Picture of the week

Have a look at the title page of this week's issue of Die Zeit, paying special attention to the image: a worried piggy-bank about to leap from the windowledge of a tall building. (The headline is "How do I save my savings?" and the article is about the coming recession. As though your savings would be the worst problem you would face if it did come to a new global recession.)

But look now at this detail of the illustration:

Is it just me, or does anybody else think that the stopper in the piggy's belly looks like a vagina? I wonder what the illustrator was thinking.

Happy

I have been in a good mood all week, without any particular reason to tell. Or perhaps with many tiny little reasons that all add up to happiness. One thing that makes me happy is simply being busy, I like having things to do and people to do them with.

I am starting to make good friends in SL, to my surprise and pleasure, and have begun to prepare a home of my own where we might meet — and dance! One of the first things I did was to set up a tango dance animation pair. Watching myself dance in SL has made me want to begin dancing again in RL too, I should join a tango club and take some more lessons this summer.

Corvi and I are in the process of starting a kind of literary magazine in SL, loosely modelled on the New Yorker magazine: our desire is to present good, interesting writing which will be in but not about SL, as the New Yorker is not actually about Manhattan. This is still in very early stages, we are talking about what we would like to do.

My buddy Eidolon has started a business making skins and jewelry, and will open a store soon with a friend of hers, an artist who makes clothes, accessories and furniture. It's been exciting and quite amusing to see them working together, preparing the store; Corvi and I have been advising them on prices because they just have no idea, Lorac had set everything out far too cheaply for the quality of her work. Their store has a blog of its own, and is found in-world at Nip Tuck Island.

And I am working on a little building project: making a very slow vehicle. It will be a kind of flying sofa with cuddle and sitting poses, sleek like an airplane on the outside and satiny on the inside, with wood grain and soft furnishings and cut flowers, something like a mobile gazebo. I will post some photos here as it progresses.

Angsthäschen

Als ich gestern morgen kurz in SL vorbeischaute, bekam ich eine Meldung von dem Club wo ich tanze: die Ehrengäste, die VIPs, werden zu einer Sonderveranstaltung eingeladen: zu Mittag werden die neu zugekommene Tänzerinnen feierlich "eingeweiht." Ich hielte mich für alt in diesem Sinne (obwohl noch uneingeweiht), also davon unbetroffen, dachte an einer gewisse X unter den Neuen und sagte mir, "Mannomann, ich würde gerne zusehen wie man sie einweihte." Also erwog ich, zu der Zeit im Club aufzutauchen um den Show mitzuerleben.

Etwas später aber bekam ich eine zweite Nachricht, diesmal an uns Tänzerinnen gerichtet, sagend dass sämtliche Mädchen die weniger als drei Monaten lang im Club arbeiten sich als "neu" zu betrachten haben und am Einweihungsfest sich zur Verfügung stellen sollen. Das würde mich wohl treffen! Und auf einmal wurde aus meinem Lust, Furcht und Angst. Ich sah mich nicht mehr bei der Einweihung von X zuschauen, sondern wie ich dort neben ihr öffentlich bearbeitet wird. (Was mich jetzt, wenn ich ehrlich bin, da der Gefahr vorbei ist, freilich reizt.)

Also habe ich mich von SL abgemeldet und versteckt. Weder bin ich eingeweiht worden noch habe ich gesehen wie man die süsse X einweihte. Scheisse, muss ich sagen: meine Feigheit ist echt zum kotzen. Ich bin in Second Life genau so verängstigt und prüde und scheu wie in der Wirklichkeit. (Quelle surprise!)

[Updated] Ich finde jetzt, einige Stunden später, daß ich eine Chance verpasst habe. Das (zweite) Leben bot mir die Gelegenheit, einige meinen Dämonen ins Gesicht zu schauen, aber ich schaute weg. Beim nächsten solchen Fest der Körperlichkeiten (sagen wir) soll ich teilnehmen.

On friendship and growth

The emotions of childhood never go away, I think, they remain with us in later life. And when we are again in a situation that we experienced as a child, the same feelings leap out at us with the full strength that they had then.

I was ten years old last night, watching my best SL friend meeting her friends and hearing of things they had done together without me. I felt jealous and envious and lonely. I felt that she had grown and moved on in SL in a way that I have not, and that she is moving away from me.

The oddest part is this: a mutual friend turned up, who also knew the others, and I felt the same sense of being — what? "excluded" is not quite right. But I realized that it was nonsense: She had been introduced to them at some stage, just as I was now being introduced to them. It is open to me to make them my friends too, as it was for her after she first met them.

I wonder whether I am using my few good friends in SL as I have used their equally few RL equivalents: as a shield for my emotions, to avoid the risk of forming other attachments?