HOME is where my HEART is!

Again and again I am forced to reflect about HOME: What is home? Why am I confronted so many times in my life(s) with this topic? What can I learn from my experiences?

I was happy in Second Life - I as my avatar and my clicker as well. Monkey was my home - I really felt like a Monkey! I wanna place analogies today to learn. So the question to ask would be: Did I ever feel like home somewhere in real life? I am happy to state: Yes, I really feel home in the town I moved for studies and stayed till now. Once I questioned it in earlier years, but after a month near polar circuit and some weeks in the US I knew again, home is in this town which allows me to live close to the beach. I guess that is one really important part of my personal favorized home location: water. I love water! And I definetly have more connection to the sea then to my home town. And I always lived seaside in Second Life - from the early days till today.

But am I connected to a certain house? No! Not yet? Who knows what might be one day in the future...
In Second Life I even did change my houses living on the same land plot. Could I say I am vagrant or am I just flexible to adapt to living various circumstances? In Second Life as in real life? Most of my Second Life living situation is displayed in this article: http://myavatarmind.blogspot.de/2010/11/my-residential-history.html. Its my tenth move in regions in Second Life.  In real life I will manage the 15th move of my life in the near future. But well, I might be a bit older in real life than in Second Life.

Right now in real life I am forced to move as well as in Second Life. The RL home will become a major building site for minimum a year and who wants to live on site? Not us! So RL a new flat was needed and we were lucky enough to find a better place in a terrible estate situation not too far away from the old one.
In Second Life my old home will sink. The ocean will absorb Monkey soon. There will just be Monkeys at heart left - no "real" residents anymore. Monkey will be gone - always and forever. Something which makes me sad, as it really felt like home. Now, I found a new home. A "better" one, as my hut at Monkey was shabby - well I chose it that way myself. It's a more expensive one as well. If I could choose I'd avoid that part in SL as well as in RL, but the market claims the price, eh!? ,-) Will I feel like part of a special community like I did when I was a Monkey? Rarely...
But as I realize that is one thing I liked about Monkey, may I be able to become part of another community in my new RL district? Maybe, as I now know, that this is something I might care about. I might try harder now, even if I'm kinda individual person.

In Second Life I chose a place for living close to my favorite neighbor and friend Dee. I already lived on that sim sometime ago. Funnily I just realize, I move back to a part of my town, where I already lived in RL as well. Not 'cause of a neighbor though, but because I was happy over there. I keep some of my social surroundings and add some new. Kinda similar, eh?

Last but not least, home is where my heart is. In Second Life my heart mostly belongs to the arts, my thoughts, writing about it and talking to my SL friends what some days motivate me to blog like today (thanks Vally! ;-))
In RL I am happy I can start a new chapter of living in an environment I already loved once with the people I love most. And I might write....and they lived happy ever after!
(Well, not in Second Life. I bet there are some more chapters to write here ,-))

Blogging at Monkeys for the last time!?

A must to go and enjoy...already checked out the sim, while making the poster for the invitation.

Where am I nowadays?

Miss R kinda vanished. Miss R that was me, is still me, but I am hardly acting in Second Life the last month. Some people make up stories about unused avatars meeting up in a bar, where they hang, till their clickers want to use them in a virtual world. I don't believe in that theory. Well, actually I know, that such place does not exist at all. Avatars vanish or even die like real people do, when they dissapear. Mostly the thoughts about us - the vanished ones - by other people or avatars or even clickers keep us alive, in memory. Maybe this is, why people collect pictures in virtual worlds, like lots do in the real world - to keep images alive. And this synthetic world does not only change constantly people wise, the landscape changes over night often and areas dissapear from one day to the other.

I'm not gone forever, even if this is one of my longest periods I did not materialize in my world. Well once in a while I have to, to pay the rent for my home, as I still live at Monkey Beach. But I didn't hang with friends, went to my favorite club CBGB (http://slurl.com/secondlife/Lanestris/123/223/99), surfed or explored in ages at it seems. Why is that? What changed? Do I or my clicker miss being here?

