You were afraid...

Sad Song for a Sunday: "Calypso" Suzanne Vega

My name is Calypso
And I have lived alone
I live on an island
And I waken to the dawn
A long time ago
I watched him struggle with the sea
I knew that he was drowning
And I brought him into me
Now today
Come morning light
He sails away
After one last night
I let him go.

My name is Calypso
My garden overflows
Thick and wild and hidden
Is the sweetness there that grows
My hair it blows long
As I sing into the wind
My name is Calypso
And I have lived alone
I live on an island
I tell of nights
Where I could taste the salt on his skin

Salt of the waves
And of tears
And though he,pulled away
I kept him here for years
I let him go

My name is Calypso
I have let him go
In the dawn he sails away
To be gone forever more
And the waves will take him in again
But he'll know their ways now
I will stand upon the shore
With a clean heart

And my song in the wind
The sand will sting my feet
And the sky will burn
It's a lonely time ahead
I do not ask him to return
I let him go
I let him go 

A Song for a New Year: Amanda Palmer "Hurt" Boston Pops - NYE 2009

In her introduction to this song Amanda Palmer says everything I have been feeling for the past three months:

Amanda Palmer: "It's been a really hard year for a lot of people and for me in a lot of ways... I am a firm believe in that there is no darkness without light and no light without darkness... If you can't go to the really dark places then you can't really have much joy... I have lost other people this year... I want to dedicate this song to putting everything in this year behind us...."

I hear the fat lady singing...

This has been a week of weird reflections for me. Thinking about the end of things. We are winding down to the end of the year. It is the end of the semester in school. In real life I am dealing with a death in the family.  But--and here is irony for you--it is the end of a love affair in Second Life that has hit me hardest of all.

I have avoided talking about all this in my blog here, because he never liked being the object of public discussion. He used to read my blog everyday. We used to chat everyday, we used to email, call, share our SL and RL lives. Then again, he used to love me. Ah well, things change. He doesn't read my blog any more (Google Analytics shows that to me). And he doesn't talk to me anymore. Not really. I get polite emails from time to time. Those friendly emails can hurt more than when we used to fight just because they are so polite, so cool. Distant, emotionless.

This week I realized (I have had some very long hours in the car thinking about stuff) that I have been spending most of 2009 waiting for "things to get better"--when all that happened was things got worse.

I could just count my blessings. I met him fell hard and fast, and had a glorious, wonderful, romantic nearly two years. Most of 2007 we were like (he used to say) teenagers in love. He was my obsession, and I was his. We couldn't keep our hands off each other.

All of 2008 we built our life together in Second Life. I gave him land in Valis for his rez day. We had an Italian villa he designed for me. He made me a studio to write in on the second floor. Then we bought airships and moved high in the sky. He had his shop on the ground. I was--still am--so very proud of his designs. We talked, laughed, had fun together. Couldn't bear to be apart for more than a day at a time.

Real life had demands on both of us. Real life came first we always said.

I remember once, after a fight, when we both went away angry and both immediately turned back around, he pointed out that we really were not capable of walking away from each other. He said: "I can't leave you. I always come back to you."

Here's a question: do we fall in love with a person? Or in love with the feeling of being in love? Or are they one and the same? What makes love go away? Do we just get tired of each other and the little annoyances become too much? How do you get around that? How do you make love last? Is it even possible?

And how do you let go when you don't want to let go? How do you by the one who left when it is a constant knife in the heart? Is it easier if you end it in anger? Because I can't be angry at him. I just hurt. All the time.

He said "Do you think we are the only star-crossed lovers that ever were? It will get better with time."

He was wrong. We are the only star-crossed lovers I ever was part of, and it isn't getting better.

Marry him, Sophira!

I was cleaning out my computer folders this morning and found this screenshot I took of the map in SL exactly one month ago. It feels so far away now. You see I was in-world moving my stuff out of Valis. It was the end of my home there. The end of everything Draven and I built together. The end of his love. The end of my world.

You can see my blue "home" location in the top left of the picture. You can see the yellow dot that is me standing there. That was the day I went in to take all my things out and leave the place to Draven. He had told me to "delete" his stuff and keep the place. Told me he was leaving Valis, maybe leaving SL, leaving me. I am still not entirely clear in my head where it all went wrong. We both had real lives that had to come first. But, oh, it was good--for 2 years it was so good. This last year, I don't know. It just all went wrong.

