the second life of marx dudek » fourth wall

Foot Traffic

Marx Dudek — Thu, 05 May 2011 17:39:08 +0000

Hello, gentle reader. You are accompanying me on my walk today! It really is amazing that I can go on a lunchtime stroll and write a blog at the same time – without wires! On a small device I can hold *and* type with using the same hand! Youth, do not take these wonders for granted – you live in pretty amazing times.

And yet, I am walking in the street alongside the curb because this city has apparently given up on the idea of sidewalks.

If I should happen to get struck, though, you should be able to find a photo of it on Twitpic within a few minutes. Ah, technology!

It’s worrisome how looked-down-upon walking is becoming in the States. I’ve actually overheard someone say that they never notice someone outside unless they’re in their car. What a sad thought! Being a pedestrian is really a statement of independence, but for Americans, it seems increasingly interpreted as “I can’t drive”, or “I can’t afford a car”, or “My car is broken”, or “I’ve had my license suspended”. Never “Wow, that’s healthy!”, or “Sure beats high gas prices!”. You certainly see a lot of things that you would normally miss, driving past at 55 miles per hour.

Unless you have your face stuck in a cell phone.

Oops.

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Looking Back – Part One.

Marx Dudek — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 05:00:09 +0000

Writing about myself is, more often than not, discomfort incarnate. I am my own most difficult subject, which frustrates, as few things consume me more than the desire to be known and genuinely understood. In the interest of letting thoughts flow as freely as possible, I ask you to indulge my stream-of-consciousness as I attempt to provide some insight into the person you know as Marx.

As I look back on three years as a virtual being, and what appealed to me the most about Second Life – the promise of greater self-discovery – I realize that I know about as much about myself as I did when I signed up in December of 2007. I could interpret this as validation that I have been true to myself all along. Either that, or I could interpret it to mean that I’ve spent most of my life hiding behind a mask.

Those who have known me for any period of time know that I spend most of my Second Life in the form of a rabbit. While I make no secret about the fact that I am a “furry” – and I will be more than happy to answer questions or challenge preconceived notions of exactly what that means – my form is truly a metaphor of the one who dwells behind the face … and the whiskers, and the ears. Unlike many SL furs, I enjoy being a human in Second Life as well. I don’t know that I would feel complete being just one or the other, nor do I feel compelled to choose. I will often pick one or the other based on where I am, or what I am doing, or with whom – although I am more likely to feel comfortable being “Marxibun” around other humans than I am being human around other furs. Confronting this fact as I write it out leaves me feeling rather unsettled, actually. I love my human aspect. Why be self-conscious about being human in a furry environment? Am I being discriminatory? Projecting my own insecurities on others? If I’m the same person inside, should it matter? And if someone judges me based on fur – or lack thereof – should I be overly concerned about their opinion?

While growing up, my mother was my greatest influence – a strong woman with a passion for fairness, justice and compassion. She helped define the liberal values that I cling to tenaciously. After my father died, my mother married a dyed-in-the-wool Texan and her worldview took a hard right-turn. Before too long, the views that I embraced were now under constant withering attack by the very parent who had instilled them in me. The change was – and still is – quite a shock to me. The night before I created my Second Life account, there was a particularly unpleasant confrontation between me and my mother over my continued opposition to the War in Iraq. Near the end of our conversation, she declared that I was “a godless Marxist Communist who needs to get on [my] knees and pray to God for forgiveness”. (Did I happen to mention that my mother had moved to a remote area of Texas and relied on Fox News as her window to the outside world? Yeah, that.)

So, click forward one day ahead, and I am being pressed by an online friend of mine from Norway to sign up for Second Life. After dismissing it as something I had already tried earlier that same year and found to be boring, I was asked to give it another chance. Unable to remember the password for the first account I had created, I made a new one. With the previous evening’s argument with my mom still fresh in my mind, I snarkily typed in “Marx” – figuring that this foray into Second Life would be as short-lived as the first one, so it really didn’t matter what name I picked. (I chose Dudek simply because of how it sounded, because it was similar to “Brubeck”, who is one of my favorite jazz musicians. I later discovered that it means “twenty” in Esperanto.) Knowing now what I didn’t know then, would I choose a different name? Not on your life. I love it.

Remembering my first year, I am equally horrified … and proud. I began my virtual life as the biggest tomboy you could imagine! I sported short-cropped hair, an awkward body shape, and an almost militant opposition to makeup. I was also quite stridently an intergendered avatar. My SL look, and body, and mannerisms reflected a longstanding ambivalence toward gender roles – one which followed me from my real life into my virtual one. In Second Life, however, the body I had chosen for myself often left me feeling awkward – particularly at those moments when I disrobed in front of others. (I am not particularly fond of the word “hermaphrodite”, but in the interest of being easily understood, that’s what I was for the first eight months of my Second Life.)

