I leave one virtual world as I sit to write about my trip to Virtual Worlds 2008 conference in New York City. The virtual world I have left is Clarissa Dalloway's London. It is a text based virtual world, not computer mediated, yet it is as compelling and immersive, no, even more compelling and immersive as so many of the three dimensional computer mediated worlds I frequently inhabit. A phrase comes to my mind, something like, "This was London. The war..." but the phrase I was looking for comes from a favorite poem of mine by Denise Levertov about reading Checkov on West Heath. For Mrs. Dalloway, "The war was over, except for some one like Mrs. Foxcroft..."

I look at my fellow passengers. A few read, a couple fidget, holding their coffee cups, half full of high test coffee, yet most sit with vacant stares or eyes closed. It is early in the morning. In London, Big Ben would be chiming eleven in the morning right now. For those in Connecticut, that means it is only six in the morning. To the northwest, the sky covered with the darkness of night, but to the southeast a rim of pink edges the lightening blue. I want to write right now, reading Virgina Woolf does that to me, yet I have not slept well recently and perhaps I should join the vacant eyed and rest. It will be a long day.

For some, Virtual Worlds is about this longing to write, to create. In the old text based virtual worlds like LambdaMOO, people used words to create wonderful spaces to explore their own imaginations. With the move to three dimensions the space for creativity expanded to include visual artists. Yet for many others, virtual worlds are a place to hang out, the new millennium's replacement for Saturday morning cartoons, which were themselves a replacement for the imaginative play of yesteryear. To others, it is a place to market, to sell toys and sex and avatar shapes. It is a place where you need to worry about the legal issues surrounding virtual currencies and intellectual property. I worry that the petty commerce will soon over take the beautiful creativity, just as it does when the shops move in to a community where artists had fled in search of cheap space.

Second LIfe will become the new Soho and the neo-bohemians will move on to other virtual worlds. OpenSim? Qwak? Something that hasn't been dreamed up yet? We shall see.

The train stops briefly in Westport and fills up even more. If I'm going to rest at all before this long day, I should save this document and try to close my eyes briefly.