I love my friends, but I don't know if I can fit into what they are doing. I just want to be happy, and make others happy. But all my friends have grand visions that get grander every week. These visions involve land. Land requires money. Lots of money. It seems to be spiralling out of control. And money is the root of all evil. It causes so much conflict. My rl alter ego continues to maintain a policy of financial independence: no money will be put into this world, and none will be taken out. But I feel this isn't fair to my friends. I feel as if I'm exploiting their hospitality, living and having fun on their land, and never paying them back for it. I do give them most of the tips I earn from concerts on their land, but this will barely make a dent in their tier fees. I still feel like an irresponsible gypsy girl and a drain on my friends' resources.
Maybe I should pack up all my things, free up the land and the prims for my friends, and become a wandering minstrel. I would work on my projects in sandboxes, and maybe peddle my wares from a caravan or at some bazaar for whatever cheap price they could sell for.
Or maybe I could get a little plot of land somewhere, initially supported with tips from performances, and set up shop on it and slowly expand a business, at my own pace, without obligations to anyone else. I would start small, and be self-supporting all the way....
I don't understand people's dreams about owning lots of land and building magnificent structures. I know why. It is because I am a musician, not an artist or sculptor or architect. Whereas others live in space, I live in time. I specialize in transient creations. Fleeting beauty. I need no prims and no land beyond a small parcel to stream from. I have copyable donuts in my inventory, which I can eat whenever I want to. I don't need money to live. I can avoid the curses of the material world. On the copy of my poem in the Truth and Beauty garden, Tyrol wrote the author's name as "Catherine Moody, Gypsy Spirit". That's what I am. A spirit, like S. and P. after they died, free to roam the world.
"Je chante! Je chante soir et matin,
Je chante sur les chemins,
Je hante les fermes et les châteaux,
Un fantôme qui chante, on trouve ça rigolo
Je couche, parmi les fleurs des talus,
Les mouches ne me piquent plus
Je suis heureux, ça va, j'ai plus faim,
Heureux, et libre enfin!"
— From "Je chante" by Charles Trenet (1913-2001)
Loose translation by Catherine Moody:
"I sing! I sing from dawn to dusk,
I sing as I go on my way.
I haunt the farms and the castles I pass,
A singing ghost — how funny, people say.
I sleep among flowers on slopes of soft grass,
No longer do flies bother me.
I'm happy, and hunger's a thing of the past,
Happy, at last, and free!"
5 comments:
My visions aren't grand. I never wanted a palace or fancy things. I just wanted to make a peaceful forest for people to enjoy. To create public green spaces, and maybe a few modest rental cottages to help offset some of my tier costs.
That is all I ever wanted. To coexist quietly alongside the village of Faeria, and provide a green buffer between it and the rest of the world. And so that is the type of land I bought, for my forest.
My problem arose when I stepped outside those boundaries and bought a different kind of land, as a surprise for a friend, because she had said she wanted it. Instead of being excited, she was angry. The relationship dissolved at that point, and has never recovered. All because I tried to buy her something she wanted.
I will forget the grand dreams of others. I just want some trees in the forest. That is all. And if that is not possible in the Huin sim (as it appears it is not), then I will simply pull up stakes, put my land on the market to sell, and leave. There are many other places in SL that I can go, and create my own sense of place; my own home.
Perhaps I have lost something of myself here. Perhaps I have been consumed by a vision, and that which was me has died. I don't know, but something has died somewhere, and the clues all seem to point to me as the killer.
/me looks at herself in the mirror of her dear friends and is not sure she likes what she sees.
My land is canvas and place to share and create with my friends.
Though I have thought reccently of becoming homeless again. Land is needed to place your piano, to bring in the sounds from your rl self. It does have it hassles and problems too not having also has it hassles too.
I love and adore, appreciate all things about you and most of just darn glad you're my friend Catherine. You make my parts whole in SL. I would miss you if anything ever happen to you. Just as all who I hold dear to my little avatar heart.
I have also been feeling bit down and negative wonder bit too about land, group thing. Does anyone really care about the Bottp, do I really have anything to offer, everyone seems more caught up in what they are doing, I am not as bright as yourself and lot of my friends maybe I should just quit too. But it just might be my depression and personal exhaustion talking so I haven't said anything.
Dear Catherine, don't you dare disappear! I have had a good time filling out the gallery space that Mykyl so graciously allows me to use, but I enjoy being there because of the other people who are there - such as you.
It is the tone of the place - set by Mykyl - that makes the village such a wonderful place. There are others besides you who see SL and Faeria Village as a refuge rather than a money machine!
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