Moody Pines

Changed again. Too much joie de vivre, too many pink cherry trees and psychedelic extravagances in the last Naga Saphira landscape! So now the landscape is more moody, more reflective. The ground is littered with needles and sticks and mosses. Pines dominate. A volcano seeths nearby, while an underwater pagoda misplaced up on shore bubbles as fish and a red jellyfish circle above the water, mysterious flowers emerge from ancient ground, there's an orange tree, and a peach; my tent is there once more. It is a strange and strangely inviting place.

I am intrigued by my creations. I mull upon this place I call my Second Life home and question what it is in me to create the milieux I do. While making Moody Pines I am recovering from a bad cold. Are the elements in my scene symbolic representations of a disease process; is the hovering red jellyfish a depiction of a virus made manifest? 


When I was doing my first degree in English Literature, I was very interested in symbolism and the unconscious. I remain interested in symbolism, but no longer buy Freud's conception of the unconscious - nor Jung's, even (well, not wholly). In some senses I think unconscious processes are deeper than either of these two guys thought and arise from a body "knowing"; in other senses what they saw as unconscious processes are preconscious processes that arise in relation to.... Remember, both Freud and Jung saw the human psyche as being quite compartmentalized with a definite place called "the unconscious". I do not see things this way. For me arisings in consciousness are just that, "arisings" but not from an individualistic hidden self; these consciousness arisings are relational. Relational to other selves, environments we encounter, our own histories and memories, and from our own flesh and blood. Consciousness is an emergent property, an emergent  relational process.


Just thinking now about my comment about body "knowing," I recognize a need to explain what I mean. Clearly the body does not "know" nor "think" in any way similar to the mind, but there is deep core "knowing," a tissue, muscle, chromosomal knowing and memory. I shall give an example of this shortly, but first I want to signal a philosophy called 'biosemiotics' where biology is interpreted as a sign symbol study. In a few words, biosemiotics sees the evolution of signs/symbols as arising from the same evolution of life itself. Biosemioticians think that once we understand the signs and symbols of biology (which are - apparently - regular), we'll understand the life process (which they see as regular). A grand belief, for sure. The trouble is, signs and symbols are not regular, nor constant across the various cultural expressions of them - despite Jung's (for example) determination to make them so. 


Symbols, like the production of dreams, arise in the person uniquely as well as culturally. There isn't a one-to-one correspondence between an image and a meaning, as least as far as I'm concerned. For me, at this moment, the red jellyfish in my SL scene feels right as a symbol of an invading virus; a thing taken out of its environment and into my otherwise healthy cells; a thing making itself dominant. Yet, in my time honoured way, I Google this: jellyfish symbolism, and find in a site dedicated to the shamanistic journey: Jellyfish, Power Animal, Symbol of Acceptance and Faith. So, either I am in denial or the equivalent of a dictionary definition is inept. As I say, signs and symbols are not regular and understanding them is not a simple process of Googling nor flipping open a dictionary of signs and symbols.


To return to an example of body "knowing" I'm thinking of a case of the neurologist, Oliver Sacks where an elderly woman started experiencing sexy feelings and started to act flirtatiously with the nursing home staff. He diagnosed her with Cupid's Disease and blood tests showed that the sexually transmitted disease syphilis this old woman had contracted years ago was being reactivated at a neural level, and strangely, reactivating her body's sexual desire from the time of the disease contraction. Funny business, but it demonstrates the interaction of thoughts, desires, memories, and disease.

The visual arts abound with depictions of inner processes, whether realized or not. Munch's 'The Scream' says it all. Van Gogh's swirling landscapes used to say, "he's mad" but now - through an incredible amount of research and reassessment - speak of a man understanding the process of things, the realization of things in change. Monet's progressing problem with cataracts saw his paintings, once vibrant and colourful, change to muddy and brown as his eyes dimmed.


Naga Saphira is a palate for expressing myself, as is Elila herself. My avatar, in this russet landscape needed to be expressed in another way. No longer a Minoan woman, but now in a lilac-flowered dress to complement the landscape. With SL we become artists, and as artists, we bring our health into our creations.


[My title 'Moody Pines' sort of sums up the criss-cross between feeling unwell and depiction of it all.]