I usually was used as an assistant for work, to relaxe my clicker or get her new impressions through explorations. Maybe real life was already bringing a lot of new stuff to her? Maybe she was extraordinary relaxed, maybe she stopped working for a while? She does not tell me. I just know, I miss hanging with my avatar friends some days, the feeling of being involved in this world, getting inspired here, listening to great music and as well as gardening. Gardening yes, no need to water plants in SL, no way you can get dirty hands by gardening, if you don't want to...perfect..just fun and some eye candy.
My clicker just told me, she misses this as well, but for a long time she had no idea, how to get the old vision back, she had, when she was acting in this virtual world through me. That might be different to an online game, where you have given quests to solve and not do what you wanna do, like you can in Second Life, a life sim. Maybe sorting out her own life different in some fields, needed a break from the virtual to find out how to act in here now, with another real life background?

In former days we philosophed about, how you are always one step ahead in the virtual world. Meaning, you often try out stuff, you want for your real life in the virtual, before you go real. Or you see tendencies in your virtual life, that might inspire you for your real life as well. But it seems this can happen the other way around as well. I guess that is why some avatars are dying. For example it's much easier to create a new avatar with a new personality, than turning your avatar personality to another.

Being away has some benefit though. You learn who your "real" friends are. Which the people are, who care for you. People sending you messages, if you are okay, still alive or similar content. People making you go online once in a while to have a chat or send some lines back. People you miss as well. Those people will always be part of the reasons, why avatars come back.  Besides the personal reasons everyone has...I sure will have to go on working for my clicker again. And maybe one day I'll be a lucky avatar again, to be allowed to have a bit of a "private life" again, to just hang and chill in this virtual world. I dream about those days and I know already, I will have to redesign my land, when I come back seriously and not just for a short break, as a symbol for a new era. I don't think, I changed so much, but I know that even small changes in my inner self, were accompanied by new homes here always. And I am curious, what my clicker will be up to when it's time...time to be back! And time to redress....omg I did not redressed since month. I am happy I don't live in "The Sims" where I sure would have died by now, for not using the bathroom or being a totally depressed avatar throwing myself from the rooftop. ;-)

REZZED by Revnik Vernissage

Vernissage at the NEW REZZED by Revnik (moved to Monkey Cove Main Beach):

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Monkey%20Paw/228/13/23

"Light & Shadow Version 3.0"

comes with a surf board line based on the shadow theme

Saturday October 22cnd 12  PM SLT (noon) 9 PM german time

The exhibited pictures are a mixture of real life photography and SL snapshots. They refer to a status of being somehow there and in the same time not totally being there. A way of presence that has a relation to the shadow, which needs something physic and light to appear, but is not physic itself - similar to our presence in this virtual world. We are here, but yet somehow connected to the "real world" and our virtual being is at least in a mental way based on our everyday self. The perception of this world is subjective as the colorizing of the pictures.

The surfboardline is based on a photo series of shadows.
It was developed in the process of creating this exhibition.
Those shadow boards let "your self" glide through the virtual worlds.

Enjoy!

REZZED by Revnik Blog: http://rezzedbyrevnik.blogspot.com/

REZZED by Revnik on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/REZZEDbyRevnik

My Clickers Bookshelf...looking for volunteers

Well, even if we don't talk my clicker seems to read my blog ;-) By accident she grabbed a book from her collection yesterday and found herself looking at that one, which funnily kinda is related to my last blog entry:

It's not only interesting from a historical point of view, as it includes several snapshots to german living rooms at the start of the eighties and is referring to the master living room called "Die Gute Stube". As well it has texts in it, dealing with the question, if an apartment can be a mirror of the soul of its inhabitants or not. Another one asking what makes an apartment a home and an introduction from Manfred Sack from which I wanna cite now:

"...still in many of our living rooms the ruddy "Gute Stube" is alive, this tidy stage on which the inhabitants perform in front of their friends, relatives and visitors (in front of themselves) instead of using this room to really live in. Actually the apartment is not just only a number of rooms, in which one makes themselves comfortable and organizes the allday life, but like clothing a means of expression, a way of language, to express themselves. It provides a feeling of security and consistency, its as comfortable as possible - but as well it allows the inhabitant to represent him/herself and feel connected to him/her ideal of being, and this nearly always one level above on the social ladder as in real..
So most of us reside not like they really are, but like they dream to be or claim to be. [...]"

