11. As the narrator, I am not sure who I am right at this moment, so I will just record the following conversation:
Z-Self:: We are extremely surprised that you emerged. We thought you were gone.
Fall 2007 Self: I feel a little like Rip Van Winkle. So much has changed. I get very confused.
Z-Self:: We’ll try to explain it to you as we go along. We think it is important that we try to get more of your perspective about some things before you disappear. We expect you to do some kind of merger but since this has never happened before, we are unsure
Fall 2007 Self: Sure, and I will have some questions
Z-Self:: We think you are a result of two converging events. Possibly you help cause one. Over the weekend, *** and the avatars got themselves into a labyrinth, each of them trying to lead the others out and emerge as a leader. This was all a distraction that we think started with the great space vision but now that you have emerged, maybe you confused them. Sort of like a person who comes up behind two people in a conversation and thwumps one of them of the head. That person thinks the person next to him did it and begins to question him sternly. While that is going on the second person gets thwumped on the head and partly due to that an the irritation of being falsely accused and thinking the person is up to no good, the two start fighting while the person who did the original thwumping supresses giggles. In your case, when you began to emerge, the others thought each of them were trying to take over. Instead it was you!
Fall 2007 Self: Well I didn;t ask to be here. I have two questions. 1) what is an avatar?
Z-Self:: lets get ***. ***! Please answer his question
***: Hi fall 2007 self. You look very familiar
Fall 2007 Self: You too except you look so calm and seem happier. What is an avatar?
***: Do you remember early last fall, you went to a seminar on using technology to communicate with students and you were told about Second Life? And then at the Sakai, class, the instructor insisted you get on and check out the Sistine Chapel?
Fall 2007 Self: Ah, yes. I haven’t had time to do that. It seems silly to me. All this pretend stuff and what is this about being a different gender? That sounds a bit weird to me but for some reason fascinating. And this Sistine Chapel stuff. Don’t we have enough reconstructions in too many different formats. Art Historians and others are in the processing making collections of motion images of building interiors. How can this virtual stuff be better? It will become one other software to try to bring up in class. Seems like a colossal waste of time to me. People always seem to want to get into some kind of new fad. I am tired of technological change. Let’s work on the content of what we have
***: Well, the pretend “you” on Second Life” is called an avatar. I just found out from Stim and Pema that avatar is Sanskrit for a manifestation of a god.
Fall 2007 Self: OK, who are Stim and Pema?
***: They are people also on Second Life but they told me in first life
Fall 2007 Self: My head is spinning. They are are avatars but told you in First Life? Geez, I am getting a little vexed
***: Well stay calm and we’ll try to help you. In Real Life they are people with avatars (wise people)
Fall 2007 Self: This Second Life stuff is suggestive of spiritual, you know heaven!!!?!
***: You made good use of that thought but that had to wait until you became less busy again in the Spring
Fall 2007 Self: What is great space? Are you talking about outrer space?
***: I have had some visions since I started in PaB…
Fall 2007 Self: Hold on, what is PaB? i hear so much about it. PaB this and PaB that. I don’t remember any PaB
***: Oh my, where do we start to have this make sense to you? PaB is Play-as_Being. It is a group that you began to hang around with in June. You came on to Second Life in mid November
Fall 2007 Self: Ah, that’s in just a few weeks. That is about the time I expect to finish this project
***: Yes, that is last year’s project. Well you got on, checked out the Sistine Chapel (you liked it by the way) and then someone told you about the Dresden Gemaldegalerie and you checked that out too. That is a reconstruction of the old galleries and it is like having a membership in a German museum while living here
Fall 2007 Self: Well that sounds pretty neat. Then what happens
***: You get a little bored and begin to get things ready for the next load to the image base and also work on a big grant for A*******
Fall 2007 Self: Well, we’ll never get that
***: Surprise, you do. But in response the library decides to discontinue support for the image base software. This happens in March and you suddenly are without a place for the images so you slow down production and get back on Second Life
Fall 2007 Self: Wow, was there anything new done in the four months?
***: Well, you find some more sites and start learning to get around.
Fall 2007 Self: Do I find anything spiritual.
***: That’s the neat part. You start making some friends at those sites and then one day, hanging around a Buddhist garden, you find this play-as-being group and things begin to change rapidly. You had changed a good bit by the time this happened in June and then the changes become more rapid
Fall 2007 Self: Sounds interesting
Z-Self:: We are getting a little off topic here though. The PaB talk is one we should have with the pre-PaB self. As we have stated, you may have emerged out of the confusion of the weekend. Bit also you emerged because we had to call upon your memory to get the project underway. You and I had made a good team on those projects
Fall 2007 Self: Funny thing, I didn’t know you existed
Z-Self:: yes I was hidden to you but we worked well together and have been doing it again in the past couple of weeks
Fall 2007 Self: It feels good to work. What part do you do?
