I was not prepared for this at all.
Sometimes I like to joke that the universe is really just a computer simulation running to decide some dumb bet like whether a human would actually buy hot dogs from a street vendor or believe that Mikey died from pop rocks, only it will be something even dumber and we haven't found it yet, like how many fritos I can stuff in my mouth and still sing along with Abba.
Then something like this happens and I'm like WTF universe?
Last week I powerwalked my way through a half-installed art installation and this week I decided to get on that horse again and went to see Hand by Bryn Oh. (Slurl).
Perhaps I was not in the best frame of mind, or perhaps I was. Just the "Welcome to Second Life" instructions moved me. No really, you land at a spot that helps people acclimate to moving in SL in one of the most engaging exhibits I've seen and I've been doing this a while.
We'll get to that I'm sure but first, Hand.
Not to give away stuff but you follow a lil waif named Flutter through an incredible build and there are waypoints where you can stop and listen to the story and it is all just beautifully moving- I would have been content with just the subway and that's only the beginning.
So once up and out of the subway I was feeling good, and there were instructions on how to get to the apartments in the welcome area so I boldly walked along the fun lil plank walking paths hoping I didn't fall out of the exhibit like I usually do and bam.
The matrix had found me.
Ok so back up.
September 11th was twenty years ago and that hit me the other day. It always brings with it the phrase "They walked right out of their lives." My mother used it to describe all of the people that got up and went to work like always and never came home.
It was especially poignant because my father had died suddenly one day when I was very young and he too had just walked out of our life. I know the idea inspires profound sorrow in me. You had no idea today was the day.
I think something inside me needs to address this because three of my own recent flickr pictures very nearly became images of people disappearing but the sadness they inspired in me with a partially rendered figure was just too deep to unleash on flickr, and myself.
Now, fast forward to today and I am enjoying the experience of Hand immensely, and I have just walked up a plank ramp and...
I walk into a room at Bryn Oh's new immersive experience and the fact I'm even there on this day is the result of so many strange turns of events in the course of a lifetime that the odds are long and yet here we have the very thing I've struggled to create for weeks.
