Appearing shortly after Edwardston Resident’s return.
Celebration?
The 7th spire of the Castle of the 7th Spire may be highlighted by the 2 differently colored crystal clusters.
Rezzer rocks, shorter than their cousins and a brighter green than the other green crystals.
The crystals, both green and pink, are most certainly from The Moon. Baker Bloch’s been there, and so can you Second Life viewer. He walks toward the recently installed launcher at the Norris Building. Let the countdown begin.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, Heterocera, Rubi
It began with a friend request. Edwardston Resident, deep in the mind abyss, heard the familiar double bell ring. It was a wake up call. He accepted the friendship, and he was back… in VWX Town, emerging from the 97/97/97 7th spire he had disappeared into the day before. But since time didn’t exist in that space — space either, for that matter — well, there wasn’t any *matter* there either. Back to the point: the bell rings woke him up. He had a tangible connection to His Second Lyfe again. And through this reciprocated wake up call, he realized he had another friend: Baker Bloch. For the request did not come from BB, but through it, in checking his friends list, Edwardston realized that his virtual brother was already on it (1st of 2 now), an original or ur friend, as it were. A brother and a friend and more.
And Baker Bloch had decided on something when Edwardston Resident returned to VWX Town. He would be there *in person*. For real this time, and not just a ghost of a former log-in.
Edwardston first visits the main chamber of the Castle of the 7th Spire, encircled by the remaining 6 (and less important) namesake turrets. He chats with a forgotten prioner, saying, “I know how you feel now,” to this object. What happened to him at the 97/97/97 point? It’s similar to asking what happened in Room 237 in The Shining film. It’s like explaining a hypercube to a cat. It might go well, but it will probably just drive the cat to his dinner bowl for needed, replenishing energy. It’s like explaining a gorilla to a chimpanzee.
Baker Bloch has prepared. A *second* Second Life viewer opens, and he looks across a garden space toward the white mist he knows is Edwardston Resident. Baker is disappointed. He never actually *saw* Edwardston in person, even though he managed to finangle a couple of minutes out of this system straining dual perspective. Edwardston always remained a white smoke ghost, as witnessed in this photo.
From *Edwardson’s* perspective, he pretty well saw Baker Bloch as he did the night before: a gray figure except for the bright red armbands. And Edwardston himself looked all wonky — completely wonky. He had bleached blonde hair now instead of the former carrot red, and his outfit was basically black instead of the warm tans and browns of before. He tried to speak but couldn’t think of anything to chat about. It knew it was *super important* that Baker Bloch showed up with him at this time. Baker Bloch, he realized, was making a supreme effort to be here. He was welcoming him back to the land of the virtual living. He was welcoming him to the Other Side of town, the as yet unexplored east side. And telling him: “This is now yours as well. As much yours as mine. Feel free to go anywhere you like. There is no harm to be found here. Explore; enjoy!” Yet he implied all these things silently, with his mere inserted presence at this point in space-time-matter.
Edwardston watched as Baker made some awkward attempts at locomotion, falling unconscious at one point because of the exertion, apparently.
Then he faced the other way, made a weak pointing gesture toward the heart of the village’s east side, and was gone — winked out just like the previous night’s much shorter visit. And I must emphasize that this time, Baker Bloch was *actually here* with him and not a ghost, as before.
Edwardston’s true colors returned just as Baker Bloch disappeared. Edwardston understood that for them to be together like that took a lot of energy, so much so that their actual forms were altered. He did not know that, all through the visit, Baker Bloch never saw Edwardston Resident except as mist. It was obviously not a meeting that could last long.
On his own again, a rejuvenated Edwardston walks happily down the yellow bricked entrance road and into the meat of Rubi’s VWX Town.
He would observe strange things that might have seemed threatening under different, less asssured circumstances.
He sits between contrasting images of a mortal enemy, but can only grin.
It is here, on the top floor of the recently enlarged Confluence Place, that he observed where the end would come.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, Heterocera, Rubi
… may be gone, Hucka D.”
Hucka D.:
2 in 1. Foreign 1. Four in One. Gone.
bb:
Left on his ship.
Hucka D.:
Yes. The cat scared him. He was too close to Catman from Camp Rubi. Barrel House gone. Catman. Blocked at Bloch Hill. Now it’s all Baker Bloch’s again. And The Residents.
bb:
That’s a shame. I liked Edwardston Resident.
