winterlines

           I love winter. 
            It’s the darkness, the long dark nights when I can hide, not be seen, pretend the rest of the world is far, far, far away or maybe doesn’t exist at all. In its absence it offers so much, it’s an absence of light but a presence of temptations that dare not come out during the day for being ostracized or bullied.
            A time when shadows are no longer distinguishable from not-shadows, when there are merged or swallowed up by the all-encompassing, as I feel I am when night comes in tracking across my skin, darkening me, reshaping me, remaking me. Every night I feel I’m being rearranged and during the winter there’s longer time for this indulgence to be indulged.
            The sun’s very lethargic during winter, almost to the point of ailing.  Or is it saving it’s energy for longer days?  Even the sun needs a rest after all the work it’s done during the spring, summer and to some extent even autumn, it has to take its toll a little bit and leave it feeling more than a little weary, weather-worn, ragged around the edges.  Hence winter, a time for it to take the time for itself leaving us to our own devices largely, leaving us to face the dark for longer and longer, encouraging us not to ignore that side, the darker side, our negative.  Colourless it may seem but rich in shades and subtlety that light can only dream of and rest on its laurels of spectrum overload to make up for what it lacks in tone.
            The winter embraces, draws me in with offering and often comes through with its tantalizing treats.  Moods are different in the winter. They become secretive, some become agitated, some tetchy, but others become reflective as though looking into the pitch dark lets is see so much more than the exposed glare of a midsummer’s day.
            Others abound also during this time. The normally hidden, forgotten, ignored, rejected, things discarded as myth, as imaginings, hallucinations.  These things exist but need the right conditions to feed and thrive, conditions that winter offers in abundance.  An uneasy balance is struck between unlikely alliances during these forbidden, and for some forbidding, months, the world beyond, or even worlds beyond, are never very far away and the fabric between so thin that merely brushing against it could cause a tear through whose frayed edges nocturnal natures may seep.
             I love the winter, precariously-balanced on the edge of the year.
  © Anan Eebus (16th January 2018)

SL’urring my words

me then....

          I’ve haunted the virtual corridors of Second Life for so long now, I just realized how many years I’d been here and most of it as a one of the undead!
          Though I suppose I’d better make this clearer, undead as in a vampire, but then I thought, well, being a vampire is itself like living in a limbo, an alternative space between the world of the living and of the dead, as in properly dead, and in a way SL is that too.  A place in between two worlds where we schizophrenically live out parts of our existence: between RL, real life, and VL, virtual life. Even though SL is itself the virtual life we aren’t completely virtual being real lives behind the screens and we come and go so not completely one nor the other, and I’ve been doing this for nearly 10 years now I just noticed, just two month shy of it in fact.
          I entered this weird and crazy place in 2008 and found at first it was almost impossible to stop my computer crashing after only brief periods in here.  So after a couple of months I managed to upgrade my computer and voila! I was in proper, for as long a time each time as I wanted. And I’m still here living the life of a supernatural vampire and of recent now become a werewolf half-blood too.  I am busy!   On top of this I also enjoy a swim and transform into my mermaid-self whenever I do as fins are so much better for cutting through the water, even in SL.
          This whole time I’m managed to maintain, sometimes by the skin of my fangs, my status as a vital vampire and since immersed myself further into more walks of vampire lore which has become inextricable to who I am here.  I even bite in RL but that’s another story and possibly one of a more adult nature.
          I’ve also established myself as a photographer and artist here and have set-up a group called unveiled for promoting my works and galleries when I have had them, which at the moment I don’t being I don’t have anywhere for one, nor the money to do it.  The money has always been a bane for me in SL, never had enough and the things I’ve done to earn it, again perhaps a story for another time and when the children have gone to bed.
          So many changes have happened in that time and still keep happening and I never fail to have yet another strange or weirder than weird experience, or meet someone strange and weird, or both!  But despite it all I’m still here and even maintain a Tiny Empires HUD, which won’t mean anything to anyone who doesn’t know about SL, but for those that do I am looking for a new clan/ allegiance in TE so get in touch if you like.
          Anyway, I just wanted to catch up a bit with myself here as I’ve been realizing just for how long I’ve been in a place where time runs at a total different pace than RL, it feels like I’ve had several lifetimes here and yet I’ve always been only the same me, the same avatar, the same Anan Eebus, and yes my hair has been blue from day one. 
          I also am aware when I did first join I was probably under the legal age limit for it but only just, and probably only in US terms anyway so that doesn’t count for me cos I’m UK.
          Of course I know to any no SL’ers we may all seem a little weird and sad but believe me, we do have RL lives, we just enrich them with a touch of the virtual and in this case Second Life.  I will share some of my stories this year from my experiences there (maybe including the adult ones!) and any new ones I have.

 

.... me now

© Anan Eebus (3^rd January 2018)