Z-Self:: I am doing the seeing and the thinking that goes into the color correcting in the editing process right now. You are remembering where things are and how to do all the tasks
Fall 2007 Self: And I thought I was doing it all
***: I have had to learn how to stay out of the way sometimes
Fall 2007 Self: Geez. That sounds tough
***: Not as tough as it sounds. There are rewards. I worry less and I don’t go around angry nearly so often
Fall 2007 Self: I don’t think I can do that
***: You learn to do it. You are laying the ground work for me
Fall 2007 Self: I am angry about alot of things. Those stinking dogs never stop barking for one
***: Haha, now the dogs make me think of comasion. Isn’t that a hoot?
Fall 2007 Self: You gotta be kiddin’ me. No way! Those dogs could drive a saint to cursing
***: Haha. It IS hard to believe.
Fall 2007 Self: Lots of things make me angry. Once I have an angry moment, it can stick with me the rest of the day unless I find a way to forget it. Just finding a way to deal with that would be worth alot.
***: Yes, that is how we figurd out you ahd returned. Yesterday we went home angry.
Fall 2007 Self: And you found a way to pursue the spiritual. I am convinced that I have lost that for good
***: You haven’t lost as much as you think. It is there waiting for you. You are hiding an answer that you don’t know you have. You do not have to grow old and bitter. Just old, if you stay alive long enough 
Fall 2007 Self: I really can’t imagine this. It sounds so unbelievable. I feel even more like Rip Van Winkle now. I have been much blessed in this life and I know it should make me a happy person. But instead I can’t stop complaining
***: That part is much easier to fix than one would think. I start every day with a personal good thought about the one I love and then that it is enough to just be alive. Then I make a mental list of things I am grateful for
Fall 2007 Self: I remember a Thanksgiving service some years ago. I was siting there with a spouse who loved me and our first two children and the clergyman asked if any one would be willing say something for which they were thankful. It seemed as if he was looking at me and I just sat there. Of course so did everyone else but that scene has kind of haunted me
***: Keep up the hope
Z-Self: What we don’t know is what will happen now. Will you be staying for the length of the project or do some kind of merger with ***. But whatever happens it sure has been fun meeting you again.
Fall 2007 Self: Well you two are pretty neat too. It sure is an amazing tale. And you did all that without becoming a Buddhist?
Z-Self: Well the Buddhism part is another story but you did find a good number of Buddhist friends.
Fall 2007 Self: Well I always liked the few I have had in First Life. Do we get a Third Life?
**********************
10. F. I am enjoying my job today. Where else could one lose oneself in pictures and listen to Boris Gudunov? And I love this opera. It is near time to go home and I don’t want to go home. (Well maybe I don’t love it that much!)
9. F. As it gets closer to the time for PaB I am having the urge to attend although I really am too busy here. I wonder if the six hours is becoming ingrained. Do I need another fix of love and fellowship?
8. F. While I was working I began wondering Who is writing this blog. Maybe that is one reason I still need to learn more about the heart. I realize some of it comes from there.
7. F. The words “O mein herz” drifts by (from Siegfried) while I am pausing
6. F. I changed my music listening too while I am working. I have been listening to Wagner and a few other things. The figures of the Ring Cycle are motivated so much by attractions and identities but there is life and death there too on a fundamental level. Such a different from the loftiness of Gretchaninoff. It makes one think about how illusionary are our selves tying together with the theme of today.
5. F. Thinking back to the post a day or two ago, we have a need to love and we need to be loved. It feels like I just realized that on some profound level
4. F. pause. I feel so much more relaxed since deciding to go with the flow but I now feel very tired. Hmmm. Need some adrenaline. Too bad I don’t drink coffee
3. Gr. Wow, where do i start this morning? My cup seems to be overflowing (Glad is not my job to clean it up)
2. This is not what was supposed to happen. For some time I have been thinking about my thoughts and hopes at the time I first found PaB and what PaB has done for me. This morning I realized I have been slowly morphing into my self of one year ago, right before my brief incursion into Second Life (7 months before I knew PaB existed…before it existed). I am drawing on the memory of that self as I immerse myself in this big project. Also by nature of the task, I have run into dates that told me what I was doing as I found time to enter into Second Life, had to give it up for a time, and then return in March with a new character and purpose. I have been more controlled by the flow of events than I realized. I am ecstatic in one sense because I have been worried about withdrawing into myself and feeling somewhat annoyed and confused about PaB that wasn’t part of my life one year ago. It is a relief to see why this is happening. So much is illusion. I also feel grateful for this unexpected learning experience, a presentation of the appearance of a self hidden away in the memory cells and I am living this self again. Yet I see now the illusions and that this will be a temporary metamorphosis and a learning experience. Through it all, I can get a glimpse of the z-self, constant and steady (while my selves flit around unsteadily), slightly the worse for wear, but alive again for another day. I am that
1. TGT. A beautiful cold, crisp morning after a day of cold rain and some light snow (all melted). The sky just beginning to run a lighter shade of blue in the east and the streetlights like gems. A solitary bird overhead watching me enter the building. Another day to be alive with the actual clouds lifting and the metaphorical ones seeming to to clear also.
