Who Needs A Second Life?

ok, Makropoulos is back,

and she is pissed.

( pantherfile.uwm )

Makropoulos, for those of you who don't know,

is the personality I channel

when I have time to channel.

Makropoulos is a woman who has been alive for 420 years,

or some ungodly period of time like that,

doomed to wander the earth

in a body that's say, roughly

24 years old

Though, I should tell you,

after this period of time

it's starting to show some age.

Anyway,

I'm back,

and I have to comment on this

phenomenon

called

Second Life

I went onto Second Life the other night--

I thought it would be a cool place to be

Makropoulos,

and perhaps it could be a cool place to be

Makropoulos,

but they wouldn't let me take that name!

So that was my first problem in Second Life --

I really dug the body I got to choose,

but I couldn't figure out how to change

my clothes.  My Second Life Self somehow got dressed in

this stupid flippy little teenaged dress

that I just wouldn't be caught dead in.

And I couldn't figure out how to change it,

but I did determine:

the options they offered me were,

well, not exactly the styles I would like to wear.

 

That was my Second Problem with Second Life --

and then I got stuck wandering through all these 

precontrived places, precontrived

in someone else's brain,

and not even half as interesting

as the rest of the real world really is.

I mean, honestly, gang,

I've lived in the rest of the world:

I've lived in London,

France,

Germany,

Greece,

Turkey, 

Thailand,

Canada,

India,

and most recently,

the United States of America,

and when you put the effect of living

in those places,

as well as travelling to many other places,

multiple times,

alongside the world of 

Second Life,

well, one of them pales,

and it isn't the planet we live on.

That's the truth.

So, that was my Third Problem with Second Life

But that also takes me to the thing

I really liked

about Second Life:

the first person I met was French.

I was being so lazy, using English - I mean,

that's been my primary language for 

over 100 years,

and when her first sentence was French,

I was at first quite surprised,

and then I realized,

that Second Life is a place

that requires

Second Languages,

not to mention

Third of Fourth

Languages.

Because

people in Second Life could be from

anywhere.

Second Life gets rid of those

geographical boundaries, and puts us

all together, in one

space without time and space.

Well, to say the least,

I struggled with my French.

I mean, I haven't used it for nearly

100 years.

And then I began thinking:

I'd better brush up on my German,

And my Spanish,

and my Turkish,

if I really want to get around

in Second Life.

(or even in blog life)

That is the First Good Thing,

and perhaps

THE BEST THING

about Second Life.

I was struggling with flying,

since I have a Mac,

and loving the idea of flying,

 but getting more and more frustrated

by a very essential feature of Second Life-

the avatar itself.

After I excused myself from the French

woman, who I must applaud

for struggling with English,

while I struggled with French,

(her parting statement to me 

was "kiss")

anyway, after that rather

sweet encounter, I found

myself catapulted from one

mediocre Second Life 

location to the next,

until I seemed to get stuck 

in one, where I finally

found other players who

spoke English, and one

dashing male avatar walked

up to me and said: did you see 

anyone around here?

There's some people

behind me, I said,

and he said: yeah,

I know them. But is

there anyone else?

(as if to say: I know 

them; they bore me;

I'm looking for the 

cool folks, and I said

"I don't know; I'm a stranger here myself."

And he said "yeah,

me too," then went

dashing away,

looking for someone

else, not me.

And I thought: 

crap, I could do that in my First Life.

This gets me to the Fourth Problem With Second Life,

and the Reason I Won't Do It Again, for awhile:

You see, I feel that I'm already

in an avatar. 

This body,

I live in,

is my earthly

avatar,

it's the form I chose

to use for 

this stretch of time

on this earthly domain.

I have enough trouble,

and enough fun,

negotiating this earthly

avatar,

why the hell would I need another?

Sure:

some people may act out

their wildest fantasies,

their real self,

in the Second

World, and 

(and perhaps because)

they actually believe

this Earth

is the First World,

when in actual

fact

Earth is the Second Life.

Second Life for me

is a Third Life

that I really don't need.

After all my time

on this Earthly Plane,

I've come to realize

that when you're damned

to eternal life on this Second Life Planet,

which I am,

you would be in torment,

if you did not always live it

as your true self.

So for me,

I am true to my fantasy self

-my real, Other self-

in this life,

 all the time,

knowing that THIS

is the Second Life.

THIS is the place

where we've been required

to get it right.

the first time,

the only time,

so when we head back

to the First Life,

the only life,

the eternal life,

we know the following things:

what it is to be good,

what it is to be bad,

and what it is to know the difference,

and what it is to say: "that's too bad" or

"that's too good."  The eternal life

that knows all these things,

is the perfect life,

and that's what I am 

striving for.

World Without End. 

(  freakingnews  )