The newest dress from Thalia Heckroth™ is all about the back. It is a simple sheath that is quite plain in the front and then, once your back is turned, reveals a lot of skin and a lot of design.
That does not mean it is severe. The front has a deep scoop neck and is open under the arms, so it is revealing, but with restraint.
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Francis Bacon,the great scientist-philosopher wrote, “In order for the light to shine brightly, the darkness must be present.” The truth of this is demonstrated every time I work with projectors. They are brightest when it is darkest. I thought of this quote, though, in relation to this avant garde outfit from Liziaah. It explores form and texture and through its form, the interplay of dark and light. Released in deep, dark shades of aubergine, royal blue and black, the colors provide the darkness.
Explorations of form, curving shapes and an open back reveal the light of exposed skin made brighter by their relation to the dark, rich fabrics.
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Mami Jewell has released a new dress in many colors. This teal version and it’s available in a limited edition on Marketplace.
Here you can see it in all its exuberant glory, with flexi panels that add movement and grace.
A.A. Milne’s wonderfully wistful Winnie the Pooh once said “Some people talk to animals. Not many listen though. That′s the problem.” I am sure we would be a in a better place if we listened to what the animals are telling us about our environment, but as to not listening…They never had a cat like Oscar. Listening to Oscar is not a choice. There is no not-listening option. You see, with Oscar, if you don’t listen immediately, he just gets louder and louder and louder and he does not stop. He perseveres. This comes up when he decides he wants me to lift up the corner of the quilt on my bed or the lap quilt on the couch so he can crawl under. I know he will not stop, so I am well-trained and immediately hop to it when he begins to meow (Howl is more accurate.) But then sometimes he looks at me like “what are you thinking?” and walks off tail in the air. Ten minutes later, he is back to howling for a blanket lift. After a few cycles, I try to ignore him. It never works. He perseveres.
Helen Mirren gave an interview earlier this month that shocked some and made me happy. She said that she wished she had told more people to “fuck off” and it is not the first time. She once said if she had a daughter, that would be one of the first phrases she would want to teach her. As Mirren explained, “Unfortunately, at least for my generation, growing up (we didn’t say that) and I love the fact that girls are so much more confident and outspoken than my generation were. We were sort of brought up to be polite and sometimes politeness, in certain circumstances, is not what’s required, you’ve got to have the courage to stand up for yourself occasionally when it’s needed.”
I think a lot of us need to say those words more often. We often do things we do not want to do out of social expectations and traditions that really require a good fuck off. Of course, sometimes there are obligations and job requirements that just don’t allow us to say that, but then we have Second Life® and if there is any place on the planet where we should be free to do as we please, it should be Second Life.
That’s why I never feel bad about wearing clothes as I please and not just as they come in the folder. Of course, I don’t feel that is really saying “fuck off” to the designer, instead it is just showing that they clothing is more versatile that first envisioned. Of course, in this case, I think wearing this dress differently than pictured in the vendor ad is intentional, otherwise, why would the designer make it so versatile.
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“I am the shore and the ocean,
awaiting myself on both sides.
I travel
always arriving in the same place.” ― Dejan Stojanovic, The Shape
Yesterday was a hard day for me. My mind was occupied with thoughts of friends in extremis, whose difficulties and hardships I cannot lighten. It was also the second anniversary of Squinternet’s death and I still miss her open-hearted friendship and humor. I guess in Second Life, as in my my first, when feeling sad and ineffective, I head for the water for new energy. Whether I find myself lakeside or on the shore of the sea or an ocean, there is something about the inexorable sound of the waves that comforts me. No matter what, the waves will continue, an infinite sound loop that I find comforting.
I may have felt sad on the inside, but I looked anything but on the outside. I was wearing this indecently sexy new swimsuit from Liziaah. It comes in five colors. I chose the Aqua, as you can see. The folder comes with all the standard sizes plus one made to fit Slink Physique, which I am wearing. I love the marine inspired embellishments that make me think this is the sort of swimsuit that Diane de Poitiers might have worn if Henry II had been the king of Atlantis instead of France.
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Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind,
But as for me, hélas, I may no more.
The vain travail hath wearied me so sore,
I am of them that farthest cometh behind.
Yet may I by no means my wearied mind
Draw from the deer, but as she fleeth afore
Fainting I follow. I leave off therefore,
Sithens in a net I seek to hold the wind.
Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt,
As well as I may spend his time in vain.
And graven with diamonds in letters plain
There is written, her fair neck round about:
Noli me tangere, for Caesar’s I am,
And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.
Sir Thomas Wyatt
Lea8 is home to the stunning Love, Henry, an installation that celebrates one of the most consequential love affairs of history, that between Henry VII and Anne Boleyn. But Henry was not the first man to fall in love with Anne. Before him was Harry Percy and Sir Thomas Wyatt who wrote that poem about her after he had been warned off. He went off to Italy for a while, though he came back in time to be caught up in the contrived ruse to eliminate Anne to make way for the third wife who finally gave Henry the son he so desperately needed. 
Henry and Anne are a popular subject because love matches are rare in royal history and their story is so very rich with passion and drama. However, their story is also important because the world would be very different if Henry had not fallen so desperately in love with Anne. This led to his rupture with the Catholic Church and with Spain. It’s possible without passion urging him forward, he would have waited for Catherine, who was not well, to die before seeking a new, young and fertile wife. Spain did not have Salic law and he may have looked to their example and pushed for a change in English law so Mary could inherit. He definitely would have married her off before menopause so she would have been able to have children. Henry would never have raided the wealth of the church and England would never have had the funds to build its great navy.
