The reason I’m nostalgic is because I’m a poet with a penchant for introspecting. Or maybe it’s because I grew up in home situated in a different place than my grandparents. Perhaps, it is also because my definition of a home, then, situated to a new, different place nearly 10(!) years ago now. No matter the root cause(s), what I do know is that I can recount memories at a pace that is comparable to the times that you can blink.
“What does nostalgia even have to do with this site?” Excellent question.
When the physical world ages and changes, these websites can offer an escape. The list of websites is different to different people, of course. However, if you’ve had a personal website of your own, I’m hoping you understand why mine is at the top of the list of websites of significance for me.
You visit your website and notice the small choice of font or color or layout. Years pass by and there comes a time, eventually, the same small choices and their reasoning drift away to a place that is visible but, increasingly, distant. You start afresh and make new choices. The cycle repeats on a cadence shaped by the happenings in the present day. A sentimental person will experience respite through making new choices and identify it as nostalgia-in-the-making. They are correct.
Yet, bracing for nostalgia by abandoning all change? I much rather strive for language that constructs, both, the feeling of remembering and acceptance of changing. I think it sounds like: The walls of this home on the internet are no stranger to the person I am in the now, as well as, the person whom, years from now, will wish to trace through life as it happened.
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Written on the occasion of publishing v3 of rizwanakhan.com.