On the beach

Surfing the Web sometimes feels to me like walking along the beach, just at the edge of the surf, and looking down all the time to pick up cool shells and interesting rocks and -- once in a rare while -- something awesome like an intact horseshoe-crab shell that’s been washed ashore. There are lots of cool and interesting and awesome things online, but I only get this feeling when it’s bits and pieces of cultural nostalgia that sloshes into my path...

Like the thousands and thousands and thousands of old 45s someone just sold on eBay. I never had thousands, but the 45s I had as kid were way more precious to me than all the CDs I have now -- I think it has to do with choice. I could slip one of those smooth vinyl platters out of its sleeve any time I wanted, pop in the little plastic adapter, slide it onto the turntable, and hear my favorite song right now, without having to listen to the radio for hours, keeping myself up all night waiting for the damn deejay to play one particular tune. (Which I did a lot.) Now it’s just way too easy to hear any one of thousands and thousands and thousands of songs whenever I want, with music everywhere: online, over cable, from my CD collection, whatever. And so of course, I end up hardly listening to anything at all anymore: not only can enormous choice be paralyzing, but it also, paradoxically, seems to reduce the desire to partake. If I can listen to anything whenever I want, it’ll still be there tomorrow, too.

Maybe that’s just me. Maybe the Xer obsession with nostalgia (some of us are even nostalgic for our now-defunct sites devoted to the Xer obsession with nostalgia) is like everyone’s love of nostalgia: we like being reminded of a simpler time, which everyone’s childhood was in comparison to his or her adulthood.

And that might be why I am moved almost to tears -- and definitely also to laughter -- by the images at Square America, a site devoted to sharing those old-fashioned square photographs that went out in the 1970s. My family’s photo albums are full of these gorgeous little four-sided moments in time, and all the pictures of chunky little baby me are chunky little squares of history. (That’s probably why this collection at Square America, featuring images of childhoods bygone, are particularly touching.) When I take snapshots of my family and friends now, with my digital camera, I snip and crop and print out and cut down to emphasis whoever the subject is, and I still find a square photo the most appealing. Something about a square photo just says love and warmth and home to me. My little niece in the square little pix I take of her will never feel the same way, because her family photo album will feature images of all sorts of wild shapes, cut down from ink-jet printouts... unless my brother just ends up keeping only a digital album, in which case perhaps a laughing kid unwrapping a Christmas present on a screensaver will say "love" to her.

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I found this eBay auction and Square America via my surfing today at Metafilter, which is where I make lots of interesting discoveries. I trust the geeks there to scoop up the neatest beachfinds from the seashore of the Web. I like to think of them as virtual metal-detector nerds, and we all get to share in the treasures they collect.