Hucka D.:
He may show up again.
bb:
What next?
Hucka D.:
Build.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, Heterocera, Rubi
First, a SL photograph I “repinned” from Marianne McCann’s Snapzilla submissions depicting a dancing red skeleton at the accursed Falmouth Hotel in Bay City, a Linden Lab urban showcase. Two synchy things about this, perhaps. First is the presence of a red skeleton, like the foreman of the recent toy happening at Philo, Herman Park. Second is the involved name of the hotel (and also encompassing sim): Falmouth, which is also the name of another Frank Park location that just happened to play host to the last toy happening *before* Philo. Interesting juxtaposition, and worth a mention in this blog.
We return to VWX Town for the remainder of the shots in this blog post. We now have two what could be call “slanty” buildings in town. We’ve already discuss the first some: the now cat topped City Hall that’s also grown a story since its inception several days back. Then just yesterday I decided to insert another composite Moard Ling structure on the extreme eastern side of the community…
… and move the Norris Building formerly occupying that space to the west side of town, next to Edward’s Stream. There’s still basically nothing within either of these structures, however.
The Wall of Eyes south of the newly positioned Norris Building has been deleted, and a huge stone elephant effigy has taken its place.
Baker Bloch experiences the majesty of VWX Town’s newest slanty building from beneath. I believe I’ll simply call this the Marble Tower for now.
There are now a good number of what I’d call composite buildings in the community, including the two structures already mentioned, and also, as of several days ago, the Confluence Place. It represents a mashup of two different Moard Ling builds, in contrast to the single structure used as as a base module for both the City Hall (5 stacked modules) and the Marble Tower (3 stacked modules). The two involved structures employed in the Confluence Place are “ML Statue of Nekoty” and “Valley Mansion”, a newer Ling offering.
Interesting proximity of the Piepodt pod at the end of the surface aspect of Edward’s Stream (aka 1st Stream) and nuclear smokestack imported from the opposite side of town along with the Norris Building. They seem matched in relation to the back of the Table House behind them.
Current VWX Town skyline from what might be Baker Bloch’s new office in the attic of The Table House.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, Heterocera, Rubi
bb:
He didn’t think he had any choice, and he didn’t. Not really. He had to enter the east side of town.
—–
The cat reappears atop the revamped City Hall.
“No,” Edwardston thinks, “it didn’t fly away… unfortunately. What *was* this irrational fear of cats appearing/manifesting in him? First the appearance of that backwards figure between the palm leaves, seeming to enter the Confluence Place, and then the manifestation of the Catman inside the very same palm (trunk this time), facing toward his house instead. Two in one, he realizes. Dwarf and Giant, he then thinks as well, although he’s not sure where that analogy popped in from. Barrel House. He *must* get into the Confluence Place [although he doesn’t call it that].
He decides he has to enter the east side of town from the front door, as it were, and not go in sideways. That might even be dangerous at this point.
Carrcassonne watches as he heads back around what he’s calling Barrel House toward his residence, intending to circle around it to the start of the yellow bricked road…
… only to keep going straight into the Church of The Diagonal [ again this is not what Edwardston calls the structure] and all the way through it to the 7th spire of the Castle of the 7th Spire [again… Edwardston doesn’t know its true title, or what Baker Bloch has selected for its name].
Here is his answer.
—-
bb:
So what next?
Hucka D.:
He has a realization about The Diagonal. He puts two and two together… actually he remembers the diagonal from Baker Bloch’s collage, the one with the four five Baker Blochs in one.
bb:
What *happens* there?
Hucka D.:
Two places become one place. He is there, on the lower edge of the Rubi Woods in that 7th spire of the Church of the 7th Spire…
bb (completing Hucka D.’s thought):
… and he’s also in Virtual Chelsea Hotel village at the 97/97/97 spot there. The two Triple Points are one Triple Point. How’s that?
Hucka D.:
I’m still not sure what happens.
bb:
He can’t choose east. He can’t choose west. He must choose above… *beyond*. Above… higher.
Hucka D.:
The Cat attacks and possesses him. He becomes All Eyes.
bb:
He knows what replaced the cat even though he hasn’t even entered the east side of town.