This somehow sounds kinda familiar related to second life and I will try to follow this track and am looking for people now, who would be so kind to let me portrait them in their SL "living room". If you wanna model for me, please write me a note in Second Life!

Moving always includes a transformation.

Actually my next post should have been one about the Miss Oahu pageant contest I participated over a month ago. But I was pretty exhausted and needed time to recover and there was more important things in life than a pageant. Being first, second or which place ever in a pageant is a luxury problem, which I will write about, when I feel like it later.

So anyways, I again did move.....well my clicker did in real life. And guess what...I suddenly had the need to change somehow as well. I guess that's, what the weird unspoken connection of me and my clicker is about. I guess any avatar has that connection to its clicker, or what do you think? We never speak, but we transport thoughts of the other to the visible. Well, it would be kinda weird, if I'd speak to my clicker, wasn't it? Something like:
"Hey dear...how's going tonight? What can I do to amuse you tonight? Let's find you a boytoy or what you'd like?"
So, to avoid awkward conversations like this, I am better in guessing, what my clickers needs are. And at that point I felt, she needed some change in here as well.

I had such a nice place, which even was used as a movie scenery. I was told people come to the Cove to check out my place and some were sad it had to go....I was too! It was comfy, probably too comfy for my clickers dark minded time. As we never have any conversations, she didn't tell what was up. I am just here to transport feelings and I bet, she didn't even know herself what all was about, at the time she let me remove my pretty home and replace it with a creepy skysphere home at 10.000 meters.  So actually I moved only in high, as Monkeys is still home to me.

My time up in the sky didn't last very long though.  The quiet and creepy place was just right to let my clicker think and think and look at the creepiness, think again and finally made the decision to move down to the beach again and build up something different again down there.

Something must have happened, but as we never talk, I have no idea what. Besides my favorite neighbor told me all the time, its not the same to life in the sky. She was right, but I think it was a necessary experience to "us". It took a while as always to have a version of the new home that "we" were happy with. And funnily the color palette was a totally different then ever before.

As often the feelings and emotions are there before we even recognize what the change means for the real life of our clicker. But I am sure she will find out soon!

Today's The BIG Day

I wrote my introduction, bought new shoes, chose my outfits and even fixed my hair...so I guess I'm well prepared for the 2011 Miss Tropic Hawaiian Peagan Contest at Oahu Sim in the Bruddah Iz Amphitheater.
I remembered when writing about my vacation at Oahu, that I have to come back, when the Sim is more populated. And recognizing that there is this peagant once a year - this year the 4th time. So my decision to be back at Oahu that day was made month ago, but the decision to participate last minute. I'm usually not the girl going for fashion events or any kinda beauty contests. Beauty is very subjective and I never liked commercial beauty. My clicker though likes to watch "Project Runway" once in a while and creating fashion is an art as any art. Today I will wear a high fashion gown and my swimwear will be very classy, instead of very slutty - which I always try to avoid. So if you wanna see a side of me, which you never experience in allday life, you should come by at Oahu Sim. Today no "Rockstar" hair, no boots, no leisure clothes or surf wear. And I'm very curious, how it will feel, being there....maybe I need some days of vacation and stick at Oahu afterwards, when I find someone joining me ;-)

Read more about the event here : http://www.slenquirer.com/2011/07/miss-tropic-hawaiian-pageant-2011-has.html