I got an email from Microsoft’s Bing, it’s their 5th anniversary. Along with the email was a link to Bing Gallery, and I saw a pic I liked. I started browsing then I saw this picture I really, really like. It reminded me about how I feel about my second life right now.

(from http://www.bing.com/gallery/)
It’s like this, this is how my life feels now.
For more bluebells checkout this Flickr page:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/inese_ie/

Anyway, I kept on browsing through the pics and came across another great scene. And I thought to myself, Second Life is like this too. You can build your dream out on a virtual ocean, and it can be beautiful and even feel like a home for your soul, yet it is also very fragile, so fragile that a good storm will blow it away.

(from http://www.bing.com/gallery/)
All of the things we build reside in a fragile virtual world.

I spent at least an hour going through Bing’s Gallery and I downloaded many photos. I’ll use them in some future posts, but this last one was like someone strumming a chords inside my spirit. Did you ever read James Joyce’s “Ulysses”? I know, it is very, very hard to read, especially if you are dyslexic, and I never actually finished it. Nonetheless, there’s a line in there somewhere that goes something like this, “Am I walking into eternity along Sandymount Strand?” That’s what this last photo feels like.

(from http://www.bing.com/gallery/)
“Walking into eternity along Sandymount Strand”

Nice job Bing!

UPDATE 2023: This particular blog post has surfaced again and again as most watched over the years. Why? I surmise that people studying James Joyce noticed the reference to Sandymount Strand. It’s an obscure reference but I’m not the only one to take that passage to heart. Here’s a video called “Walking into Eternity”. I hope it helps in understanding of the mystique of this phrase.