While it is possible Mary could have married her cousin James V and united Scotland and England, I doubt Henry would want a son-in-law in waiting on his northern border. It is too bad, we could have been spared Mary Queen of Scots and the countless books making a heroine of a relentlessly stupid woman. It is more likely Mary would have married her Spanish cousin Charles V (father of her eventual husband) and, if Henry had no son, he would have ruled when Mary took the throne. Without the war with Spain, the British would not have defeated the Spanish at sea and both North and South America would have been Spanish colonies. England would have remained a Catholic country and there would never have been a Glorious Revolution to rid her of a Catholic king which means John Locke may have never written his treatises on government that were the foundation for the American, French, Vietnamese and many other revolutions
The Arborea gown from The Annex is a stunning ecru silk taffeta gown worthy of a queen. It has lovely leaf print panniers.
Protestantism might have still spread throughout Europe, though, and brought with it The Enlightenment and democracy, but it would have been slower and later and it is possible it would have been suppressed far, far longer. Religious wars and persecutions probably would have continued even beyond the 40 Years War because Spain, and with it, the Holy Roman Empire, would have not lost so much power and money to England and would have had more resources to wage war against Protestantism. The British might never have become a worldwide Empire without its great navy, the direct result of its war with Spain when the Spanish King tried to overthrown Anne and Henry’s daughter Elizabeth. Since Spain’s method of colonization was very different from England’s model, the entire world would be vastly different. Continue reading
We are living even now among punishments and ruins…Wendell Berry
Portland is not burning, but much of the Pacific Northwest is. Today, the smoke is thick and heavy and makes my throat sore. I get frequent updates from friends in Washington, Idaho and eastern Oregon. Wildfire smoke covers the region like a shroud and a new mother frets because even indoors the air irritates her eyes and wonders what it might be doing to her infant. Trying to be upbeat, a young woman snaps a selfie wearing a bandana to protect herself from the smoke with the comment, “The Sundance Kid Goes Grocery-Shopping.” I tell a friend to go through her old photos and gather pictures for her friend whose home on the Nez Perce reservation was destroyed, knowing from my own experience that among the most enduring losses of a fire are the pictures and memories of childhood.
The wettest rainforest in the United States is burning. Widely and silently understood, the reason there are wildfires in a rainforest is perfectly clear to the people, but seldom expressed by the powerful. It reminded me of something Wendell Berry wrote. “The most alarming sign of the state of our society now is that our leaders have the courage to sacrifice the lives of young people in war, but have not the courage to tell us we must be less greedy and less wasteful.”
Berry also wrote, “Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do.”
Insilco North makes me think of a fire-scorched planet, scraped bare
Although the science is settled, you do not have to understand science to know whether we should act or not. All you have to do is consider what the consequences are for being wrong. If those who say we must act to save the environment are wrong, the worst thing that will happen is we waste some money, perhaps some people will lose jobs and maybe there may be a recession while the economy adjusts. It won’t be permanent. If the people who say do nothing are wrong, well, the consequences are devastating, permanent and fatal. With the consequences of a wrong decision so completely out of balance, why is there even a debate? To go once again, to Wendell Berry, “We have lived by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. We have been wrong. We must change our lives, so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption that what is good for the world will be good for us.”
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Langston Hughes, one of America’s greatest poets, wrote that we must “hold fast to dreams” for if they die, life is like a bird who has broken wings and cannot fly. When dreams go, he wrote, “Life is a barren field frozen with snow.” I think this is an important truth that we must all hold onto. Dreams animate us. They keep us from drifting into a stagnant contentment. Chuck Palahniuk wrote “Let me never be content.”
Sometimes people stop seeking happiness, settling for contentment. I think contentment is a trap. It is a yield sign on life’s highway. That’s where dreams come in. Unlike goals, they need not be realistic, they can be far-fetched, but they can set a framework for realistic goals that guide us toward self-fulfillment and happiness.
It is more important to have dreams than to achieve them. Hope is more powerful than success and hope is what dreams are made of.
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I’m not obsessed
So don’t forget it
It’s just a silly phase I’m going through
I must confess that clothing appliers amuse me. After all, when I began back in 2007, most clothing was made of textures applied on the avatar’s system layer. Details like buttons and collars and cuffs were usually drawn on and even photo sourced clothing had an air of unreality to it. Flexis and sculpts added depth and form, but they did not add verisimilitude. And then came mesh and there was a revolution in fashion where most of the design effort was focused on the forms, the shape, the buttons, collars and other details and the fabrics were added later. Because the barriers to entry for mesh creation are higher in terms of skills and software, several designers retreated and retired. Now that mesh bodies have replaced the system body for thousands of us, we are back to applying textures, this time on the mesh body. It does seem like we have come full circle – though with a distinct revolution in quality.
For example, this swimsuit from MiaMai is put on with an applier. It’s from the quarterly My Slink Obsession event that opens tomorrow. Certainly there are lots of mesh swimsuits and even several that don’t flash unsuspecting bystanders, though I think they are in the minority. However an applied swimsuit has its advantages, especially for those bystanders when one is sitting down and shifting positions in a chair. Another reason to love appliers is how much easier it makes layering. All of us have struggled with trying on a dozen blouses trying to fine one that will fit under a jacket and longed for the days of system clothing when layering was as easier as one, two, three. This brings back that ease coupled with the higher quality of the mesh body.
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