2009.12.21 01:00 - My Christmas Blog

The Guardian for this meeting was Calvino Rabeni. The comments are by Calvino Rabeni.

Looking around, noticing it is only me, deciding what to do with that.

Calvino Rabeni: No one is here.
Calvino Rabeni: Other than Calvino Rabeni.
Calvino Rabeni: The pause is coming up. Do I have a focus for it?
Calvino Rabeni: Yes, I will let my environment appear and my tasks disappear.
--BELL--
Calvino Rabeni: I was typing up an "epoche" report prior to coming here.
Calvino Rabeni: Sometimes it feels like the monitors box me in.
Calvino Rabeni: I claim the log.
Calvino Rabeni: I wonder where the scheduled GoC is.
Calvino Rabeni: Check my email. Nothing from PAB, I think.
Calvino Rabeni: There is some personal email on my other monitor. "We still have Paris".

Calvino Rabeni: onigokko
Calvino Rabeni: Now's my chance - I put the cam view from above. The avatar runs round and round in a clockwise circle passing through the sit position.
Calvino Rabeni: I can notice it since there is only one av running.
Calvino Rabeni: stop
Calvino Rabeni: A always thought the running pattern was more complicated than that.

Calvino Rabeni: Sometime I think it would be good to have a day off from everything computer, SL included. A kind of fast / renunciation to disidentify with it. A thing like the sabbath - no work may be done.  You agree to drop all that Doing, and let Being be.
Calvino Rabeni: A thing - but also to think that way.
Calvino Rabeni: I am reflecting on how my experienced options for acting in this place, when others are here, has changed since I first started coming to PaB.
Calvino Rabeni: Some RL-people have more than one "alt", including a quiet one.
--BELL--
Calvino Rabeni: Mainly I come here to contemplate. Secondly to have interactions with others that stir things up - in myself.  And I want that to be useful to others and to myself.

Calvino Rabeni: I was thinking of a christmas party I attended earlier today.
Calvino Rabeni: SL is so much easier - you just introspect the av's profile and then you easily have ideas for conversation starters.
Calvino Rabeni: I was bored with some of the routines, like -- which house do you live in?
Calvino Rabeni: I liked the conversation about internet browsing interests.
Calvino Rabeni: "What do you do" ? I ask. "I'm in corporate finance, I do mergers and asquisitions" he says.
Calvino Rabeni: That won't go over too well in this leftie crowd, I think.
Calvino Rabeni: The noise was very loud - of voices - at that party.
Calvino Rabeni: The one man looked like a cowboy - tall, thin, blue jeans, big buckle, boots, square jaw, hair like a brush, serious look. He was from Idaho (a true-blue Western state).
Calvino Rabeni: The woman in the red cashmere dress with the red ruby-like pendant on her chest.
Calvino Rabeni: Outdoors, all the shoes. One pair were golden slippers.
Calvino Rabeni: I thought they belonged to the tall bare-foot woman dressed all in black.
Calvino Rabeni: Could have been a dancer.
Calvino Rabeni: The M & A man had a very cute son.

Calvino Rabeni: I wonder how much others mull over their impressions.
Calvino Rabeni: It clears my feeling-memory.
Calvino Rabeni: All the familiar PaB participants have a unique "energy signature".
Calvino Rabeni: The SL viewer tires my computer - start the program and the fan immediately goes on high speed.
Calvino Rabeni: The fire effects on the torch are pretty good, they give me a feeling like there must be smoke.
Calvino Rabeni: Since this log will be posted, going on like this is no more weird than writing a Blog.
Calvino Rabeni: It is christmas season and I am not (much of) a Christian.
--BELL--
Calvino Rabeni: Nonetheless I like to resurrect some of the internal meaning of the tradition.
Calvino Rabeni: During the pause I was contemplating the story of the baby being born.
Calvino Rabeni: And what it meant about the future, and all the positive possibilities represented by that event.
Calvino Rabeni: May every human be able to experience that, as much as they need to.
Calvino Rabeni: May they find the right words, or the right concepts to hold it, whatever their tradition.
Calvino Rabeni: May they find that child within themselves, and give it the deserved reverence, symbolized by three wise men.
Calvino Rabeni: They didn't know what was going to happen, they were following a star.
Calvino Rabeni: So let there be something celestial like that for each person.

Calvino Rabeni: I remember a time in life where I was identified with being purely rational
Calvino Rabeni: I did not know the language of myths and could not open my understanding to it.
Calvino Rabeni: It changed - or I noticed it changed, with something that happened with my father and step-grandfather.
Calvino Rabeni: Grandfather had many stories, about hunting and wandering in the river valleys of texas on horseback.
Calvino Rabeni: They could have been true - I didn't know, which was OK, and decided to take them as if true.
Calvino Rabeni: My father disliked it. He said they had no value because they could not be proven.
Calvino Rabeni: So I bought the old man a bottle of Tennesee whiskey as a gift and said "tell me a story".
Calvino Rabeni: Grandmother was scandalized, but she also kind of smiled in a way that said - you have given him a way to be himself - which the others around here don't do - he lit up, and I am happy about that.
--BELL--
Calvino Rabeni: The hour's up - end of log / blog entry.
Calvino Rabeni: May all beings find the true One being born within, and usher it carefully into the world.
Calvino Rabeni: _/!\_