It was during this time that I met the person who has become my partner, my equal, my mate and the habit I have no intention of breaking. She never showed any intention of wanting to change me – she loved me as I was, without hesitation, condition or exception. When I decided to place my virtual self clearly on one side of the Gender Divide, she neither criticized nor celebrated. She continued to do what she had done from almost the moment that we first met.

She accepted me.

Do I regret my decision? That is a difficult question. Expectations of gender can present a burden, especially when you don’t feel as though you belong to one or the other – or worse, when you feel the Battle of the Sexes raging within your own body on a daily basis. Living a gender-neutral life does afford a certain freedom that is lacking in society’s feminine/masculine roles. It does put a strain on me – as Marx – sometimes – but why should it?

That’s a very good question.

(To be continued.)

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Frantic is the New Calm

Marx Dudek — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 05:06:01 +0000

As pen-in-hand as I’ve been lately, I didn’t want you to think that I had necessarily fallen into writer’s slump yet again.

The truth is that this past week in RL has been exceptionally chaotic, and has left me little time for anything other than putting out fires and vacuuming up flood waters – figuratively and literally. This week has exemplified the cliched proverb, “When it rains, it pours.”

My life will be turned mostly upside-down for the next two weeks. I will write if I have the time and the inspiration. Mostly, however, I will be packing and unpacking boxes and moving furniture. Life moves quickly and abruptly, and it takes all of my strength just to catch up – and keep up – with it.

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A Very Positive Note!

Marx Dudek — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 05:27:42 +0000

To those who have been concerned about my physical well-being, I am happy to report to you that I am doing much better.

Well, that’s a bit of an understatement.

I am feeling better in the past few days than I have in the past two years.

Fingers crossed that this will continue!

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How to Succeed in Business … by Trying Your Little Heart Out

Marx Dudek — Sat, 29 May 2010 08:33:52 +0000

Too much caffeine. Bad bunny. You’re supposed to be sleeping right now.

Making things is one of my greatest joys in Second Life. Sometimes I daydream of winning the lottery, or finding some generous philanthropist with whom I strike up a conversation about virtual worlds. I give such a winning testimonial about Second Life that I am awarded an endowment, so I can work eight hours a day at stretching my creativity to its limits and creating dozens and dozens of lovely virtual things to brighten the lives of others.

Oh well, I can dream.

This dream has had me thinking a great deal about what is truly important in life. How many of us labor in the service of a job that we truly love – the kind of job that we would willingly do for free because it is just that fulfilling? Does SL fill that void for us, let us live the dream of gainful self-employment – or maybe not even necessarily profitability, but something that we love doing? I know that the things that I do in SL right now – designing T-shirts, making furniture and various knick-knacks – would totally be something that I would love to do in RL. My little brownstone in Paxson (Zindra) even mirrors the comfortable old building in which I’d love to set up shop, with my own little cozy living space on the top-most floor.

I think about this a lot – perhaps too much – when I’m at work. I think about designs. I think about layouts. I think about patterns and cushions and woodgrains. For a while, I worried that perhaps this was obsessing over SL. However, I realize now that my heart is yearning for something as artistically and emotionally satisfying in “real life” as I have in my virtual life. Don’t get me wrong, I am thankful for the job that I have, and a boss who seems to see potential within me. Still, as I sit and stare at folders, and purchase orders, and spec sheets and legal documentation, I wonder … is this where I’m going to be in five years? Ten years? And if so, will I still be feeling the way I’m feeling right now?

Right now, in this economy, it’s not the time for me to rock the boat. My RL is somewhat burdened with personal debt that I need to get under control. Capitalism runs on credit, and credit is a cruel and harsh slave-master once you submit to it. One thing that I’ve found Second Life has done for me is cause me to spend less money. When I can find similar creature comforts in virtual goods in a micro-economy, there’s less temptation to overspend on real-life things that I really don’t need. Since I’ve had the shop in Zindra, which has been about a year now, I have not had to deposit a single dollar of my own money into Second Life. I even have a comfortable little nest egg. This was the first year that I was able to pay my annual premium membership entirely from in-store sales and still have a substantial balance left over. Sales have dropped off quite a bit in this past month, but that’s to be expected as we crawl into summer.

