A Planet to Sit

I have good news, and I want to write it down here while it is still fresh. Apple has approved eleven:eleven, the app I have been building, and it is going live soon on the App Store and on Google Play.

eleven:eleven is a small planet of real places in Greece, and you go there to sit. That is the whole idea. You turn a little globe, you choose a place, and you sit down in it for a while.

The places have names, the way good benches do: the Sea of Cloud, the Shore at Noon, the Slow Stars, the First Sun. Each one is a real place in Greece, brought as close to a screen as I could manage, with the grass moving and the sea doing its own slow thing.

There is a timer, so you can stop watching the clock, and a breathing guide for the days you want one: breathe in, hold, breathe out, with a calm voice in English or in Greek. It does not hurry you.

My favorite part is the light. While you sit, the day moves on. An hour of sky passes in eleven minutes, afternoon into gold, gold into dusk, so the same place is never quite the same twice. Some days it rains. Some days there is mist on the sea, or snow, and you just keep sitting.

The music grows while you sit, slowly, a little more of it the longer you stay. Every sound in it is my own. I spent years making music for other people to hear, and this time I made it for people to sit inside.

And when you have finished sitting, you can stand up and walk. I did not want a planet you only look at, so you can get up and move through the place you have been sitting in, on your own feet, at your own speed.

This notebook has circled stillness for years, so it felt right to build a place where you can simply sit. Just a good spot and the day going by.

Apple has approved it, and I am still enjoying how that sentence looks. The App Store and Google Play are where it goes next, and it is going live soon on both. I will not give you a date, because I would rather hand you the real thing than a promise.

Its page is already up, with the planet and the places and a little of what a sit feels like: apps.v-sag.com/eleven.html. The links to the stores will be there the day it opens.

Come and sit.