this began as a folder on my desktop. inspired by kevin's approach, i started turning it into what would become this field. his script acted as a toolkit, but more than that, it offered a way of thinking about directories, files, and how they might live openly on the web. this site carries both that idea and kevin’s generosity, without which it would not have come to life.

thank you, kevin!

the folder's called cabbage field, after pissarro's 1873 painting. it feels like it's always been around (the earliest record i have is a screenshot from july 2023). that’s why i chose it. by then it was the most familiar space on my desktop. it houses screenshots, half-written notes, random photos, voice memos - all the stray bits with no proper home. a kind of junkyard that keeps my desktop uncluttered.

still, once i began using cabbage field as the soil to cultivate this site, i had to sort things out a little. a few files got deleted (like the dumb memes i used to make for friends). others were gathered into new folders - giving them, in a way, a place to belong.

while sorting things out, some of the files were quite large, so i had to compress them to reduce their size. i opened one afterward. a photo, then a voice memo. just to check. the photo held its shape well enough. but the voice memo had shifted somewhere i couldn't quite tell. the voice was still there. still recognizably itself. and yet it didn’t land the same.

a compression ratio of around 60% usually kept the visible or audible quality intact. beyond that, artifacts began to appear. pixels softening, outlines collapsing. ghost traces where the data used to be.

it leaves me wondering what really remains.

whether it's still itself after all that's been stripped away.

i don't have a clean answer. but it feels like an old question wearing new clothes: the same thing we ask of rivers, of people, of anything that keeps changing and somehow keeps going.

that's what i like about things: they're ever unmade, yet somehow whole, like streams. they keep growing, like fields. maybe this place is a field of streams. a space to tend over time, shifting and growing as i do.

as i sorted through the cabbage field folder, i found myself drawn to recording its unfolding. i want this place to become a space for reflecting on change. i don’t know if i’ll ever manage it, but i want to write it down anyway (even if it remains unwitnessed).

the very first thing i did when i started building this site was to pick up a pen and write down my initial ideas in my notebook. writing slows me down and allows me to notice what i truly want. through those vague notes, i sifted away fleeting urges and kept only what felt sincere, what spoke most genuinely to my heart, as the foundation for this space.

i could have drafted in joplin or made an are.na channel to brainstorm, but i wanted to write by hand - to establish a physical connection to something that can't be touched. perhaps what i sought was a feeling for this space before shaping it.

today i brought a few updates to this place.

• first is the color notes (what the light held.md) - a kind of color diary of mine, inspired by one of my favorite corners of the internet: special.fish. it keeps track of the color updates i've shared there.

• i also added a few effects taken from RV's free Javascript/DHTML effects to add some seasonal touches to the space. i'd love to give the site a sense of the seasons, though i don't yet have the skills to realize all my ideas.

• i'd like to create a folder to track what i’m currently exploring or learning - i love the feeling of researching in the open, like reading aloud in a park (even if no one hears).

i've added a tea room: a place to gather my cups of tea and to welcome guests. it's meant as a space for shared presence. i'm glad i managed to include a tokonoma, though i wonder if it feels a touch too formal.

i also set up another space called train-stop, not too different from tea-room. both are guestbooks. if tea-room lets guests share their presence by noting what they drank today, train-stop is for sharing more personal or reflective thoughts.

both tea-room and train-stop were inspired by chakai and bus-stop - the imageboard and textboard i hung out on during the covid lockdowns. it’s kind of nice to bring them back here.

when i put this site together i wanted it to reflect how i experience things: through separate spaces, each with its own focus and rhythm. instead of a single feed there’s a room for every slice of life. so it made sense to do the same with how people reach me. that’s why in addition to seedbox and tea-room i created train-stop.

because, you know, sometimes it takes a new space to bring out a different voice, to invite a new kind of conversation.

i just set up a new space called tinytwitter - a little microblog to remember the good old days on twitter with my friends. it's really nothing spectacular. i used a php guestbook script generously shared by rmf and gave it a few tweaks to turn it into a low-budget microblog. usually, i update moonlit.exposed manually, so changes aren’t instant. but now, thanks to tinytwitter, i can post updates from anywhere, on any device, as long as there’s a browser and internet.

• update 1.1 adds a few small touches to tinytwitter. from now on, the bird will chirp whenever you click the logo, and dishrag — the site's cat favicon — will occasionally peek out to spy on it. i first added these just for fun. but the chirping turned out useful - it instantly catches my cats' attention whenever they're up to mischief.

update 2.0 for tea-room and train-stop (where things got a bit crowded):

guests waiting for their train can now draw on the walls. ദ്ദി ˃ ᵕ ˂ ) anything goes! really! as long as it's safe for work (i'll have to paint over anything else ( ⸝⸝･̆⤚･̆⸝⸝) just so you know).

there's a small garden now too, for wandering. train-stop has become where the webring drops people off (most of them, anyway). boards announce the coming train and list nearby events. two ad panels stand there as well - they help fund ( ꈍᴗꈍ) this whole update.

at tea-room i've left out cups and a pot for people to pour and sip on their own. the balcony opens now onto the meadow, where creatures move through their days. guests are welcome to add their own creature to the meadow. one per person, to keep it manageable.. and there's a pond beside the meadow that reflects a different poem with every visit.

and if you've known me long enough, you probably know i love windows (like a lot of people do). in my childhood bedroom, the window sat low, level with my bed, so during afternoon naps i'd stick one hand out. i don't know why i did that. maybe to feel the cool air. or just to know the world was still out there. anyway, i built a new space called weathered-memos, which mimics my bedroom window. through it, you can tell if it's raining or sunny where i am, whether it's day or night, what the moon looks like right now, and what memories that view holds for me.

෴⚘₊˚෴෴𖥧𖤣𖥧෴˚₊𖥧𓋼෴෴𖤣𓍊𖥧෴˚⋆.𓇗⋆˚෴‧₊˚𓆑

i didn't set up email notifications for the guestbooks, so visiting feels like opening a gift to me. new comments. new drawings on the walls. the meadow has eight little friends now (and so many bugs). but what makes me happiest is noticing people's presence in watching the teacups empty and fill again. for me, this has become one of the most intimate practices i've found on the internet lately.

i hope these updates offer something pleasant to your visits. i hope they help us reach each other better, despite all the time and distance between.

spring arrived quietly for me this year, but this place has been buzzing with presence.

the waiting room at train-stop overflows with notes from visitors. the wall is covered in drawings. the meadow has twelve small creatures now and my inbox has messages from friends i've never met. tea keeps brewing. cups keep filling.

so what's new?

a ghost has moved into the homepage now. they haunt cursors and whisper words. the mp3-player now includes radio stations. gondola got rebuilt from the ground up. over at tea-room, there's a little nonsense quiz about eggs. not-too-far-across-the-fence and backroom have new things too, if you wander that far.

the ascii field has hidden links now: windows light up as if lamps were lit inside, critters wiggle at play. and fireworks bloom during holidays, bringing seasonal touches.

i'd always wanted to build a workshop for people to craft their own worry-dolls, to ease what weighs on them. but it would mean another place for creating small figures, and that felt too close to what the meadow already does. so instead i built worry-dome. you can now write your worries onto sky-lanterns and release them up. each day, one lantern per person. when others visit the dome and touch these floating worries, the lanterns glow a little warmer as if comforted by being witnessed.

and one more thing: the site closes during the day now. most of it, anyway. public spaces like train-stop and tea-room stay open though. because they've become gathering places in ways i hadn't expected. it seems like this place grows thanks to you.