Wilsonia’s Sansara Roamings, 1 April 20, 2009

OK I don’t want to get too far behind in my post text generation, so here goes. First snapshot is of the new Hibdon digs, next to the already much discussed Kerchal Forest. What a chatter he or she or it is! Here you have the second structure on the land — I’ve tacked on a 512 parcel to the immediate west to my rental fees on top of the original 2048. Unlike about all my other rental spaces I’ve acquired since the beginning of February, when my rental spree began, I can see keeping this for a long time, perhaps buying the property at some point. The only other land I can say that about is perhaps the Yapland rentals, which I now have *3* of: 1 1024 equivalent parcel with the Edwardston Station Gallery and the 100 collages of the 10×10, and then 2 on her famous art walkway, or my old space and then the most recently aquired space formerly owned by photographer Graham Guru, who has decided to focus on more rl projects for a spell. I don’t blame him — I think you have to have strong, specific reasons for keeping involved in SL and the art movement there. For strict photographers, it’s tough, because anyone can download innumerable photos from the Internet now for the base 10 lindens and slap it on a prim. As much as I like Edna’s photographs, sales have been low in SL, yea, admittedly almost nonexistent. Granted they haven’t been much better for my collages, but I think the differences are several. First off, I don’t allow people to download high rez images of my collages online, and in most cases I don’t offer any type downloads. So the collages you see in SL are sometimes the only way you, the viewing public, could view them in the first place. Plus I can’t house all 100 of my collages in an amazingly appropriate gallery space in RL like I can with the 10×10 in the Edwardston Station Gallery in SL. In that case, the gallery is now intimately tied into the art, enhances the overall work.

But I’ve gone on long enough about that.

The second and newest structure (greyish building to the lower right) is presently an empty gallery, again based on an Arcadia Asylum structure called slum econo apartments, which has a small 10×10 base but shoots up about 40 meters. Although I’ve put in new wallpaper, I haven’t decided what to put in this space yet.

I’ll get to the soon-to-be-opened exhibit in the Something To CHRO About gallery soon, whose pictures *may* be eventually moved into this space, or some other space on the Hibdon property. We’ll see.

But to Wilsonia’s explorations now. As Hucka D. and I have talked about in one of the more recent of those “We Better Chat” posts, Wilsonia is attempting to retrace most of Baker Bloch’s Sansara continent explorations from past times, a project created to reinforce the past to act as a pointer to the future, i.e., future Sansara explorations/mysteries/general experiences — now that the family seems rather firmly entrenched on this oldest of SL continents for the first time. It’s pretty exciting, really. Living *right next* to the Kerchal Forest might even be better than living *one parcel* down from the otherwise only slightly smaller Rubi Forest. It’s probably an apples and oranges decision whether one of these forests is better than the other, but I’ve done one; why not try the other when the opportunity arises. I couldn’t resist — we’ll see how “long term” the arrangement is, though. But I feel like I’m at least just as settled in as I was at Otherland, for example.

So here’s Wilsonia at what may just be the eye of the hurricane that is the Sansara continent experience, or else the center of the labyrinth/maze unwinding all around this calm eye. This is the center of the Sea of Solomon, also at the exact center of the Solomon sim. It is also the most shallow part of the sea outside the immediate shoreline. The water level here is *just* above Wilsonia’s head, or about at the 2 meter level above the sea floor at this center. Perhaps interestingly, unlike most Linden sea or ocean sims, this one has a default landing point attached, which is this centerpoint Wisonia is standing on. This means, for those who don’t know, that anyone attempting to teleport into the Solomon sim at any location will automatically be rerouted to this center. This seems to reinforce the eye symbol… I’ll have to study that more in detail later, also keeping in mind that the symbol for Linden Labs itself is an eye in a hand, as famously depicted in the Omidyar glyph here, and in even another Linden owned water sim. Hmmmm… For the record, the Solomon sim is about 5 sims to the west of Omidyar and then an additional 2 sims to the south. Not too far, then.

As one learns in the first month of posts from the Baker Blinker Blog, Baker’s Island and accompanying Baker sim lies to the immediate west of the Solomon sim. In revisiting this “historic” island or isle, Wilsonia finds it much different from the way it’s pictured in the early part of the blog, though. It’s about here it begins to sink in that she cannot *really* retrace Baker Bloch’s Sansara explorations but merely go to the same locations on the grid that he was at… same coordinates that is. Baker’s Isle, or what’s called Isle of Baker at the time, I believe, is essentially no more, having been incorporated into this huge, temple-like structure of purposes unknown for Wilsonia. It’s impressive, but it certainly doesn’t have the same type of mysterious ambiance of the underwater ruins that use to occupy this same grid space, the site of Baker Bloch’s and the seemingly sinister Mr. Low’s several liaisons.

