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Sunday, July 29, 2007

Song from Last Night: "Desert Rose" by Sting

"Desert Rose"

I dream of rain
I dream of gardens in the desert sand
I wake in vain
I dream of love as time runs through my hand

I dream of fire
Those dreams are tied to a horse that will never tire
And in the flames
Her shadows play in the shape of a man's desire

This desert rose
Each of her veils, a secret promise
This desert flower
No sweet perfume ever tortured me more than this

And as she turns
This way she moves in the logic of all my dreams
This fire burns
I realize that nothing's as it seems

I dream of rain
I dream of gardens in the desert sand
I wake in vain
I dream of love as time runs through my hand

I dream of rain
I lift my gaze to empty skies above
I close my eyes
This rare perfume is the sweet intoxication of her love

I dream of rain
I dream of gardens in the desert sand
I wake in vain
I dream of love as time runs through my hand

Sweet desert rose
Each of her veils, a secret promise
This desert flower
No sweet perfume ever tortured me more than this

Sweet desert rose
This memory of Eden haunts us all
This desert flower
This rare perfume, is the sweet intoxication of the fall

Friday, July 27, 2007

Romantic Places to Go: Heaven and Hell

Looking for a good place to spend some quality time with your sweetie? Try Heaven and Hell. This beautiful sim has it all: fascinating scenery and sex poseballs! Heaven is a series of beautiful gardens and waterfalls with romantic and erotic nooks to explore, Hell is for those into kink and BDSM. Between the two is a nice nightclub with a great dance floor titled (you guessed it) Purgatory.

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Long distance love

The very nature of secondlife makes most romances begun there the long distance kind of love. Long distance love can be painful and even deceptive, as you don't see the real person as clearly across time and space. In secondlife you may stand a better chance of more frequent and more intense connection, but even there love . . . real love needs to be based in honesty, good communication, and caring. Lust is good, but it is only an element of love . . . not the whole of it.

Thought to ponder about long distance love:

"And ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation." Kahlil Gibran

"Absence is to love what wind is to fire; it extinguishes the small, it enkindles the great." Roger De Bussy-Rabutin

"Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell." Edna St. Vincent Millay

"Wherever you go, whatever you do, I will be right here waiting for you. Whatever it takes or how my heart breaks, I will be right here ... waiting for you." Richard Marx

"You came and you did well to come. I needed you. You have made love blaze up in my heart--bless you! Bless you often as the hours have been endless to me while you were gone." Sappho

Love knows not distance; it hath no continent; its eyes are for the stars." Gilbert Parker

"But the next time that our worlds combine, cannot be very far, and I'll be waiting then to take your hand and dance among the stars." Danny Carnahan


Song for the day: We've got tonight

Song for my mood, just because I am missing someone who couldn't stay last night. . . .

Monday, July 23, 2007

The New House





This was taken in the courtyard of my home,
on Firefly Peninsula.

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Going Clubbing

So it is Saturday night and you are bored with the same old clubs. Want to try something new?

Here is a short list of my favorite cool SL places to go and hang out:

Blue Noise: you will be greeted at the gate by the jackel-headed god Anubis in this Ancient Egyptian-themed club managed by the lovely Rhiannon. Watch beautiful female and male dancers strip, play the sploder, compete in "best of" contests for cash prizes, soak and get your back washed in the dance floor spa, make song requests of the DJs, or ask for the VIP treatment from one of the lovely and talented escorts.

Lotus Moon: An Asian-themed club/casino owned by Partial and Lisette. Great dancers, contests, camping pads, a sploder, and a cash giveaway that throws out random dollars to anyone in the club. Check out the special locations upstairs where you can get a private dance from one of the dancers or escorts.

Mystic's Cabaret Gentleman's Club: Best thing about Mystic's place are the contests. Every night is something new with cash prizes. Also lots of slow and sexy dance balls. Lots of pretty dancers, a sploder and dancing camping pads as well.

Ally B's: Not only does Ally offer all the amenities of the usual nightclubs at her Egyptian decor club, but Tuesdays are for Ladies Only! With an all male dancer lineup of studly guys! Not to be missed! Also has BDSM rooms for those so inclined.

Monday, July 16, 2007

Fortune Cookie for a Monday

Got a Fortune Cookie today that read: "THE GREATEST PLEASURE IN LIFE IS DOING WHAT PEOPLE SAY YOU CANNOT DO" I immediately taped it to my computer.

It is true. For example, here are several "you cannots" that I know to be false.

1. You can't love more than one man (or woman). Why? Most of us have enough love for multiple children, at least 2 parents, assorted siblings, many many friends. Why, if no other love is limited, do we assume that romantic (or erotic) love must be limited to one significant other? What is limited is not our love, but our time. And in love we want all the time and attention of our partners. We behave in love like toddlers who say: "Mine, all mine!" Maybe we don't need to limit our love . . . maybe we just need to share our toys better.

