Viscera
Yesterday I went out and got my hair cut. It was very strange.
For the past month I’ve been hitting the keyboard pretty hard, although you really can’t see the fruits of my efforts in publicly yet. I’ve been trying to get Zebra Corporate out of the way and the vBusiness Expo rolling. This means 10 hour days in Second Life, sporadic late night meets, a six day work week, and then a mad rush around the house to get dishes done, do the laundry, and apologize to my wife for forcing her take care of all of the “outside of the house” stuff.
She’s been a saint through all of this, really. While I’ve barely left the house in weeks, I’ve been able to temper my cabin fever with the knowledge that at least the fam is doing well.
Still, not everything can be taken care of by the wife. Going out to get my haircut was something I had to do myself, obviously. So, for the first time in a long time, I went somewhere apart from the schoolyard across the street where I drop my daughter off.
It was so weird. The chairs, first of all, were really strange. I mean they were just generic plastic things I’ve sat in a dozen times before, but I haven’t sat on anything but my office chair and couch in ages. It felt like I was holding my body in some kind of unnatural position… I kept thinking someone would notice.
The sound was wild. All of these conversations floating in the air, some music overlaid on top of it, the skittering of the receptionist’s keyboard, scissors, water. It was a little odd because I couldn’t turn any one part of it up and there was no mute on any of the audio streams, but the loss of that control was kind of thrilling too.
Soon I began to get drunk on the sheer novelty of the experience. The way light played off of things. Focusing my eyes on distant objects rather than just Alt-zooming them closer for a better look. They handed me a glass of water while I waited and even the fine particulate matter left on the outside of the glass by the cleanser they used held a certain fascination to my fingertips. The echo in the room, too - something I had never noticed, or been able to notice before.
The world had leapt back into focus and, as I left, I knew that I had changed a little. I knew how it felt to circulate blood, to breathe, and to deal with gravity.
Then just today, as I put 30 minutes aside to follow up on my news reader, I catch an old K Zero post about Second Skin:
I think, after watching this, I need to make a promise to myself to get out more no matter what. The plain truth is that while virtual worlds are an incredible communication medium, and most of my friends are there, it’s still not tangible.
Remember, it’s just a hop, skip & jump from this:
