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<title>Sean Greene — Writing</title>
<link href="https://seanpatrickgreene.com/writing/"/>
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<id>https://seanpatrickgreene.com/writing/</id>
<updated>2026-10-09T12:00:00Z</updated>
<author><name>Sean Greene</name></author>
<entry><title>What shelves here</title><link href="https://seanpatrickgreene.com/writing/sample-note-what-shelves-here/"/><id>https://seanpatrickgreene.com/writing/sample-note-what-shelves-here/</id><updated>2026-10-09T12:00:00Z</updated><summary>A sample note. The short kind. Three sentences and out.</summary><content type="html">&lt;p&gt;This is a sample note. Notes are short, lightly titled, and live beside the essays without pretending to be one.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Expect them to be the most frequent thing here. A thought from a walk, a line that needs saving, a correction to something said on a podcast two years ago.&lt;/p&gt;</content><category term="craft"/><category term="talks"/></entry>
<entry><title>On carving a website out of stone</title><link href="https://seanpatrickgreene.com/writing/sample-essay-carving-a-website/"/><id>https://seanpatrickgreene.com/writing/sample-essay-carving-a-website/</id><updated>2026-10-01T12:00:00Z</updated><summary>A sample essay. What it took to make a web page feel like it has weight, and why the metaphor held up longer than expected.</summary><content type="html">&lt;p&gt;This is a &lt;strong&gt;sample essay&lt;/strong&gt;. The words are filler; the shape is real.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Every link on the home page is a slab of basalt. Press it and it sinks. Let go and it slides out of its recess and takes you somewhere. The first version was a rounded rectangle with a noise filter on it, and it looked exactly like what it was: a button wearing a costume.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h2&gt;What changed&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Three things. The edges got chipped, the slab got a side you could see, and the shadow stopped being a soft widget glow and became something a lamp would cast.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;The texture was never the problem. The silhouette was.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The second version used real stone, generated once and tiled. Four tiles, under 250 KB, and the page still loads in under a second on a phone.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;h2&gt;What the library is for&lt;/h2&gt;
&lt;p&gt;The home page is the entrance. This room is where the writing lives. Essays like this one, poems, and notes that don&#x27;t deserve a title. Each one is a page, so a search engine can read it, and so can you.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;ul&gt;&lt;li&gt;Essays run long and have headings.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Poems keep their line breaks.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;Notes are short and undated in spirit.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;
&lt;p&gt;That&#x27;s the whole system. Drop a file in, run the build, and it shelves itself.&lt;/p&gt;</content><category term="craft"/><category term="design"/><category term="stone"/></entry>
<entry><title>Basalt</title><link href="https://seanpatrickgreene.com/writing/sample-poem-basalt/"/><id>https://seanpatrickgreene.com/writing/sample-poem-basalt/</id><updated>2026-09-18T12:00:00Z</updated><summary>A sample poem, eight lines, to show how verse sits on the page.</summary><content type="html">&lt;p class=&quot;verse&quot;&gt;This is a sample poem. Replace it.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class=&quot;verse&quot;&gt;Black glass that forgot it was fire,&lt;br&gt;
cooled in a hurry, pocked with the breath&lt;br&gt;
of whatever was leaving.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class=&quot;verse&quot;&gt;You can carve a word into it&lt;br&gt;
and the word will outlast the hand,&lt;br&gt;
the house, the reason.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p class=&quot;verse&quot;&gt;Press it. It sinks a little.&lt;br&gt;
Let go. It goes where it was going.&lt;/p&gt;</content><category term="stone"/><category term="poems"/></entry>
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