how to move around, interact with objects in world, and how to fly. I can fly! As I explore, using a search window, a map, and the power to teleport, I discover that everything in Second Life is built by users. Premium members have the ability to own land and can build on it, using Second Life's own tools and scripting language, conduct business, create spectacles. It is presently about the size of the city of Boston, with over 250,000 active profiles, and 10-15,000 users online at any given time.

Since those first tentative hours, I have climbed a pyramid, on whose summit I met a man with a '69 Mustang. He offered me a ride and when I climbed in, he flew that car into the virtual sky and I was strangely exhilerated. It lasted but a few minutes, but it was my most romantic date in years. And I'm pretty sure the guy was straight. I have visited a secret underwater labratory, being constructed by some guy who seems to enjoy inviting me to see his latest creation any time he sees me online. I have attended classes on Hero Mythology and Wicca 101.

I have found an art gallery (3rd floor, Kiva Island Art Gallery and Library, y'all) whose curator liked my work and gave me wall space to hang as much as I care to for free! He even took the time to show me how to create a canvas on a wall, import my art as a texture, and set a price and limit what a buyer can do with it. I sold a drawing for $150! (er, that's Linden dollars, the currency in Second Life. The present exchange rate is around $257 Linden dollars/per $1 US.)

I'm not recommending Second Life to people with a full and gratifying first life. I realize every minute I'm in there, I'm not here, feeding or clothing destitute humanity, re-planting rainforests, or spaying a pet. But somehow, I find myself in the privileged position of living in a relatively safe sector of the planet with a computer, a cable internet connection, and occassional free time. I'm having a wonderful time watching what we do when we are offered the opportunity to build a new world.

The House on the Corner

This house doesn't live here anymore.

It was built in the late 1800s, and sat on the corner next to my apartment building (which you can see to the right) in the early part of the twentieth century. It burned to the ground, by arson, sometime in the 1960s.

Not visible in this photo, directly behind my apartment building, is this home's carriage house, which still exists and is now owned by me. I've been told by the city that it shouldn't exist. According to building codes, when a structure is destroyed or demolished, its outbuildings must also be removed. I'm not sure exactly why that didn't happen in this case, but I'm glad it didn't.

I got this photo from city hall, while doing some research on my building's history. I'm glad someone was paying attention. I've lived here 10 years, and this is the first time I've seen an image of the home that used to live on the corner.

gorgeous synchronicity....

I've read recently that synchronicity is the world asking you to pay attention. Or some aspect of yourself asking you to pay attention. I've looked for meanings in them, but there don't seem to be any, beyond "isn't it cool what life can do?"

So last month, my checkbook didn't balance. It was exactly $292 different than my bank statement. I had an odd sense of familiarity with the number, as if it were a number that had popped up more than once in my bookkeeping over the years, but I couldn't put my finger on it. I went through all the numbers again, and couldn't locate the culprit. I was getting frustrated, so I put it away, hoping I'd figure it out this month.

This month, of course, the glitch was still there, but I had an idea. I divided $292 by 2 and got $146. AHA! $146 is the monthly amount I pay on a long-term debt, and that explained the familiarity, as I have made an occassional double payment over the years. I scoured the previous month's register, and sure enough, there was an extra entry in my checkbook for the payment, and I'd accidentally checked them both without noticing.

But there was only 1 extra payment. How was this possible? I was still $146 off! I went over it and over it in my head and decided I had to re-do all the math for the month and see where it went awry. I found it almost by chance. It wasn't an addition problem so much as a copying error. There, near the end of the month, I had a line item that was $16.22, but in the totals column, where I do the math, I had misprinted it as 162.22.

The difference is $146.00!

I'm not sure why, but this weird little coincidence makes my heart beat quickly and excites me. If it is the world: "Hello!" If it is my subconscious: "Hello!" If it is some gorgeous choreography, conspired by the two of you: "Hello! Hello!"

In any case:

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Lamont Speaks:

So, way back in the 20th Century, I was laid up for about a year with a serious case of bicepital tendonitis in which I felt like doing very little. I wouldn't work, I rarely played. I went to the doctor, I went to therapy (physical and psychological), I went to movies, and I started drawing.

Luckily, the tendonitis was in my right arm, and I am left-handed, so drawing was something I found I could do fairly comfortably. I had drawn a lot as a kid, especially in jr. high and high school, but it hadn't been a priority for me for some time. At first, I was daunted by the size and space of a blank page. It seemed too big. Too much potential. My drawings in school had mainly been in the margins of textbooks during lectures. I had recently seen a painting by a friend of a Mayan stelae, with it's glyphs laid out in an organic grid, and the answer seemed clear.

I drew a tiny frame in the lower right hand corner of a blank page in a notebook. I think I might have drawn a little circle in it. There was room for little else. Then I drew 3 more boxes around the edges of the first and I filled them in. It took me a few days, but I filled the page with little squares, a tiny illustration inhabiting each one. Oh yeah. Lamont. Basically, on just about every page I drew, there'd be moments when a spontaneous drawing wasn't happening, so I had a few stock images: a circle, a cube, a UFO, a little alien guy, that I'd draw to sort of get the juices flowing. The little alien guy was almost a little puppet: a tube with a head on top with a couple of eyes, like a stick figure with a little meat on it's bone. Every time I drew this little guy, the name "Lamont" would pop into my head. Like from out of nowhere. I told a friend this story and she just stated the obvious: "Oh, yeah. That's that little guy's name. That's Lamont."

As I continued drawing, a story emerged: Lamont was a Transdimensional Systems Analyst, a meme-being from out-of-time-and-space. The squares i was drawing were a graphic datastream he recieved and sort of channeled out through my hand for observation, analysis, and system enhancement. A couple of years later, I had filled my first sketchbook, sold my first drawings, published a couple of zines, and was wined and dines by the rich and famous.

So that's the origin of Lamont. His story is ongoing, and the drawings keep coming. More on this, I'm sure.