What Others Think About My Life

It's always fascinating to hear what others think about our lives, isn't it? Some may endorse your approach, while others might think you could use your time more wisely. Some support your interests and activities, while others could care less. Yet, when someone cares enough to offer his observations and opinions, it seems a bit flattering. I'm just Fizzy; I do what I do because it seems right and fitting. I'm not looking for justification. Nor is DR (trust me; I know him personally). He writes what he writes because it seems right and fitting. Still, when somebody pays attention and is intrigued enough to offer an opinion, it makes it all worthwhile. So, below I have posted a recent review of The virtual Life of Fizzy Oceans (Hey! That's me!) written by author Donald O'Donovan.


"The Virtual Life of Fizzy Oceans is a strange and wonderful book. Fizzy Oceans, the heroine, thinks outside the box. But she doesn’t stop there. Fizzy lives outside the box.

Fizzy lives, as the title indicates, in a virtual world, where many of the limitations of our so-called real life are absent. In Virtual Life, as opposed to Physical Life, there’s no gravity, no disease, no aging, and you can travel through space and time, sans passport, with just a click — whoosh! — of a button. You can be who you want to be, go where you want to go, and yet The Virtual Life of Fizzy Oceans is not a science fiction novel for the simple reason that the technology that Fizzy and her virtual friends enjoy exists on the Internet now.

Fizzy Oceans herself is our narrator. Her style is breezy and conversational — Author David A. Ross has a great ear for dialogue — and the result is a light and frolicsome narrative freighted with serious content that is easily ingested, thanks to Fizzy’s unfailing good humor, playfulness and wisdom.

Those of us who grew up with video games drove go-karts, leaped tall buildings and battled Koopa Troopas in the person of Mario. But why let somebody else get your kicks for you? In Fizzy’s virtual world you get to custom sculpt your own personal avatar (called an emulation), a digital alter ego that has the characteristics you choose.

What about sex, you may wonder (I know I did)? Not a problem. At a virtual venue appropriately called the Sex Dungeon a delightfully uninhibited Fizzy gets it on with the hunky emulation of a Polish baker whose Physical Life body is in Krakow, while her Physical Life body, a bookish 37-year-old medical clerk named Amy Birkenstock, is tucked away in a stuffy office in Seattle.

The literature of escape abounds with tales of lost civilizations populated by beings who were able to communicate telepathically, teleport their bodies, and move freely about on the astral plane. Fizzy Oceans, as a representative of the new virtual culture, does it all, with ease and aplomb. In a world without boundaries she gets up close and personal with some of history’s finest (and some of the sickest) minds, including Mark Twain, Mahatma Gandhi and Saddam Hussein, as she takes the pulse of our tottering civilization and strives for a peek at what the future may hold. According to Fizzy, there is hope: “Perhaps we can kill ourselves with negligence and stupidity, and maybe we can render our beloved and fragile planet inhospitable, but we can’t extinguish the current of love, no matter how hard we try.”

So, that about says it all! Thanks, Donald. Now, off to VL I go. Come on, Amy, log me in!

The least we can do?

DR stopped by the Open Books shop in VL this morning to ask Crystal and me if we would post a link to his Open Books author page. Since he created us, and the OB shop, I suppose it is the least we can do.

http://www.open-bks.com/writers-corner/ross-david/david-ross.html

See you tomorrow,
Fiz

Vincent and the High Yellow Note

Those who know me well know my passion for art. You probably also know my passion for Vincent Van Gogh. To me, Vincent was the ultimate artist. In VL, I made a REP to recreate his life and exhibit his works - a kind of living museum. Yes, I remember well the opening night. I had created an alternate avatar - Vincent himself! - and, well studied, I was ready to play the part. Crystal and Kiz were at my side. But all did not go as I had hoped, and that night the three of us learned a painful lesson about how art itself is valued in our culture. The following is an excerpt from DR's novel. I hope you 'enjoy' it.

Love,
Fizzy


FROM THE NOVEL...
Crystal Marbella is at my side as I sign the papers to purchase my very own REP with the greenshoots that Kiz won in VL Las Vegas and so generously handed over to us; and while we both know that the creation of a new REP will require vast amounts of my effort and my attention, and as a result I will be spending much less time assisting Crystal with the Open Books Project, she is nevertheless happy for me because she knows that it has been my longtime dream to recreate the life and times of the artist Vincent Van Gogh in Virtual Life.

“Building an entire REP from bare ground up is a huge undertaking, Fizzy? Do you think you’re up to it?” Crystal asks.

