February 2, 2021 · 11:24 am

Four Corners 02

He knew exactly where to look. He heads across the road toward the hills.

He pauses to roll two dice at Gigi’s place, red and white. “Twins,” he exclaims, seeing the result. “Good. I’m on the right track.” Certain Death can be avoided tonight.

He moves forward…

A wise sparrow looks down from a tree behind him. He stands in flowers again, pansies. This is where it will happen. He waits. He, again, knows Certain Death is not stalking him. This is the day, this is the portal. He waits. The sparrow knows too.

His head begins to vibrate rapidly. It has begun.

Leave a comment

Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0024, 0604, Bellisaria, Four Corners

Tagged as , , , ,

February 1, 2021 · 10:42 am

Four Corners

“Dum de *dum* de *dum*.” Riiiiinnnng. “Oh dear.” Riiiiiiiinnnng. “That’s the phone.”

“Where, honey?”

“Over… *there*.” Riiinnng.

“Over where, honey?”

“On the wall.” Riiinnnng. “Just over… *there*.”

“The wall… the phone on the wall?”

Riiinnnng. “Yes. Don’t you remember. The phone… on the wall.”

“The *pay phone*? The one that hadn’t worked for 20 years?” Rinnnnng.

“Yes. I think. Go check. I’m scared. I’ll be back in my room.” Riinnng.

She was so happy just seconds before. Now the world seemed to be ending.

Riinnnng. Herbert Glenn Gold walks over, answers the phone. Riinnnn– “Hello?”

—–

“You have become old, Stefan.”

“No… not old. I can still rock.”

“You are a classical man through and through now. Get up out of the rocker. You cannot rock any longer. You are an old man. You…”

“Pansy,” he said, trying to reassure. “I acquiesce.” Old Stefan steps away from the DJ equipment and the dance floor as a whole, walks outside, stands in the flower bed.

—–

Leave a comment

Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0024, 0603, Bellisaria, Four Corners

Tagged as , , , ,

February 1, 2021 · 10:42 am

00240602

A room with no door (Shop 10, Kowloon):

Downstairs:

“Come in, Fern Stallin.”

—–

“Yeah, I’m not Fern Stalin.”

“Ohh, but you *aare*.” Pause.

“Anyway…”

“Cornfield,” the Old Man in a Narrow Room interrupted crisply. “I’m sensing… Corrnfield, yess.” The place had lightened up.

Blue Berry Girl, 1/2way back to Rules of Rose by this point, looked around without questioning more. She vaguely recalls twins named Cornfield, born in, yes, Valentine. A place called Valentine.

“Youuurr… *rememmberring*.”

“Listen, um, Old Man. It was nice visiting you but I have other places to go tonight.”

“Youuu… will *returrnnn*.”

—–

—–

Walking the RR in the Inbetween World. Watch out from behind!

—–

“Yoouuu… havve *returrrnned*.”

Leave a comment

Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0024, 0602, Bellisaria, Kowloon+, Purden/Snowlands, Sandfly, Sansara

Tagged as , ,

February 1, 2021 · 10:41 am

moving forward…

Maybe I need to think about Blue Berry Girl more, since she perhaps has become more central. She’s not Blurmaid as I anticipated in this half shell at the X shaped crossroads in the heart of the Maebaleia/Satori continent, but maybe her story is more crucial. What do we know of her so far?

This is as good a time as any to create a kind of year in review post, short in nature. The virus is of course the big news in 2020, and everyone has been impacted to one large degree or another, including us. But we’ve also been more fortunate than most. We haven’t lost our jobs (knock on wooden head), we remain healthy (again with the knocks on the head), and, despite both working from home in the main, the wife and I are getting along swimmingly. I can’t imagine a couple being locked indoors together this winter that doesn’t like each other. Lots of divorces will come out of this. Loss of jobs, splitting up of families. What happened in 2020 will be impacting us for years to come.

That’s why it’s so urgent for Joe Biden and his administration to push legislation and acts through as quickly as possible to bring relief Americans so desperately need. Bring us affordable health care and education; reform the prison system and military-industrial complex. Enact *now*, as soon as possible, sweeping climate change mandates that will help us save the planet (we should be leaders on this!) and stop further catastrophes to heap on top of the ones we already face from other directions as a nation. I remain optimistic but also realistic, given the history of the Democratic party up to this point and the sheer lunacy, right now, within their counterparts, the Republicans, who remain an actual political party only in name, unable to help anyone but the rich and powerful who don’t need it. Trickle down economics is a myth by this time.

I know steps are being taken. I’m just not sure they’re enough. All great nations have their turn, then fall back and yield to others on the rise. I think this virus is exposing who we really are. We cannot be the leaders in the future with the present systems in place. We can’t just return to the “normal” of the Obama years. We’re falling behind.

OKAY, getting back to the blog and my safe zone (yea!), I’ve had a really good year there, along with lots of local hiking. I’m extremely blessed to be living in the community we do, with oodles of beautiful, protected park land very close by. This is something I’d also like to focus on this year, and years to come. Return to real life photos and art, and a bit more away from virtual stuff and My Second Lyfe. A bit — because both will continue in tandem with each other for some time.

Happy 2021!

Leave a comment

Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0024, 0601, Maebaleia/Satori, X-City

Tagged as

January 30, 2021 · 11:00 am

Strange Isle


thing to fear

Leave a comment

Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0024, 0517, Maebaleia/Satori, Stranger Creek, Weird-o Islands+, X-City

Tagged as ,

January 30, 2021 · 11:00 am

X-City church 02

“A marriage,” A Mann suddenly said behind her, unseen before and sitting in the front pew. Duplicates again!