Hucka D.:
He’ll see, in a flash, the polarization of the Norris religion[ of the east] with the TILE game[ of the west]. He’ll be above.
bb:
He’ll hear the whispers within The Table House. Without The Residents, The Table House would not be as it is … might not even exist.
Hucka D.:
They guard it. They look over it. Send Baker Bloch back to end.
bb:
Who *are* these guys??
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, Heterocera, Rubi, VHC City
… does this new development, these — *Residents* — mean, Hucka D.?
Hucka D.:
They are your Residents. They are the center of an illness.
bb:
It’s going to freak Edwardston out.
Hucka D.:
You better find out his reaction.
bb:
Right.
—–
This day Edwardston Resident makes the decision that he’s going to use the teleporter again to see more of VWX Town.
A female voice behind him: “Residents.”
“Did you *say* something… er (checking title of object again)… Wyn??”
But the conversation, if you can call it that, appeared to be over. “Residents?” Edwardston then thinks, walking toward the teleporter. “Is that me and this Wyn?” The idea flitted through Edwardston’s mind that they were destined to marry and share the last name. Indeed, when he found the woman cutout in his inventory several days back, he thought that maybe Baker Bloch had placed it there to give him an Eve to his Adam, a perfect soulmate. He had even talked to her sometimes, but never had she spoken back. Is the object instead channeling another soul?
“How about you, Philip Linden?” Edwardston asked the other figure in the room. “Do you want to say something this morning as well?” But Philip remained silent.
Big Head Philip.
After checking outside the house for anything new (and seeing nothing) he uses the teleporter to head toward the City Hall again. He didn’t specifically remember the teleport option labelled “City Hall 05” from yesterday’s travels — he remembers “City Hall 01-04” options instead. Maybe it was just bad memory. He’s still very new, he said to himself in his mind. Maybe Baker Bloch relabelled the floors while he was asleep, he then thought. Maybe the bottom floor was now “City Hall 00” instead of “City Hall 01”. He’d read about that numbering problem somewhere — what to name a ground floor.
He takes a deep breath, selects “City Hall 05” from his options, and hits the teleport button…
“OMG, what *is* that way up here?”
Then he recognizes the object and quickly teleports back to his home, breath all panicy now. “That *cat*!!”
—–
Hucka D.:
See?
bb:
And if that cat’s way up there on top of the new 5th floor of the City Hall, then he’s going to start asking himself what took the place of the cat on the Confluence Place. It’s actually the very same cat moved directly up, but let’s not bother with that now.
Hucka D.:
Let’s not bother now with that.
bb:
He’s going to find The Residents.
Hucka D.:
And think Baker Bloch is insane — mentally ill — at the core of it.
bb:
*Is* he?
Hucka D.:
Of course not. (pause) I don’t think. But, anyway, the conglomeration of *eyeball* objects is suppose to represent insanity. The Residents directly took the place of The Cat.
bb:
Edwardston *must* simply enter the east side of VWX Town now.
Hucka D.:
Simply *must*.
bb:
Tonight?
Hucka D.:
Let us talk about this [ instead]. The City Hall has been extended up a floor, and topped with the same cat that use to lie directly below on the Confluence Place. The Confluence Place has been remodelled, enlarged. It is a place of *memory*. A third stream now comes from within and not from without.
bb:
The backing waterfall.
Hucka D.:
Right. Confluence Place has everything it needs in itself now. It doesn’t need Edwardston Resident.
bb:
Not sure I follow you, Hucka D.
Hucka D.:
It already has Residents.
bb:
But I think we spoke before…
Hucka D.:
… before spoke…
bb:
… about The Table House the City Hall now completely arches over to reach the space of Confluence Place.
—–
Edwardston walks out of the house toward the Confluence Place to look for the cat. Something else is there for sure.
The cat is not even within Edwardston’s vision range atop the City Hall’s new, 5th floor. “Could it have, I don’t know, *flown* away??” he asks himself. But, no, it’s still there. Invisible to him, but there.
“Blocked from going in!!”
—–
“Even if he wished to,” Hucka D. added.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, Heterocera, Rubi
Stranger do’ins in VWX Town lately. Edwardston Resident is going to be surprised. Explanations soon!
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, Heterocera, Rubi
Feeling lonely again, Edwardston Resident copies a version of Carrcassonne from the pool before going to bed, and rezzes it in his room. Certainly too large for the room, but still he lets it remain. “One day he’ll be able to talk to this being, this entity,” he thinks before falling to sleep.
