Hello friends,

We made it back to the Great White North in one piece. I have been working on my website for the last few weeks. I wanted it get it to a shape that I was happy with. More importantly, that I could make a part of my workflow. Building a robust system.

Woolgathering #

• Started reading The Rings of Saturn by W.S. Sebald and stumbled up on the word “dog days”. Who knew it was named after a star.

• Stumbled up on this mesmerizing accessory cloud footage on twitter. (Everyone in the comments are saying everyone else should watch the movie NOPE)

• Twice in a week came across the work of German artist John Heartfield. I like how John Berger uses Heartfield’s photo-montage work as a way to breakdown the medium.

  The peculiar advantage of photo-montage lies in the fact that everything which has been cut out keeps its familiar photographic appearance. We are still looking first at things and only afterwards at symbols.

• The best show in the world

• Exploring the shape of grief with Anne Carson

John Cage : I HAVE NOTHING TO SAY AND I AM SAYING IT

Making the web my own #

This was the year 2002. My friend lend me his internet scratch card. He said it had two hours of internet on it. All I had to do was use the serial number on that card and I can go “online”. I didn’t believe him. There is no way someone was going to give me two hours of internet. It was expensive. It was a luxury. I typed the numbers in. Heard the dial-tone go crazy. Poof! There I was, peeking into the most incredible thing I have set my eyes on. AOL chat. Then, there were blogs, directories, blogrolls, webrings^[1]. A hyperlink wonderland.^[2]

Accessing another person’s mind, without trying to acquire a dusty old book from the library. A look at the mundane everyday goings of some rando ^[3] on the other side of the internet.

I kept a blog on and off for over a decade now. I would start one up, write a blog post or two. Forget about it. Relaunch a new one couple of years later.

Slowly my need for my own website went away. Replaced by the ease of using things like Instagram ^[4], Twitter, Tik Toks of the world. And then, the algorithms started to take over. Curating an experience just for me. Maximizing on revenue by showing me exactly what they think I need to see. ^[5]

It took me a long time to close in on this dissatisfaction I felt with current state of the web ^[6]. I realized I need to carve my own tiny corner of the internet. Away from the whims of these infinity pools. ^[7]

A website can be anything you want; a river, a plant, a garden, a puddle ^[8]. I want my website to be a garden. Where I can plant my ideas and see them slowly grow over time. Building a widely connected mycorrhizal network ^[9] between thoughts. I made my own little garden. At the bottom of every post, you can see backlinks to other posts. Over time, each would feed into each other. Feed off each other. ^[10]

I want this website to a quiet place for someone to take shelter in. A giant banyan tree for a weary traveller to take shelter on a hot day ^[11]. Where they can quietly glance through my notes or look at my commonplace book.

I want it to be resource for myself. To find bookmarks I can revisit over time. An archive of my newsletters.

For an eventual time when the big tech I depend on doesn’t exist anymore. These tangled text files will exist on a physical disk somewhere. Until I decide to burn the current iteration of this website and rebuild it anew ^[12]. Letting entropy take its course. ^[13]

Until then, I have this tiny, unadorned part of the web for myself. Some place where the young-me would have loved to stumble upon ^[14]. To peek at the mundane everyday goings of a rando on some corner of the internet.

Embracing