Burning Life

I finally made it to Burning Life 2009. I was so envious reading about Dale and Honour having such fun times there. So Sunday morning when Oura tp’d me to meet her there, I grabbed the taxi eagerly. Except…. RL interfered. We weren’t there 5 minutes before I had to logoff. 😦 I never even got to grab the notecard that explained the build. I THINK that it was an interpretation of the creative process. I do KNOW that Oura is pretty in fire.

I had resolved to spend all day Sunday building. I didn’t actually make “all day”. I got started somewhere in the afternoon. It wasn’t going well. Actually, it didnt go well at all. It was one of those nights were I ended up crying at 2am and swearing I would see this project through but that I would NEVER build again. I still felt that way when I finally finished at 4am and went to…. well, not sleep and certainly not rest. What is it when you are not exactly conscious but you aren’t really asleep either? Anyway. /me shoves thoughts of Sunday’s work and not-work and erroneously deleted builds out of mind.

Honour explained to me that I did not have an accurate understanding of the RL Burning Man ceremony. We talked about it a bit. I discovered that I’d already missed the Burning Man part of the SL week of celebration and the Burning Woman as well. But I was still in time for the Burning Temple. Okay. I have to confess. I am not at all comfortable or interested in the concept of a temple burning. While I don’t think about it a lot, I suppose I do hold a bit of a grudge against Vespasian and Titus. Be that as it may, I decided that maybe I should try to experience an event that is apparently an SL tradition. So I met Honour over at the temple, well before the ceremony was to begin.

Honour warned me that it gets very laggy. So I switch to low ARC hair, turned off my mysti and other scripts. There was incessant drumming, necessary I would think at such a ritual. So we both turned on dance animations and moved to the drums. 🙂 I continued working on the other machine, watching the crowd grow over here. There really were a huge number of people arriving, in all sorts of outfits. It did begin to get laggy. I set up my camera in advance, anticipating major lag once the burning began.

Many people had left messages in the temple. Just before the fire began, the messages were read out in local chat. Some were funny, many were quite touching. Then the fire itself began. (LOL – good thing too – I’d gotten a message that Komuso was going to be playing and you KNOW how I feel about hearing Ko!!!) The fire was quite impressive. It started small and grew. The wind whipped it up at one point. I was relieved that it did NOT trigger any RL memories, recent or historical of burning buildings. But the building did indeed burn to oblivion. I found that satisfying. It’s the realistic type of touch that make SL so much fun. That comment sounds weird to me as I read it back (maybe because I havent had more than 12 hours sleep in the last 3 days). But somehow it makes SL more “cool” when it can pull off RL touches (yes, J, like shadows under the trees).

So I stayed and watched the temple burn to the ground. It occurred to me later that evening (morning) that I should have immolated myself as well, but all I can say now is – things got better, the way they do, once I had some sleep. 🙂 Thanks Dale, Oura and Honour, for ensuring that I finally got to experience a truly historic part of SL!