When the economy picks up, though, and when I get my personal credit crisis a bit more in control, I’d like to start making some RL versions of some of the items I sell in Second Life. Actually, I could start selling T-shirts now, through Cafepress or Zazzle – but I’ll need to test-order something first, to make sure I’m comfortable with the quality of the finished product. I’ve also had one or two Second Life-themed books in mind. I just wonder, and worry a little, how many years our grid has left in its lifespan. For all of the talk about constant quarterly increases, I’ve seen a slow-but-steady decline in concurrent users. They’re down to an average high of 50,000 from 80,000 just a little over a year ago. Granted, quite a few of those were campbots – but I can’t believe that bots made up around 30,000 users. Perhaps a third of that, I’d think. Of course, I could be wrong.

I want to follow my heart in as many aspects of my life – of both lives – as possible. I’ve let several decades slip by me as I’ve tried to find happiness and fulfillment in relationships, only to come up empty on the other side. I’ve lurched from job to job, very rarely unemployed but also very rarely overly enthusiastic over the type of work I’ve found myself doing. While I don’t buy into the myth that success is available to anyone who truly wants it – Capitalism can’t succeed if there are more millionaires than there are laborers – I do believe that you won’t know if you can succeed unless you try. It’s all a matter of keeping the proper perspective, and knowing that failure is a real possibility – and knowing that, allowing yourself the freedom to fail. To paraphrase the wonderful Douglas Adams, successful flight involves aiming for the ground … and missing.

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Clear Cache, Reboot, Restart

Marx Dudek — Sat, 29 May 2010 04:24:56 +0000

This is a really terrible habit of mine, and one that I have not been able to break, in ten years of writing online.

I am starting my blog over. Again.

The past year and a half in RL was difficult for me. It left my mind in a very unhappy, unsafe and uncomfortable place – a place from which I am only now truly stepping away from. I won’t delve into details. Those who need to know, know. Those who knew, helped me through it. Those who helped me through it have earned a very special place in my heart.

And now, I find myself emerging again. Finding my own limits. Making my own boundaries. Deciding what I’m okay with. Determining to be genuinely true to myself, and to others. Coming out of my shell – a little at a time, perhaps, but making slow and steady progress.

In SL, I am happily partnered to a very caring, very sincere, very loving individual. Someone I have had the wonderful good fortune to have flown across the Atlantic to meet in person. Someone who has become an integral part of my every morning, and an essential part of my weekends. Someone I cannot imagine having to do without.

In RL, I am now single for 18 months. Healing. Hiding. Surviving. Deciding whether a life in the company of another is preferable to a life of solitude. Not particularly rushed to find an answer to the question.

In SL, I am trying to find myself again, to reclaim myself and rediscover the wonder of self-exploration that made Second Life such a wonderful experience to begin with. Sometimes I wonder if that’s possible. Part of the magic was the newness of the experience, the ability to immerse myself fully in a world where it seemed anything was possible. I still want to believe in that.

I realize that baring my soul in a public forum places me at risk of ridicule. In a world where names and faces can be as real, or as unreal, as the names and faces behind them, our virtual life can be as honest or as dishonest as we will it to be – and indeed, the virtual lives of those around us. So few of us in Second Life share our RL identity to more than a handful of people – that “hiding in plain sight” often makes a person hyper-sincere. Sometimes that hyper-sincerity manifests itself in intense malice, mockery or bullying. A good friend of mine wisely said, “Second Life is not a utopia – it’s not because there are people in it.” No matter how perfect any locale may be, no matter how far we run away to get there, that part of us which we desperately seek to run away from catches up with us. Some even bring it with them willingly. So the glitch that is greater than any server malfunction, greater than any asset crash – is that of simple human nature. Be it the tendency to share too much, or not to share enough – or to point the finger and laugh at the one caught in a moment of vulnerability, or embarrassment, or anxiety, or shame. We have seen the enemy, and it is us.

And yet we live in a world where the broadcasting of every minute detail of our lives has become the norm. The concept of privacy seems almost alien, as Facebook does what the CIA and KGB could only have dreamed of accomplishing – convincing people to hand over not only their papers, but their receipts, their whereabouts, even the key to their diary – all willingly and with a smile. Our accomplishments and our failures are on display for the world to see. It seems almost trivial that walking around without clothes is still indecent – we have never been more naked as a society than we are right now.

So, even as I buck against the trend of RL full-disclosure, I seek to share my experiences as a virtual being. In doing so, I realize I am sharing even more of myself than I would if I were pouring this all into a first-life LiveJournal. I am rather disappointed that I did not maintain a continued and unbroken written record of my two and a half years of virtuality. I can, however, try to start now.

Hello. My name is Marx Dudek. And, inspiration willing … this is my life.

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