Inworldz.. dust to dust

          Another world bites the dust it.
          It seems after so long a time now another virtual world has collapsed in on itself as Inworldz falls down the virtual rabbit hole of pixels under the weight of a single click of ‘DELETE’. 
          Inworldz (IW) was made ages ago in some ways in sort of response to Second Life (SL) in part aimed at those disillusioned with SL as many had become at the time. Some left the inworld world entirely while others migrated to other worlds such as IW while others, and this was me partly, joined and lived for a time anyway happily in both.  That is until I realised how much time was needed to keep up not just inworld account but in two entirely separate worlds and somehow balance this with my real one, what I call the realme-world. 
          Despite this for a while I did seem to manage it, still spending more time in SL but also like a bit of an antidote to SL’s drama which has gotten bad at the time for me I managed hours in the day for IW.  So I established a me there too with the same name, Anan Eebus.  I even imported my body settings and looked almost identical.  Why wouldn’t I, as for me it was the only other-me I knew and in SL I did sort of model my inworld me on my RL (real life) me. I called it and still do, being comfortable in my own skin, especially as in these worlds you can basically choose any skin you like.  Weird I know.  I do hope you’re not getting lost in all these me’s I keep weaving into the blog here, just remember they are all me at the end of the day. 
          So I set up a whole other virtual life in IW for years in my avi, or avatar there, establishing regular places I’d go, like for dancing or for coffee and chat with fellow inworlders, or inmates, as sometimes it did all feel a bit insane and like an asylum, as did SL.  In truth there was very little difference between them except SL was a bit ahead of it in technology and because it was the thrill of the new, had far less psychodrama. I even set up mu unveiled Art Gallery and started having exhibitions and took part in build contests through which I did win some money, or I’z, or IW money, the equivalent of linden currency in SL. 
          But after many years IW has finally died, this month in fact, closed forever and all in it lost beneath the virtual sea that reclaimed it to its icy depths.  I wish I’d known sooner as because I had been logging in less in recent years I wasn’t there for the last few weeks or day so wasn’t able to save anything.  That is if there was even anyway I could have, but I would certainly have taken a few last photos of the old place before its imminent demise. 
          Anyway, luckily I do still have some photos but anything else I had there is gone forever, so fragile and ephemeral are such worlds, places, lives, gone in a click! It had over the years suffered a huge decline in active participants and I suppose cost or apathy or whatever got the better of it.  I somehow wish I could have made a little 3D model of myself though as a souvenir, which sounds weird I know, but you have to be a little weird to live in these worlds. 
          But I’m still here, in SL that is, happy enough and certainly as busy as I need to be but luckily not letting rule my life as I once did.

the last photo I took of me in IW

 © Anan Eebus (27th August 2018)

once upon a friend

old photo from 2009 of me and Galib dancing at Veiled fang Sanctuary

Gone, gone, so many gone, drifted or died, somewhere still wandering or somewhere laying in stillness gone, gone, gone but not lost but not here, in a neverwhere confined to traces of memory, siftings of remembering. 

How to keep going, breathing the air they can no longer breathe, doing the things they can no longer do, loving the lovers they can no longer love, living the lives they can no longer live, that is the trick, the balancing act, the edge of a reason that sometimes feels so unrelentingly saddening, unfathomably harrowing.

As if one life isn’t enough to be working with some add yet another to the mix and the mess that plays with your mind and cracks your emotions, a second life in Second Life which is and isn’t as real as the real and yet real as it’s real as we make it to be.

So I’m thinking, for better or worse, of a friend, one in particular who long ago now left and then left and then left here forever and never return except in my mind and sometimes in breadcrumbs online, in that world, that second life, that blur that one’s never quite sure what is tangible or just an imaginible. A world that nevertheless craves to be touched, to be felt, to be held for all of its absence, for all of their absence, for all of his absence. Sometimes it’s closer and sometimes it’s not but it’s never so far as to be far out of reach.

His name was Galib and although not a lover he was as close as a friend could be or could be in an unreal world that’s as real as the unreal can be. He died in the real where he simply stopped being although signs of once having been still haunt in photos and name. His footprint remains in pixels and archives of old conversations still stored in a cloud somewhere far, far away and sometimes right overhead; such a strange twist of fate.

How often it happens as much in our second life as in the real and the feelings of loss are as potent in both, far from being deadened by digital detachment. The grief is the same despite the seeming disconnect, where two worlds collide and sometimes with consequences so unexpected and unprepared.  How to share such a loss, with those that don’t understand, to reconcile with the real and unreal when the unreal is real, this other world, this nowhere that’s somewhere so far but always right here.

Away from the keyboards, away from the screens there’s flesh and there’s bone, there’s blood and emotions as warm to the touch, as solid as me and living as you.

Though years ago now I still think of him, the Galib who wasn’t any more a cartoon, animation, line of code, zeroes and ones who logged into being and then just logged out of existence. I remember his hair, raven and wild as dark as the night which suited a vampire as he was and I am, and the walking cane which he was never without and whether was needed I never was sure but was him through and through, his superpower perhaps. He was an expert at fencing and also most notably a rocking guitarist; a sad loss to the music he never got to make. Then was his drinking, for which he made little apology becoming the demon that in the end took him for good.

We never met for real but it feels like we did. How strange are lives lived today between worlds where we are many people but always, always, for better or worse, just you and just me. 

© 2018 Anan Eebus