After Maxine and I met in the tea house, Storm came floating in, levitating in a lotus position.
Maxine Walden: hi, Pema
Pema Pera: hi there, Maxine!
Maxine Walden: here comes Storm
Pema Pera: hi storm
Pema Pera: what a nice way of transportation!
Maxine Walden: hi, Storm
Storm Nordwind: Hi guys
Pema Pera: handy too
Pema Pera: when we don’t have enough cushions!
Storm Nordwind: Tricky round corners and in the ice
Maxine Walden: handy for a storm
Storm Nordwind: My knees hurt today
Pema Pera: haha
Maxine Walden: due to the mode of transportation?
Storm Nordwind: Could be.
Storm Nordwind chuckles
Maxine Walden: I saw your blog, Storm, nice reading
Storm Nordwind: Do I read that Dakini has phantomed the roof?
Pema Pera: yes
Storm Nordwind: Oh thank you Maxine
Storm Nordwind: It is quite inconsistent!
Maxine Walden: what does that mean, phantomed the roof
Storm Nordwind: Objects in SL can have different properties
Storm Nordwind: One of those is phantom
Storm Nordwind: means that if switched on, you can talk right through it
Storm Nordwind: of fall through it
Storm Nordwind: or
Storm Nordwind: if its an attic
Pema Pera: talk your way out of it ;>)
Maxine Walden: such as…oh..I got lost in the attic a couple of days ago and Pema had to help me out
Storm Nordwind: I can see by the roof’s properties that it should not happen again
Maxine Walden: what should not happen
Storm Nordwind: You should not get trapped in the attic
Storm Nordwind: The ceiling is now phantom
Storm Nordwind: you will fall through when you tp here
Storm Nordwind: though the roof is normal
Maxine Walden: oh, well some of us can trapped anywhere perhaps
Storm Nordwind: This tea house had its own samsara!
Maxine Walden: afraid I don’t know what a samsara is
Storm Nordwind: Ah… it is a concept in eastern religions
Storm Nordwind: It means the endless cycle of birth and rebirth
Storm Nordwind: The idea is that all beings get caught up in it
Storm Nordwind: and while they are they are prone to suffering
Storm Nordwind: The end of suffering comes, according to these schools of thought, when you escape from samsara
Maxine Walden: via contemplation or compassion?
Storm Nordwind: Well those are steps on the path for sure
The talking moved to the topic of blogs.
Storm Nordwind: So I am pleased you liked the blog though, as I say it is very irregular and certainly not homogenious!
Maxine Walden: I thought it reflected sincere experience and appreciated it being shared
Storm Nordwind: I am humbled and touched by your remark. Thank you
Maxine Walden: You are most welcome; thanks for the sharing
Storm Nordwind: I find it very odd to blog as I find them difficult to navigate as a reader
Maxine Walden: navigate physically or in terms of the direction of the writer seems to be traveling…?
Storm Nordwind: oooh - good point! Let me see…
Storm Nordwind: certainly difficult to navigate physically because of the lack of conceptual structure often
Storm Nordwind: And the same lack of structure can lead to rambling on the part of the writer
Maxine Walden: isn’t that so, and yet the writer might feel he/she is on a very interesting path…one dilemma I find is to have my own perhaps different view and
Maxine Walden: try to read/approach the other view with openness even when I may really differ
Storm Nordwind: yes indeed
Maxine Walden: and sometimes when my buttons get pushed that openness can be very difficult
Storm Nordwind: True. I understand that. Yet life is short and there are millions of blogs out there! Unless I have a real motive to read something I suspect it will not hold my attention when in blog form
Storm Nordwind: So here I am experimenting with blogginess as well as playfulness
Pema Pera: Following your suggestion, Storm, of having more blogs connected with my PaB blog, I made a tentative suggestion to Maxine to start her own ;>)
Storm Nordwind: Wonderful. If she agrees I look forward to seeing it
Maxine Walden: and so I have been looking around on the wordpress.com site and trying to see what you and others are doing
Storm Nordwind: Well I use Google blogs because I use it for everything else!