The next “morning” he awakes and dashes to the window, taking another look at “Catman”. The illusion is still there, but not as marked as before. Edwardston notices that if he turns a certain way the backwards figure illusion becomes more clear, and with a slight adjustment to the viewing angle the Catman illusion becomes more distinct while the former illusion fades. This seems to convince him that the two illusions are actually part of one, larger illusion, along with the symmetrical eyes from the day before. He can either bravely suck it up (once more) and head into the cat topped building or turn away from it in fear. This is the primary gate he faces, a decision. This becomes conscious to him at this point in our yarn.
Up front and in person, the area where the illusion takes place from his upstairs window looses some of its essence. Here is Carrcassonne, as usual, staring back at him in wordless communication. She will not talk in person, he realizes.
Here is the guarding cactuses…
…and the accompanying large ape.
He’s not afraid to even pet the ape.
He explores other parts of west VWX Town this morning, including the Temple of TILE. He decides that he must focus more on it, and the harbored labyrinth of many colors. He still does not know what it means or how to walk it. I would show him shortly.
Edwardston heads into the Great Rubi Forest again.
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, Heterocera, Rubi
He’s not quite sure how it happened, but when our Edwardston R. touched a certain picture he had rezzed in his Home o’ Fibs residence and accepted some inventory, he was almost instantly transported to this location. He recognized that it was the same location as in the picture. Long time blog readers of mine (the hoards, the hoards!) will know this to be the infamous 97/97/97 spot in Lanestris, in the black heart of Virtual Hotel Chelsea village in front of the uber-poisonous and noxious Purple Tower. Provencial Edwardston was panicing (“How do I get back home, how do I get back *home*??”) when he remembered he could just hit the home button and return, an escape hatch in effect. He’d learned this trick several days ago.
While he was thinking this, an art kiosk greeted him; he knew the drill from being based so near two of Baker Bloch’s galleries and their own kiosks (Power Tower Gowlery and also Toxic Art Gallery). So why not check out this stranger gallery while he was in the area? Trouble was, he couldn’t find it when walking around on the ground level of the town. He had to use distant vision (which he had only recently discovered as well) to locate the gallery above him at a certain point, and used the sole gallery seating to sit in and lift himself up into it. All of us who’ve been in Second Life for a while know that trick.
But to be honest, he wasn’t that impressed with the art…
… nor what he could see in the other box-sized galleries strewn throughout the rest of the dense urban area. I think the problem was that Edwardston had no pesonal connection with this art, unlike with some of Baker Bloch’s collage work. But I might try to subliminally get him to return and re-check things out here. After all, it was me who made him come here in the first place with the inventory “mistake”, as he thought of it. He’s still very naive to this world. But, in different degrees, we all are.
Edwardston certainly did appreciate the immensity of the virtual Chelsea Hotel itself, the centerpiece of the community. And I think he did understand in some way that this community, this village, was the twin to VWX Town he was searching for, and not long destroyed Pietmond or even the more recently abandoned VWX Town in Philudoria.
Returning home, Edwardston decided it was finally time to suck it up and take a tour of the Toxic Art Gallery located just next door to his home.
He found the art on the first several floors more engaging that what he saw in VHC village (again, because it was more personal to him, and not a comment on the quality of any art involved), but it was only when he spotted a representation of Esbum Michigan in a collage on the 4th and last floor that he really perked up.
And a tiny Baker Bloch was found below Esbum as well. He was about to enter a forested region of what Edwardston knew now was called Real Life, or the real world. But the observing Edwardston was curious about the greener square (or near square) of forest in the collage’s center. The vivid, monochromatic colors looked more like Second Life trees, pine trees to be specific, like the ones in back of the Home o’ Fibs. The Rubi forest was instead populated by a mixture of cypress and eucalyptus trees — not pines — so it couldn’t be a collaged image of that. So Edwardston’s thinking was that we have Esbum here — Second Life avatar — and Baker Bloch — another SL avatar — and perhaps a square of forest from SL, and then real life stuff arranged all around this. Was Baker Bloch attempting to enter the virtual forest but blocked by the surrounding, real forest? Was it like trying to find the center of a concocted labyrinth? And what of the giant Esbum Michigan hovering above? The framing orange dogs (same dog?) showing the way in and the way out?
Then two pictures to the right, Edwardston R. finds another familiar image: the orange, floppy topped entity seen in an Esbum related snapshot found in his inventory not long after arriving in Rubi, an image Edwardston thought might be a representation of himself somehow. Here the being, now equipped with a body for moving about, appears to ascend a mountain beside an L-shaped gorge. The line of white cars in the foreground appear to be heading directly into the gorge, or, better, represent a continuation of the curving line of the gorge within the picture.
The next picture seems to be a direct continuation, with the orange alien transformed into a dingo as he reaches the top of the gorge. The cars in the foreground now avoid coming up the gorge toward him, and instead keep heading down the broad cement highway in the center of the collage, toward a large blackbird. The prominent stick of this picture is upright or “raised”, in contrast with its horizontal twin from the previous collage. “A gate closed, a gate open,” Edwardston thinks at the time.
Then *both* sticks appear in the next collage — Edwardston is just continuing to move to his right, following the gallery walls — along with Baker Bloch again; *5* versions of him, in fact. And it took Edwardston a minute to pick out Esbum Michigan behind the Baker Bloch in the green chair. Edwardston Resident would have had no contact with Hucka Doobie yet, and so wouldn’t know who he was (pointing bee avatar in lower right corner of the work).
Edwardston looked through the rest of the collage collection on the 4th floor, which was actually the entire 20 work Wheeler-Jasper series I created in early 2009. He found more interesting images within, but the ones I’ve illuminated so far still stuck out. Then he teleported to what he thought might be another floor of collages but was instead the roof of the gallery. The alignment between where he was standing on the Toxic Art Gallery and the Church of The Diagonal straight ahead of him (he didn’t know it was named this) struck a chord. Another seed was planted here: the idea of The Diagonal extending across not only the Rubi sim but the whole of the continent he resided upon. This alignment, he knew, could not be accidental. But this day, it was only an observation, and nothing deeper would come of it for a while. He didn’t realize that the very place he’d “accidentally” teleported to in the Virtual Chelsea Hotel community was precisely aligned with this same Diagonal. It would take a while for it to all come together for him.
Looking the opposite way toward Rosieri. I think Edwardston would like to explore the parcel he sees there soon. This is the old home of Coke, an acquaintance I first met way back in 2008 Azure Island days, before I’d even moved to Rubi and the mainland. An original paradise of sorts. I’ll have to tell what I know of her story soon as well.
I next sent Edwardston to the Power Tower Gowlery so that I, baker b., could take a look at a particular collage: the terminal work of the Lis series, and what could be considered the second to last collage of the entire Gilatona-Lis mega-series within the Power Tower. I wanted to compare the imagery of this work with the Judgement card mentioned in the post just below mainly concerned with The Shining.
This is the specific image I wanted to compare it with. I’ll have more to say about all this soon — too long a story to go into here, probably.
Edwardston also revists the Falmouth collage(s) on the floor just above this, again noting the red haired entity.
He uses the conveniently placed teleporter to save a walk back down the various ladders and stairs to his Home’o Fibs next door. Just after then teleporting again up to the second floor (his bedroom) from the first, he notices *two eyeballs* staring back at him from the window. You’ll most likely have to enlarge the below snapshot to see what I’m talking about here. But the illusion is blatant and symmetrically effective.
Edwardston quickly realizes these are two eyeballs from the many in the Wall of Eyes he can view from this window. But he understands the “accident” has meaning as well. Someone *is* looking in on him. He approaches the window and sees in the distance what looks like a brown colored creature, staring up at him or, as he studies it more, perhaps at the newer, oval shaped building in town more to its right. A name suddenly springs to mind: Barrel Building. And the creature is Catman. Edwardston quickly understands that the “creature” is just the trunk of the same palm that produced, within its fronds, the illusion of the backwards turning figure before. But, all the same, he just as strongly knew this was Barrel House and Catman he was staring at through this window, and that Catman is somehow his manifested fear of progressing beyond the prickly, impeding cactuses toward the structure topped by the giant, yarn wielding cat. Quite a yarn (sorry).
Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, collages 2d, Heterocera, Qbrick, Stanley, Rubi, Shining, The, VHC City
Sunklands 
