I hadn’t realised that it’s been four years since my first visit to Green Story, the Homestead region held and designed by Dior Canis. Indeed, it might have been even longer before I hopped back to have another look, but for a poke from Shawn Shakespeare; admittedly, that poke was given to me at the end of June 2022, so even now I’m being a little tardy in just getting around to a visit and an article, given October is now peeking over the horizon at us!
At the time of hat visit, which I wrote about in Stories and memories in Green Second Life, the region was very much a place of two halves, one in the sky and one on the ground, and both equally attractive, and which offered a continuity of theme and expression, one to the other.
So far as I can tell now, Green Story exists in its current iteration as a ground-level build only; I certainly didn’t note any suggestion of a teleport to a sky platform – so if I did miss it, my apologies. Both the 2018 iteration of Green Story and this are joined, however, by the fact that whilst each has its own landscape, neither is what might be said to be contiguous location; rather, each exists to offer a series of locations – or vignettes, depending on how they are being utilised – scattered within a landscape which helps to link them as places to be found and appreciated.
In its form at the time of writing this piece for example, the landing point sits on a winding track running towards (or away from, depending on your point-of view), a little railway stations which has perhaps seen better days. Rain falls from a star-filled sky cut through with the ribbon of the Milky Way, and the shadowed forms of the station buildings, their mix of warm yellow lights and bright white platform illumination reflecting of banks of mist, beckon the new arrival with the promise of a warm reprieve from the downpour.
This station is a strange hodgepodge of buildings platforms, music store, café, waiting room, and so on, which look as though they have all come together to huddle against the rain rather than being built with intent, a single rail car hunched at the end of one of the lines and suffering the rain in silence. The very oddness of the station buildings – which includes a very cosy artist’s studio floating above the rest as if daring gravity to say something – givens them a unique attractiveness which further draws visitors to them.
Travelling the other way along the track from the station takes the visitor past a little telephone booth before the trail peters on on a shoulder of the hills descending from the south and west to meet the north-facing coast, the course of the trail marked only by the march of a line of street lamps beyond where the trail’s guiding fences end.
Further travel from here is either a case of climbing the rough slope of the hill or descending it towards the waiting shore. The way upwards can lead one to where the skeletal form of a cabin occupies an out-thrust of rock. Looking to be only partially complete (and a neat combining of builds by Wendy Keno and Cory Edo), the cabin is nevertheless cosily furnished and offers a comfortable retreat from the weather with an uninterrupted sea view. The path down, meanwhile, offers the way to where a deck sits over the water. Reached via stepping stone, it offers a view to the brilliant arc of the Milky Way as it rises from the north-east to arch over the region in a swathe of starry colour. Also visible from this deck is a little boat sitting far out on the water and laden with pillows and blankets as a further retreat for visitors to partake.
And therein lines the raison d’être for this design: not s much as a place to be explored in the traditional sense, but as a place where people can come, relax, share (intimately, if they wish, given much of the furniture scattered around includes cuddles / adult poses), take photos of themselves within the various vignettes – art studio, cabin, deck, telephone booth and so on (several more await discovery as one wanders) – or simply remember or lose oneself in thought.
In this latter point, it doesn’t matter that the art studio floats over the back of the station buildings or a single window frame is suspended alone on a hill slope; what matters is how the mind, the eye and / or the camera opt to use the locations within this region, be it for expression or escape.
SLurl Details
- Green Story (Green Story, rated: Moderate)
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 