The culture of the Internet?

There are times when internet culture feels a bit like a beach.

Or at least a walk on a beach, a place where maybe you’re thinking about family, food, or past loves, or trees, or bicycles. I think Claude Lelouch wrote the key elements of Un Homme et Une Femme in his car, parked on the beach in Deauville in the rain.

And then you see something in the surf.

You fill your pockets with beautiful little stones, ground glass, other dogs’ moldy tennis balls.

I feel love for some of the wonderful things I’ve collected on that beach. Rarely important or momentous, but always with some form of feeling or connection. Things like Lynetter’s Interesting Snippets – I can just flick through those over and over.

Also Flickr generally. It feels dead in one sense, and permanent, and quiet like a church on the other. A list of moments frozen in time, like this meeting of friends in a micro-bar in Japan that was linked to from a blog about the Jetée at Orly Airport (which no longer exists because we now need be contained when at airports…)

I’m hoping these jewels continue to wash up on the shores outside the internet’s walled gardens.