Certainty? In this world nothing is certain, except death and taxes. (Ben Franklin)

Ms Flawnt is reading Sexual Personae by Camille Paglia, a controversial thinker and scholar, who writes about the difference between the Apollonian elements of our lives (anything related to the mind and air) and the Chthonic (or Dionysian) elements (related to the body and the Earth). She is also reading Douglas Coupland’s novel jPod – his „update on Microserfs for the age of Google“ about a group of intelligent young people addicted to virtuality and gaming. We discuss this in relation to our own activities: her playing Free Cell for hours on end, and me escaping into the world of social media – SecondLife ®, Facebook, Twitter, even the right honourable online writer haven, Fictionaut…

While Ms Flawnt, who should do her art, express herself painterly, has always admitted her addiction, I rationalise my procrastination with the need for writerly social networking. It’s serious, too, but I know Facebook is my Free Cell, my not-so-free ticket to avoiding death and all the questions surrounding it, existential questions, the stuff that really great writing is made of, and any great art.

About my rationalisation: of course I need to network. Find out what and who’s out there doing stuff. Read other people’s work and review it. Get my own work into the scene and receive critique, applause and rejection. Or simply say ‘hello’ at times and ‘how are you‘. To do that, one daily focused social media hour would suffice. Instead, I spend entire evenings bouncing back and forth between different applications like a crazed pin ball in a mad machine, racking up ego shooter points, mostly. Only once in a while, a good discussion ensues. I learn something. Or I can make a contribution and my thoughts are tattooed on someone’s arm faintly glowing in the dark.

SecondLife ® plays a special role because it happens in real time – and when I use voice chat, it feels like a conversation between real people. Readings are actual readings and exchange means something is exchanged – except that I can smoke and drift in and out of anything and I know my avatar won’t take it badly and neither will anyone else: a text above my head coquettishly says „(Away)“ and I just hang there while my master, the man at the keyboard back home, takes a pee break, brings the kid to bed, hugs Ms Flawnt or just stares into physical space, enjoying the snowflakes slowly drifting past the window, filling the air with frozen water, and the Earth, which now lays still as we are in our houses, holding our breath until spring.

Even SecondLife ®, not a game, a rich 3D virtual world built by its residents for socialisation, avoids and denies the chthonic, however, the basis of our sorry body-centered lives: the virtual life is one long song on Apollo’s lyre. Everything there’s honeysweet and candy-colored. We never die, we control who we talk to and where we go, and even how: I forget my horny corn. Here, in the real world, I am naked, a child before the grim reaper, who will have no mercy, and who does not announce his when and where and how – there, in the virtual world, I am a master of the universe. Look at the cigarette dangling from my mouth: my virtual lungs are like the shiny tubes of a newborn! My ash never set anything on fire! I soar like an eagle high above my cottage. Here, I dare not leave the house because the cold makes me shiver and I am not sure if it isn’t fear.

The other night our heating gave out. It was Friday night and temperatures outside were dropping. The coldest December as long as I could remember. Lovely too: all that white snow. We live in the middle of a modern city – help’s available if you can pay weekend or night call rates and we can – and still I panicked. Not in a big way, but I noticed the difference. The images were strong: our family frozen to our seats. Our hamster staring at me with his iced spiky eyes, one paw raised accusingly: You Let Us Freeze To Death Because You Did Not Repair The Heating While There Was Still Time!

And my novel: the longest piece I’ve ever written. It lies there and my fear of death stands between me and its many pages, conveniently printed with a wide margin for notes. No notes. It’s so much easier to check my messages once more, or go to Milk Wood and stroll around the winter landscape, or join other avatars, non-feeling, immune against swine flu from birth, so much easier than to dig in and face the fact that time’s not infinite.

To summarise, knowing that I am way out of my depth with my own topic, dishing out Kierkegaard cookies, but feeling passionate, plighting nevertheless: why don’t you, over the holidays, take a little break from the computer. Touch your face, look at the wrinkles of your skin, marvel at the way your partner moves when she crosses the room, wiggle your toes in your slippers, or just burp. No avatar gesture! The real thing, the shocking thing that makes you feel alive. Summon the spirit of death willingly and allow it to enter your art’s heart. Do it so that when I see you again under Milk Wood, with the eternal deathless smile on your bloodless avatar lips, I can feel you’re real and we can be together again in a good way.

Virtually yours,

Flawnt Alchemi