You said you won’t say goodbye… and, actually, neither am I. But I will say goodnight. Which might seem odd, given that this photo, this moment, is of early morning here where I am.

But it’s already evening where you are, and so it is half fitting. More germane to this medium, though, is the message we—some of its denizens—have been keening this past little while, since we heard that it was going to be closed up, and archived. We have been saying “goodbye,” each in our own ways.

I prefer goodnight… in the sense that this place is about to lapse into a long, 10,000-year sleep. One in which fevered dreams will come and go, in an elemental flow that beggars our little notions of time and space. It’s hard enough to remember what the previous generation or two was like, much more so what the next one or two will experience. In 10,000 years, our kind will have moved on to unimaginable heights—or depths.

One wonders if any of this will interest a future Sanna, Craig, David, Lloyd; will our lives be so surpassingly strange to them, or will a hint of something familiar remain?

What we do know will stay much the same are the contours of the earth itself, in which a span of 10,000 years is nothing. The movement of the oceans, of tectonic plates, the biosphere that will have heated and cooled and heated again, in a pulse that goes back for uncounted time, and will do so forward for unimaginably many more moments.

But for the present moment, this small but precious thing: we connected. Told stories via this medium, shared our lights and darks, the patterns of drawn colour and photographic imagery. It was meaningful. Like you, I will not say goodbye to all that. Just… goodnight.