As an added comment to the Sea of Solomon information given here, I’d like to say that at the time of Blochs’ initial explorations in this area, the autoreturn for resident’s objects was set at a rather generous 60 minutes. Baker Blinker used this large window to rez a number of early structures to test them out, perhaps including the Misty’s Big Blue House that became the original dwelling for the Bakers on Azure Islands in the following months. Now the autoreturn is set at a much shorter 5 minutes, not long enough to use the sea for any kind of similar purposes. A shame. And the same thing happened in the Haworth water sim off the east coast of the Atoll continent (Heterocera), which use to have the same 60 min. autoreturn window but has now been shortened to 10. In fact, as Baker Bloch is testing it out now (as I write), one can’t even rez objects in the latter sim at all now, although they still can in Solomon. But after 5 mnutes — poof, they’ll be autoreturned to the creator. It’s perhaps a trivial fact, but still it seems to me to represent a general *regularizing* — almost a *demystification*– of SL to get rid of the little kinks that make it so interesting to me at least, and probably others as well. If it was just this inability to effectively rez objects in water sims alone, I wouldn’t bring it up. But other things factor into this decision as well, one obvious, blunt Coup de grace in the matter being that the new continents created after Heterocera and Sansara are simply not nearly as interesting. I tried to become involved in the Gaeta continent (newest one to rise from the sea bed) recently, but nothing really held me. Nothing mysterious, nothing eye popping at all. Let me know if you think differently, because I would like to understand the viewpoint of someone whose opinion leans otherwise. Not talking about estate property here, but mainlands — Linden owned. To me, and apparently others as well, Sansara, the oldest, is the best, and perhaps by a big margin over, especially, the ones past Heterocera.

Anyway, I diverge again.

Below shows Wilsonia at a rather prominent underwater peak at the corner of four sims to the southeast of the Solomon Sea (Kaminari, Cresent, Epimetheus, and then Baker itself), or in the only waterway leading out of that sea into other Sansara seas. To me, this is reminiscent of the center of a traditional 7 circuit labyrinth, with only one way in and out. I’ll have more to say about this comparison later, most likely.

Wilsonia also rediscovers another prominent underwater peak that Baker Bloch didn’t speak about at the time of its discovery in this blog, but one that Wilsonia supposed could have some attachment to the Ancients as well, since the top of it *just* juts out above the water level here. Is this some kind of related peak, then, to Hilo Peak?, she ruminates.

Then there was the inevitable revisit of the Okinu sim and its perhaps inexplicable, sharp edged and geometrically tailored glyphs of innumerable sizes and shapes. Wilsonia thinks back to the time when Baker Bloch found these glyphs (she has vague access to these memories, probably because they have the same user, baker b.), and the fact that the first two on the edge of the sim he encountered were both “L” shaped and in an isolated pair with each other from the rest. L + L then. Perhaps it stands for “Linden Labs”? she hypothesizes again. Were the glyphs trying to tell Baker Bloch something at the beginning of their relationship about the controlling ownership of Second Life and the inclusive grid? She also thinks of the heart shaped glyph Baker Bloch immediately came across upon beaming into Okinu briefly before heading to the newly risen Gaeta continent, a place his counterpart Baker Blinker was soon to visit as well. She thinks how Baker Bloch realized this was a symbol of the “love” between Baker Blinker and himself, and how it had been misconstrued by them as being intertwined with some kind of “physical” love, at least in a virtual sense of the word. Blochs and Blinks soon realized (as Hucka D. had to learn the same, afterwards, about Hurla Dontbee) that they were actually two aspects of one thing, and that while they would never be separate, they could also never be together in that way. They acted in unison in everything they did already, and still do for that matter.

Here is an example of a more typical merger of two sea bottom textures, without the sharp edges of the Okinu glyphs or the self contained, regular shapes. The Okinu glyphs, at least from my explorations, seem quite unique in that way in terms of mainland waterscapes.

“10th!” April 17, 2008

WORK IN PROGRESS

Resting Place February 29, 2008

Baker Bloch was in no hurry to return to the lair of Mr. Low for his anticipated second task, so he decided to walk back and enjoy the underwater views. To his disappointment it took only 19 minutes altogether, leisurely strolling around the edges of 3 sims total. So that made it about a 256×3 meter walk, for a total of 768 meters, or around 3/4ths of a kilometer. It’s as close as he could get with the cemetery, he believed.

Upon arriving back at the temple ruins where he had been meeting Mr. Low, unlike all other times there was no Mr. Low about. Always he appeared floating, spectre-like, atop the cleared tile floor that Baker stares at in the snapshot below. Baker searched the entire ruins and the area surrounding it. He even went up to Isle of Baker to look around, although Mr. Low insisted he had never been above water in SL, and rarely even went away from the ruins.

After Baker had just decided to hunker down for the night in the spooky ruins to await his master, he turned around in his mind the possible reasons for Mr. Low’s request to build the cemetery. Do the 3 stones represent fallen comrades, perhaps those that landed on the SL planet with Mr. Low that he scathingly mentioned once before? And also Baker had the strong suspision that Mr. Low himself was not really corporeal within SL; he too was a ghost here. Baker jokingly pictured to himself Mr. Low requesting his own headstone, the 4th, for his second task. Then a series of thoughts rapidly culminated in the obvious: the a priori presence; the color; the lining up with the other 3 tombstones; the position higher than the rest. Mr. Low was lowest no longer.

