Today, Love Hurts.

Today I will be weak.
I will walk into my 'secret garen' and allow myself to be vunerable.
I will share my vunerability here because it is like this: "If a tree falls down in a forest and you do not here it, did it still make a sound?"

If I sit here crying because I allow it and no one hears me or sees me, is my crying all in vain?

I say I am a photojournalist. And I am.

I take photographs of life with my eyes and try not to use my 'filters of perception' to distort the true meaning of the image that is captured and saved in my brain.

And for every photo ... every moment that is recorded, my heart has a caption.

Today my vision is blurred, thru the tears that cover my eyes and today my heart has this caption for what is blurred to me:

"Even when I did not know you
I knew you existed
My eyes do not have to see you
in order to know 'you are there'
but the meeting in avatar form
was but a mere window of opportunity
that the Universe did allow for us
to see what there was to see
not with our eyes but with our hearts.

Now my eyes are blurred but the
vision in my heart is still clear.
Your existence has become reality for me
and your love, a cosmic gift.

We really are two souls that have been seeking one another for many lifetimes.
So our meeting was not by chance. It was destiny.
That is what you always would say anyway.
But we still carry the burdens of a 3 dimensional world
and the HIGHER LOVE within us cannot exist freely
if we still choose to hold onto our ego's.

Why can't we just let go of these burdens?
Why can't we just bask in the LIGHT of our LOVE?
Why is our physical always trying to find ways
to destroy the spiritual?
Why?

Today, I do not have the anwser.
And I may never find that answers to those questions.
But I am sure that the answer is there.
It will present itself when my heart is ready to see.

Today, my heart can only see you.

I will miss you.

Parlez Vous Français?

Yes, yes, yes, I realize I am a week late with this post but I am not going to let another week go by without mentioning this here. I'm only a little disappointed, as this 'press party' was exactly that, for the 'press' to preview the new Jean-Paul Gaultier perfume "Fleur du Mâle".

My dear friend Ben Vanguard of www.slmen.comwas fortunate enough to experience a double reality! His job in RL working for a famous Ad Ageny in Paris met with his project in SL, creating www.slmen.com. For him he can truly say, "WORLD's COLLIDE!" Bravo Ben!

Well, the French did it again! Always at the cutting edge of Fashion and Style, and now they've managed to bring their marketing strategies into this generation's newest and hottest platform, 3D Web.

Vera Wang, Michael Kors. eat your heart out!

Faces of me ...

Upon entering Second Life














In love














Still in love














After the divorce - hey, they say that hair holds a memory, so I had to chop it off. Yes. The Divorce actually hurt - even if it was only SL.














Recovering and starting to become ME again .. but not quite.

It's the end of an era.

I now wonder about that era, especially when it never really seemed to 'take off' the way it was supposed to.
I had a dream. I had a plan. I thought I executed it pretty well.
I bought land, I built on it, landscaped it and soon it had occupants that actually liked to stay. I thought of expanding into what I had always wanted to do in RL - open are Art Gallery.

An Art Gallery. It was to be my 'baby'. Something that would keep me busy and in touch with the art world both in SL and RL.
I could actually realize my dream and it would also be a place to display my digital photos in another venue.

Then something happened that came so suddenly.
I had forgotten my dream, my plan, I had abandoned my Second Life for the 'time and acceptance' of someone that did not even care what I did. *sigh*

I was stumped. As a woman, I fell into that mode of 'leaving my dreams and projects and work just to spend time with a man that did not really support me, unless it involved 'something for him'. *sigh*

My land. My 21000+ sqm land that I bought back in December '06 - I sold. I sold it on an emotional whim.
I sold it to prove to this man that I was 'not attached to virtual land'. I sold it to prove that I could have what it takes to do business .. when all along, I always KNEW I was good in sales and was very good with people.

He just never saw that. He thought he knew way more than I because of what I was in RL. But he did not even KNOW ME. He did not know my skills or talents or strength (or perhaps he refused to see them) ... he did not take the time to see what was in front of him all along.

This was not his fault. It was mine. I made decisions based on the mere fact that I wanted him to still love me.
When in fact, I NEEDED to LOVE MYSELF.

Hmmmm, you live and you learn. Even in SL you live and learn.

Where do I stand now?

I am not sure.

