Fantasy Faire 2012

   
     It has been my great honor and pleasure to be part of Friends Fighting Cancer's Relay for Life fundraising event, the Fantasy Faire, for a second year.  For anyone unfamiliar with the event, Fantasy Faire is a week long annual event in Second Life, where a number of simulators are designed by some of the grid's most skilled and imaginative creators, each with its own unique and fantastic theme.  Creators are then selected for invitation to the event and given the opportunity to purchase a space in one of the sims and present their own merchandise.   Each merchant designates particular items to donate one hundred percent of profits towards Relay for Life and the American Cancer Society.

     At this time, nearly seventeen thousand U.S. dollars have been raised in the five days of the event so far.  This number is impressive in itself, but  when one considers that the items being sold mostly range between 25 cents to two or three dollars, it brings even more significance.  This number, which will undoubtedly continue to grow  in the closing days of the Faire, represents thousands and thousands of moments when the  residents of Second Life, virtual embodiments of people from every corner of the world,  took an action to help fight a disease that still impacts millions of people every day.  An action to show our compassion and conviction, carried out by our avatars.  In a place where nearly any reality we choose can be ours, we choose not to escape but  to experience, and rather than cut those ties to the painful realities of life, we instead  tether them to our place of dreams and wishes, so that in our efforts together they will one day come true.

     There are two days left  before Fantasy Faire ends for another year.  Soon, these remarkable sims, having completed a long journey from that first spark of inspiration to the wondrous visions they are today, will be lifted away into the dark, leaving many memories, and even more hope.  But today the breeze still gently persuades the butterfly windmills of Meanderville into motion; the sea still rolls its foamy waves at the massive stone atlases of the Tides, the sun still casts its phantom jewels over the shifting sands and the flora of Nu Orne continue their patient conquest, conjuring rainbows in the heavy mist with their iridescent flowers. 

See you at the Faire.

A Faire Forward

At the moment log-ins to Second Life are disabled, a frustrating but oddly nostalgia-inducing circumstance for me as I settled down to tackle a number of loose and loosening ends before they frayed further.   It has been perhaps three years since I can remember being so thwarted by the capricious currents of the digital seas; I'm aware of course that it still happens enough to be a nuisance, but Ive had the good luck I suppose that until today its never actually forced me to change my course of activity.  So for better or for worse, the Arx Loricatus blog suddenly finds itself the center of my attention again, if a center does in fact exist.

I've had a very busy few months, one of those brief life periods we all have where it seems that all the challenges and responsibilities we had hoped to manage one at a time suddenly arrive together on your doorstep and decided to bring the kids and the dog too.  As much as you want to give each thing the time and attention you envisioned,  sometimes you just have to let go of some things in order to grab on to others.  Unless you are a good juggler.  If you are a juggler, well then you have it made.

I'm not a juggler.

However, this blog is not just another mental bottle rocket that zipped up into the sky, burst into pretty colors and came tumbling down, lost in the fringes of the vacant lot of good intentions.  Arx Loricatus is not simply a hobby or pastime to me, neither is Second Life.  They are an ever evolving expression of who I am; my spirit, my dreams, my identity; a medium of creation that has never ceased to inspire, enrich, challenge and reward me. 

Despite my disappointment over being unable to bring many exciting projects to completion before the commencement of this year's Fantasy Faire event, I look forward presenting the final results of my efforts over the coming weeks.  For now, however, I will leave any more details for a later time and next share my ongoing experiences at the most remarkable assembly of brilliant imaginations that I believe the grid has ever witnessed.

Friends Fighting Cancer's Relay For Life benefit: Fantasy Faire 2012.

Provided I can log in ......