With fashion, one plus one does not always equal two. For example, what I am wearing today combines two pieces from Liziaah into something new. I think the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. After all, there are three outfits, not two.
I was drawn to both the dress and the top from Liziaah. I noticed they both had similar embellishment, common in a collection where designers seek to find unifying elements. I though they might work together
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Still round the corner there may wait, A new road or a secret gate….J.R.R.R. Tolkien
I stopped by Faster Pussycat today and saw that Honey Bender-Auer had opened a new store across the plaza called BENDER. Featuring all original mesh and textures, it still has the rock superstar aesthetic that animates Faster Pussycat married to sleek and minimalist silhouettes. This Kyo dress was a must for me. I love how it echoes 18th century silhouettes that we are used to seeing in rich prints and maximal embellishment and here we see it in a solid silver, without visible seams or lines and not a trace of embellishment. It is a celebration of form and it is exquisite. I only have one quibble and it is minor. Since it is sleeveless it was not rigged to the arms or shoulders and so it is not very flexible when moving, It works well with most straightforward poses but if you raise your arms…well, just don’t do that. Thankfully, most of us do not run around SL with our arms raised.
I used Flair’s Maitreya Fingernails °5 as the inspiration for the rest of my styling options including lipstick shade and shoes.
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You can make things float for no reason in SL. So I am doing just that. I have curtains and leaves and a birdcage for no particular reason. Why not? Who says I have to conform to reason? Continue reading
Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light;
I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.
Most of us have an atavistic fear of the dark. It makes sense, many animals hunt at night. While we may hunt by day, at night we are the prey. I have always loved the dark, though. During the day, the lake I grew up on would be busy with people fishing and waterskiing. I have had more than one daytime close call with a speed boat driven by reckless people who never think to look for swimmers. I loved to swim in lake at night when the boats were silenced and sleeping, put to bed for fear of being run aground in the narrow lanes between the islands. While there might be a few hundred people on the lake during the day, at night I was often the only one. Of course, it was never quiet. There were the frogs, crickets, owls, timber wolves and best of all, the loons, all competing for lead vocals in the nightly concert.
We were in the country so the moon and stars reflected and refracted in the waves. I would swim toward the ribbon of moonlight even knowing I could never catch it. I suppose it was my own brand of recklessness, swimming alone for hours among the stars, but it was magical, too. Sometimes I pulled out my canoe and paddled so i was lined up with the moon’s reflection and then jumped in, diving down to the touch the bottom of the lake which never got much deeper than forty feet. I liked the deep water where the lake bottom was made of marl rather than muck or clay. Something about swimming in utter blackness captivated me and I never felt afraid.
I miss living by the lake and going swimming. Lakes in Oregon are glacier fed and not really suitable for swimming. That has not stopped me, but in water that cold, you can’t laze about in the water and drift. You can’t lay back and let yourself sink into the inky water and pretend you are floating among the stars.
Of course, standing on Kalopsia’s broken floor is not exactly sinking into inky depths either, and I am standing, now swimming, but I am eagerly waiting for sun to set and for the evening chorus to begin. I am with cranes instead of loons and they are paper (from DDD for Collabor88), so they will be unaccountably quiet. If they could speak, however, they would rave about my adorable dress from ur.favorite.one (u.f.o.) that is at Collabor88 this month.
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I hate it when I wake up suddenly in a strange place. Sometimes I’m unsure where I am and it can be quite confusing. I had a good three days at the beach, relaxing while my typist was away but it would’ve been perfect had not storms blown in on day two. Continue reading
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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So much to do today, I need to pack for a trip for a few days, I need to blog, I need to just do all my SL things but I decided instead that brunch with Whimsy had to come first. We plotted and gossiped the way women do and moaned over how we’d like some eggs benedict in real life now that we’ve been teased with it in SL. Continue reading
Pixel Gidge is exhausted from the sun she’s soaked up all day. I’ve been struggling with a bikini top that worked for me, they were all just “off” no matter what body I was wearing, but this one I dug up from Luxe Paris – great for a big rack 🙂 . Unless you have a freakishly big rack, then I can’t help you.
I’ve got a new dresser to find space for, I’m struggling with the idea that it might actually be time to move house – but how can I leave when my view is SO AMAZING? No I might just have to reorganize inside, this house is designed for viewing amazing scenery which I have. Yes, that’s my plan. Reorganize.
But first you’re going to have to excuse me, I’ve got shower off. I’m dying of sweat.
Gidge is Wearing:
Gloss: [PXL] LipGloss #2 (tattoo)
Lashes: Amacci – Eyelash Tattoo 6
Beauty Mark: [PXL] Beauty Mark POS10 Light DX
Body: -Belleza- Isis
Hair: .Olive. the Chorus Hair – Hair Fair 2015
Bottoms: Baiastice_Ruffle Bikini-Fandango-LOWER-size M BAIASTICE
Top: Luxe Paris Chica Bella Bikini Top S
Shoes: NX-Nardcotix La Nuza Stiletto Black (Belleza)
Skin: [PXL] Shara Carnival NAT Makeup 03 LEB C2
Eyes:IKON Eternal Eyes – Periwinkle (S)
Desk: Cheeky Pea
Dresser: Second Spaces – COLLABOR88 July 2015
In my youth I was notorious for ONE MORE when I got home. Just ONE MORE. You hate for the fun to end, just one more drink, something fun before you let sleep take over. It’s a time waster, filling your hours until reality returns. But it provides relief from whatever you’re avoiding anyway – at least sometimes it does.
Two things to share on this Thursday. I just realized that this dress I blogged the other day actually comes in sizes FITTED to the Belleza body – I’m wearing my Isis body and the version of the dresses FOR that body. HOT DAMN. That’s brilliant. Continue reading