The Orange Chair!!

Sans Fur ‘N Feathers February 29, 2008

Caught!

Lazy And Quick February 27, 2008

Mr. Low was not exactly a kind master. The task Mr. Low gave our new Baker avatar was the creation of a 3 stone graveyard. Mr. Low insisted that no Linden dollars be spent on this task, and also that the cemetery must be in as permanent and stable an enviroment as possible given the imposed limitations. Mr. Low also insisted that Baker must not begin his task until he spies, from his magic bench that he must otherwise hang around in the meantime, one animal on top of another animal. And it must be from this bench and no other vantage point. Mr. Low insisted the sight would be obvious.

Thus Baker Bloch resurfaced to his island (Isle of Baker) from the underwater ruins and sat on the bench to begin his wait. Unfortunately this baker does not have quite the patience of the Blinker one, and so when the sight did occur he was about to wander away from the bench. This was about 20 minutes, SL time, after Baker had resurfaced. Baker shivered at the thought of what the creepy Mr. Low might do to him if the portent had been missed. Below is a re-creation of what he saw over the sim-wide sea to the east of the isle. Not exactly what Baker thought of when hearing Mr. Low’s descripition of one animal atop another, but, like he said, it was certainly obvious enough. His quest had begun.

Baker probably explored 15-20 nearby sims before finding a spot fairly close to Isle of Baker to create his graveyard. The trick was that he had to find *remote* property where the Object Return option was set to “zero,” yet which still allowed him to manifest the needed headstones from his inventory (freebies from SL Exchange Marketplace, once more). Just by chance, it seemed, an ordinary orange chair was already sitting atop a rock next to the place Baker had deemed best for his materialization.

Task completed, a satisfied baker sits in the orange chair, taking in the spectacular seascape around the new graveyard.

Another Baker February 26, 2008

As Baker Blinker is perhaps indisposed for a considerable amount of time, what with being merged with that same colored cup creature as seen in the last post here, and apparently on a different planet separate from the main Second Life grid even, it seemed necessary to create another baker avatar to replace the first. Thus Baker Bloch is born. Here Baker #2, hereafter just Baker or Baker Bloch, is seen just after materializing at the magic bench formerly visited by Baker Blinker. The multihued pea pod is nowhere to be found, but this Baker has a more specific mission than the first during his initial visit.

Having some time to kill before his meeting, Baker explores some of the underwater realm near Isle of Baker, including this scenic protrusion of rock at the meeting place of 4 sims.

A 1 minute late baker baker shows up at the prearranged rendezvous area after 3 hours and 20 minutes of exploring. A mysterious, pointy orange entity, whose shape should be familiar to the reader by now, waits impatiently atop an exposed area of tiled floor within the ruins.

“Mr. Low I presume,” Baker says in greeting.

Isle of Baker/ Magic Bench of the Pod Peaple February 23, 2008

The inspiration for this particular post was the discovery of yet another “Baker’s Island”, this time in SL itself. To avoid confusion I’ll call this particular landmark “Isle of Baker”. Again, no details, but it’s very close to the new rezzing spot I mention in the post above this (yes, I’m writing these in backwards order). I thought it comical and mystical that this island was so close.

Then I quickly moved on to a comparison with the Rodeo corner island that is also brought up in the above post. Hmmm. The Rodeo isle is smaller but somewhat similar in size. Both isles contain two distinct buldges at either end, larger and smaller, with a bridging, middle neck. In both cases, this neck is crooked or bent, and inside the crook we have the remains of a ruin. I’ll get back to the ruins shortly. But the most important comparison to make here is between the equally long, gray objects on the respective smaller buldges. Click the pictures below to see enlargements. I cued the two pictures together directly through these objects; open each in a separate window and toggle between the two to see this effect.

The elongated gray object on “Isle of Baker – Not” is in fact a quite valuable historic relic in the shape of an obelisk, half buried in the sand. I’ll shortly refer you to other locations that talk about this relic in more detail. The companion object on Isle of Baker is not an obelisk or anything remotely magical on the surface, but merely an ordinary wooden bench, faded to gray over time. But I could not dismiss the connection so easily. I checked out this “ordinary” bench in some detail…

On the ground beneath I found the peculiar object pictured below. It was a pea pod with 5 individual peas partially protruding out of their protective shelter. Each had a different color. I could not help noticing that these were the same 5 colors illustrated in the “Brainstorm” post below. Further moving it beyond coincidence is the fact that the red and green shapes here were squares, mirroring the red and green square pillows. Also the olive and orange colors between them were round but also contained slices, making a number of angles at each “pole”. These had to be representations of one and the same idea. But what was it??? Peas… why a pea pod??