Valis was the first place in SL I could call home. I bought the land for Draven, for his birthday in 2007. Added to it so we could build on it. He used to yell at me for buying more and more land. I wanted more for more prims for him to build with. I so loved watching him build, seeing the gorgeous things he could create. He made me an Italian villa, and a gazebo full of stars, we had waterfalls and airships, boats and beautiful gardens on the land and in the sky.  We talked about someday owning a whole sim . . . I would have given him a continent if I could have.  But he was never comfortable with my gifts, I don't know why. I don't think he every understood that those were just things. The had no real value, the only value in the gifts is just to show someone how much you care about them. And I cared. Loved him. I still do, god help me.

So it was ironic to me that as I was dismantling my life in Valis with Draven--perhaps the most painful thing I have ever had to do--there on the map was this sim, Minacci, just to the south, covered in a marriage proposal. I think that might well be the sweetest thing I have ever seen.

Someone--someone very much in love with Sophira--wants to build a life with her. And he took a whole sim to spell out his love for her in letters of a dozen prims each. On a multi-prim platform in the sky.

I say marry him Sophira. Tell him you love him every single day. If you can't live with him in RL then live with him and love him in SL. Love every moment with him as if it is the last.

Hold onto him, Sophira, and don't ever let go.

Jamesen and Tsai

Jamesen and Tsai, originally uploaded by Tsai Jie.

It has been a rough few months for me. In RL, I just lost my father. In SL I lost a man I loved with all my heart, and with him went my faith in what I thought we ever meant to each other.

Jamesen has been with me through all of it. Listening, holding me when I need to be held. Being a shoulder to lean on. Real friends do that, they are there for you. They listen to you even when it is painful or opens their own wounds.

Thank you, Jamesen, for being my friend.

The Good / The Not So Good

It has been an odd week and a half for me. Some good, some not so good.

Not good: I lost my best friend. We'd had fights before. But I guess I always had faith that the friendship would survive. We'd blow up, then we'd talk. This time? Not so much. He's gone.

Good: I discovered some things about myself. I am an incurable optimist. I still believe that love and friendship can survive anything if both sides are willing to try. I still hope that someday we can be friends again.

Not good: I lost the only place I ever called home in SL. I should have known it was coming. I did know. But it still felt like getting a rug pulled out from under me.

Good: I found new land in Zindra, in McGavet. I was only half-heartedly looking, but I found a parcel that the previous owner had named "Serendipity Cove." I figured that was too serendipitous to pass up. And the price was right. The tier was, too. So I bought it.

Not so good: I have no one to share it with.

Kind of good: Another thing I discovered about myself this week is that I am at heart a nest-builder. That will be no surprise to anyone who knows me in RL. I am forever making over, rearranging, remodeling, and shopping for my RL home. When stressed I tend to head for Pier 1, Bed Bath & Beyond, or Home Depot. Even changing the colors of the bathroom towels and soaps can make my day. So it should be no surprise that rebuilding in a new space in SL was fairly theraputic as well. And I needed that therapy.

Neither good nor bad: There is some irony in the fact that I (once again) made a romantic spot to hang out in SL. Dancing, cuddles, and even sex animations. Waterfalls, pools, and gardens. I did mention that I am an incurable optimist, didn't I? And even if the man I would most like to share it with is no longer interested in me, well, at least perhaps I can make a nice place for other lovers to visit, to play.

So keep watching, I'll post pictures as I change the seasons at Serendipity Cove and redecorate regularly. Feel free to come by with your loved one and enjoy the facilities, make yourself at home.

Song for a Friday: "Leave a Light On" by David Cook

Song for a Second Life Thursday: "U Want Me 2" by Sarah McLachlan

This is a hauntingly beautiful song.

The two things that caught my attention are the title, which is in chat speak, and the phrase in the lyrics that speaks of "Our eden . . . A made-up story to fit the picture-perfect world." Sounds like Second Life to me.

Quote of the Day: K. J. Parker

"Love is a confidence trick, that's all. Nature's way of suckering a mammal with a brain and a long vulnerable gestation period into reproducing. Humans can think so ordinary animal-grade maternal instinct wouldn't be enough to make human women go through all that, not if they stopped and thought about what's involved. So you have love. It's a substitute for rational thought; look at it that way, it's the complete antithesis of what being human is all about. Humans can make choices, it's what makes them unique. Love takes all your choices away, and there you suddenly are. Worse still love inevitably leads to the worst pain of all, when you lose the people you love."

--Death talking to Miel Ducas, from K.J. Parker's Evil for Evil

Sci-fi author K. J. Parker's steampunk engineer trilogy, Devices and Desires, Evil for Evil, and The Escapement is a fabulous study in human nature... and shoes, and hunting, and weapons of mass destruction, and war. I could go on, but really, you should just go read them.

Song du Jour: "Won't Go Home Without You" by Maroon 5

Monday's song: "Time After Time"

a Cyndi Lauper song, sung by Shaenon...