I know I need to regain the ME that I had forgotten about. I think I have regained ME. I am strong, I am talented, I have skills, I am likeable and most important I do not 'HAVE TO' or WILL never need to prove to anyone WHO I AM and WHAT I AM.

The only person that needs to be sure of that is - ME. After all, it is ME who has to ultimately live within my own SKIN.

I have blogged about this very issue of women BEING WHO THEY ARE, despite what any man or anyone says, and well, I fell.
Am I angry? Oh yes! I am angry at myself. I am disappointed that I allowed things to happen in my second life this way. It was my choice to do what I wanted to do even if the underlying reasons were wrong.

But I am back again on the right track. I am ME again, and this energy alone was enough to meet wonderful people these past few days that actually appreciate my skills and ME.

I will be very busy with my SL projects and I am excited to get back to the swing of things, PRE-MAN *smiles*

The Art Gallery is gone. The owner of the land that I sold to deleted it. *sighs* Oh well, I can always rebuild another one. The thing that gets to me though.. is now, I feel I have to START MY SL ALL OVER AGAIN ... when I should not have to.

Take note female readers ... always listen to your 'gut instinct' - it never steers you wrong. NEVER.

For the past few months, I had mine MUTED.

After finally finished building the 'Theatre in the Park' I had to stop and take a rest. I sat on the stool on the stage and imagined a crowd of avatars all sitting and cheering .. or listening intently to whatever was going on at the front.
Someday, this stage will bring in all forms of talent that people can appreciate.
Someday, this stage will hold up an avatar whose words and ideas will resonate among the masses.
Someday, a poem will be recited here .. and it will touch the heart of one person.
That was then...

I found this photograph that was taken when the equipement was added to the stage.
I later took down the 'Theatre in the Park' after having a talk with my good friend Rosedrop Rust .. about 'live streaming'.
I wanted the Emerald Isle to be a place where people can feel safe to live, work and play.
I had to rethink the Theatre location.
I didn't want to create unnecessary lag for the residence so I chose not to have the Theatre at Emerald.
For now, the build sits in my inventory along with all the other lighting and sound equipment .. waiting for a home.

DJ YSABEL

There's nothing like spinning a set of great tunes for a great crowd at a great venue!
I would mention the name of the place but for the life of me .. the name slipped my mind.
It was one of those nights that even an avatar like me can place on her list of "things I did that were WOW!"
This was definitely a WOW experience. All you need to know was that the Bee Gee's never sounded so good!

If At First You Don't Succeed, Bring a Friend

After my near bloody SL death from my first skydiving attempt, I made sure to read the notecard that came with the parachute .. on how to open it. "Haste makes waste" and in that case, "Haste could have made serious avatar waste" had this been RL. OMG! What am I saying. I decided to bring a friend along who had never skydived before. Did we have fun?! Oh Yes! And then some!














I hired a photographer friend to take photos of our descent. I wasn't too pleased with the results. I could've done way better.. but then again, beggars can't be choosers.














On our 5th skydive I did not see my partner back at the launch site. I had this funny ache in my stomach too. I waited for a bit, then decided to go to the landing site ... I did not find him there.. but instead heard a lot of commotion just a few meters away. And this is what I saw ... *gasp*














It turned out that my partner's chute had failed to open and he landed right on the road after having hit a few trees on the side of the mountain. He not only landed on the road but a guy failed to stop when he saw him, and ran him over!~














A passerby stopped to help. He wanted to take my friend to the hospital. I *snickered*. The intention was good but ummmm .... do they even have a hospital in SL? Do they even need a hospital in SL? Hmmm? Partner still could not get up. Either something was broken or he was left temporarily script paralyzed.














Well, the passerby decided to pass on by, promising to find a hospital or an ambulance or whatever, while the 'hit and stay' dude insisted on hanging around jamming out his hip hop tunes from his 14 inch sub woofers. Meanwhile, partner was still down and 'inoperable'.














All of a sudden, we were deserted and there wasn't another avatar around for miles. I had to compose myself. I felt helpless and wished I knew what to do in cases such as these, but I didn't remember seeing a Linden Lab handbook for "What to do with inoperable scripts!"
*sigh*














Then miracles of miracles!
Partner just as easily got up and started walking again!
Nothing was rendered 'inoperable'!
It was as if the entire scene was a blurr!















All was well in Second Life!
I think we'll just stick to motorcylce riding for awhile.