Beloved is the name Anu Papp has given to the latest setting presented on her Homestead region of Poetic Moon. Designed by Dandy Warhlol (Terry Fotherington), the setting is – to me, and for various reasons – potentially one of the best he has produced thus far.
There is a genuine and natural flow to the landscape which is captivating, and the placement of building and structure within it, the form of the island, just draws the eye through it, offering both a photogenic beauty and a sense of tranquillity and wholeness with nature, the industrial elements scattered about notwithstanding.
A creative talent herself, Anu is perhaps best known for founding and leading the Muse Dance Company, however in-world she is also a designer, photographer-artist and builder. These are all talents reflective of her physical life presence and talents, which extend into music, spiritualism, yoga and more, as noted within her Second Life Spotlight article, published in May 2023. All of this is also reflected somewhat within Beloved.
The setting itself forms a rugged temperate island, its coastline mostly cliffs of hardened rock or softer sandstone, the later carved by time and tide into shallow bays or ribbons of low-lying shoreline. Whilst hardly what one might call beachy, the latter offer opportunities to walk alongside the push and pull of the tide, splash through pools of seawater temporarily cut off from the rest of the waters surrounding the island.
This is a place with a high water table of its own – across its rugged back are two large and one smaller bodies of water (one of which carried subtle hints of perhaps being man-made rather than a natural occurrence. It is close to the largest of these bodies of water that the Landing Point is located (although it is not enforced), and it was on arrival that I immediately felt a comforting sense of Deja-vu; despite it being my first visit to the setting, I felt I knew it. As I cammed around, I quickly realised why: with the windswept ruggedness, the large body of water with a trail running alongside it, Beloved bought to mind an old-time favourite those who are long in the tooth (like me) might recall): Roche.
Now, to be clear, there is nothing intrinsically linking the two designs; in fact when taken as a whole, there are utterly different; but the fact that Beloved did bring memories of my multiple visits to Roche between 2012 and 2015 nevertheless gave me a sense of belonging as I started to explore Beloved. Many of the buildings scattered across Beloved perhaps aided that sense of the familiar with me, again not because of any similarities with Roche, but because they offered a similar sense of space between them, a space visitors can wander and absorb in quite solitude or in company.
Anu has a love for the works of Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī, the 3th-century poet, scholar, theologian and mystic; she quotes him in her Profile and with Beloved, she offers part of A Great Wagon, a poem associated with spiritual growth. In particular, the verses she has selected offer with might be considered a pivotal truth on the journey to spiritual awareness: that we are not human beings sometimes having moments of spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings travelling through a human experience.
In stating this truth, Rūmī, notes that as humans, we function in dualities: beauty and ugliness; truth and and lies; good and bad; black and white; and this duality of mode is the cause of all our conflicts. But as spiritual beings, we should recognise that nothing is either one or the other; that within the void of being, everything flows – there is no black and white to divide us; no sectioning of thoughts or emotions, we are simply one.
This is a concept that can get the grey matter working overtime to try to understand – and in this, Beloved is an ideal place in which to consider Rūmī’s words and the notions of self and oneness. As well as the region’s rugged beauty, there are multiple places to sit in contemplation, listen to the local sounds, to enjoy the ebb and flow of the waters surrounding the island – and the ebb and flow of shared company, if desired. Places where we can – as Rūmī might have put it – see beyond our physical bodies and understand our true essence as beings of the spirit.
In acknowledgement of this, and – if I might be so presumptuous – I would add to Anu’s use of the poem, I would perhaps offer a further quote:
In the body of the world, they say, there is a soul
and you are that.But we have ways within each other
that will never be said by anyone.
For those who prefer to focus on the region’s picturesque beauty, there is certainly no disappointment to be had. Dandy’s attention to detail here is superb, with many touches to draw the eye and the camera lens, from the cost interior of the brick cabin by the lake through the egrets gathered above the northern cliffs to the little birds gathered on a powerline – something which might, except for the absence of a shoebill, put some in mind of a certain Pixar short and thus raise a smile – and more besides.
An engaging and visual setting, ideal for exploration, contemplation and appreciation – kudos to Anu and to Dandy – and my thanks to Susann De Cuir for the hat-tip.
SLurl Details
- Beloved (Poetic Moon, rated Moderate)
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 