The other name promised excitement and butterflies. But it was a change. Not just a change of company, but a change of lifestyle. Friends would change too. It might make her family happy, that change, but she risked everything she had grown to love as her life for what might only be a honeymoon period.

Name one was her girlfriend of nine years on and off. She came with the love and tenderness that could only be found in relationships that had lasted so long. It was a mature love, in bloom, one that was steady and sure. It would not fade. Years of history gave it a glow and the voice that owned the name would always speak softly. You could always hear love in a voice like that.

Name two was his. Again, a face she’d known for years but, largely, had only ever known as a friend – save for an experimental fling when they were both learning about themselves. But his name had suddenly developed a tingling it never had before, an excitement that it failed to bring the last time that they met up. It was sudden and new and came with no promises. It was unexpected, not homely. At least, not yet. But doesn’t there always come a time when someone wants to leave home? Travel? Not physically. But at least, the heart desired an adventure and while he came without promise, he did come with love. And he did come with honest intentions.

Two names. Two options.

But the head has no say when the heart takes charge.

Defining evil had been a dilemma for him since a young age. Was it murder? Was if theft? Was evil just another way to explain hatred?

He knew ‘evil’ was at work in the stories he saw on the news about people killing other people, about world leaders torturing their own people and he knew evil definitely had a part to play in the wars he’d studied in his history classes. But faced with the issue of identifying exactly what it was at the age of nine – well that was a whole other story.

He asked his Mother for advice and she assured him it was quite simply a lack of God. Satisfied with this answer, he based his short assignment on this, god the grade he wanted and thought little more of it again until many years later.

When his own daughter was stolen from the world, many years after he has last thought of his Mother or of a God and more years still since he had set foot into a church, he was faced again with that question.

“You have to face him and forgive him,” his wife pleaded. “Face and forgive, Eric. It’s the only way we can move on.”

As he sat opposite the face of evil, separated only by a glass pane, he could muster only one syllable.

“Why?”

The face said nothing. It just stared emptily downwards, not even as though trying to search for answers. There was a looming silence and Eric decided, after a moment or two, that he was wasting his time. Before he could stand up though, the face spoke.

“I’ve asked God for forgiveness.  It’s probably easier for God to forgive though, than for you. I am sorry.”

“I won’t ever forgive you. I hope you rot in hell.”

Eric stood and turned to leave.

“Then you, sir, will live as empty as life as I.”

He ignored the jibe and left.

For the first time in many years, on his way home, he stopped off at the cemetery. He stood by his Mother’s headstone and spoke softly.

“Love isn’t a lack of, God, Mum. It’s a lack of love. And I’m sorry.”

Ruins are not flawed. They’re perfect imperfection, stunning, beautiful and completely open and vulnerable. They reek of history, of stories we were not around to witness ourselves, stories that might once have been told by storytellers now long departed from this world. They hide nothing. What once they sheltered has also long since departed and now they’re free of the attacks they once endured to protect those within.

Ruins are, to me, something like broken hearts. They’ve crumbled and they have fallen away but in their exposed and vulnerable state, they reveal something so incredibly and inexplicably simple and stunning that we have to look. We have to peek inside because it’s only in this broken state that we can see the wound inflicted by previous battles. Ruins, just like broken hearts, can no longer hide anything. They can no longer hide what was within, no longer hide wounds and are subject to observation by anyone who cares to look. And many do. There is a natural human fascination with that which is broken.

Broken is beautiful. Broken is exposed. Broken is human and flawed just like everything should be. Broken is not quite perfect but does not try to be and does not care that it isn’t. Broken lays all its cards on the table for you to see. It doesn’t want you to fix it. It just wants you to see – to look, to observe, to learn from. Broken is a lesson, a beautiful lesson.

From broken hearts, to broken buildings, to broken dreams, the flawed things in our lives are the things that eventually make us stronger.

He fell deeper into confusion than ever he had been, permitting his life to escape from any reality and drip slowly into a fantasy he shaped into the thing he thought he wanted. She was his fantasy and he was hers. They engaged one another in talks and thoughts of the maybes, the one days, the what ifs and the if onlys. They lived a perfect pixel life in wooden cabins in snow filled forests, in penthouse apartments in the sky, in beach homes, on their own private island… They lived anywhere they wanted and the world was their own. Each the master of their own success and engineering joint successes that might be the envy of others… were others not too busy engineering their own fantasies.

The wake up was a disjointing jolt from the other side – the real side, as one he loved slipped away into an untimely non-existence.

Death does funny things. One effect – an almost overnight change in his outlook. He no longer desired perfect fantasy homes, what ifs and one days with a perfect stranger and slipped solidly back into a reality that was, without doubt, a little darker than he’d like, but was a place he simply had to be. He had real responsibilities to a real little boy. And though that little boy and he did not live in penthouses in the sky and they didn’t live on their own private island… their joint existence and battle through the storm, was more beautiful than anything he’d experienced in the perfect place.