Maxine Walden: unsure if I do begin one…oh, any ‘tips’?
Storm Nordwind: From me? This being my first and only blog!?
Storm Nordwind laughs
Maxine Walden: oh, guess I had thought that Pema was suggesting using wordpress to keep links between the various blogs this PaB…
Pema Pera: no preference at all for blog types, Maxine
Pema Pera: I just found wordpress easy and powerful
Pema Pera: but I’m sure there are others that are fine too
Storm Nordwind: Well… speaking as a seasoned expert…
Storm Nordwind: hmmm…
Storm Nordwind: Do you mean tips for blog use or tips on how to translate the 9 sevond thoughts into a blog?
Maxine Walden: nothing specific, just wondering about your experience
Storm Nordwind: Ok…
Maxine Walden: maybe yes, re PaB
Storm Nordwind: Well if you are at a keyboard, by all means enter thought s as you go throughthe day
Storm Nordwind: Otherwise, use the magic pen and paper and do them all in one go
Maxine Walden: what is this magic pen and paper, or are you joshing with me
Storm Nordwind: I am joshing
Storm Nordwind: It’s just keeping a notebook with you
Storm Nordwind: during the day
Storm Nordwind: and writing stuff in it
Storm Nordwind: then transferring to a blog
Maxine Walden: thought so, have been looking for magic most of my life and have found none; yes a notebook I do know about that, yes an transferring it
Storm offered some further suggestions how he saw blogging.
Storm Nordwind: The important thing for me has been: if there is nothing, i write nothing
Storm Nordwind: If there is something simple, I write something simple
Storm Nordwind: If I luxuriate into a vision or something, you get the whole lot
Maxine Walden: trying to remain true to your experience and not use ‘fill’
Storm Nordwind: quite so
Storm Nordwind: exactly so
Maxine Walden: isn’t that interesting, to try to become just true to one’s experience and express only that
Storm Nordwind: in itself it is a good exercise I find
Storm Nordwind: You may want to make “meta” comments too
Storm Nordwind: Like “I hate doing this” or “Why isn’t this working for me?”
Storm Nordwind: Though I exaggerate!
Maxine Walden: by which you mean…sort of ‘from above or observing…oh yes, I understand
Maxine Walden: editorial comments
Storm Nordwind: sort of
Storm Nordwind: And I have found I’ve wanted (very occasionally) to punctuate the blog with other things
Storm Nordwind: Like the video I was shown and that I’ve embedded directly in the blog
Maxine Walden: do you find then that you are writing the blog primarily as a log of your experience …but with a video you are wishing to express more…
Storm Nordwind: The blog is an exercise. For me there has been a measure of artificiality in it but it certainly hasn’t been without its benefits
Storm Nordwind: On the other hand I have other things to express and it seemed a good way of sharing something
Maxine Walden: yes, I guess one would relate to and from the blog in very individual ways and perhaps
Storm Nordwind: And that’s the things about blogging - individuality
Maxine Walden: in different ways at different times,depending upon one’s mood and interest at the moment
Storm Nordwind: Quite so. There is no reason it need be uniform
Storm Nordwind: Unless you have some empathy for a reader and structure it into several parallel blogs
Storm Nordwind smiles
Maxine Walden: I have an image of a Tolstoy novel
Storm Nordwind: oooh - a very heavy image! ;)
Maxine Walden: sorry, did not mean to offend, the notion of parallel blogs just conveys the sense of the complexity of inner life, that is really what I meant,
Storm Nordwind: No offence even noticed! :)
Storm Nordwind: I see what you mean now
Storm Nordwind: I am tired and missed your prupose
Maxine Walden: (I actually like Russian novels, perhaps because I am fascinated by complexity when I can understand it…)
Maxine Walden: but sometimes I don’t have what it takes to read them, time, perhaps stamina…and I find that I often seem to lack
Storm Nordwind: I think that’s why I like people. Perhaps it’s the paradox of the simple and the complex together
Maxine Walden: lack what it takes to express/live the complexity which may be going on internally…then I feel tired and lazy
Storm Nordwind: Well if I may say so…
Storm Nordwind: you are expressing yourself with a clarity rarely matched in this tea house!
Maxine Walden: oh, my, now I am touched and moved…thank you
Storm Nordwind nods andsmiles
Maxine Walden: Pema, you have been rather quiet today…maybe feeling a bit self-conscious from Storm’s comment I find myself wondering what you are thinking
Pema Pera: oh no not at all
Pema Pera: I am just enjoying your conversation
Pema Pera: feeling moved by what unfolds here
Pema Pera: every day
Pema Pera: in fact every six hours ;>)
Maxine Walden: yes, that is quite amazing to me, your being here every 6 hours…quite a dedication
Pema Pera: well, this is really what I wanted to do all my life
Pema Pera: not that I had a clear picture of it
Pema Pera: but when you look back on your life you can see patterns
Pema Pera: . . .. .
Thanks to a RL sighting, the conversation topic moved to eagles and other birds.
Maxine Walden: Not sure if this is ‘outside the box’ of SL but just need to mention that just now
Maxine Walden: there is a bald eagle flying by the window outside, soaring and he/she is beautiful
Storm Nordwind: It is a good omen and if you have seen my full name you will see that it is strangely coincidental
Maxine Walden: an eagle in RL, here in the outskirts of where I spend weekends
Maxine Walden: oh, your name, Storm Nordwind or your RL name?
Storm Nordwind: My RL name is Stormerne. The “erne” part means eagle in old English (and lots of similar spelling in Scandinavian languages)
Maxine Walden: oh, how interesting Storm eagle of a sort…it is windy here today and the eagle
Maxine Walden: is indeed riding on the wind storm
Storm Nordwind: yes! It is a good metaphor. Calm in the midst of a storm
Maxine Walden: yes, and then here it has just begun the sleet, in the latter part of April…very unusual and the eagle is now on a treetop
Storm Nordwind: Here the cold NE wind is blowing hard and the full moon is rising
Pema Pera: Storm, do you think we can script an eagle in SL to fly above Rieul and Mieum occasionally?
Storm Nordwind: Yes and no
Pema Pera: haha
Maxine Walden: that is one of the experiences I notice here, seems like we can travel various parts of the world
Storm Nordwind: The answer is yes we can. But no it will fail as soon as it reaches as property that won’t let it in or where scripts are disabled
Maxine Walden: right in this virtual space, quite amazing…maybe even ’see’ eagles
Storm Nordwind: Have you see the red crown cranes flying above my land?
Maxine Walden: here is SL?
Storm Nordwind: yes
Maxine Walden: no, I have heard to lovely nature sounds but do you have cranes flying about your land , did you create that?
Storm Nordwind: yes i did. they don’t flap their wings, they glide. And in a constant circle. It is possible to be more complex but i wanted simple
Maxine Walden: impressive, very nice.
Storm Nordwind: I will take you to see them after this. They are no more that 200m away
Maxine Walden: Oh, that would be interesting. Puzzling thought for me just then, however, creating nature in SL. Somehow it causes me to grapple a bit ….
Storm Nordwind: I always wanted to be a gardener, but my back would not allow it!
Storm Nordwind: Now i get the chance to plant flowers and trees and move rocks for waterfalls!
Maxine Walden: so you have created your own extraordinary garden…yes
Storm Nordwind: I like it :)
Around this time something quite funny happened to me in RL. In the coffeeshop were I was drinking my latte while being logged into Second Life, I had met someone else who was curious about SL, so I showed her how easy it was to go to the Second Life web site and create an account. She did, and in the meantime someone else walked in the coffeeshop, who turned out to be an acquaintance of her, and already had an SL account. So he, too, whipped out his laptop, and the three of us met in SL, while seated within meters of each other in RL. Meanwhile, Moondust Sella, whom we had met four days earlier stopped by as well.
This was one of the weirdest mixed RL/SL events I’ve encountered so far. While in the company of Storm and Maxine and Moondust in SL, the three of us in RL were also joining them in SL, and a subset of us then went on a tour to a space colony . . . . Second Life keeps amazing me.
