Today’s poem is In the Seam of Life by Rachel Galvin. The Slowdown is your daily poetry ritual.

In this episode, Major writes… “A recent YouTube search for something else led me to an how-to video on land transference and group deeds . . . in the virtual world known as Second Life. Turns out, one can purchase everything from biscuits for their avatar dog, to a virtual silver-studded leather jacket, to a renovated kitchen for one’s imaginary urban loft. The virtual world turned twenty years old this summer, enough time for users to program a free market parallel to our own. Frankly, I’m struggling with the realities of our offline economy, and lately, the seemingly insurmountable issues we face IRL: war, political discord, mass shootings. But that’s just the thing with roleplaying communities: they grant reprieve from our very human and very startling challenges. They permit entry into worlds where we can pursue an existence much different than our current reality, with all of its missed opportunities and deferred dreams. What we cannot have in this life—say, peace—we can render in another.”

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