The withdrawal was not from the perfect place. It was not from the perfect escapism and immersion in a platform he’d come to love. The withdrawal was from a life he thought was really his, but one, it emerged, didn’t even really exist. The jolt turned his perfect pixel place from his ‘life,’ into his ‘hobby’ and restored balance.

I’m angry at God for not existing. I should rephrase. I’m angry at myself for being angry at the fact that I seem entirely incapable of allowing myself to believe for a millisecond that God might exist somewhere. Because if I believed it, then I’d be more convincing when I was telling him. I would be more convincing when I am telling him that she’s in Heaven with God. I would be entirely more believable when I tell him that if he closes his eyes and concentrates really hard that he can still speak to her even though she can’t speak back like she used to.

I mean, he believes me. He does. But one day he won’t. One day he will be able to look into my eyes and tell that I don’t believe what I am saying to him. And then what will he think? Will he think I’m the misguided fool for not believing? Or will he follow me into a mindset that all who have passed are just gone and when it’s done, it’s done? Cos life isn’t a video game, is it? You don’t fall down, cue the cheesy music and then spring back to life again. It’s not about second chances, second lives, second opportunities to say the things you didn’t say the first time round.

And if God did exist and if I believed, for a moment, that when my time’s up I’d just move along into the next room and I’d see her again, I wouldn’t have to kick myself every single day of my life for the short sentences I just could not say aloud when I had the chance.

“Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for the most beautiful and precious gift that anyone has ever given me. I forgive you its late arrival.”

She missed our boy. She missed him too much to let just another asshole come in between but she knew as long as the asshole was around, the boy would not be. So I know… that’s how I know she would have come good.

In my mind she would have worked her way up in a prestigious company. Amazing business brain. She would have been busy and we would have worked out the childcare arrangements between us. I would have been flexible, I promise.

She would have had him during the week one week, and I the weekend and then we’d switch. But only if that made him happy too. He would have been happy, though. He loved having both of us.

We’d have planned his 18^th birthday party, with the help of our spouses. We’d both be married then, that’s for sure.  Her husband and I would get on really well and laugh and joke as she and my wife rolled their eyes at us in unison. We’d have pulled out embarrassing childhood photos to show his girlfriend and we’d have taken him to University on his first day – together. She would cry as she left him in some halls of residence building with his belongings in a box and an exciting future at his fingertips. I would hug him and try not to cry because Dads can’t get away with it like Mums can. We’d stop for something to eat on the drive back to Manchester and she would still be crying, but more with pride now than concern.

But life is cruel. So I’ll take care of the childcare arrangements. I love having him here all the time anyway and I don’t mind planning his birthday parties. Driving him up to university in 12 years or so alone – that’s not a problem either. But I wish she could have been there. His smile is only half a smile without her.

I lay awake last night with the window open. At first, you were awake too. I could tell because you were breathing in time to the soft murmur of the buildings outside. But then your breathing changed and took on the rhythm of my own, perhaps because your ear was pressed still so firmly to my chest. But the hand that was holding mine loosened its grip and your breaths became deeper.

I wondered what you might be dreaming and wondered more if the closeness we shared might mean I could give you my dreams. Perhaps my conscious mind could transfer thoughts to your subconscious. Because I only want you to have beautiful dreams. So I thought hard about wonderful things, like tropical beaches and wide expansions of ocean, of you and I and my boy and the crazy dogs just running around on the sand laughing. I thought of nights in with chocolate cake and movies that we miss the storyline of because we’re too busy kissing. I thought about Saturday afternoons in the museum explaining to my son what everything is because he’s too impatient to read the signs. I thought hard about Sunday mornings in bed cuddling and playing those silly word games that you always make up on the spot.

And I fell asleep shortly after, my insomnia defeated, succumbing to the happiness of the simple but stunning things I have in my life. I dreamed of those beaches and I dreamed of you.

When you woke me up this morning with a cup of tea, you had the same smile I spent the whole of my sleeping night with. You had the same look of honesty, truth, of happiness that I’d just spent my night indulging in. And as real as pain of hot tea spilt down a bare chest, so too are those dreams.

This is something I know is good practice to be in but for months I haven’t done it. So when I have a more public domain to put this stuff into, I suppose it gives me more motivation.

The 300 words can be on anything. Sometimes I’ll just start writing and get to the end and realise I’ve exceeded the 300 and made no sense.

I invite anyone else who wants to take part to do so. If you’re up for it, just drop me an email to josue[@]pixelscoop.net or an IM (Josue Habana) in world and I’ll either post for you or set you up with an account to post them here yourselves.

Let’s get back into practice

Check it out for yourself:

Always a lover of both the real and virtual theater, I’m delighted to let you all know that talented playwright, Z. Sharon Glantz (known in Second Life as Lailu Loon) will be presenting another of her original plays in April. I Gave at the Office was well received in world last year and the new production, Oxymoronic Fusion, promises to be superbly entertaining.

This presentation will also be streamed live into the real life Open Circle Theater in Seattle, presenting a phenomenal exposure opportunity for Second Life performance.

For more information, visit www.oxymoronicfusion.wordpress.com or contact lailu.loon [at] gmail.com [dot] com.