“Marriage to who?” Tessa ventured, getting bolder now. She could punch through his face and draw back a brain if she wished. She’d done it before with a coke machine.

“A Womann,” came the response. Kate, or the thing that appeared to be Kate, halted for a moment, hands raised from the keys. Tessa half suspected the singing would begin now, but it never did, the chorus remaining frozen in their spots, blue books still open. She could go check on the name of the composition in it, she realized. Kate’s too — from the score on the organ’s music stand; if there was one.

There wasn’t. The blue choral books proved more fruitful. Handel it truly was! But which part of the “Messiah” was Kate playing? Not the same one as this more familiar bit here. Maybe from the Easter part?

The marriage was beginning. A Mann united with A Womann in holy matrimony. But where was the minister?

“Madam, I’m Adam,” said A Mann.

“A Man, A Plan, A Canal…” said A Womann.

“Panama!” they exclaimed together. Tessa woke up.

Leave a comment

Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0024, 0516, Maebaleia/Satori, X-City

Tagged as , , , ,

January 30, 2021 · 11:00 am

X-City church 01

“Kate! I thought I’d lost you forever.”

“No. I’m here.” But her voice was weak, far away. She waves half-heartedly. She didn’t appear to be herself to Tessa.

“I *saw* you, though. On the beach.” Tessa thought back to Kate face down in the sand at Elven Mist. And the perpetual atomic blast out over the water in the distance. Kate didn’t have on a mask. There was no way she could make it, which, given the ones who did and their actions, maybe was a good thing. Tessa realizes this wasn’t really Kate. Kate was dead. She turned to the other figure acting as a greeter in this X-City church, new in the last year and a half.

“And what is *your* name, sir?”

“Mann. Just call me A Mann.”

“A. Mann? A. stands for something?”

“No. Just A Mann.”

All 3 stood there for a bit, with awkward gestures from the 2 what Tessa now considered simulacra; forgeries of real people most likely; stand-ins.

Music was coming from the front of the church. Perhaps Bach but maybe Handel — Tessa couldn’t quite get a handle on it. She moved forward down the aisle to investigate more, leaving the two figures who she deemed useless for meaningful interaction behind. “Goodbye Kate,” she whispered to herself, not looking back.

But then in front of her appeared the figure of Kate, playing the organ and the classical tune she couldn’t figure out the composer of. Maybe not even baroque. But Kate again! Perhaps this was the real one this time.

“Kate?”

The tune of baroque or baroque-ish design went on and on as Kate didn’t respond to the outside world, engrossed in her playing, it appeared. And those mute singers with their blue choral books seemed so familiar. What was going on here? Ahh, Tessa realized. A dream!

(to be continued)

Leave a comment

Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0024, 0515, Maebaleia/Satori, X-City

Tagged as , , ,

January 29, 2021 · 4:26 pm

good luck?

You’ll have to dip more than your feet in this TILE Pool to get use to the South, Dream Tessa. Rains down hard there! The rain with the pain, ooouuuch.” Ghost Pac-man reminded me of someone. And also someone else yellow; a rivalry, yes.

‘*There*. If you’re submerged you can’t feel the pain. Let it go, let it all go, the tension, the weight of the world.” The pool was just big enough, head to foot. Like a fitted coffin. Let’s hope the analogy stops there.

Tessa wakes up, gasping and grasping her throat in an attempt to breathe. After she regained her wits she looked about the room and noticed the umbrellas. Lisa the Vegetarian had delivered, as promised. Time to go. No more dreams: reality.

Leave a comment

Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0024, 0514, Mountain Lake, Omega

Tagged as , , , ,

January 29, 2021 · 4:26 pm

leaving Fryburg

“You know more about the blue rose and the blue thorn, child, enough for now — enough for your understanding.”

“I… understand.”

“Now we must move away from this butterfly themed treehouse on this once quartz laden peak in the Mountain Lake District. We have learned all we can from here. Remember to pack your umbrella. It’s rainey season in the South.”

“I… shall.”

Leave a comment

Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0024, 0513, Mountain Lake, Omega

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

January 29, 2021 · 8:56 am

more men

“There’s Devils around here again, Cpt. Dick. Or Devil; I can smell it or them with my 6th sense.”

“ESP,” acknowledges the captain, drunk at the time (it was noon, after all) and knowing that demons manifested in the area occasionally, like in ’73 with the Buzz and the Bee. He swears he hadn’t touched a drop when he saw them. “How many?” he attempted to clarify, thinking back to that awful day in early May. “One? Three? 50?” He skips over the number 2; too many bad memories. He can still feel the effects of the stingers coming from each side just here, there and there. If only he were inebriated when it happened to curb the pain.

Jake Hardbody thinks harder, ramping up his abilities to the max, like a raging fire. “One. But: powerful,” he concludes, unwrinkling his forehead and reflexively drawing his gun as if the Devil were in the immediate area, which he wasn’t. He was still down at the ice cream parlor asking nonsensical jokes to unsuspecting customers while assigning them ridiculous names. But he was about to leave. Back to the Ultimate Creator in Hell Heaven who was also himself to report on what he’d seen on the other side of X-City, the place they usually try to avoid because of, well, because of well armed and experienced psychics like Jake H. here. UC had it that Jake had retired from the force — the last of his kind — after the windmill accident in Hoover but that was planted propaganda to lure them back. Jake Hardbody also had a hard head, like a Diamond. In truth, he was a type of God himself. He was the secret power behind the police force of Upper Western Middle X-City, and soon to be a hero for a greater cause.

(to be continued)

Leave a comment

Filed under **VIRTUAL SL, 0024, 0512, Maebaleia/Satori, X-City

Tagged as ,