2. You can't make love work long distance. That may have been true a century ago when the fastest communication was the mail train and it took months. But today we have the Internet, IMs, cellphones that reach around the globe, text messaging, email, . . . and Second Life. Nine tenths of sex takes place in the mind, the imagination. If you can communicate you can have a romance. And it can be very good. Trust me on this one, I know.

3. He can't (or wouldn't want to) look at other women if he really loves me. Bullshit. Even if you only ever eat at home who says you can't read the menu of the fine restaurant you pass on the street? If your man is looking at other women all that says is that he has a healthy appetite. Ask him what he likes. maybe play out some of those fantasies that are turning his head. Talk about it and it will enrich your own sex life, clamp down on it and all you have is a man who feels guilty for a normal sexuality and who can't talk to the one person (you) he should be able to trust. I fear the day my man stops looking at other women--that is the day he is no longer interested in sex and that means he isn't looking at me either.



Friday, July 6, 2007

They call it the SL effect...

The first thing everyone does in SL is build an avatar. A persona. You, but not you. The six-million-dollar version of you: better, faster, stronger. . . also younger and prettier. All the things that you would like to be. With all the attitude and sexuality you want to display. And why not? This is a game, what is wrong with having attractive pieces. Some of us go farther. Non-humans, gender-shifting, multiple avatars and multiple persona stories. SL is all about role-playing. We can do things we'd never be able to do in real life. Live in the storylines of our fandoms. Participate in wanton sex, slave and master games, consensual violence, BDSM. Buy and sell anything, including not just our bodies, but our souls in some ways.

SL gives us the opportunity to wear complicated masks. To construct stories, behind which we are safe to escape from the complications of RL. But when does that line between RL and SL blur? When you have a mask, no one can see your real face. Or can they?

Being able to operate behind a mask gives us all a freedom that is heady and addictive. You can now be the bad-ass dude or the sexy lady. But when we act out sex and suddenly find we are falling in love, are we falling for the person or the persona? There are, in SL, a gazillion opportunities to make connections, to experience romance that we may be missing or wanting in our RLs. What happens when the RL person behind the mask starts to fall, to have real internal emotional attachment to another SL persona?

Those who say it is just an SL effect, will tell you that the emotions you are feeling are also a fantasy. You are in love in the same way anyone might have crush on an unreachable object of affection. Whether you go with it or let it go, these people tell you it will pass. And that is one way to deal with the emotions you are feeling.

But for some of us the SL persona is not too far removed from the RL persona. And the emotions, the attraction that turns to love is very real. The biological responses are all there . . . why not the psychological ones?

The irony here is that love works exactly the same in SL as it does in RL:
  • You meet someone. You find them physically attractive.
  • You flirt. You talk (most people don't realize that the largest sex organ is the brain--that conversation, flirtatious conversation, is more conducive to positive sexual experience than all the right moves in the world. This goes double in a virtual world where encounters are based, not on touch, but on narrative).
  • You date (in the RL world that tends to happen over the course of weeks or months, the ease of access in SL allows that to happen over hours and days).
  • You get even closer and have sex (in RL this takes while as we generally need to build up huge level of trust or too much alcohol, in SL however this might happen your very meeting).
  • You make each other feel good. On a regular basis.
  • You decide you can bottle and keep that feeling by tying the other person to you permanently (in RL this is marriage, in SL . . . well, people have ceremonies, but permanence ia even more ambiguous in SL)
Here is the problem. While each of us knows exactly what we are feeling, we can never--in SL or RL--know what is going on in someone else's head. Never. We can only trust in the honesty of our lovers.

I know of several RL couples who play in SL. But not with each other. One or the other partner has an SL marriage/partnership/sexual relationship with someone (or more than one) else. In the best cases all parties know and agree to allow it. are honest with each other. In some cases--and these are the ones where someone is bound to get hurt--one partner has backed off to give the other freedom to experience SL love, an SL relationship. Is that love real? I don't know, it may depend on how you define real. Love is a feeling. If you feel love it is real enough. If you love more than one person and you can't be upfront about it, if there isn't an honest attempt to make all the relationships work, you will hurt someone and likely be hurt yourself.

Love, in any reality, is based on trust and honesty. But when you open yourself up and tell honest truths, you always run the risk of being smacked down. When someone you trust is honest with you it can hurt, too. Love runs the risk of hurt because love is worth it--wherever you find it. The risk and the working through are what separates real love, wherever you find it, from shallow fantasy sexual romances.

So, yeah, I believe up-front, sometimes painful honesty. Pretty much all the time.

I also believe that there is more to SL love than just an SL effect.