I am still traveling, visiting my middle sister, my oldest sister, my younger brother, my nieces, my nephews and all the family. A trip to the family cemetery, the old homestead my grandparents built and of course, feasting everywhere I go. It’s tuckered me out which is why my pixel self is napping at Isle of Peace, a beautiful spot to rest and relax
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Gemütlichkeit is a world I picked up from this wonderful web site I found the other day. Even it it means you wander away for hours, I want you to check you out. It’s a collection of untranslatable words. Words that convey concepts, that have no equivalent in our language, at least not in a single word. It is fun.
I am wearing the dress I wore in my last blog post, in a print this time. It comes in a solid or print version with six options in the texture huds. My last post was nothing but head shots, so I wanted to show you the back which is just so adorable. The house is the San Clemente from Barnesworth Anubis. It’s a great house and I will show you around inside, but the name makes me think of Richard Nixon, since that was where he was from.
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Clawtooth by Clawtooth Over and Over
Ram Dass, a pop spirituality writer, once said, “We are all just walking each other home.” It is a quote that has stayed with me since the day I first heard it.
Bubbles Clawtooth is walking his mother home. Bubbles’ mama has ALS, a neurodegenerative disease created to break hearts and spirits, but Bubs is too strong, too busy, and too needed to fall apart except perhaps for moments of silent screaming while driving to the pharmacy or grocery store. Because he is her child and her caretaker, he wrote that he feels like “the primary joy in her world which is both a treasure and a large cross to bear. Being strong when your heart feels like it’s shattering along with there being 24-hour needs and very little time for autonomy is by far the most difficult thing Bubs has ever had to face (and Bubs has faces some things darlings). It’s a living nightmare in one moment and a dear treasure the next.” Bubbles finds the strength in his love and joy in his service, but that does not make this walk easy.
Sometimes it helps when someone walks with you a little distance,even if only in spirit. So I propose a Blogger Challenge to show our support and solidarity with Bubbles.
How do you know, when you think blue — when you say blue — that you are talking about the same blue as anyone else?
You cannot get a grip on blue.
Blue is the sky, the sea, a god’s eye, a devil’s tail, a birth, a strangulation, a virgin’s cloak, a monkey’s ass. It’s a butterfly, a bird, a spicy joke, the saddest song, the brightest day.
Blue is sly, slick, it slides into the room sideways, a slippery trickster.
This is a story about the color blue, and like blue, there’s nothing true about it. Blue is beauty, not truth. ‘True blue’ is a ruse, a rhyme; it’s there, then it’s not. Blue is a deeply sneaky color.”
― Christopher Moore, Sacré Bleu: A Comedy d’Art
I am reading The Culture of Make Believe by Derrick Jensen. I think I will have to just buy this book and return the copy I am reading to the library. Like Wendell Berry, Jensen’s book is too rich in subject matter to just read. It will be one I want to go back to again and again. I am reading it slowly, pausing after each conclusion or big idea to think. The underlying theme is that by viewing our world as an object to possess and exploit instead of seeing it as this living, breathing subject whose existence is vital, we become alienated from the world and all sorts of other ills are natural consequences of treating everything as an object to own. The writing is beautiful and powerful and full of ideas that I want to remember. He wrote that ““we have a need for enchantment that is as deep and devoted as our need for food and water.”
I think this is true. Wonder and awe are thinks we yearn for and they are most often found outdoors in the natural world.
There is wonder, too, in Second Life®, at the beautiful worlds and stunning landscapes of our virtual world. It is less powerful, but no less real. There is no fresh, brisk breeze with the restorative power of fresh air, but there is the calm and soothing joy of beauty. Take a walk at The Trace Too and the sights and sounds will entrance you. Now if only they could produce virtual fresh air.
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I love the music of Leonard Cohen. I have a playlist I love of Leonard Cohen covers and know nearly all his songs by heart. One of them, Anthem, is one of my favorites because although on one level it despairs of the world; it also calls us to act with hope. “Ah the wars they will be fought again. The holy dove, she will be caught again, bought and sold and bought again. The dove is never free.” It is true, endless wars are a constant stream throughout history, started by governmental leaders, the “killers in high places who say their prayer out loud.”
But then there is the chorus.
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
Ring the bells that still can ring acknowledges that as bad as it is, there are still some things that you can do. Don’t let excuses stop you from doing what you can. “Forget your perfect offering” reminds me of Voltaire’s aphorism “The perfect is the enemy of the good.” Do not wait for the perfect answer, the perfect solution, go with what you’ve got because good enough is better than nothing, and nothing is what you get if you wait for perfect. Everything we can do is going to be slightly imperfect, “there is a crack in everything” but it is those imperfections that reveal our humanity and “that’s how the light gets in.” I love how he asserts that it is in our imperfections that we will save ourselves.
NYU has released fabulous button front shirts that tuck in and by tuck in, I mean there really is a tail that tucks in, they don’t just seem to tuck. The top also has a gorgeous yoked back with a single center pleat adding volume to the body of the shirt. There are coordinating skies in several plaids. The color palette is subdued and autumnal, appropriate now that the northern hemisphere heads back to school and the freshness of fall is in the air. If you look, you can see the skirt has a couple design details to elevate it from the ordinary, including a thoroughly modern peplum that is very different from the usual in that is drapes close to the body and is longer than usual. Unlike most peplums, it is not adding a lot of volume at the hips.
I stopped off at Cape Juniper which is an interesting sim. It has a wedding venue along the shore and a small town with a retro vibe. There is also this derelict and crumbling old church (I am assuming a church) that caught my eye and drew me in.
It didn’t really seem like part of the town, but it was still a lovely spot to visit and take pictures.
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I love the adorable floral blouse and skater skirt that NYU just released for the Wayward Hunt. You will have to hunt for it at the main store because this color will not be sold after the hunt is over. I always love separates because that gives me options to wear the pieces with other items.
I stopped by the beach at Terracotta but I did not wade in as I have new shoes from Ingenue (available at this month’s Collabor88 for now) and wanted to keep them dry.
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NYU’s tapered pants and vested shirt are two separate pieces available at Xiasumi School. The top has a HUD allowing you to choose between six colors for the shirt. The pants come in two versions, one to wear with this vested top and the other to wear with other items. They come in several colors. I chose to wear black with the pinstripe, instead of matching exactly.
I do not worry very much. Worry does not prevent mishaps or change outcomes; at least not for the better. It can only make things worse, distracting us from getting things done, making our minds race with one fret after another. The heroic Corrie Ten Boom had this to say about worry, “Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow; it robs today of its strength.”
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One of the surprises when I moved to Oregon were the magnificent magnolia trees. I had seen them in pictures, of course, but I thought of them as southern trees, not trees to flourish in the Pacific Northwest. But flourish they do. They are in bloom now.
Magnolias have such a grandiose beauty, without fear of being gaudy or flamboyant. They just are what they are. They don’t hide their exuberance, their size or their extravagance. It reminds me of one of my favorite Bible verses, “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow;they toil not, neither do they spin, yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.”
The scarf that is belted to this dress from NYU reminds me a bit of the exuberant magnolia petals. With a color-change HUD, there are 10 plain or 10 print scarf options. The dress itself comes in 10 colors that match the scarf options.
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