"Fire in the Twilight"

Dear Diary,

I've never been to a Beltane thing before, in real life, or in SL. In fact, as much lip-service as I pay to being pagan, my spirituality has always been a uniquely solitary experience. I'll light a candle for Winter's Solstice, I'll fiddle around and read books, but I've never ever gotten out and "DONE THINGS" with other people.

Until yesterday. Until Mari and I started talking about how there wasn't gonna be fishing this week at Livingtree, but there was gonna be this Beltane thing at a sim called Escapades.

I'd been to Escapades a couple of times before. Mostly while window shopping at Loki Eliot's clothing store. There was also that one time that Melisa had taken me to the Escapades Island, and given me a tour in a flying boat.

Not really knowing what to expect, I decided to use the 2 hours of lead time to rush out and find something appropriate to wear. All of my clothes were winter clothes.. as I'd only just started this avatar in SL, last November.

Mari gave me some good leads, but nothing I saw really jumped out at me. I ran around like a chicken missing it's car keys, and eventually happened to get an IM from Isley. I asked her if she knew anyplace selling springish sundresses, and she took me to a shop called "Baby Pie". They had exactly what I was after.

I got dressed, and then took Isley with me to meet Mari at Escapades. The lag was awful, the crowd was huge by SL standards, and there was nary a toddleedoo in sight! Big kids, like me and Mari and Isley, as far as the eye could see (with a draw distance of 32m).

We each got some torches, and hats and masks, as well as facepaint tattoo layers. Then torches aloft, we marched like some kind of mad Benny Hill characters, around the island and up the side of the volcano.

Children, fire, lack of supervision... what could go wrong?

At the top, a large wooden statue of a stickman had been built. When we all got to the top, we were guided in casting our torches, and our bad memories into the pyre, and setting the "Wicker Man" alight to burn out the bad memories and the wintertime.

More like "Log Man"

As the Man burned, they played great music, and we all began dancing and then walking around the fire in a circle. As the Man collapsed in the flames, they started setting off fireworks, and we kept dancing and shouting and having a great time.

Oh yeah, this seems safe.

Eventually the fire died down, and things drifted into a sort of chatting hanging-out kind of thing. People began to stray off to their homes, and eventually I did too. Then Mari, Isley and I ended up back at my new place in Blumfield, as I began drawing up plans for my new house.

In all fairness.. no one was actually sacrificed in the flames.

This was a very spontaneous event for me.. with only 2 hours of lead time, and little or no idea what to expect (heck, half the expectations I had were totally wrong). And even though it was very very barely a "Pagan Ceremony" on any level.. it was still my first.

And after all the emotions of the last few months.. I was glad of the opportunity to cast my cares into the Pyre along with the flames.

Beltane 2013. Count me in for next year too!

"Dear Mommy"

Dear Diary,

Since I have no reliable way to reach her, I've decided to leave a note here for Mommy to read. For those of you who have triggers regarding losing parents, families ending, etc.. you might just wanna skip this post.

If you rilly wanna read it, click below.

"Base Camp One"

Dear Diary,

Following the loss of the house in Somersley (end of March), I talked a great deal to my Aunt Vivienne about the whole situation. I have an alt, who runs a store, and she had some land that was 'on the way out'.. an old store that she'd long since outgrown. Our original plan (I say "our", but it's just me) was to put up a little skybox on that land for me to live in while I waited for Mommy to come back to SL.

I was worried that if Mommy did come back, and found me living comfortably in a fancy house someplace.. she might shy away from trying to rebuild our family.. that she might feel she was "taking me away from the happiness I had". I was determined to keep things as spartan and basic as possible.

Aunt Vivienne had other ideas. Not only did she push the money into my pockets, but she all but forced me to rent a plot of land next to Mari's house!

I rented the parcel there for 7 weeks in advance. Figuring that I'd keep my finger on it that way, if Mommy didn't come back by the end of April, I could decide then if I wanted to buy the land.

"Base Camp One"

Well as should be obvious by now, April came and went, and Mommy didn't return.

So I contacted the guy who was renting me the land, and together we hatched a plan. I gave him my old parcel where the store had once been, and he gave me a discount on the new land. Since I was planning to abandon the land, it was amazing to get any value at all for it. Ended up shaving about 3500L$ off his asking price for the land. (to be fair, the land is special, as it's sort of in the "Suburbs" of Bay City.)

It was still an expensive purchase. There's no denying that. But I'd planned to spend about two weeks hemming and hawing, and dragging my feet still hoping that Mommy would return. But within half an hour of contacting the land owner, I'd become the new owner of the land.

My original plans for Beltane had been to log in, do some of the unpleasant tasks like removing the "family" tab from my blog, cleaning up my profile, reverting my username, etc.. nothing I was looking forward to, but work that really did need to happen. Then to round out the day with new clothes shopping, and some rethinking of my avatar's shape.

Instead, my fun money was all drained away (and then some!), and I was left basically broke, but holding land I rilly wanted to have.

So my retail therapy will have to be postponed a week or two (or three).

Still, I now have the very best neighbors in all of SL. Faced with that, waiting a couple of weeks to buy new clothes doesn't seem all that bad.