Oh, that John Crowley
Early last week, a friend of mine pointed out a weblog entry by fantasy novelist John Crowley, regarding his first experiences in Second Life. Unfortunately, up until a few hours ago, I had the name confused and generally cross-linked in my head with Aleister Crowley, who I was fairly certain was both dead and unlikely to have a LiveJournal.

In his LiveJournal entry, Mr. Crowley went on about psychic experiences, convergence vs. coincidence, his dreams, and such like, in somewhat puzzling and flowery prose. I had a truly surreal "Bwuh?!" moment. Said moment recurred several times over the next few days, compounded by careless skimming, by a persistent cognitive disconnect (read "brain fart") on my part, and by the seemingly non sequitur commentary following the entry. (They were quoting from Alice in Wonderland, I eventually realized.) A few hours ago, I reread the article for the Nth time. This time was after Hamlet Au pointed up the same entry, complete with explanation of John Crowley's true identity. It was really quite astounding to realize how my preconceptions and expectations about the presumed author were coloring and distorting a relatively mundane (yet poetic) weblog entry.

It's awfully easy to see what isn't there, isn't it?

And, speaking of surreal non sequitur, Will Webb explained the Dutch term mierenneuker to me last night. "Ant-fucker?!" No, that's not a typo. Who the hooping heck came up with that? Yet again, SL has expanded my horizons.
Posted by Moriash Moreau at 2:08 PM