“Sly Sideways has agreed to help. At least until I master the basics in scripting. If I need more help, there’s always VL University. I can learn what I need to know there, bit by bit.”

“I admire your initiative, Fizzy.”

“Thanks, Crystal. I will build it because it must be built. I will build it for Vincent. Because he gave everything he had, including his life, trying to find the high yellow note.”

“I’m going to miss you at Open Books,” says Crystal with a bit of sadness in her voice.

“Don’t worry, I’ll still come around,” I assure her.

:) Crystal types.

So, how does one go about recreating a person’s life in dot matrix? Especially one as emotionally deep as Vincent Van Gogh. Like any competent biographer, I can accurately document the progression of the events of his life. I can portray his family and his friends; the historical record is at my disposal. I can detail his trials and tribulations: poverty, illness, loneliness and confusion. I can script digital representations of the paintings, and the places he lived and worked, and of his physical features. But how can I possibly portray the spirit that once bestowed such a unique vision and representation of the world in which he lived? Yes, that is the challenge I face. Yet, I know I must try, because not only Vincent, but all artists who strive to represent the human condition—in all its varying hues and textures—deserve such a legacy. I know that if I am successful—even to a degree—then I, too, will become a viable artist. If I fail, then at least I have touched my own brush to the canvas in a genuine and noble attempt to reunite with the spirit of creation itself. And that, my fellow seedlings, is the true purpose of our existence!


In order to make a final survey of the terrain, I activate Vincent’s emulation for the first time. My creation is impeccable, I believe, but have I gathered the courage to finally walk in his shoes? My first steps in this strange body are not unlike those of any other emulation, yet I feel the artist’s peculiar presence bearing down on me. From his parents’ middle class home in Amsterdam I move to the Borinage in Belgium, then to the parsonage in Etten, England. I visit the Goupil et Cie Gallery in Paris where he worked for a short time as an art dealer with his brother Theo, then the hovel of a home he kept in the Hague with Sein the prostitute and her infant son. Finally, I move on to Arles, France, where Vincent lived for a short time with the artist Paul Gaugin, and where he cut off his ear in a castigatory rage. I also pay a visit to the asylum at St. Remy. In his room I spend a reflective moment peering out his window at the garden where he painted irises and sunflowers. Back in the village of Arles, I set out in my ragged clothes for a day of painting in the countryside, my brushes and pigments stored in a homemade satchel strapped to my back. Under my arm I carry my easel. In my free hand I carry my lunch—a crust of bread, a bottle of milk, nothing more. The children in the streets wait in hiding for me to pass so they can hurl stones at me, knocking my straw farmer’s hat off my head. In a wheat field, just beyond the city’s border, I paint furiously as a Murder of Crows circles overhead. They call out to me in a language I suddenly understand. Sheathes of wheat dance to the music of the breeze. In my waistband I carry a loaded .22 caliber pistol—a rusting relic of a firearm, really—for a purpose not yet determined.

Once more as the emulation of Fizzy Oceans, I greet Crystal and Kizmet, my two best VL friends, as they transfer into the REP near the museum.

“Oh, Fizzy!” Kiz exclaims. “What a world!”

Crystal, the European, is more demure.

“Let me show you the collection,” I offer. Walking through a corner of my virtual Amsterdam to reach the museum housing the collection of Van Gogh masterpieces, my friends are wide-eyed and full of compliments.

Once inside, we begin to view the drawings and paintings. Silence marks our collective reverence, and I notice a tear welling in Crystal’s eye as she stands before Vincent’s portrait of Père Tanguy. I fully understand this wash of sentiment, because I have felt it many times myself. In fact, while I was creating the replicas in the ‘garden’ I often found myself crying for no apparent reason, and I now understand that such emotion is not abnormal but natural when faced with such unequivocal beauty. It’s like staring straight into the face of God. Or suddenly understanding the nature of a universe. Real beauty causes us to release all the false pride and pseudo sophistication we work so hard to maintain in our daily lives. By the time we reach the last painting in the collection, Kiz appears a bit uneasy. She turns to me and asks, “Fizzy, how many invitations did you send out?”

“Uh…” It suddenly occurs to me that we three are alone in the REP. “More than nine thousand, I think,” I answer.

“Nine thousand?” she says, incredulous.

“More or less,” I confirm.

The number obviously represents a non sequitur in her mind. “Where is everybody?” she says. Her question is not necessarily directed at me but at some nebulous entity.

Crystal looks at me sympathetically but perceptively. Kiz, still the neophyte, is stunned, dumbfounded. I can feel her mind stretching to understand the absence of visitors. Suddenly realizing that I have been ignored, spurned, and summarily dismissed, and that all my sincere and dedicated work may just have been in vain, I am impressed—no, overcome—by a reality even greater than my personal failure, which is the death of beauty itself!

Can such a thing possibly be true? Can a concept or emotion so innate, and so vital to our humanity, actually die? Perhaps the answer to such a question lies in the silence around us as we view these passionate paintings by a master forever in search of recognition, forever in pursuit of expression beyond everyday lexis. The language of the soul, if I am permitted such a cliché. Of course the vocabulary of silence has a meaning too, one that is enveloping and undeniable. And perhaps final.

Sitting together at The Café Terrace at the Place du Forum—Sly’s 3D re-creation of one of Vincent’s most famous paintings—three faithful friends sit together underneath the stars in Arles, France, within the unlikely environment of a masterpiece on canvas, drinking absinthe and waiting for the Renaissance. We think we may be waiting a very long time.

Who is Fizzy Oceans?

Hi! My name is Fizzy Oceans. I am the main character in the novel The Virtual Life of Fizzy Oceans by David A. Ross. As my creator, Mr. R. says that I’m supposed to write this blog about my Virtual Life. Honestly, I don’t know where I’m going to find the time to document my many adventures in VL, but Mr. R. is hard to argue with, so I guess I’d better just get on with it.

Actually, I am a split personality. Primary is the afore-mentioned novelist who created my physical life counterpart Amy Birkenstock. Amy lives in Seattle and used to work at a Medical Billing office (now she works part time in Mr. Chang’s fish market). Finally, there is Yours Truly, Fizzy Oceans, archivist, researcher, adventurer, VL Greeter and all around nice person!

Confused? Don’t worry; you’ll learn to tell us apart. I’m the chirpy one with big ideas, Amy is the realist and always, it seems, down on her luck, and Ross is the typist, a bit grouchy at times but, all in all, a pretty special guy.

So, what exactly is VL, you ask? Well, VL is first and foremost a simulated, digital world in which we can create whatever reality we wish. But it is even more than that. Some say it is a whole other dimension, and I would agree. Others say it is just a computer game, and for those who see it that way, that is true too. I fell into VL quite by accident, as do most who end up there. Was it an errant keystroke, a wayward click of my mouse, or was it just fate? Who knows? At first it seemed pretty strange in VL – something like walking around inside a Roadrunner cartoon, or a Tim Burton movie. Then I met Crystal Marbella, who showed me around and got me acclimated. Crystal is my best friend in VL, and I’m sure she’ll drop by for a cameo appearance here on the blog from time to time. Kizmet Aurora is another good buddy; we go to the beach together, go gaming in virtual Las Vegas and we shop for clothes on the Côte d’Azur. Some of my other VL friends are actually quite famous: Mark Twain, Jacques Cousteau, the Dalai Lama and others.

Here in VL, the so-called rules of engagement are rather different: for instance, we can fly without effort from place to place – even to civilizations long ago consigned to history. It is also possible for personalities to return from the dead, and for formerly unknown species to manifest and interact with whomever they might encounter.

VL is a Brave New World. And you are invited!

Now, back to Amy for a moment. To be sure, life is not going well for her in PL (Physical Life). Her job sucks and she’s usually pretty broke. She used to work for a doctor but she couldn’t even get health insurance. Finally, she lost that job and had to find work at Chang’s Fish Market cleaning up fish guts just to get enough money for a burger and fries. Sound like somebody you might know? Well, I hope not. Circumstances like Amy’s are not all that uncommon these days, but that certainly does not make them any easier to bear. You’ve got to feel for the girl – I know I do. But I also have to hand it to her because she just won’t give up on her dreams. And that’s where I come in. Amy is my fictional representation in PL (everybody’s got to have one, I guess), and since she’s not working much anymore, she retreats into her computer, into VL, and she lives vicariously through me, Fizzy Oceans.

At least that’s how Mr. R. planned the whole thing. To be sure, it works for all of us: the writer, the medical billing clerk/fish market janitor, and for me. I’ve got the best part of the deal, I guess. I go all over and meet interesting people and cook up wild activities and generally have a blast. Which is why Mr. R. wants me to write this blog, I guess. And who am I to refuse? One keystroke from the author and I am history. He’s got me there, so write I will, fast and furiously.

And I hope you’ll come along for the ride. You never know who we might meet, or what new and interesting idea we might uncover. We’ll be talking about everything here – not just VL reality, but Your World, too.

So come sign up! Don’t be shy; you are welcome here in our world(s)!